Yesterday and today were beautiful days -- sunny, high seventies, and low humidity. It's a bit perverse to be wearing shorts at the end of November, but I could definitely get used to it.

We managed to secure a block of ten tickets for the Gator Bowl so it looks like I'll be spending New Year's in Florida. My vacation's turning out to be much busier than I expected it would be. After driving back to Virginia on the 12th, I'll spend a few days here and there before taking a road trip to Westminster College in New Jersey and New England Conservatory in Boston. A friend of mine is looking into vocal pedagogy graduate programs, and we figured now was as good a time as ever to start visiting. Following that trip, I'll have about a week to loaf around at home and study for the listening exam, before driving back down to Florida for the Bowl. Once the Bowl is finished (with Tech winning, no doubt), I'll only have five more days before the spring semester starts, so I'll probably just head on back to scenic Tallahassee from Jacksonville. I'm hoping I'll have time to finish the first movement of my string quartet before break so I can devote the time at home to editing and proofing. I never write anything worth keeping over short breaks in foreign venues -- It must be the water.

Rumour has it that there's going to be a last-minute adjustment in the teaching roster of grad students in theory/composition, and one of us non-teaching types might end up with an eartraining class next semester. Even though I'm obviously the most useless assistant right now (I can't exactly proctor a lab that doesn't exist yet), I hope they find someone a little more qualified to take the class. I would love to teach a fundamentals or basic theory class because I think I'd do an excellent job with it. I had great success as an undergrad doing theory tutoring and think I do a pretty good job of teaching in general. An eartraining class bothers me because my piano skills definitely leave a lot to be desired, and I haven't done four voice work, progressions, or sight-reading in about four years now. If I do end up with this duty though, I'll just suck it up and do some hardcore piano work over the break.

Oh, yesterday I wrote the bibliography for my history paper.