Waterlogged weekends and sweet serendipity

Friday was a recording day in Brooklyn... after I'd finished teaching, of course. Got a lot done. In fact, I think I'm well on my way to being finished with the album. At least finished with it in a pre-mastering sense. There's more work to be done, so for those that are being impatient and won't leave me the hell alone with all their gripes, chill out... I'm getting there. Trust me... I'm not slacking off or anything. There's a lot of work going on in what I'm doing to these songs, so back off already.

Saturday was weird. I was asked to sing as part of a chamber ensemble for a soundtrack to a documentary on the life of St. Xavier (of Jesuit fame). Basically, it was me, my friend Cat from choir, a couple of other girls I didn't know, and a bunch of Jesuits, taking turns in and out of recording booths in a studio in midtown Manhattan. We laid down our individual vocals, did a couple of sectional takes, and we were done and out of there in something like two hours. Not bad, really, especially when you compare that to the hours and hours I'm used to spending in one studio session on my own crap. At least all I had to do on this thing was a bunch of vocals, which was a nice change of pace, believe me. After we got out of there, Cat and I were off in search of a Barnes and Noble (which we never found, strangely enough), on the way to which we stopped in at a martial arts supply store that we happened upon. There, I picked up a few things in preparation for the women's self defense workshop I'm teaching on Wednesday... some focus pads and a neat little book on Capoeira workouts. Then we walked around for another six hours or so, looking for that damned Barnes and Noble. Incidentally, it was raining buckets the entire time. Funny how rain doesn't seem to stop New York pedestrianism. My jeans were stemming water all the way up my leg, sure, but that didn't mean I should... I don't know... get out of the friggin' rain. No, I had an umbrella (or, as Cat pronounced it, to my chagrin, an UM-brella... silly northerners), so I was technically fine. Even after we gave up on our search and found ourselves at Chelsea Market, we were still good for another few miles. We did stop, though, for a gelatto, before calling it a day and swimming for the subway stop and a train to the Bronx.

The next day, I had a choir performance for some sort of incoming freshman event... that went smoothly enough. Easy music, quick little concert, done and done. From there, I spent the rest of the day locked in my office, taking a crack at the work that I knew lay before me. My Monday presentation was about half way finished when I left, as was the beginnings of my Thursday work. I even made a dent in some research for one of my other papers, which I swore I'd try to avoid at this point. So yes, there was still so much to be done, but I'd at least spent about seven hours on getting some of it out of the way, so there wasn't too much to beat myself up over at that point.

Then, this morning rolled around. I still hadn't finished my presentation for this evening, and I was a lost cause when it came to the work I needed to do for Thursday. In addition, I had a statistics class today, during which we were to hear the dreaded final exam test date. This is when my day started to get a little better.

Dr. Lewis told us that we wouldn't have a statistics final after all, but rather a make-believe methods section to a research project, in which we would be expected to incorporate the different methodological elements we'd learned over the course of the semester. This, in case anyone's wondering, is extremely good news. I'm already doing exactly that for my thesis, so all I have to do is add a little extra here and there, and statistics is done. I can't help but smile just thinking about it, even now. Ahhhhh... no statistics final. I wasn't looking forward to reliving the stress of the midterm, especially in the context of everything else that's on my plate right now.

This evening's Teaching of Psychology course, the one where I had to give my presentation, started an hour after statistics was over. I barely cranked out the materials for my presentation, but felt pretty scetchy about how the presentation ought to go. Apparently, I wasn't the only one... not only did the other students no understand what we were expected to do, but the professor didn't have a clear idea of who was supposed to present. My presentation, then, got bumped to two weeks from now, and I have plenty of time to thoroughly prepare, especially now that I know what I'm supposed to be doing. I'll say it again... Ahhhhhh.

So now I'm getting a little more work done in the office... just a little more. Tomorrow, I'll be on the phone with people, trying to get things finalized for my evaluation proposal presentation on Thursday... that one's going to be a hayride, let me tell you. I've also just found out that I have a meeting with Dr. Wertz and another professor at Lincoln Center on Friday (between my last bit of teaching for the semester and my recording studio time in Brooklyn that night) concerning my proposal for a qualitative conference at Fordham next year... apparently, I'm being taken more seriously than I thought, and they want to hear what I have to say so they can get in on the action. That's a pretty big deal, so I have to prepare for that meeting, or at least practice sounding like a little less of an idiot. Either way, I want to be ready. Of course, we can't forget the women's self defense workshop, which is definitely going to happen this Wednesday. I have to get my agenda together for that thing, which shouldn't be too hard, but it still needs to be done, and no later than tomorow. Speaking of which... why am I still in my office? I have to go to the gym and work out before I go home for the night. Ugh... why they won't just put an eliptical machine in my office, I'll never know.