Meet Margaret and Chip

O.K. So my friends are harassing me to blog more. I was very busy assuring my afternoon nap was taken care of, so I apologize to those who are waiting with baited breath for my updates!

Having successfully napped already today, here we go!

Lenny has left us and gone up to Germany for 13 days (he's actually already a week in) so I've been on my own for the first time. With limited knowledge of the area, I decided to stick with what I know and stay pretty much between the two Navy installations we have here. The base where Lenny works is called Capo (short for Capodichino which is right next to the airport) and the Support Site which is where the base housing (for the suckers who have to live on base!) and the Exchange and Commissary are there.

We have a GPS - and we have named her Margaret. She is Margaret because she speaks to us in a British accent and the only English name Lenny could think of was Margaret Thatcher. She does have a very authoritarian voice, so it works! When you don't take the turn she has indicated she gives you a semi-frustrated "Recalculating" message. Her only issue is that she's not quite as quick on the uptake as the Naples traffic expects me to be.

In my adventure to Capo to simply park the car she twice told me to make a left hand turn several seconds after I had passed said turn. She simply "recalculated" me and back I went. Here's another funny thing about traffic here - the roads only go one direction, so if you miss your ramp to someplace you can't just go up to the next exit and go back the other way. You have to suffer passing through several small towns and somehow, Margaret comes through at the last and puts us back the way we came. Lovely.

Alex is quite tickled that I talk to Margaret as I drive. The reason is since I'm already driving the oldest Naples beater around, I feel that I should be polite to the car and the GPS so they will continue to take me where I need to go. So in that vein, while Lenny was gone we also named the car - He is now known as Chip. This makes sense right? He has many chips where he has lived through some typical Naples side swipes. So, he is Chip.

I fear that Chip is not long for this world though because while Lenny is in Germany he's been working on purchasing a new car. My car - the Pacifica - is somewhere in the Atlantica en route to Naples, so that would mean that Chip will be retired from our little family. This does not make me sad even a little.

So, now we head into a few very busy days. I will try to get the post up about Alex and my visit to the Royal Palace downtown Naples but friends, Alex and I will be flying on Friday up to Munich to meet up with Lenny and we will be spend the next few days driving our new car back to Naples. We hope to make several stops along the way and will get lots of photos.

Looking forward to updating you all soon.