Tuesday, August 28, 2007

bits and pieces

I'm sitting at my window looking out on the Hudson river. The water is sparkling, lit up by the lights of a thousand New Jersey apartment buildings. The George Washington bridge looks like a string of Christmas lights hung out between two states, and a rather unromantic Fairways grocery store LCD sign informs me that the New York water taxi now goes to Yonkers. How is it possible I'm here? I shouldn't be able to afford it. Not least because I am able to blog from this exact spot because I got a new computer today! My old was is three years old, and still functioning (more as a desktop than a laptop, now), but I was in need of something a little more portable and robust, with wifi. And today it arrived, all shiny and new, in an enourmous box that contained more packaging than computer.
Can you tell I'm excited?
I also attended a very intensive teacher training orientation event at the university today. Have I blogged that I'm teaching this semester yet? In case I haven't, you now know. I'm TAing, along with my good friends Ben and Ivan, for our department's new ethnomusicologist, J. Martin Daughtry. The course is on voice, and I am preparing a lecture on the castrati in choral music, and will be running two tutorial sections. I'm meeting with the professor and my fellow TAs tomorrow to discuss it all.
I am also, following a successful audition earlier this evening, now a member of yet another choir in New York city. This one is 60+ voices, so will make a nice contrast to the chamber choir that I am already singing with.
All in all, a good day!

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