An almost sleepless night today, interspersed with two long periods of waking up. Still away from home after 27 days of hospitalization whose end I still don't know, when on departure I took leave of my son, hoping for a trip of only 72 (scant) hours.

The sky is still black here in Milan, laden with the promise of rain with intense weather events nearby, while the sun is shining at home. In every sense of the word.

Thoughts chase each other, ranging from frivolities to worries about the future. Thinking about what I will do when I return home, what will be easy for me to do and what will not. How I will experience returning to Milan for my next checkup in a month. Will I experience the anguish of a new problem that will blow up the much-needed family vacation, or such that it will seriously affect my health? I realize it is pointless to fret, however, the head is racing, and getting it to slow down is not easy....

The physical, geographic, seasonal distance between me and my family these days is like the difference between the 15°C and leaden sky looming over Milan this morning here as I wake up with a sprinkling of rain, and the images I see coming in from the live webcams in Puglia, where I live.

It makes me a bit melancholy, if not quite in a foul mood. And it makes me worry about what is to come in the next few days.

Some time ago I found a 3D model of the Apple Park’s Rainbow Stage.

Recently a friend of mine, playing with his 3D printer, decided to print this for me as a little present.
I thought it has come out really good, and I’m grateful for his present.

One of the funniest and most incredible things I have seen outsides the lanes of the Niguarda's hospital in Milan is the number of birds that lives on the trees and in the city park nearby the hospital. There's also a riding school for horse riding therapy, dedicated to younger kids.
But, in some occasions, you can encounter Diego. Diego is a peacock who's made its home nearby the riding school (which I see from my window) and when there's little traffic you can see making a walk in hospital avenues. And that's funny.

Being (again) in Milan yesterday gave me another (unexpected) joy. In fact, I hade the chance to re-encounter in person my friend jtheo after our last meetup during the BzaarCamp in sept. 2006, and his wife xlthlx (whom I've known online for decades but never had the possibility to meet in person).

As said in a previous post, being struck in this city a thousand miles away from home sucks. But it's also giving me some small little pearls of joy and memories to take back home.

I've been a Byword user since ages. Howerever lately the app has begun to show some uncertainty on synchronization of notes using iCloud (while the Dropbox support has somewhat disappeared from the macOS version).

My friend Luigi lately fell in love with Bear, and had the chance to talk me extensively about its features, versatility, and support from both the software house and its community.

So today I took my decision, activated the Pro version of Bear (which is giving me two weeks of free usage for evaluation), imported my old notes, tagged them inside it and deleted the Byword app altogether from my MacBook Pro and my iPhone.

We will see how it goes!

… you can get the chance to encounter people you've known on-line for years, or ‘ages’.
Yesterday I met Luigi, one of the first Italian people known on Mastodon after leaving Twitter. In April two friends known in a small and ‘obscure‘ mailing list; we have checked and our first emails go back to october 2000.

Milan it's a strange city. Always tries to fashinate me, but everytime shows some of its downsides. But it is undoubtedly the place to be if you want to meet people, and wanting to make situations and opportunities happen.

Last Monday finally I've been sent back to my family. The following days have been a rollercoaster of task to do, and things to put back in order after 5 months of being away from home. Adding to all this, my kid's school has come to the end for the first class so we had to find a new routine with his needs and our duties.
Hence the silence… not that I'm complaining, I only with there could be another 4 or 4 hours a day to complete some tasks. And having the energies to do them too ;-)

One year ago we were on vacation. We had our first trip cruising over the Adriatic Sea, going from Bari to Trieste, then down again in Greece, Turkey arriving to Istanbul and then back again to Corfu and Bari.

This is one of my favorite pictures of my son, during our visit to Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. He looked in awe, like us, at the magnificent architecture of the place and felt the ‘magic’ of this religious place. While being a church for religions, he also felt the need to pray to Mary (mother of Jesus) for my health, since he has always known about my issues. It was so spontaneous and magic that it's a moment impressed in my memory. And I would like to share this with you…