Unfortunately, the power resumed right before they were going to send us all home, so now we have 15 calls in queue and a whole lot of angry people who think "sorry, the power was out" is NOT an acceptable excuse for having to wait on hold for twenty minutes. Why am I blogging, you ask? Because it seems like every other person is putting me on hold for some reason or another. What's wrong with these people? You don't put Customer Service on hold, they put YOU on hold! I have to say I greatly enjoy doing that, especially to angry people. Let them stew in it for a few minutes and maybe they'll be less rude.
June presses on, and it hasn't even been terribly hot and humid yet--knock on wood. I've already accomplished one of my "summer goals", climb Sleeping Giant, and will now move on to other tasks, like creating my Italy scrapbook. GRE studying has taken up a good deal of my time, as just reading through the word lists alone is lengthy. Per Sara's request I will insert the word "contumacious" here. It means disobedient, did you know that? I didn't. As much as I love words, sometimes there's just so much redundancy, little words we don't use or care about and that have no particular aesthetic value. Emendment, for example, means correction, but who would bother using it?
I'm glad I have a job that occupies me forty hours a week, even though it can be terribly dull at some times and depressingly cruel at others. I do prefer to have something to do rather than a lot of free time during the week. Luckily, I also manage to incorporate a lot of non-work into work, such as reading, studying for the GREs, email correspondence etc etc.
In terms of reading I've been glutting myself on all the joys of the recently refurbished Windor Public library. I re-read the massive "Duchess of Milan" in two consecutive evenings, both because it's a familiar read and also because for once, I had an extremely lucid understanding of all the Italian courts involved, which as you may guess made me really excited--like when they mentioned in passing the giant equestrian statue Leonardo was going to make for the Duke--not only did we write an essay on the final on that horse and its political significance, the Leonardo exhibition at the Uffizi made a cast of the legs and chest of this thing, and it was monstrously huge. Sadly, the Florentines only made a passing appearance, in the ignominious surrender of Piero the Gouty to the French King's forces when he was passing through Italy, effectively turning the city into an unwilling barracks for the entire French army for several weeks. Could you tell Piero was none too popular with Florence after that little debacle?
Now I'm reading a book on the mystery of the two princes in the Tower, and whether Richard III was really responsible for their deaths as later historians made him out to be. It's written by a lawyer and very interesting. The new library is absolutely delicious but I do have pangs of nostalgia for the library I grew up with, which is now almost completely renovated. Ah, well.
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