It seems like we’ve been having rain, wind, and storms more often than not. But today we are supposed to have severe storms, and I guess weather forecasting has gotten better than it used to, but it’s still the midwest.

Many things are happening all at once this week: Holy Week, which means extra work services (back at it!), Festival (recordings due Thursday night), along with regular preparing for the end of the year. Louie shared with me an email he got from work about “crunch time” and how the school year follows a certain ebb and flow, and crunch time is the normal part of things…it was all both true and also felt very much “don’t worry about working 80 hours a week this is all fine.”

Nonetheless, I haven’t been too crazy busy. I’m more annoyed by my constant allergies and some personal health matters which I’m not discussing here. I’ll be happy when April 24 is behind me though, as that is the end of a lot of stresses in my personal life as well as the day of the Spring Recital for my private students. And then it’ll be nice when school ends, but I don’t want to wish my life away!

I feel like each semester goes by faster than the last, which I assume means that the next semester will be even faster and soon I’ll be retired. The downside is that I constantly feel like it’s the “end of the semester” and that we are constantly preparing for performances, when I want some time to just relax and work on technical issues my students are having. I suppose I could do less performances, but I don’t think twice a year is too many.

I keep researching parts of my upcoming trips when I have some downtime, as well as reading: I’ve started some Jo Nesbo (reading Bat) as well as waiting for the next Inspector Gamache I need from the library. I did decide to go to Austin as well: I figure I should take full advantage of opportunities and since Louie is going to be there and there’s a hotel room, I should do it. I’m just going part of the week he is gone, but it should be fun (and hot.) I wish the Norway trip were later in the summer honestly, as the summer will feel a bit of a letdown afterwards, but that’s out of my control!

I enjoyed performing on a concert on Sunday afternoon at Washington University. I only played on the first piece and then stayed for the rest of the concert with a colleague. She worried she had guilted me into staying but I said I was happy to do it, that I wanted to be the sort of person who stays when they can.

I recently saw a post online that someone made about networking and attending concerts being work and all of that, and who knows, maybe that is a thing, but I want to the be the sort of person that attends concerts for fun (I already do this) and also to support my fellow musicians, not just for networking reasons. I want people to attend my concerts, so I should do the same, and I feel like statistically if I go , then somebody else will too. That’s all. And did I mention I like music?

I’m rambling now. I blame the sneezing 🙂

Basically I came here to blog and I have little to say. Life is rather repetitious really, each day the same schedule as the week before, waking up early and working late. It’s a rather tough schedule, and I keep trying to decide how long I want to continue it, and what the tradeoffs are.

How’s your April going? Eaten any good recipes lately?