Rejoicings

Today is my last day at the Stub--originally I was going to work for another week, but as I quickly realized I was becoming depressed and going stir-crazy while my summer was whittled away, I decided to beg off and leave today. Oh, the joy!! To make things better, Sean came up yesterday and dropped by for lunch, and then took me out to dinner after I got off work. I love just being able to talk to him. We always have great conversations but yesterday was just so much fun. We talked about all the places in the world we'd like to see, and whether going to Italy or Egypt would be a better idea for an entirely hypothetical honeymoon (I'm divided; on the one hand, Egypt would be amazing and it's best to go while you're young and can take the heat, but that would also be much more of an on-the-go honeymoon, while Italy, since I've been there already, would be more relaxing). Sean wants to see Venice and Naples and the Cinque Terre. I wouldn't mind getting a chance to visit the Capitoline Museum in Rome, or the Doria Pamphili gallery...and yes, the Cornaro chapel, my greatest regret.

After dinner we went home and Sean made his bastardized version of my mom's blueberry muffin recipe: he ignores the blueberries and makes just the batter, which we have officially dubbed as delicious as crack, and then makes it as cookies...so they're just basically sugar cookies but with a muffiny texture. We watched tv together like an old married couple and Sean battled the Pod, my mom's futuristic vaccuum cleaner which is, as I predicted, too much for a mere man to handle. He couldn't figure out how to get the cord out of the body and was hitting the "retract cord" button over and over. Then Sean made valiant use of the Pod to vanquish a spider so he could sleep in safety. My hero.

Links

It stills feels too soon to let them go. They're all clustered there, taking up space, and my fingers go right to the delete key and then hesitate. Packing lists, at least three of them. The hostel association. Ryanair, in all its banana-lemony cheapness. Oh, and Via della Mattonaia, Sara's Italian blog. All remnants of my eager preparations for something that is, all too swiftly, becoming one of those "did I really do that?" memories. The blandness of office life is wiping away the reality of those brilliant, shimmering months of Italy. I knew it would happen--just not this quickly.

I'll let them linger a bit longer.

Diversion

Last night I had my friends plus Sean and Cody over for dinner. I used the dining room, which I will never live down in Sean's eyes as I had long argued that it's obsolete. This was only the second time I've ever had dinner in there. However, this morning we semi-compromised and he said as long as there was a dining room I could paint it whatever crazy color I wanted, included RED which is exactly what I would paint it. I still dispute the necessity of a hutch filled with useless show pieces and "good china". Ugh. Why show off crap that you're afraid to touch?

Reading "The Age of Innocence" and Sinclair Lewis novels has transported me somewhat back to the days when people really 'entertained'. It would be so much fun--if one only had servants. Stupid labor laws. Speaking of, I hereby revoke my condemnation of Edith Wharton, given after being forced to read "Ethan Frome" in high school and discovering that though I spent the book wishing for the main characters to die, they DON'T despite their romeo and juliet suicde attempt at the end ("gee darling, we can never be together because you're a servant and my wife's a bitch--let's ride this sled right into that big tree and die in each other's arms!"). That book still blows bigtime, but "Age of Innocence" is an entertaining read, and I love her language. Perhaps I just hate books about the bleakness of New England. New York society life circa 1870 is much more diverting.

Upshot

As an addendum to that previous entry, I don't really feel as sorry for myself as I may sound. I've got it pretty good, a fact of which I'm well aware. I'm proud of the job I have, perhaps not out of fondness for the service we provide, but simply that I got myself this job and have done so well at it. Perhaps the onset of PMS made me more emotional last night, but I was saddened almost to tears at the thoughts of summers past and how carefree things always seemed to be then. Now I'm hemmed in by schedules and responsibilities and it's hard to get used to the idea that I'll never be that free again. However, never in a million years would I trade StubHub for Sofia's, no matter how unfettered I was in those days.

Of course, the mother-voice in me wins, and I'll be working overtime tonight. Haha.

Moving Forward

Last night I felt so old. Sean was telling me about his day lounging at Pinto's pool, and then mentioned he was going out again, and my first actual thought was, "Now? But it's ten o'clock..." and then I realized how OLD that sounded. I go to bed at 11 because I get up at 6:50 every morning. I guess I'm getting a real taste of what adult life is like--soon you don't even want to stay out late, and you're surprised by people who do, and then before you know it you're like countless parents falling asleep by ten o'clock! This was my day yesterday: I woke up, worked 8-4:30, went to the gym, came home and swept the garage, ate dinner with my mom, washed the kitchen and bathroom floors, showered, read for a while, talked to Sean for a few minutes, went to bed.

