Live blogging: Alton Park, Day III

You thought I'd all given up, but actually, I was writing three pages of an article on a Victorian periodical. 

Which you won't have read either.

Also, I was attempting to figure out how to get some UPS packages out of central receiving, as my department currently has no secretary (!), which means that nobody is manning the store (so to speak), which means that...we aren't getting any packages from UPS.  This is taking more mental energy than is absolutely necessary. 

We shall proceed.

7:05 PM: An impoverished woman tells the story of how the family got that way.  Suspicious moral: don't leave poor people lots of money, they'll lose it.

7:07 PM: Frances is supposedly "improving" again.  This is not the first time the narrator has made that claim.

7:08 PM: "Be sure to keep all your shabby things on hand.  The poor will be so grateful when they get them!"

7:09 PM: Who the blank is this Lord Harcourt? Have we met him before? Perhaps I wiped him from my memory.  

7:11 PM: Time for instructions on how to maintain virtuous tenants.   

7:13 PM: Virtuous tenants are, of course, disinclined to think radical thoughts.

7:14 PM: Granted, we're back on the topic of the upper class and its obligations to the lower.

7:15 PM: PARTY!

7:20 PM: Wait, who or what is "Mrs. Herbert"? *googles* Ah, it's Mrs. Herbert and the Villagers (1823). *makes note*

7:26 PM: STAR WARS: RETURN OF THE AMIABLE

7:29 PM: Those Protestants and their missing sacraments again... 

7:31 PM: Instructions on how to prepare for confirmation.

7:32 PM: Be nice to the servants.

7:33 PM: How fortunate that God has provided us with people poorer than ourselves, so that we don't have to kill our own food! 

7:41 PM: BRB, explicating the catechism.   

7:42 PM: Something tells me that Frances' desire to take the name of Cleopatra after her confirmation is, shall we say, at odds with standard Catholic practice. 

7:46 PM: Once again, the ever-improving Frances appears unimproved.

8:43 PM: Sorry about the extended absence--I was dealing with some sort of odd electrical behavior in the laundry room, which required me to, among other things, bail out the washing machine.

Ah, life in the ivory tower, so free of everyday concerns.

Anyway.

8:51 PM: Several years have passed since the beginning of the novel.  It certainly feels like it, I must say.

8:57 PM: Let us now observe the moral necessity of learning how to balance one's checkbook.   

8:59 PM: THE FANTASTIC AMIABLE 

9:01 PM: "I do so love spending time with you guys! Of course, I haven't bothered to do so for two years."

9:02 PM: DO NOT GIVE IN TO THE TEMPTATIONS OF PARIS

9:07 PM: STAR TREK: THE WRATH OF AMIABLE

9:07 PM: By some amazing coincidence, Protestant moral education is always so inferior to the Catholic variety. I cannot imagine why.

9:09 PM: The Protestant character is grumpy about the whole concept of fasting. 

9:20 PM: "Whoops, just forgot about the whole Lent thing, don't mind me."

9:24 PM: Frances pretends to have temporarily dozed off in order to get out of answering a question, which I suppose is a tactic to be recommended to all students. Or not.  

9:25 PM: Carnival is really, really bad.  

Clearly, this author has not read Bakhtin.

9:27 PM: The Protestant accuses Catholics of idolatry, at which point Frances wakes up again.

9:36 PM: Everyone, refrain from nasty gossip. 

And we close tonight's hundred pages with the Golden Rule, which leaves me time to, um, contemplate what's going on in my laundry room.