The Apartment

Well, I got the apartment. I went to the real estate office this morning to rent the one I looked at on Friday that I liked. So I signed the contract, or rather the formal offer, which the owner now has to accept. If all goes well, I can get the keys end of April and pay large amounts of money in deposit, agent fees, and registration taxes. But hey, I've got an apartment in a good location, with nice new furnishings, in Florence. Even though it's not huge, it has a sofa bed, so we can host short-term guests.
This afternoon, I finally got an introduction to the lab, and a description of what they're doing at the moment and planning to do soon. It sounds interesting, and I'll sit in some more tomorrow to get an idea of how things work in there. Since this experiment is both older (and flakier) and more complex than the one I worked on in Charlottesville, that will probably take some time.