My comments here have been very annoying. Hmm. That's not quite what I mean. What I'm trying to say is that when I try to look at my blog at home, it takes forever to connect to Haloscan.com (my commenting service), then it fails, then it shows the blog without any comment links. That's what's annoying. I can't get to Haloscan.com directly, either. I can reach it from a computer at work, but not from home. From what I've heard, my blog has been behaving normally for other people, but let me know if you have any problems seeing the comments. It might help get the problem figured out. Very strange.

I'm still gradually working on finding piano lessons. I contacted a past music professor of mine (Prof. Barth) a little while ago, asking if he could recommend anyone. He had me come in and play for him the other day so he could see where I'm at, and then said he'd pass my name on to some old students of his who might be looking for students of their own. It was a little stressful playing for him, just because it's been a while since I've played in front of an authority figure, and I was always a little bit nervous going in to lessons with my old teacher anyway. It's funny how I get much more nervous about playing the piano than anything else. It sort of makes sense, since I'm more of a beginner at it than other instruments, but I would also have thought that stage-fright type feelings would be somewhat instrument-independent. Oh well. I did okay. He also said that a student of his has a friend who wants to learn to play mandolin. So my e'mail address will travel through a small chain of people and I may end up with a music student again. Most of the students I had a couple months ago gradually faded away for various reasons, and I've been busy enough to not feel like actively searching out new ones. But one mandolin student might be fun.