I've had a really nice break so far. It started with a great trip to Canada with Sara. We didn't do a whole lot of sight-seeing or anything, but that wasn't the point. Instead, we did smaller fun things together, like walk on Lake Erie:


And chop down a Christmas tree on the Bakkers' farm:



Then I headed home. Even missing Nate, being here for an extended period has been really nice, and I feel a lot better rested. The Christmas Eve service at church was, as always, wonderful, and Mom, Dad, and Claire played their instruments beautifully. (I sang in the choir.)

Today I'm getting laser eye surgery. That's both exciting and scary! I told Mom, who's also had it done, that I wasn't looking forward to being dopey all day afterwards, and she said, "Oh, you won't even remember it." (They apparently give you some drugs.) Well, I wasn't so hot on that either, but I have a playlist of audiobooks set up on my computer so I can just close my eyes and listen and not get too bored. I'm hoping that afterwards it will have been worth it!

Sorry to be posting to so many other sites, but I thought this was very funny. Some other ideas:

ARS NVA

5 LIN

542TO16

PNTNL

GNA RAIN

TTL SRLST (too many letters, but too good to pass up)

I know you all can think of others. Feel free to comment...

I went to the store this morning to get cookie-making ingredients, but forgot to get parchment paper to bake on. My apartmentmate Craig was kind enough to buy some when he went to the store an hour or so later. He said I didn't need to pay him back, but I insisted and looked over his receipt anyway. I didn't see the parchment paper on there right away, but I saw something that looked funny and figured I'd challenge him on it. At the bottom of the list, right under Kroger Walnut Pieces (KRO WALNT P (1.99)) was:

DICK PRESER (3.23)

"What are you buying, Craig???" I asked, pointing to the offending item.

"That's not my receipt--I didn't buy walnuts. Yeah, that's not my receipt. Did you buy walnuts?"

"Oh."

Well, that was embarrassing. That's the last time I buy Dickinson's seedless blackberry Preserves at Kroger.

The semester's basically over. I have to print out a copy of a paper that never reached a professor via email, and I've got a meeting for the program committee for our upcoming theory symposium, but there's no more really stressful work. Tomorrow I'm off to Canada (!), then on Thursday I fly to beautiful Ioway. I can't wait! (Even though Nate's got me beat, itinerary-wise, at least *I'm* not skipping Christmas with the family.)

I think my paper for History of Music Theory I is really something that's good enough that I'd feel comfortable sending a version in as a conference paper proposal. It's on syncopation in the 14th century, and while there are a number of people who would be familiar with how it works, they are mostly musicologists who aren't as interested in the concept's analytical applications. Anyway, I'm planning on submitting it to Music Theory Midwest over the break. We'll see what comes of that.

One thing that I, like Christy, feel *needs* to be posted: The Twelve Composers of Christmas--the link takes you to the video embedded in her blog.

Finally, I just got word today that my class (MUS-T132) is "almost certain" to exceed its current capacity (i.e., two lectures with 90 students each). You may recall that I posted two and a half weeks ago that the 10:10 lecture is already at capacity; I just checked the 8:00 lecture, and it's up from 64 then to 79 today.

I'm less stressed than the last couple of times I posted. I've been working really hard the past couple of days (though I took a break last night and, to some extent, this morning). My projects are coming along really well. I've taken to keeping a Textedit window open, where I type in rough percentages for how much I have done on each project. A lot of my friends seem to think this would be more depressing than helpful, but I get a nice sense of gratification as I see my (very rough) percentages (almost) uniformly creeping up towards 100 (HoT=History of Theory):