Crepes!

Today was a chillout day. We didn't have any appointments (for real this time), so we just hung out in the apartment. I attempted to do some more research, but was hitting quite a few dead ends, so I decided to take a break and eat lunch. Now, I told y'all I've been eating cold cut sandwiches like they're going out of style so I decided today to try tuna (yes, I brought a pouch of tuna with me from the states, lol - good thing b/c none of the tuna brands here are recognizable). Of course, I didn't have all the ingredients, but I figured a close enough substitute would still be better than another prosciutto, turkey and salami sandwich. I found some salt and pepper in the apartment, and added the mayonnaise and mustard that we bought. I didn't have any relish (I haven't even seen relish in the supermarkets) or eggs (for some reason, everytime we see eggs, they're not refrigerated - I don't quite know why but I refuse to buy warm eggs). The tuna turned out to be more mayonnaise than tuna (I think I OD'd on the mayo) and it wasn't quite Hellmann's or Miracle Whip so the taste was off. But it still tasted better than cold cuts.
I spent most of the afternoon on my computer working on some non-Bocconi related projects, and trying to scan my computer for adware and spyware (I know it's infected, I just haven't found anything that can detect and get rid of it). The virus scan took four hours....yes, 4, as in the number after 3. That was most of the afternoon. In the end, it told me that my iexplore.exe file was infected. Hmmmm....not sure about that. When I tried to clean/quarantine, it did nothing. Finally, I opted to submit a copy of the file to Symantec so they could figure out if it was truly infected, and got a message that the software could not find any infection (way to waste 4 hours of my day running in circles). I finally decided to submit the file anyway and see what happens.
I did put together a spreadsheet for our project to track our research. One of the other team members put together the original spreadsheet but it was way too complex. She had about 10 tabs. She had a tab for free market reports, and a tab for market reports that require purchase. A tab for global reports. And a tab for global reports that require purchase. A tab for blogs. A tab for forums. A tab for books. You get the picture. Then on each tab, she had sections based on the type of item it was - for example, the luxury consumer vs. the luxury market vs. the luxury economy. I looked at that thing and was thinking "it will take me longer to figure out where to put my source than it would take me to find the source." Ashley and I both gave her feedback that it needed to be simpler, among other things, and she responded that her Excel skills were minimal, so I decided to take a stab at it myself. I put together a one tab spreadsheet with some drop down lists as necessary, so that we could have a master list of all the sources and filter depending on our needs. I sent it out to the team and asked for feedback. Ashley asked me to add citation fields, so I updated it and sent out the updated version. That was my productive deed of the day :-) It made up for the fact that I was exhausting my obvious research sources and running out of new places to look.
We went out to the supermarket (yet again) briefly. I was supposed to just be going for water (which costs all of about 1 euro) and instead ended up with 11 euros worth of stuff. The supermarket is all of about 3 blocks from our apartment but we were drenched in sweat by the time we got back. This heat is serious. We hung out in the apartment most of the evening, with Rita watching movies on her laptop and me still chugging along with the virus scan. Since we didn't have any evening plans, I decided today would be a perfect day to get some more crepes! Rita wasn't impressed with the crepes the last time, but she's a good sport and came with me to the creperia anyway. As usual, there were tons of people out on Ticinese, walking around, eating ice cream, sitting at the cafes, and otherwise hanging out. I was all hyped up for a crepe with chocolate, strawberries and rice krispies. But of course, when we got there, the woman behind the counter tells me they don't have any strawberries (it took about a minute for me to understand what she was saying b/c she was speaking Italian). That just killed half of my excitement. I decided instead to try bananas. So I had a crepe with bananas, chocolate and rice krispies. It was ok. It tasted good, but I think I just had my heart set on strawberries. After eating a warm dessert with chocolate, I was feening for something cold. Rita opted out of the crepes when she found out they didn't have strawberries, so she decided she wanted ice cream. But not just any old ice cream. Something reliable. So, off we headed to old faithful (McDonalds) to get her a McFlurry. Apparently, they didn't have cookies and cream so she got a cone instead. I, on the other hand, decided I'd go for a strawberry milkshake. And guess what? They were out of strawberries too! Apparently they make them with fresh strawberries. So now I'm wondering - is there a strawberry drought going on that I don't know about? What's up with that? So now of course, I have strawberries on the brain, and nothing else will satisfy the urge. I left McDonalds empty-handed and we returned to the apartment.
We decided we will attempt a trip to Florence this weekend. Most likely it will be on Sunday. Tomorrow is market day, and I'm looking forward to watermelon, peaches, and bananas. I wasn't impressed with the grapes (mine weren't very sweet, and Rita's were seeded), and the cherries went bad too fast so I may skip those. We are also planning to return to the via Montenapoleone area to check out the Burberry store (we missed it last time) and quite possibly Corso Como. If we do, I'll be sure to write all about it. I hope you all enjoy your weekends!