Niels went back to Denmark today. We'll miss him. Now we're housemate-hunting again. Anybody need a place to live? Daniel hasn't had many responses to his ads.

I tried playing a Bach fugue on the mandolin today. That was hard. The Modern Mandolin Quartet CD I've been listening to has a fugue from the G minor violin sonata done on solo mandolin and it sounds absolutely amazing. It's as if there are two or three people playing. I was impressed the first time I heard it, but now that I've tried it I'm really impressed. My fingers are hurting now, but they've just been out of shape in general anyway. I'll give it another shot tomorrow.

I've also been watching a series of videos I found at the library, called The Story of the Symphony. Each one has Andr� Previn talking about a different composer and conducting a symphony with the Royal Philharmonic. They're pretty history-oriented, without much theory, which is too bad, but it's still pretty interesting and I'm learning a bit. I really miss taking music classes, though. Maybe someday I'll take some Continuing Studies class at Stanford or something. These videos also make me wish I had learned to play some orchestral instrument when I was little -- I would know so much more about a lot more music by now if I had. Oh well. It was fun growing up as a folkie, too.