This is how I've spent my summer, and unlike most people I'm working up till the Friday before school. Yes, this seemed like a good idea when I signed the contract in June. I'm sure my mom would be on me if I didn't, though--last night she was harassing me as to why I'm not working overtime on every day it's offered. I answered, honestly, because it's boring and makes me miserable to work 8-5:30 for a measly $18 bucks extra, and she scoffed at me.

This morning I got paid, which supposedly reminds me why I do this, except my paycheck had to be halved because our lovely accounting department had been failing to take out federal taxes from my paychecks previously. Now I have to deduct lots so that I don't wind up owing the government come April. I get most of it back anyway, I don't know what the big deal is. Sigh.

I guess if I had tons of free time I wouldn't really know what to do with it anyway, besides perhaps prep for the GREs, which I find it very difficult to focus on after a long day of work...I've been working on my merit project pretty steadily, and I have about seven poems that are OK to turn in...I've lined up my internship schedule for the fall, working 12-5 on Wednesdays and 9-3 on Fridays, which is a good deal less than I thought I'd have to work...I've been in touch with Jesus about working on his book, which is about Spanish architecture under Phillip IV...I haven't blown money on a single thing this summer--my most extravagant non-gas, non-food, non-entertainment purchase was the Ligabue cd. Overall I'd say I've been very responsible and adult--and it's extraordinarily defeating.

Stuffed

Friday night Sean I went to the carnival at St. Bernadette's, just down the street from his house. It's so pleasant to actually be able to walk to a place from your home, whether it's to the sea wall or Krauser's or a carnival with all its shiny things. I met more people who had only glowing words to speak of Sean, and we chatted for a bit with his uncle Donnie and his roommate Gary, who is like a hilarious alter ago of Donnie except that he's black and Donnie's white. He made dirty jokes and said I was pretty--he's a winner in my book.

Saturday morning we woke up sort of early, after a night filled with some difficulties--sheet entanglements, Sean's rage towards a malfunctioning ceiling fan, me accidentally popping him in the nose in the middle of the night--to go hike up to Gillette Castle. I finally saw the lily-pad filled pond which Heather had told me about years ago, and the castle, which boasts a stunning prospect over the river but is itself rather unattractive, I thought. I didn't like the roughness of it, it looked purposely unfinished. That evening the fun continued--we had had such amazing weather all day, and it was a favorable evening for watching a play in Edgerton Park. The play was "Robin Hood" by Alfred Noyes, author of "The Highwayman", and the performance was excellent. The set was really cool, and it had a three-story tower from which Robin actually rappelled down at one point. They used real arrows and metal swords, and the fight coordination was really good, in comparison with the crap featured in Macbeth at Fairfield last summer. The main way in which the play differed from a Shakespeare play was the lack of bawdy humor and farce, which I rather missed. It was light-hearted at points but never truly funny.

Funny was this afternoon, actually, when Sean and I took in "Little Miss Sunshine" at the Criterion in New Haven. I highly recommend it as a movie actually worth paying 9.75 to see. The number of laughs in it are surprising considering the number of sad things that happen in the film--hopes being crushed, death, etc. For once the critics were right in all the glowing things they said of this movie. Afterwards we walked around New Haven for a while, such a gorgeous day it was, and then went for an early dinner on Wooster Street. I'm still stuffed two hours later. All in all, this has been one of the most fun weekends I've had all summer. Could I have asked for a more wonderful person to spend it with? I think not.

Times

Recently I had the opportunity to keep working for StubHub while I'ma at school. I got called into Todd's office, nervously of course, and he pitched me the idea--remote access to email from school, and my regular pay of $12 an hour. It was a tempting offer, mostly because it'd be so much easier than the job I already agreed to do, which is work as Dr. Escobar's research assistant. I tried briefly to convince myself I could do both, but with spending two days a week at Greenwood Press, and this being senior year and me being lazy, that would never work.

However, I was on the brink of weaseling out with Jesus so I could make more money at StubHub, when a fortuitous conversation with Sean made me realize how much better for myself and my nebulous future plans working for Jesus would be. So yesterday I turned Todd down, and heard back from Jesus about the work he'll be working on-- "Spanish Architecture under Phillip IV". I don't know anything about Mr. IV, but I was a big fan of Mr. II. I know I saw IV's coffin at El Escorial but that's beside the point. Anyway, I think I made the better choice, and StubHub will be awaiting my return in December anyway.

