Fun dancing this weekend. I realized that, as of Friday, I had gone two whole weeks without dancing at all, which is a lot for me. But maybe it was a good break. The Berkeley Friday Night Waltz was a lot of fun, and, while dances are always fun, it was the first one in a while where I danced the whole time and ended up feeling satisfied rather than saturated, and didn't feel like I stayed up too late, even though it was past my bedtime.

Last night was the Ragtime Ball at Stanford, and Quena came down from Davis for it. It was good to get to dance with her again. And Jessica came for a little bit, the first time I'd seen her at a dance in ages. I'd missed dancing with her, too (she was my partner for Opening Committee the last two years). And DeMara even came all the way down from Oregon for the weekend! Most exciting indeed! So overall, the theme of the night was getting to dance with good friends I don't see very often, and it made me very happy.

The Stanford Music library is having a book/sheet music/LP sale today outside Braun. For $4 I got books of Chopin scherzi and fantasies, "65 World Famous Waltzes," essays on piano music, and two volumes of theory lessons, to get ideas for my own teaching. Not bad.

Today I had my first temp assignment. It didn't involve doing very much, though. Basically, this small company was having a tax auditor come in, but the people who work there are never actually in the office, so they wanted someone in there to sort of hold down the fort. Not much real work. So in terms of money per hour I didn't make much, but as far as money per effort goes, it was great. I wouldn't have paid me to do it, but I'm not arguing. The job was originally going to be for three days, but the auditor didn't know if he'd actually have to come back and if he did it wouldn't be this week, so it turned out to just be a one-day thing. Oh well, it's something, and that's better than nothing. The office is in someone's home, and the most exciting part of the day was getting past their dogs, which were small but ferocious.

This amused me: according to the Stanford magazine, Giancarlo Aquilanti is going to be the new musical director of the LSJUMB (the Stanford Band). The article says that he "is not responsible for policing the unpredictable ensemble, but he is attempting to teach members how to read music. 'I hope that their interest will begin to shift to music and that they will think of themselves more as a musical group than a social event,' he says. 'But that may be a few years off.' " Good luck :-) I had Prof. Aquilanti for 4 or 5 music classes over several years. One of my favorite quotes is from Music 23, when he said "Everything, once it is explained, is really pretty dumb. Think of the guy who invented the wheel...."

I was having a pretty blah day yesterday, and I ended up not going to the contra dance in the evening because I didn't feel like dancing, though I suppose it might have cheered me up. I tried to do various other things, like reading, writing, playing music, even writing a new tune, but I couldn't concentrate on anything. So I finally just went on a long walk and then went to bed, where I had weird dreams. Blah. We'll see if I feel any better today.