Lots of Work

A quick note: the times that are showing up on these posts do not reflect the time here.

Just to finish up about yesterday: By the time we arrived at the Trevi Fountain, it was dark.  Of course it looks beautiful all lit up and my colleagues were duly impressed.  We all threw coins into the fountain, thus ensuring a return trip.  It worked for me--I threw in coins 4 years ago!  We had dinner at a small restaurant Fr. Mike had suggested, Piccolo di Arancia and it was just delicious!  We took a cab back home and called it a day at about 9pm.  We were all happy to get a good night's sleep!

Now it is about 7pm Monday,  and we just knocked off work a few minutes ago.  As expected, it is slow, dirty work, but we kept after it and got quite a lot done.  Unfortunately we don't have a count as to how many books, but I think I packed about 150 books.  Everyone packed a different number because of the varying sizes and accuracy of the book list.  Sometimes you had to look very carefully to find the book in your hand on the list.  Most of lists were quite accurate, so I was able to go quickly.  I generally worked on books published in the 1700's, though a few were earlier and later.  As I knew would happen, seeing the old books was interesting at first, but quickly became routine. More interesting than age were the various markings handwritten on fly leaves, e.g. dedications and even notes about appointments.  It made the former owners come to life for me! We started at about 9am and broke for about 45 mins. for lunch.

So, nothing terrible exciting to report today.  So far our backs are holding up pretty well.  We are always on our feet, hunched over a table to read our list and pack the books.  Then we have to stack the boxes so the mover can take them.

Dinner is at 7:30 here in the community.  Needless to say, we are not running around the city tonight!  I don't expect our routine to vary much this week, though Assumption students who having been taking a class about Rome this semester with the college president  are in town and are going to join us  for Mass and dinner Wednesday night, I believe.  That will break things up a bit.

I'll let you know if/when we get out again!