Successo!  Here are the steps for getting your permesso di soggiorno:  1.  You go to the post office. 2. You figure out which window you are supposed to go to to get the packet of forms and the 2 payment slips, one for the permesso application and one for INA Assitalia Agenzia Generale di Roma, cn. 20, Assicurazioni d'Italia. This window is not one of the 3 window types that you can take a number for.  In the post office I went to, it was a door where you press a button and wait for someone to come.  3.  You go home and figure out how to complete the forms and payment slips.  4.  You buy an official stamp at a tobacco shop.  5. You return to the post office with your completed forms, your stamp and 238.10 Euros.  6.  You go to the same window where you got the forms and give the person your forms plus 30 Euro processing fee.  7.  You get a number to get in line for type A windows.  8.  You go to the type A window when your number is called, and hand over all the forms and pay 208.10, which is 107.50 for the application, 98.00 for the INA Assitalia health insurance and the rest for postage. You get your forms and a receipt. 9. You go back to the window of the permesso di soggiorno application person.  She gives you 2 receipts to sign and one more form to write your address on.  The receipts inform you of the date and place of your appointment at the police department (La Questura), which will be in about a month, so they will have received your application materials by mail.  The Perm. di Sogg person gives you a bunch of official looking receipts (see photo) and mails the forms.  

My walk home from the post office took me past the home/offices of the President, where they were blocking off the street, and there's a helicopter circling (still) overhead.  When I got home I decided to google to see if I could find out what's going on.  It turns out that for official information it's easier for me to read the Italian than the google-translated English:

Monday, September 10, 2012

With the appointment of Chianciano, the party led by Pier Ferdinando Casini has been proposed that as the pivot of a list for Italy capable of coagulating the scattered forces who do not recognize or social democratic evolution of Pd impressed by the Secretary Pier Luigi Bersani, nor in the folding of Berlusconi's PDL, or as they call. Thus was born the party of the Monti-bis, wrote yesterday in the newspaper La Stampa columnist Marcello Sorgi. But it is unlikely the name of the Prime Minister will be spent by the centrist party officially pregnant with the help of ministers, businessmen, representatives of Catholic associations and trade union leaders. 

 I don't think the re-appointment of Monti is the reason for the to-do at the Presidential headquarters, but who knows, maybe the pregnant centrist party is having a baby shower. 

OK, time to go to my desk, which is set up away from the internet cable to keep me from distractions.