Back at it

* Classes started today. My office is still somewhere in the 60s F, though the research labs across the hall are much much warmer (I told a colleague "I need to run a piece of ductwork from HERE [indicating the lab] into my office." He looked puzzled)

* So far only one lost person - someone who must be new, didn't know where our class met and then asked me "Where is MAT 108 in this building" and I had to explain that (a) There is no "108" in this building and (b) the Math building is on the other side of campus. ("Run" I said, not very helpfully, as his class started at 9:30 and it was 9:28 at that point)

* My intro class has 11 people. This pleases me. Small intro classes = a good thing. You can give more personal attention and usually if you have people with Big Problems, they are in the intro class, so there's less chance of that.

* I started back on a couple stalled projects - I've been trying to do a little hand-quilting (I want to finish the quilt in the frame this year, ideally this spring). I also pulled out the Augusta cardigan again last night and worked on the first front for it. I need to be more disciplined about working on my hobbies instead of just buying stuff for them.

* Am thinking again about summer research. Have a small thought of doing something with biomass bags and monitoring levels of orobatid mite populations in different habitats (different forest types and grassland). Could be fun. I need to start doing some background reading. I also need to do more general reading to see if I can dredge up some ideas about other projects.

* Also re-started piano practice - didn't do any right before break, of course couldn't over break, and when I first got back my ears were compromised and also I didn't have the energy to. I'm working on Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring but am also noodling around on a few other things (a different arrangement of Georgia on my Mind that I found in one of my books). I want to keep up practicing on my own in the hopes of going back to lessons once the time changes back. I wish I had a bookstore near me that sold piano music; I would love to look at a few more different things, especially arrangements of standards or pop songs.

I perhaps also need to find a "hard" thing to work on (maybe I pull out "Je te veux") and work concentratedly on that. At least once I get Jesu.... to the point where I feel comfortable with it. (I acknowledge it's a simpler piece - most Baroque stuff seems easier to me to play than most Romantic stuff. And some Romantic stuff is extra-hard for me because it seems the guys who composed it liked to show off how big their hands were and how long their reach was. Hm. I wonder if that's about when the "big hands/ big feet means big Other Parts" idea got started....)

Or maybe I look for slightly-simplified versions of ragtime pieces. (I am not yet expert enough to play Joplin in the original; I have a book of his stuff and yeah, it's a bit much for me yet)

the challenge for ordering "blind" is sometimes you get truly "easy" stuff that is aimed at the rankest beginner and it doesn't hold my interest. Or stuff marked "intermediate" that is really "advanced for people with 20 years of experience." So I wish I could LOOK at the book before buying it. But alas, where I live, that's not possible. (Not even the semi-local Books a Million has music books)

* Started back again with Duolingo. I find I retain nouns a lot better than other parts of speech. And I still can't quite grok Irish Gaelic spelling/how the sounds relate to orthography. (I think my learning German went easier, partly because German pronunciation isn't as different from English pronunciation as Gaelic is). I still want to motivate myself some time to do actual bookwork with workbooks that give a more systematic understanding (and in German, try to figure out the rules for word order in sentences - I still find the order of sub-clauses hard to understand)