Moving on at this petty pace.

There was a time when I used to use this diary as an outlet, as a distraction even, when I was working on the tedium of part extraction and correction. I remember when my husband and I were pulling allnighters getting the performance materials for his first symphony ready. I would be updating every few hours, just to vent some of the pressure building up inside. Now I seem to have let this page languish as I find other things to occupy me.

So what do I do when I need to take a break from separating systems and arranging cues and page turns? I play spider solitaire. Yes, I admit it, I’m a total addict. I also play a game one of my friends introduced me to, an online, interactive role-playing game involving stick figures and references to popular culture and a chat room you cannot enter unless you pass a basic written English test where you have to know the difference between there, their and they’re. Because the number of turns one can play is limited, I tend to have the chat running alonside my work and pay attention to it from time to time, allowing myself to be drawn into a conversation when I can no longer concentrate on measures rest.

Another way to get away from my work is to go downstairs and make myself a cup of tea (and perhaps have a square of dark chocolate with it--I limit myself to one a day) and then knit several rows of this scarf with the incredibly complex pattern. It’s not that the pattern is really that complicated, it just requires great concentration, and that’s a good thing because I stop thinking about music copying (and everything else) for the while that I’m actually following it. I’ve made some irreparable errors already, which will just have to stay put because there’s no way of undoing them. The blue scarf was easy to unravel, this just tangles and knots and that’s the end of that.

Hubby and I went to see Grandpa Mike’s jazz concert last night. He played a bunch of his favourite standards from over the years without an intermission, and it was too long to sit through so many ballads. I ended up having to pee about two songs before the end, so I never made it back into the hall. The reception was nice. The house manager had bought some cheeses to supplement what food services had brought over, and one of them was an aged cheddar steeped in port, or something like that. It was amazing.

Well, I have taken enough time now and will get back to work. Only the last two strings to format, and then I get to start on corrections. Wheeee!

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