when people, if asked if they liked classical music, said they like to listen to it to study. Actually, erm, it still does. I listen to Hilary Hahn playing the Bach Sonatas/Partitas sometimes when I’m studying, so I’m not really against this in principal. But I love the Bach partitas and listening to them is comfortable and familiar and sometimes still too intense to do while trying to focus on something else. I often find it distracting. Listening to it while you’re studying is missing the entire point. It’s not background music there to be ignored.

I don’t enjoy every piece of music out there, of course. Usually I have to get to know it to some extent before I love it and wonder how I lived without it.

Listening to the second movement of the Barber violin concerto makes everything else fall away and I wonder why I’m not spending my life in this little world of the Barber violin concerto. Why is anything else worth doing? (And how on earth could you pay attention to anything else when it’s playing???)

Here it is (played by Hilary Hahn and I don’t remember what orchestra). It’s nine minutes long and I of course don’t recommend missing any of it, but the oboe solo at the beginning is my favorite thing, ever. Also the violin solo that starts at 5:08 is wonderful. (The first movement is also wonderful but not my favorite.)

I pulled out my violin tonight and played the sheet music my mom found in the move. But the Barber was in the box I mailed back from France and though I had it memorized once, I never keep a piece completely in my head for long. Oh I also lost the Bach partitas. Sigh.

to WordPress 2.7, which was the whole point of this switch-hosts debacle. And now my RSS feed should work again. I don’t know what that was about–I imagine maybe I deleted something in the transfer that I shouldn’t have? I have no clue.

This new dashboard is way fancy. I’ve been living in the past. Also, I have never EVER EVER been able to get my categories to list in alphabetical order. This is A BREAKTHROUGH.

Also, I should maybe mention that I am sick. It was weird–yesterday it was definitely allergies, now I’m thinking it was allergies plus a cold because now it’s just cold. Fortunately not much class this week because everyone’s gone for AAAL and TESOL conferences. I’ve been laying around a lot, working on things like 1) Methods class research proposal 2) Evaluation class test review 3) vaguely reading for literature class paper (still debating whether to take this pass-fail, deadline is in five days) 4) finishing up blogging research project for poster next week 5) feel as though have been working on something else but have not. Still have no idea what kind of test to design for my eval final project. And that is all the talking about my classes that I am going to do.

Okay not my father, I’ve been reading and just finished Obama’s first book, since my landlords own it and I had nothing else to read. I really recommend it (though I’m well aware lots of people out there read it before I did). It’s really interesting to read it now after the election. For instance, here’s the blurb on Obama in the back of the book (in case you didn’t know who he was (!!!)):

“Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee to become the junior U. S. senator from Illinois. He began his career as a community organizer in some of Chicago’s poorest communities, and then attended Harvard Law School, where he was elected the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. … In addition to his legislative duties, Obama is a senior lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, practices civil rights law, and has served on the board of directors of various charitable organizations. He lives in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood with his wife, Michelle, and daughters Malia and Sasha.” (1995 Three Rivers Press)

A little weird to read now that Sasha and Malia are household names and he has been elected the first African-American president of the UNITED STATES.

It wasn’t just the bio that was uncanny, though, it was the whole book, from the pages about Harold Washington (first black mayor of Chicago) and how he meant so much to the black population there, to the pages about churches in Chicago and Rev. Jeremiah Wright, to the scene upon his arrival in Kenya where he’s stunned when the airline employee recognizes his name. It’s a really good book though, I found it really enlightening and I’m so glad to have such a deeply thoughtful president.

I said yes and sent off a copy of my diploma this morning (which meant I got to use the UT color scanners, so that was fun).

I can’t believe it has actually happened. It took me almost two weeks to figure out this transfer. I won’t bore you with the details because, although they were frustrating, they are boring.

But a few things have happened since the blog went down on Tuesday, and if I had had my blog these past few days these would probably have been three different posts so excuse the length.

1) I went to Houston with Anna and it was lovely. We went to the Houston rodeo and it was huge. I took the Greyhound back to Austin and it was clear that all the flowers are starting to come out. I can’t believe I manage to forget how wonderful Texas is in the springtime (also my allergies are gone so I can enjoy it!!!). Lots of people were out taking pictures of each other alongside the highway. We drove through Brenham and past the Blue Bell creamery and it was packed. I think there must have been an event of some kind.

We saw Entre les Murs/The Class and I really liked it. How could I not, really, it’s about teaching, in France. Watching that was probably what prompted my post below. We also watched Man on Wire which I’d been wanting to see and that was also good.

2) I had my feet looked at by an orthopedic surgeon and have decided to get them fixed. I’m tired of them hurting. I really should get some black Danskos for work but I can’t really afford it this month.

The doctor said that the recovery time, till you’re back in your normal shoes not till you’re back walking, is three months, so I think I pretty much have to do it in May. He said though that this surgery will probably get me a good ten years, maybe more, maybe less, and I will at some point want to have the joint fused so that it just won’t hurt anymore. But they fuse it at an angle apparently so that you can still walk in normal shoes.

