Miscellany

One Down. Two to go. Blast it, my eyes won't blaze red like Willow's. Anyway, below the fold you'll find an inchoate collection of my tired ramblings. Read at your own risk.

Symphony last night. It was also the last night for the temporary director, which is a mega-relief. His andante sounds just like his allegro, and his fortissimos were all mezzo, and that's just...bad. Why was there a temporary director? Well, last season's director unexpectedly resigned at the beginning of July. In hindsight, I think he foresaw the possibility, as the last concert last season featured his son, daughter, and one of his own compositions. My best guess is that he knew there was a possibility of some crisis (health or family seem likely) and wanted to go out with a bang in case the crisis hit. Since he resigned, whatever the crisis was presumably struck. Sad. He was a good director.

Anyway, there was a very good trumpet soloist there. He played on the second, third and fourth pieces. On the second, his skill showed off just how insipid the directing was. The third and fourth pieces were better. Apparently it's okay to make Russian music sound like, well, music. Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije Suite was my favorite piece, despite the piccolos' obvious need of further practice. It was lively, catchy, silly... And it has a great story behind it, which I may link to when I'm coherent enough to actually find a decent online version. Wikipedia's ain't. Haydn. That was the composer on the first two. Properly directed, they were probably good pieces, too.

The last one was half good and half bad. The trumpet solo parts were good; the parts where the orchestra played with the trumpet were pretty good. The parts where the orchestra was by itself... *sighs* Anyway, the composer is Alexander Arutyunian, and the piece was Concerto for Trumpet.

I'll randomly segue back to Monday now. I went down to my mom's office to shampoo the rug (sadly no slime creatures from outer space showed up). Turns out that the timing was very fortuitous: they started knocking down walls on Wednesday and Mom and Marky had to scramble to get all the stuff moved out of Mom's old office into the new one, where I'd run the carpet scrubber. I don't know if I mentioned that she's doing a LOT of renovating down there. Not as much as she'd hoped, as the first bid sort of scared the living daylights out of her, but a lot.

So, back to today (ain't time travel grand?), I gave tests in both of my evening classes. In 015, one student came in and at first I thought she had a bad cold, then I figured out that she'd been crying. Lots. Hard. I took her aside and offered to let her take the test next time; she gratefully took me up on it. No clue what's going on with her, but I hope it at least settles down some by next week.

As for next week, it should all be review unless I go into a mite more detail on hypothesis testing in stats. One more week of lectures; two more T-days to deal with. Oh, yes, since I don't lecture on Fridays, as far as I'm concerned, the week is now over. Math108 lab, office hour, and philosophy class aren't work. Well, occasionally the Math108 lab is. Anyway, before I lose coherency entirely, I shall say Gute Nacht. Well, type, not say. Of course I could say it, but no one would hear it unless I recorded it and posted an audio link, but then you'd have only my word that it was me saying it... Er, yeah... Splunge.