What a wonderful week.

My friend Giulia Amici,and her companion, Marco Salghetti-Drioli, arrived from Italy on Tuesday night for a brief stay before continuing on to vacation in Maui.

Giulia and I have been friends since I began to teach the Celestine Prophecy seminars in Italy many years ago. I met her through Giorgio Cerquetti who first invited me to Italy. The two of them were married for many years and are still the closest of friends.

Last May in Milan, Giulia and I did another one of our numerology seminars.  She has become a great fan of numerology, and now has a regular radio program and magazine column on the subject.  She translated my numerology charts into Italian and sells them as well.  We had a wonderful time talking numbers again!

I enjoyed getting to know Marco better.  He has lived a very interesting life as an engineer, a spiritual counselor, and a master craftsman. For many years he was the director of the crafts department in the ashram headed by Osho.  Since those days, he has continued to focus on wood working.  He told us he would like to visit Japantown to look for tools.  I knew exactly where to take him--Soko Hardware on Post Street in San Francisco.

The weather on Wednesday had turned gorgeously clear and sunny.  

We had a great visit to the Japantown Center--eating lunch and shopping.  Giulia bought two long kimonos--one with a brilliant orange pattern, another in a subdued dark blue, each perfectly suiting her tall slender figure.

I bought a new hibachi (small iron barbecue) and some cedarwood incense. 

We ended our sight-seeing tour by driving up to the Marin Headlands where you can view the Golden Gate Bridge and the skyline of San Francisco from the Pacific Ocean side!  

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Earlier this month, Robert and I had been researching the best way to sharpen kitchen knives.  Gunther lent us his electric knife sharpener.  It did the job fairly well, but was rather noisy!  As luck would have it, Marco arrived!  He bought us  a whetstone, and taught Robert and me exactly how to use it.  Somehow we attracted into our a world a master craftsman to personally demonstrate knife sharpening! 

You have to love synchronicity.

Last night we had our friends Rainey Sykes and Mal Levine, and Beverly Cheney and Avrum Gratch over for dinner.  We made a lamb roast with artichokes, fennel, garlic, and red potatoes.  Robert carved the roast with our very sharp knife!