Bob Dylan

We went to a concert last night, billed as a tribute to Bob Dylan. It was fun and entertaining. Basically it's a yearly thing where local groups play for charity. The theater was full, the music too load. Lots of grey hairs in the audience and on the stage as well as young musicians. As one can imagine the quality varied from really good to wish they would stop now. There is a local guitar player who could have given Jimmy Hendrix a run for his money and some of the singers were very good. Overall enjoyable, but the Bob Dylan aspect was a bit disappointing, maybe I expected some imitators, rather than interpretations of his music.

We also finally had a bbq yesterday, invited some friends and their 3 kids. It's been raining every afternoon for the last two weeks. So we scheduled it for mid day and everything turned out fine. One thing I don't quite understand is that when one invites at least some Italians say at noon, they tend to stay the whole day and then even make excuses about why they have to leave at 7:30. I'm not complaining, it just takes some getting use to. In the US people would normally come for a meal, visit a couple hours after and go home.

Weekend In Milan

Luisa's parents took Julia and her cousin Sara to Rome on Saturday, so we took her to Milan on Friday evening as they were leaving from there. Saturday we had the afternoon off from kids. Luisa's sister took care of Giovanni and he had his first ever sleep over at her house with his cousin Guido. And we went to the Renzo Piano exhibit. Wow that was great, he must really be an inspiring person to work with. That evening we had our first dinner alone together in months - Japanese food, good.Sunday we took the two boys to a castle near lake Maggiore, the castle is great as one can go up to the highest levels, they also have one of the world's largest collections of antiques dolls. I got a kick out of the mechanical one that is an old lady picking up her skirt and peeing, they have some of the mechanical dolls on video, showing them in action.In the afternoon we went to the museum of transportation. It's really amazing, and free. It's the private collection of one man and has everything, from trains, to ski lifts, to subways. It's a bit like being in someones giant garage, though it's all outside and pretty well organized.This is I think a bit amazing, at least for the catholics. Julia and Sara walked into St. Peters with their grandparents for the mass and were picked out of the crowd to deliver the host to the cardinal giving the mass. Can you believe it? Even more amazing is that Julia also had an unusual experience there the first time we took her when she was a baby. She started to cry during the mass, pretty loudly. An old nun who was near us came up and lightly caressed her forehead. After that she was silent.Now we are back at work in Belluno, seems like it's going to rain all Summer

Good News

We won a competition for the design of a bell tower at one of the large churches in Belluno. I'll post some 3d renderings on our design blog. www.helpudesign.blogspot.com It's a big help for us to have this project as it's a kind of welcoming into the community. Hopefully it may lead to us getting other projects in the area.

We had a nice visit this weekend from a friend and client Phil Deane. He lives in Oceanside, California and is touring Italy mostly in the Southern half. So it was great that he made the effort to come up here in a busy schedule of touring.