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.

I have tickets to Portland to visit my sister! Yay! I'll be there April 11 - 14.

Fun contra dancing tonight. Becky was looking for some Spring Break dancing so she came along, and there were also a few other studenty type people there. Or at least people in that age group, if not all from Stanford. I always say we need more of that there (not that I don't like everybody else, too, of course). The dances were good -- Eric always seems to come up with something interesting and unusual -- and Sidesaddle played excellent music, though they were sadly minus a mandolin player. I think there were a lot of dances with a lot of alemands, though, and my forearms are a little sore now. And one random muscle in my back, too, but I don't know what that's from. But it's not too bad. Oh, and I found my shirt that I left there last time. Yay!

In other news, I will hopefully get to go up to Portland for a weekend to see Lacey again soon. That would be fun. I'm going to look for plane tickets tomorrow.

It was a year ago today that I moved into my room here. It's been kind of nice to stay in one place for a while after 5 years of scooting back and forth between Santa Cruz and various dorm rooms. And I like it here. I think I have a very nice and comfortable room, and it definitely feels like home. The house still needs a name, though. I was thinking that something from Joyce might be good. The only idea I got out of Ulysses was Omphalos, which I kind of like. But I'm still thinking about it.

Alright, current library situation:: someone "higher up" has to approve the job and wants to hear from the library director that it's okay, and the director is on vacation until Tuesday. Alice said that the director already told her it was okay, but they don't believe her, apparently. But it does mean that we're fairly confident it will all work out. The director just has to come back and say so. The bad news, though, is that I have to work as a temp instead of a contractor so I'll get paid a little less. But I've already decided I want to make it work, so it will all be okay.

It's a beautiful, sunny day today so I ate my lunch at our picnic table out back. We also have a hammock set up there, now. It's very nice.