Am going to try to find an orthopedic surgeon in SA or here to get that organized. It kind of confuses my summer plans. I think I’m going to take two classes during summer session 1 and be done early July at the latest. But I won’t be able to work at my current job on crutches so I’m not sure what I’ll do the rest of the summer. Temp?

Finally and perhaps most important,

3) I have a job offer back in France, in Poitiers. I guess I shouldn’t talk too much about it till I’ve taken it but I’m pretty sure I will. It’s a 1-year thing again but that was what I was going for, and it’s at an engineering school again which I liked. I just have to send them a copy of my diploma and say yes and it’ll all be set to start the paperwork. I’ll do that all on Monday.

It’s surreal to be thinking about moving back to France and starting over in a new town at a new school (one that looks unnervingly like the old one) but it’s also very exciting. It’s also a bit weird to know this early. I thought I wouldn’t know till May or June. I could hold out for something different but I think this is a pretty good deal. I’ve wanted to go to La Rochelle since we used those Tricolore books in elementary school.

It’s making me think a lot about last year and how special I think my situation was and yet this new place is so incredibly similar. I think most engineering schools are. It will be so weird to have new students! I liked my old ones so much. How will I possibly like the new ones as much? Of course I realize that as a teacher I will have new students most years. But I’ve become friends with so many of the old ones that it’s hard to think of them as just students anymore.

On a side note, my parents are planning a Christmas in Paris. I am so excited about it. We are going to rent an apartment for the week. (It will save me so much on airfare.)

Obviously that link isn’t really about Poitiers. It’s about the futuroscope theme park.

autant que jamais.

The blog might disappear for a day or two. It’s very confusing. I’m trying to figure out how to transfer everything over to another host. Let me say again that it’s very confusing…

I had an excellent day. My mom and dad and uncle came into town and we went up to Mount Bonnell and then to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, both of which I’ve been meaning to do but hadn’t gotten around to yet. I want to go back to the wildflower center in April when there will be more flowers. I forgot my camera though so I want to go back also for that. I have a macro setting to test out. Next weekend I hope to be in San Antonio to see the Luminaria arts night.

Oak pollen beat out cedar pollen today. I think there is hope. Also there is a possibility that it might rain here this week. I could not be happier about that.

1) Sometimes I can’t believe I just hopped on a plane and went to Poland alone without knowing a single word of Polish.
2) Listening to my iPod on public transportation, especially trains in Europe, gives a lot of these overplayed songs a very train-like rhythm when I re-listen to them now.
3) Songs I listened to on buses give me much more the impression of seeing what I used to see out of the windows–if it was night, it was a reflection of the inside of the bus.
4) I can’t believe how quickly time passes and how distilled so many moments are in my memory because I listen to songs repeatedly for periods of time. I have a playlist of songs like this, and when I put on Random Song by the Postal Service I can almost taste the Caribou Coffee Reeses’ cooler, and smell the bathroom soap from Shu on my hands, and feel the gray squeaky tile beneath my feet and the clear Dansko mug in my hand, and think about how at the end of the day I’ll be going home to that house on St Clair where no one but me lives yet. Mostly these memories make me think how lucky I was at the time that I listened to that song over and over; sometimes I knew I was lucky at the time (like when I was in Spain with Zandra and Chelsey and Marcela and listened to Youth Group’s cover of Forever Young over and over and over as though I knew that this was the most fun I was going to have for a long long time); sometimes I had no idea. It still never gives me any wisdom to tell which I am in the present. Sometimes the songs remind me of how sad I was and that’s equally hard to listen to; Band of Horses’ Is There a Ghost reminds me of roaming the streets in Reims wandering into shops because there was nothing else to do for so much of the time; Adele’s Hometown Glory provokes that rising panic that I became so familiar with those last weeks in France, as though I was losing something I was afraid I couldn’t get back.

I don’t know. Every time I try to write about this I get lost in reminiscing about things I didn’t mean to reminisce about. Well that’s what the songs do to me anyway. But I more meant to wonder out loud about how multi-sensory it is, how the routine smells and sounds and sights and tastes of the time get wrapped up in the song. It was so unintentional. I just listened to the songs because I liked them, or because I had to and they were on the radio, not to color them and embed them in my memory like this.

I hate it. Seriously, it’s not my name, there’s no a in my name, I hate it when people don’t look at my name long enough to realize that it’s not Elaine. Or when, after they’ve known me for several weeks, they still can’t get it straight.

I was thinking about that because it doesn’t bother me at all when French people call me H?©l?®ne, and I think there are two reasons. 1) I like the name H?©l?®ne. I think it’s pretty. I like the vowels. (I also like the name Elena.) I have neutral to negative feelings about Elaine (and Ellen), but I can’t tell if that came before or after the misnamings… 2) I’ve been called H?©l?®ne on and off in French class since I was 6, which is also about the time I told people I was too old to be called Nina and changed to Eileen. Oh and maybe 3) It’s clear that French people have a hard time saying my name and figuring out how to pronounce it because it’s so different from French. But Texans are just lazy.

Maybe it’s just that one was voluntary and one wasn’t. But seriously. I’m tired of being called Elaine.

I have a professor named Elaine, though, and she said she gets Eileen a lot. Which is something I never thought about. Maybe it’s generational.

End of rant.