Yesterday I spent time on the phone with people from Comcast (my bill skyrocketed from $122 to $214) and AT&T (Mom’s billing was confused due to switching service from digital to “High Speed Internet” when she switched rooms. They were preparing a shut off on an unpaid balance I was unaware of). This was in the course of the weekly session of balancing my checkbook and my Mom’s checkbook and paying bills.
By the end of the day, I felt like I had spent the day working. Good thing I did some composition work early in the day.
I met with the organ maintenance guy at church. I have been having a cipher (note stuck on). I also asked him to do some other minor maintenance while he was there. I promised to email him details on the upcoming organ project.
Today I need to do that and prepare parts to give to my jazzers for my setting of the “Holy, holy” (mentioned in yesterday’s blog).
Eileen and I did manage to talk to our daughter in England for an hour or so on Skype.
We haven’t spoken in a while so that was nice.
I’m hoping today I can have more time to relax.
I’ve been working my way through this issue of the New Yorker. There is some fine prose in it including a piece by Ray Bradbury. Ironic that he died on June 5 and this is the issue for June 4 & 11.
One of the amazing stories in it is online. “The Black Box” by Jennifer Egan loses some of its punch online due to the conceit of the story. There are 47 little sections of objective phrases of instructions and comments like “You must remain conscious.” Through these Egan tells a wild story of a woman posing as a spy. The loss on line is that each section in print is inside a box. So there is a delicious pun on the title which is also important to the story.
Speaking of Bradbury, Neil Gaiman has written a tribute to him for the Guardian.
This morning I read Sonnet 12 by Shakespeare.
I find the online site (link to sonnet 12 on it) very helpful. Dr. G. R. Ledger, formerly Honorary Fellow, Classics, University of Reading, U.K., now retired is the creator of the site. He says that this sonnet is one of the “finest sonnets in the history of language.”
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New Account of Bo Xilai Meeting With Wang Lijun – NYTimes.com
Real life murder mystery.
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Far-Right Politician in Greece Slaps Rival on TV – NYTimes.com
I found this description amusing: “Golden Dawn … has rejected the neo-Nazi label attributed to it despite its use of a symbol resembling the swastika and the tendency of its followers to perform Nazi salutes in public ”
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In Italy, Blind Baseball League Fosters ‘Freedom’ – NYTimes.com
Blind baseball. Who knew?
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What Pogue Actually Bought – NYTimes.com
What techie equipment David Pogue is currently using.
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David Brooks muses on recent studies of small dishonesties in our lives.
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Comcast Corp.
National Customer Operations
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