Internet jury rigged… for awhile… but food photos and a rant

As I write, I have returned home from supper with a priest who just arrived in Rome for the canonization of Carlo Acutis… which has been cancelled. Other things are going on.

Returning home I find no internet. I’m using cellular data but I could not, for some reason, tether my laptop, which I tested and tried before I left for Rome.

I happened to buy a thin portable Bluetooth keyboard which I am using now to type into my iPhone WP app for the blog. That helps.

I’m not sure what the sitrep is with internet. Checking online (with the phone) shows no outages for Vodafone Italia. Maybe they show it outside of Italy, I don’t know. Maybe this is another example of the gummint screwing with internet in advance of all sorts of big shots descending on Rome in the next few days.

All I know is that, if this doesn’t clear up, I may be working from the sacristy or a bar if it doesn’t clear up by morning.

So, I am not quite cut off, but I am a bit crippled until I can find out what the deal is with internet here. I did pay my bill, of course.

In the meantime, for you dear readers who like food photos. I’ll try to upload a couple from supper now and then hit the hay.

Roman style artichoke. Perfect. Fork sank through it.

Pizza Bianca … hmmm Pizzaballa… Fumo Bianco…

Seconds after (it was cold) I cut it, it was oozing milk. Mozzarella as God intended.

Alla norcina. Could have been in a better bowl. The fancier the bowl the harder to eat in an integrated way. Goodies go to the bottom so you must incessantly lift and sift. Keep it simple.

Salitimbocca which I had not had since I’ve arrived. It was just right tonight.

I spoke at length with the waiter, long-serving, old-school, seen it all. He said the Jubilee is a flop. They had a huge lunch crowd but almost all the tables tonight were empty! And this is a well-known place in the heart of things, in a Jubilee when clerics are flooding in. Cardinals eat here (not ones I like) so it is known and established. We had a leisurely meal over a couple of hours. In their main room with over a dozen tables, there were two other tables with people and one turned over. The Jubilee… meh.

However, now I am hearing that rooms are booking FAST and some clerics were possibly going to be booted from their reservations (for Carlos Acutis) to make room for the guys with colorful sashes and bigger accounts.

What did Jesus say about the “aquilae”?

UPDATE: 5 minutes after I posted this, the internet came back up.

Of course it did. Anything to keep me from sleep.

UPDATE: It will be interesting to watch things like bandwidth and GPS over the next few days as preparations are made here for the arrival of many heads of state.  In years past when some big shot came in, you could look at your phone for a map and watch it drift around trying to find where you were.  Big shots leave, everything back to normal.  Maybe they’ve gotten better at things.  We shall see.