There was another election today, so I went and voted. This time I took Louie with me and told him how to vote (no seriously I did. He and I share similar political views but he hadn’t done any research at all so I told him what I knew and suggested who to vote for and why.) We do a lot of voting here! (Last month was the primary for some of today’s elections. I’m hopeful that we don’t have to vote again for a little while…)

Yesterday was one of those days where I felt like maybe I do know what I’m doing with this whole teaching things. For one of my jobs I have to be observed every two years and the observation went quite well. I think I’m getting better at teaching college age students and started having some new ideas for how to push them more and how to work with my music majors and making a 4 year plan for them rather than working piece by piece. I didn’t have my bullet journal with me for brainstorming, and in fact, haven’t used it in awhile. I think I’d better dust it off and get to it, as that is a good way to have ideas.

I go through phases with planning. I’m always gungho at the beginning of years and semesters but then I taper off. As I’m nearing the last month of the semester I’m thinking ahead to next fall and what worked and what can be improved. As always, more relaxing and telling myself that yes, I know how to do this, and no, music lesson scheduling may be a challenge but no one will die if they don’t get a lesson in. I struggle to find the balance between pushing students to perfect pieces, and pushing them to learn the gist of a piece and move on. That’s one of the things I want to focus on…I love getting students to perfect and polish music, because they generally don’t want to, but that is where the real learning comes in. Yet, there is a benefit to playing more pieces than you perfect and gaining a wider repertoire of pieces that you kind of know and can return to.

We had a nice weekend. Friday night we saw the Mark Giuliana Quartet at Jazz at the Bistro with friends. We ate dinner there too since I was pressed for time—they have some decent food—not great, but decent. Saturday night we went to the Symphony to see Karen Gomyo play the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto (one of my all time favs!) We wanted to do a hike during the day Saturday but it was raining all day and that didn’t sound fun. Sunday I had makeup lessons and a quartet concert. I had a headache and felt tired most of the day so after that I just came home and relaxed.

We’ve been trying to rewatch all of Game of Thrones before the new season starts, so we worked on seeing a few episodes. (Spoiler: we aren’t going to make it, so then we’ll have to decide whether to wait to watch new episodes until we catch up and try to avoid spoilers, or just confuse ourselves further.) I would say we only end up watching 4 to 7 episodes of television a week, so it is hard to get through too much at once. It’s amazing how much I’d forgotten about the show though, and rewatching it certainly reminds me of small details.

Sunday was also the one year anniversary of the day we got Muriel! What a fun day and a great decision. She and Miles have been hours of entertainment and have really invigorated my instagram account.

Sometimes I think that Muriel might think it’s the one year anniversary of her being kidnapped, the way she’s always trying to get out the door. But I think she’s got a decent life! We even got her a friend!

You see that cut on Louie’s cheek? That was from Miles. Do not try to give Miles a zerbert without looking into his eyes. And then trust what you see.