… wherein It’s Sunday.
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I made it to the holidays!
Going into this week, I’d been running full-tilt for far too long. I spent the first few days clearing the last few hurdles: I put away all the improvised-sitcom stuff; the kiddo finally tested negative for COVID (w00t!); I finished teaching my intro-to-improv class; I handed in another French essay, as well as B1 and B2 placement tests (I passed both).
Then, everything went slack for the holidays. My various lessons went on hiatus. My coworkers went on vacation. I had no incoming responsibilities.
So I’ve been puttering away at the backlog. I finally found a decent auto shop and got the car fixed (it needed a new battery). I wrapped the last few incoming Christmas presents from my siblings. I at long last finished my improvised-Shakespeare syllabus and sent that to the Improv Embassy folks. The todo list wasn’t getting any shorter, but I was picking off some difficult, long-procrastinated responsibilities.
We celebrated Christmas yesterday with the kiddos and their dad (I now have books, a soft scarf, and some useful bits of electronics). Then this morning the three of them headed out to visit family for the week, leaving Lindsey and I alone in the (suddenly very quiet) house for the holidays.
I imagine I’ll spend some time continuing on this backlog of work, and I’ll make plans for 2024. Improv-wise, we’re already brainstorming ways to follow up the success of the improvised sitcom. And generally I feel like I’m living a lifestyle I designed when everything was locked down for COVID, and I was in a new country where I didn’t know anybody. Safe to say, it’s time to make adjustments.
Also, I’ll receive more presents. w00t!
This Week’s Hobby Stuff
Posting about my hobbies, to gently remind myself that I’m doing stuff…
- French: y’know, it might be time to discontinue French lessons. I feel like now, in order to get better, I’d need to do some immersive program, and my B2-ish level is enough to handle whatever Canada throws at me. I imagine I’ll keep listening to newscasts and practicing vocab, but I can leave off more actively studying French in 2024.
- Piano: still woodshedding on the hardest part of the simple Chopin prelude; still plunking along happily with “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”. Kinda casting about for new things to study while my teacher is on break.
- Guitar: finished the basic funk-bass course! back to idly soloing on my electric. I feel a bit bored with my guitar solos, but I don’t know what to do to spice things up.
- Trumpet: I think trumpet will likely be the other casualty of the 2024 reset. Right now I’m soloing against a iii:vi:ii:V progression, and having an okay time. Alla Hornpipe is still brutal.
- Gaming: another session of Slugblaster this week, plus we played the trippy-as-hell “Meow Wolf” course on Walkabout.
- Improv: finished that intro-to-improv class; sent my Shakespeare syllabus to the Improv Embassy; now planning a basic-narrative syllabus.
The Utterly Useless Fact of the Week:
[repeating an oldie but a goodie from 2016]
If you received all the gifts from “The Twelve Days of Christmas” you would have a total of 364 presents — so unless next year is a leap year, that’s a gift for every single day until *next* Christmas.
(Mathematically speaking, the number of gifts you receive in “the N days of Christmas” is the nth “tetrahedral number”: n*(n+1)*(n+2)/6.)
