Digital Analogue

Round 2: Other things I've been up to

Looking back on the term so far, I'm not sure why it seems like I've been so busy. It's not that different from other years, although my CS 141 class is as big as any I've taught (they were growing consistently through my previous run, up to 20 or so when I last taught it in fall '05; they continued to grow for a few terms after that, to 25, and then came back down to 21 this term).

Ballroom gets ever bigger, with a consistent crowd at the beginner class every week that squeaks in just under the room size limit of 50 people (which means that more than 4% of Knox students are current active members of the ballroom dance club). In that arena, we've expanded the offerings to three classes a week (beginner club, intermediate club, and team), although my teaching load has actually decreased, as when I split the club class, I switched to only teaching the beginners a few times a term, the rest being taught by advanced team members. It's also nice because I can now spend more time in team classes doing technique, since I can teach moves in intermediate club.

House work has slowed to a crawl during the term. I just today put a second coat of paint on some exterior windows, some of which I started way back in May. The bathroom proceeds very slowly; the tin ceiling is now basically done, nailed up and caulked and painted, awaiting only its final coat of paint, but nothing else has happened. The next step is the blue wall paint, and if work proceeds at the current pace I should get the fixtures installed... sometime next year.

I continue to sing, of course. I'm in the community chorus again, which is doing an earth/green/nature-themed concert next month—should be fun. I still sing at St. Pat's every Sunday, where we haven't had a regular organist for about a year and a half now, so it's certainly been good practice at picking starting notes and leading a capella! There's also a group over at Corpus that has been learning Latin chant, and I've gone a few times... not sure how long I'll be able to keep that up, but the leader is out of town a lot, so it's not really a regular commitment.

I don't write nearly enough anymore, though. That's not just a blog thing; I feel like I'm not writing much of anything. Part of that, I've decided, is that I've been walking more: the sort of thinking-out-loud that I used to do in essays and blogging, now I work through more quietly during my fifteen-minute commute. Unlike biking or driving, where I have to pay attention to the road, and the trip is short in any case, I can walk on autopilot, and so I tend to spend time hashing out arguments in my head. Still, I've long felt that nothing improves my writing like writing, and so I really should make the effort to do more of it.

"I see horizons wide as a man's must I be nothing till I'm some man's wife?" --Boublil & Schönberg, "The Pirate Queen" (Grania)