* Second batch (just a single batch this time) of meatballs are cooling and ready to go into the crock pot. I may take the cookies out of the freezer this morning when I go down to church.
This afternoon is going to be laundry and packing. And winding off yarn - I need to wind off the rest of the vest yarn, and I have a couple of skeins of sockyarn I want to wind off and take.
* My campus has a very good choral director; he always chooses interesting pieces. I mostly only hear the campus small-choir at graduations though I guess they give concerts throughout the year (I am so busy now and have so many evening meetings that it's rare now I get to concerts on campus).
I will have to look up the title and name of composer credited, but they did a choral piece based on these Beatles lyrics:
And yeah, sitting there on the front row of the faculty section, when I realized it was THOSE lyrics I kind of went "oh no" and told myself "no you cannot cry now. If you need to you can go home and cry but you can't cry now."
(The line about "some are dead and some are living." Also the Beatles song was used at the memorial service of someone I knew, and it is something that came across my Pandora stream shortly after my dad died, so while I acknowledge it is a very nice piece, it has become....fraught....for me)
(ETA: No, apparently they DID just do a choral arrangement of "In My Life." Salmo 150 - by Aguiar - was listed in the program but it is VERY different from what they did:
I would say I think the piece they did was maybe more appropriate for a graduation, with the slightly nostalgic tone, but I wonder if it was that they were missing a few key voices and could not do the Salmo; the choir looked smaller than it often does)
* I managed okay. And again I'm reminded that I'm generally not the sort of person who inspires a sort of affection among students; I guess I tend to be a bit more arms-length and formal but it does make me slightly sad when I see students running up to professors they had and hugging them and stuff; I wish I had that kind of easy friendliness and comfort with interaction but that's not me.
But yeah. Yesterday afternoon was a little bit of a loss because I always feel melancholy after graduation. Oh, I guess I made use of the time - I cleaned up my guest room/home office a little, and I pulled out and worked on the crochet afghan a bit (if I can fit it in, I'm taking it, because it's a good project to work on when you're tired or involved with TV or otherwise not able to concentrate a lot on something complex). And I printed off the patterns I want to take with me- a few toy patterns I'll obtain yarn for at the Michael's, a couple sock patterns.
I do need to gather up a couple unfinished sock projects, including one I last worked on LAST Christmas, and consider taking them.
* An observation: We have an aviation program and it seems like every Master's degree graduate is the same: a 40-ish or 50-ish man, usually balding and greying, with a small Sully Sullenberger style mustache. I swear I've seen the same guy graduate with his Master's in aviation management five times.
* I mentioned my chair's new dog. She has brought the dog in (the dog's name is Maggie) a number of times and I admit, even as a not-real-big-fan-of-dogs person, I like Maggie. There is something about a creature that is just automatically happy to see you - that their only experience in life with humans has been such that a stranger is reacted-to as "oh yay a new friend!" (I think my chair got Maggie direct from the person who owned her "parents," so literally her only experience with humans has been around people who like dogs. I think that makes a difference. A friend of my mom's has a rescue dog and while she's an okay dog....she is not friendly to new people, even people her owner likes). So it's nice that Maggie has had such good experiences with people.
it's the best thing, scratching her ears and having her look up (in a way I interpret, though I may be anthropomorphizing here, as lovingly) into my eyes.
Also she doesn't wag her tail back and forth. Her tail goes in a *circle* when she's happy or excited, and it's the funniest thing.
I admit I wish I could have Maggie's confidence in people and go "oh yay a new friend" when I meet a stranger but I've had too many bad experiences in my life to be able to trust someone I don't know well.
* If I have the time and energy later on today, I may try to do a long (like: length of some Christmas song) video without narration of my tree. I like that idea, of just putting on a favorite Christmas song and then slowly panning my camera around the tree to show the ornaments. But first I have laundry to do (last necessary load is in now, but I might also do the dirty sheets so I could put them away to make things a bit tidier - my hamper is not very big). And I should wind off that yarn, maybe start before I finish dressing for church.
* Bell choir is playing and they asked us to wear red, green, or black so I am going to pull out the old red velour dress (seriously, it is 20 years old, but it was good quality and it still fits, so I still wear it) but I got partly dressed (and did my makeup) and then put a robe on to do the meatballs so I didn't run the risk of dropping something on my good clothes.
*I have a few time-embargoed posts for before Christmas; hopefully I will have a chance to write a few real-time posts in the time after Christmas. I will be in Illinois from the 17th to the 3rd of January.
(And I confess: I wanted to write and time-embargo a "HEY 2019 I WIN BECAUSE I SURVIVED YOU" post but I admit I'm also superstitious enough that I don't want to do it until the *actual* 31st of December, because a lot can happen in even a few days)
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