The Ongoing Saga of it Being Too Cold

At work today, there was more drama over how cold it's been.  I have been shivering for at least a month.  And apparently I'm not the only one.  At one point, one of the girls across the hall got so mad about how cold it was she just decided to leave and go sit somewhere else. I don't blame her, but I work on a desktop at work so I don't have the luxury of just getting up and leaving whenever.
Then I was talking with someone via email, and there was the implication of needing to do more research. Doing the whole taking the initiative thing, I started working on that.
As I was doing that, there was another conversation (involving the same girl) about how it was warmer but that it should get fixed. And the girl said she was going to call.
I was also thinking about my Mom and how she is clearly suffering from burnout when it comes to taking care of my Grandma. I wish she would ask her brother to take care of my Grandma. It would be difficult, but shipping my Grandma down south might be a good thing for us, especially for my Mom. My Mom has been taking care of my Grandma for over ten years, and, sadly, it could easily be another ten. It isn't fair to my Mom, and quite frankly, I don't think it's okay for her emotional and mental health. I suspect my Uncle wouldn't want to take Grandma, but I have half the mind to write him a letter, emphasizing how much he apparently loves his sister and what a Christian man he considers himself. I actually very much doubt his love for his sister and for Jesus, but there's a part of me that wants to try on my Mom's behalf. My Mom deserves a break, a big one, and she deserves better than such a terrible family (her awful mother, her awful brother, her awful sister-in-law. This whole family is rotten to the core. Everyone talks a big game about responsibility but it's nowhere to be found. I'm disgusted at being related to these people.)
I just realized today as I was sitting here how feminine Mark's voice is. I don't know how I could have missed it. This isn't a criticism, just a weird thing I noticed.
I accidentally got an update on the Mark-the-Landlord drama. Today he was on the phone with someone talking about replacing a stairs and a deck.
I even heard Mark give a giant sigh today. Oh, I understand, I wanted to say. I really have been dragging today. I think I need a nap, though I honestly do not have time for one.
So, basically, out of everyone, I spend the most time with Mark. I'm not complaining, but I guess this wasn't what I expected to end up thinking about all the time.
Then, in the ongoing saga of "It's too cold in this building" today some people came into the office and opened up the ceiling tiles and were inspecting. One of them was saying a bunch of stuff wasn't working. They were right around my cubicle, making me terribly nervous. (Would I have to leave? I was really tired today and was praying that yes, they would let me go home. I needed a nap and had things to do.) They started taking bits of the ceiling near my head out, looking inside and conferring with each other. Then they went into Bella's cubicle and did the same thing. (I don't know where Bella is today, but clearly not here.) "It's definitely zeroed out," Tommy (as he was called) said to his friend.
Just as things were getting really interesting there, Mark came in with a task. It was either an accounting task or a proofreading task. Basically, I needed to make sure that two lists of books sales were together and that their weren't any mistakes. The way he laughed about the construction fun was exactly how Daniel laughs. Exactly. Terrifyingly so. They're so different in age and potentially political beliefs. (I say potentially because I know exactly what Mark thinks about politics, Daniel will be cold in the grave before he expresses his thoughts on this and a wide variety of other subjects.) And yet their mannerisms are so similar, and I find myself being struck by them all the time.
Work went by really fast actually, for all my complaining. I kept doing that thing were I would look up and discover that about another hour had passed.

Patriotic Poets

Today I'm reading up on some poet biographies.  Given that it is the 4th of July holiday still, I thought I would concentrate on a couple of American poets.  Things I've learned so far:

-Phillis Wheatley was from what is approximately modern Senegal in West Africa.  
-Even though Wheatley was "discovered" as smart early on in her life, they still made her work.  She wrote poems about how she wished she could stop being a servant and live the life of an academic.

-Wheatley published broadsides, which, for those of you not totally obsessed with the literary world, is a poster version of a poem, usually printed so that the words are indented into the page, so you can "feel" the word.  Broadsides are sort of a lost art in our culture, but I can assure you they're really cool.  

-Wheatley had asthma.  I honestly wasn't even sure people back then knew what it was. 
-When most Americans wouldn't publish Wheatley's work, she turned to a publisher in London. 
-Wheatley got to meet other famous people, including Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. 

-A lot of Wheatley's poems were written in couplets, including iambic pentameter (that's what much of Shakespeare is in) and heroic (which is the form favored by epics.)  This indicates to me that she must have been educated in the classics.  She also wrote about death, which everyone knows is a favored topic of poets. 
-Many British readers were uncomfortable with Wheatley's slave status.  They often criticized her "family" and owners for keeping her in slavery.  However, as a house slave, she got to avoid many of the worst aspects of slavery or the tough life of being a free slave in an overtly racist country. 
-Her husband was John Peters, who was a free black.  He may have been a lawyer.  Since he was ambitious, a lot of white Americans hated him. 
-"Refugee" slaves were slaves that were considered too sickly to work on things like sugar plantations in the Caribbean, so they were sold off as house servants in other parts of the world, including New England. 

-Walt Whitman's father was a admirer and friend of Thomas Paine.   
-Whitman was part of the first generation of American children. 
-Whitman's brothers and sisters were given patriotic names, including Andrew Jackson, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. 

-As a child, Whitman was apparently picked out of a crowd by the Marquis de Lafayette (who was instrumental in providing French support during the Revolution.) and carried young Whitman on his back. 
-Whitman's relationship with his father was imperfect; he respected him but they were never close.  There is some indication that his father may have been an alcoholic.  Whitman had a close relationship with his mother. 

-Like Shakespeare, Whitman didn't have a lot of formal schooling.  He spent six years in a public school in Brooklyn, and at around twelve began working. Whitman continued his education by spending time renting books from a library. 

-Whitman liked Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper.  He liked Shakespeare's Richard III, which I also love. 
-Whitman was not just a writer but a publisher, beginning with become an apprentice printer as a young man, at around twelve or thirteen.