Another Friday

Well, I'm at the tail end of sleep deprivation and overwork - I hope. The first is because my wife has been ill, and the second is because there's too much work to do.

My lady has been coughing at night - lots of allergies. She got some meds now that may help, and I'm hopeful. I really could use more sleep.

Video, IT work, distance learning, language labs. It's all piling up. My new boss is supportive, and looking for ways to turn down this firehose of work assignments to a manageable flow. But it's getting more difficult to manage things. Sleep! Blessed sleep!

So I'm taking the afternoon off. I'm substituting an aimless afternoon for purposeful behavior. I went to the $2 cinema, watched five minutes of the new Spiderman movie (the sound wasn't working so I left), wandered about the mall, looked at books, talked to a friend on the phone. Now I'm at my  favorite coffeehouse. Tonight I work on the house, and then grab my family and go to a concert for kids. That'll be fun.

I think it's time to resume network studies. The way out is through. I need to investigate the CCAI, and review my CCNA. I may have to retake the latter, as it expires in December.
My piano playing is getting tantalizing. I'm improving, and I want to play more and more. It's like a little voice is telling me I could be a really good pianist, if I would just practice more and more often. Ah, where's the time? When I prepped for my CCNA (fourteen months), I didn't play at all.
In what little spare time I have, I'm reading The Ego and Its Own by Max Stirner. Something tells me he was young when he wrote it. It's interesting reading though. I'm skeptical some of the more extreme points, and it really glosses over lots of topics, like its references to Greek philosophy, but it's worth a read. I'm just glad I didn't read it when I was young - I would have been influenced in an unbalanced way, I'm sure, like when I read G.B. Shaw's stuff. I'm at a good age to read philosophy now, though.

Fuzzy-headed, muzzy-headed with fatigue. But I like where I am right now – I’m a node on the great web. I’m fixing to drink some Earl Grey tea, which should charge me up a bit.

too much exercise

I did Jazzercise four days in a row - a first for me - and last night I was so tired I could barely sleep. I told my daughter about this, and she thought it didn't make sense. If you're tired you should sleep better, right? I told her that sleep is like other bodily functions - it works better when you're well-rested.

I am not addicted to exercise. I can quit anytime I like!

another Friday night

I had a frustrating monring cleaning the house, a frustrating afternoon editing video, and more-or-less enjoyable hour at the piano. Got the even to myself too. All's well..

I'm on the Three-part Sinfonia #7 by Bach, having plowed through an enourmous (for me) amount of sight-reading this evening. Eight  more and I'm done with the Bach Keyboard Music book! Then, I move on to volume 1 of the International Piano Music Library, which a couple of young beauties gifted me with last year.

Sometimes I try to wonder what's behind the sight-reading phenomenon - all  the tangled strands of rhythm, pitch, fingering, lines, phrasing, that has to happen all in the moment, all at once, and I know I'll never get ahold of it. Just doing the sight-reading will have to suffice. The current challenge is to keep looking ahead, to allow the notes to enter my sight while I'm playing the previous measure - not easy...

I haven't improvised in weeks, and listening to my recorded improvisations makes me want to do more of this. It's exciting, to hear something you did two months ago, off the cuff, and enjoy listening to it.

I'm hanging out in the coffeehouse again. It's not very busy, which is suprising. The Square is loaded with people, and UNT & TWU are about to open their doors.

I laid down to rest for awhile today, and thought about the 5th mode melodic minor. I used to recite these modes to myself, over twenty years ago, and while I had my eyes closed I did some of that. But then, it was easier to just see it on the keyboard, which I've been able to automatically visualize since I was 19.  So in G, this mode is spelled G A B C D Eb F G. You get G major & C minor, for instance.
But it's an enormously fertile thing to spell out every triad, seventh, and ninth chord, and start playing  chord progressions. (I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader....)

This is my first blog entry using my iPad. It's really light. Using laptops is going to be pretty old-fashioned soon.

information overload

I don't have his book handy (Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan), but here's a paraphrase:
"In times of information overload, we use pattern recognition. Instead of using verbal learning, we  study configurations."

Brilliant! I have a lot of configurations at work I need to get started on, with a lot of new equipment. If only I could shelve my video projects, which take up a lot of time & energy...

I'll be getting some video assistants in the near future. Good!

The ego and its weight...

Weighed myself this morning. Down 2.8 pounds this week! Wow!

A day in the sun yesterday probably helped, but giving up wheat has been a huge component.

I'm down to my 1994 weight.

So, the challenge is to stop feeling like a smug 13-year-old... :)

after a hiatus

Been busy. had a training event last week, which took a lot of energy to prepare for and set up. I did a presentation on Linux & education, did a tabletop presentation on Cisco Show & Share, and did lots of video work. I'm back on a regular work schedule, so I have to work Fridays again.

So many things are out there, waiting to be learned! McLuhan's philosophy of media, Edubuntu, my new iPad, yoga, psychology, Cisco studies - and I have so little time & energy. I come home and I'm a chef & dishwasher. Rewarding, but exhausting.

My sightreading project is moving ahead, a little each day. I'm on p. 205 out of 310, of the Bach Keyboard Music by Dover. I'm on the last Partita, and the Goldberg Variations are ahead - the rocks in the rapids. Whoever said Bach had easy rhythms? Lots of 32nd notes, with some occasional flurries of 64ths. Hard to count, hard to read. But good for me. Good for my brain and my fingers. And beautiful harmonies. Diminished chords with suspensions, diminished chords over pedal bass, double suspensions (which my music school teachers assured me did not exist back then), and beautiful modulations to neighboring keys. Really creative use of the harmonic & melodic minor scales, and, if you count notes that resolve before the  chord resolves, harmonies as advanced as any composer before, say, 1905. Double trills, dramatic changes in texture and voicing, along with, it must be admitted, some pretty dull movements, which Bach seems to use to "clear the palette", like when Irene Ryan's photo graced the walls of Wayne's World on SNL. Swifter modulations in later movements, when the listener's ear is likely to be tired and could use some extra stimulation. And on and on. I'll never exhaust Bach.

What's next? My twenty-some-odd volumes of the International Piano Library. That'll be harder, because it's more pianistic, and the styles will be all over the place. Oh well, I've got years...