Tomorrow, school starts.

Well, for those of us at the collegiate level here in town, at least.

(The local schools pushed back their open-date by a bit more than a week. Not because of the heat, but because they decided they wanted to move into a new building early - I heard over Christmas break was the original plan. But, the new building is not perfectly finished - so classes get pushed back. While I can see that it would be much easier to start in a new building at the start of the year, friends of mine who have kids are scrambling to arrange child-care at the last minute).

I think I'm ready. I went in Saturday and prepped the first week of Biostats (I prep the stuff new each fall; it's probably the hardest class I teach and I tend to think it's better for me to have extensively reviewed the material rather than to just consult my previous year's notes, even though Biostats doesn't change that much from year to year.) I think I may, as time permits, do similar intensive re-prep for ecology as well.

And even though I complained about teaching Principles I (well, complained a little bit) at first, I'm actually enjoying prepping the material for it. A lot of it is stuff I've not thought in detail about for 10 years or so (we teach some of the same topics in General Biology, but not NEARLY in the same level of detail). And there have been some small new findings, like new types of RNA besides the good old m, t, and r RNAs I already knew.

It's a challenge to figure out the best way to present the material but I do tend to enjoy challenges. I find that getting past inertia is the biggest part - I may groan about, "Oh, maaaaan, this is the chapter on membranes and membrane transport and some of the students HATE learning membrane transport" but once I get going on it, I enjoy the task.

(Really, I am happiest when I'm working on something that's at least marginally creative, whether it's prepping class material - which, yes, does take creativity - or planning/writing up research (revising the research write-up, not so much), or knitting/quilting/sewing/playing piano/baking bread. When I'm busy, I'm happy. When I can't be busy for whatever reason it's when I get kind of crazy.)

***

Another little finished object: yet another pair of wristwarmers. I knit these of "Sublime," which I believe is a Sirdar yarn (the company affiliation is in very small letters on the label). It's mostly wool but with some silk and a bit of cashmere. I bought the yarn on my "fun day out" in Longview this summer. I bought it because I loved the color so much, and when I touched the yarn, I knew I wanted some small accessory of it.

The pattern is called "Cupcake Mittlets;" it's available for free on Ravelry for those who are members.



I made them one repeat (16 rows) longer before starting the thumb gusset. (The pattern specified doing one full repeat, and I did two, because I wanted longer wristwarmers). It took all but about 8" of yarn from the first ball. (I was glad I didn't have to break into the second ball; now I have 50 g of soft dk weight yarn to play around with. I might make a shorter pair of mitts (just to be sure there's enough yarn; balls can vary a few yards in length) from the second ball and give them as a gift at some point.

I didn't try to photograph them on; it was a hot day when I took the photos (and I was already warm from racing around putting on the different dresses I photographed - I tend to do photos in a "batch" and upload several at once). I'll be glad when it cools down enough to make wearing these kinds of things viable again.

***

I don't have a lot of back-to-school traditions any more; I remember when I was a kid we'd do the annual trip to get new shoes and new clothes and school supplies. (Now I tend to avoid the stores when I know people are out supply-shopping and instead buy stuff as I need it). But one thing I do like to do is listen to the Academic Festival Overture.



As I've said before, this is a piece of music that kind of exemplifies the romantic imaginings of what life would be like on campus that I had at a younger age. (I didn't know then that most of the songs Brahms included were actually drinking songs, and that Brahms was perhaps poking a bit of gentle fun at the university, but whatever). I liked the bustle of it, the sense of purpose, the quickness made me think of fall afternoons. (And of course it has the Gaudeamus at the end).

(Heh. If I were doing an "80s style montage" of film clips about how campus life would be in my idealized imaginings, this is actually probably what I'd pick as the soundtrack. Well, it would still be an "80s montage," just 1880s, I guess.)

I never really thought about it until I was an adult, but my parents' tastes in music very strongly shaped my own. My parents were kind of aspirant-highbrows (or so I've guessed, from things they've said) during their early married days: they learned how to cook different kinds of ethnic foods (this being the early 1960s, when such things were, I think, less common than they are now), they read a great deal, they listened to classical music, they went to the symphony and the Gilbert and Sullivan society performances. And the records they had in the house when I was growing up (and yes, they were RECORDS; I'm a product of the vinyl era - there were 8-tracks when I was a kid but I remember them as being very fussy and easily messed up, and cassettes became really widespread once I was a teenager, but it was records that my parents had to listen to) were things like Beethoven and Brahms and "The Student Prince" and "The Mikado," things like that. And so that - and also the soundtracks of musicals like Sound of Music - were the things I listened to as a kid. And they're the things, by and large, I still listen to as an adult (soundtracks maybe not as much as the classical/operetta, but still).

I guess actually, in some ways, my parents were geeks, even as young marrieds. But I tend to hold the label of "geek" in fairly high esteem - to me, it means it's someone who cares about something, who is interested in learning about it, and who doesn't mind if their interests are considered maybe a little odd or non-mainstream.

Academic Festival Overture remains one of my favorite pieces of music. I picked this version as much for the lovely photos of old university buildings (From University of Breslau/Wroclaw, I assume, based on the little writeup) as I did for the performance.

NOW I feel ready for school to start again, after listening to that.