Its official. We got married on March 15th. We wed at the Beverly Hills city hall with our good friend Billy as our witness. Simple, easy and both back at work later that day. How efficient, right? We dressed up a bit, sport coats and hair combed!! HAHA. Justice of the Peace was excellent, so kind and supportive. We exchanged vows, I couldn’t stop myself from crying. It was a very special day for us. 19 years in the making.

House update – This month we didn’t see a lot of action. I guess that’s about the same as every other month. We spoke to our realtor, a British woman living in Italy with her family. She had shared regarding two lanes of activity needed to land our July purchase.

Demolition of the pig stalls. Apparently, they need a permit to demolish. Several months in, still no permit. Lots of talking, not much doing. She tells us they are just waiting for the permit to be issued and construction machinery will roll in. She tells us the commune may want to come back out one more time before issuing. So, we wait.

Amnesty/Sanatoria – Apparently the work they did on the house was not legal many years ago. As a result they have to pay and/or demolish the work in order to reach compliance. Compliance is required in order to make the sale this July. Given the pace, we are beginning to lose confidence they’ll make it in time. They can’t get this part done, until the demolition of the pig stalls mentioned earlier. So we wait.

Immigration update – We finally start engagement with an immigration lawyer. We are planning to do our Visa by investment. This means you invest a certain amount of money in a legit business for 5 years and you are given a Visa that really has no limitations. This would allow us to come and go as we please over the next several years. We have stack of paperwork we are now completing, which hopefully results in some approvals and then visits to the Italian consulate.

Retirement update – Both George and I are targeting end of June as our last day of work. We’ll be back in Italy last week of June so I guess June 21st is last official day at work. Still feels weird saying that out loud. After a long career where work has been at the core, I’m looking forward to getting those hours back to apply to some other interests.

We ended our visit to Italy in March, it was colder than usual and in fact we were hit with a lot of rain and pretty good hail on one day.

We have grown to love a couple restaurants in Orvieto and make it a point to revisit each time we are there. We imagine being regular customers eventually and having them know us by name.

On one of our rainy days, we take a long road trip to some other local towns. While it hails outside, we enjoy some favorites.