solo perche solo piu verde del verde

In which I go shopping in a public restroom.

I arrived at the cafe in the middle of a hail storm. It had been sunny when I left home, but now I dashed in the door wet and pelted by tiny pieces of ice.

I had decided to spend the morning in the coffee shop"working". Midway through my latte, a couple of blogs, and a few facebook perusals later I needed to use the restroom.
The restroom is a shade of pale green and has the words "solo perche solo piu verde del verde" painted on the wall. I do not know what this means exactly. I put it into an online translator and it came out with: 'only because it's only green of the green' I think some meaning and all of the poetry must be missing in the translation.

Which reminds me of a certain house I discovered on Queen Anne. The turret of the house, yes turret is inscribed with the latin phrase: 'quo amplius eo amplius' which never quite translates very well for me.

You can find some photos of the house on line at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amplius_Eo_03.jpg and http://www.43places.com/places/view/794003/2018-nob-hill-ave-n-queen-anne-seattle

I first encountered this house late on a moonlight night, but that is another story....

Back in the bathroom, as I sat on the toilet, I noticed that the artwork on the wall had a small tag below it that stated the the photograph was for sale and if one wished to buy it one should write a check, take the artwork off the wall and pay for it at the front counter. (It probably should have said something about washing one's hands first) I was not at that time in a position to write a check, so when finished I wandered back out to my table/workstation and looked up the artist on the internet. The photo in the bathroom was a pleasant close up of a rhododendron. The photos on the artist's website, RJB photography were, all women posing in retro pin-up fashion, lounging on motorcycles or muscle cars. I wondered how he had ended up with the flower shot. I decided to buy the idiosyncratic photograph on a whim and that is where the trouble began.

Firstly, I had difficulty removing the photograph from the wall. The wire in the back seemed to be caught on the nail and I could not manage to untangle it even when I stood on the toilet lid. I looked around for something to pry the wire loose to no avail. Then I had a stroke of genius, I opened the tank on the back of the toilet and removed the long skinny wire that connects the flush lever on the outside of the toilet to the actual flushing mechanism at the bottom of the tank. (The flushing mechanism is called a "flush valve flapper". I know this because my mother's youngest sister was a plumber for awhile after she divorced her millionaire husband and before she went off to be a stock broker on wall street.)

With the wire "chain" I managed to reach the painting wire and un-stick it from the mounting on the wall. Unfortunately, the photograph came loose so quickly that it flew into the water tank. The photograph was undamaged but a significant amount of water was displaced. Due to this unfortunate principle of physics I had to spend quite a bit of time with paper towels in the bathroom. When I was finished (and had washed my hands) I opened the door to see a line of 3 people waiting anxiously to use the restroom. With a red face I exited the restroom and carried my photograph to the counter. (Only later did it occur to me to wonder why there had been a guy waiting in the women's restroom line).

In the end I decided that the photograph was really only mediocre and I hung it in my bathroom at home- NOT over the toilet however.