This has been a particularly lengthy week. My schedule shifted from 9-530 to 8-430, which in itself is no problem; however, a recent tripling in call and email volume has prompted them to request we work an hour or two overtime every day. I did it three days, and it dragged. I said NO for today, because it's Friday and I'm going to be free, and see Heather and go down to Sean's and sleep with my boyfriend in a queen bed...ahhhh. Tomorrow morning we're going to hike up to Gillette Castle, and tomorrow night we're going to see a play on the green in New Haven. Summer is ending but there's so much fun left to be had--Carla's coming down in a couple of weeks, too, and we're going to help out at Sara's craft fair and hawk scarves in the heat.

My reading list has taken a turn for the classical lately. I re-read Babbitt and finally read Madame Bovary, which was excellent. For my lit class in the fall I read "the Professor's House" and just finished Fitzgerald's "Beautiful and Damned" last night, which was a shoot-me-in-the-face experience because it's set in the Jazz age, bring on the flappers, and the characters are just semi-rich, utterly useless people who drink and bore themselves to death and mental instability. Whoo. Now I've moved on to another Sinclar Lewis, Main Street, and I'm dreaming of finding Lolita actually in the library for me to borrow. A bunch of books I wanted last night were 'there' according to the computer but missing--The Bridge Over San Luis Rey, Sister Carrie, some others.

I've been reading all summer, naturally, but of late I've felt a tangible thirst for literature, and a realization of how small the fraction of what I have consumed is in relationship to what's on offer in libraries and bookstores. If I had a week of real summer vacation I would find a sunny spot and just read and feed myself grapes. Sean likes to point out I had four months of vacation in Italy, but you know what, I was severely lacking in books over there! I can't count the number of times I re-read Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and Lamb, or the number of times I stepped hopefully into the Paperback exchange in search of a good read, only to be turned off by the crazy high prices on even used books. I did find a couple books worth buying there, Hibbert's Medici book and my oft-mocked Tacitus, but I lacked the freedom that public libraries here provide. I love libraries. Wherever I settle one day, a well-appointed library will be an absolute prerequisite of the town itself.

Update

Have I really not posted since July 19th? I guess it's due to having rather annoying internet at home, coupled with the fact that I spend my day in front of a computer equipped with superfast internet doing sneaky things. As of today, my work shift is 8-430pm, which is nicer in a way because the first hour is quiet and goes by quickly, but sucks because it's darker when I wake up. Last night I had one of the dreaded "you're pregnant" dreams and woke up, if not in a cold sweat, then very disturbed, at 6am. Shudder.

The past two weekends have been road trippy--first to Wellesley to see Rae, just as I promised I would do prior to graduation, go me. Their campus is ridiculous. There's a lake! Dolan Pond just can't quite compare, although watching guys wade in there looking for a ball or something else they've lost while gingerly trying to avoid duck poop is a diverting sight. Anyway, it was cool to get a picture of what Rae's life is at school. We even saw the lab where she is slaving away her summer, which was a less than pleasant reminder of chem lab in high school. A trip into Boston included the Garment District, thrift store mecca extraordinaire, and the Isabella Stuart Gardner museum, which made me miss Italy a great deal. This past weekend we went to Philadelphia to welcome TJ home from seven months of exile in Freiburg, Germany. We didn't really do the historic tour of Philly as much as play mimigolf on a course that featured historic landmarks on each hole. Plus we watched National Treasure, which was largely based in the city. Sara came along for the promise of a trip to the Philadelphia Art Museum, but we were cheated when no one else wanted to go. Sigh. I was kind of expecting that. However, I did get to see Anna, whom I had dearly missed, and we had good times in the car with Sean at the helm, the four of us girls packed in and Sara snoozing in the back seat as always. The trip home was extremely long--first to Yonkers to drop off Anna and see the Stabile nest, then to White Plains for Meredith, then to New Haven, from which I drove Sara home and then joyfully arrived at my own demesne a mere seven hours after leaving TJ's house. That wasn't all driving, of course, as we did have a couple of stops, including dinner at Sean's, but I'm still feeling quite tired this morning. It was worth it, entirely.

Now we're in the home stretch before school starts. My textbooks, purchased mostly off Amazon, have started to arrive. Yesterday I was incensed to discover that my history of astronomy book was previously owned by a smoker, which of all things is the thing I hate about used books that I can't give the sniff-test to. I have four weeks left to accomplish a great deal, and in addition to decide whether I will work for Jesus as his assistant as previously agreed upon, or keep on working for StubHub remotely from school, with easier work and much higher pay. I was flattered that they offered, and am very tempted. I can't decide. Speaking of which I should get started on those 1200 emails which piled up over the weekend. Alas.