more excitement in one week

My friends back home made the comment, "You have more adventures in a week than I could handle in two or three months," and I can say that the same is practically true for me.  One long day of classes and traveling past Zürich for work and I am loathe to leave the house the next day.  Even for things I love to do.
I did, anyway, make my way to the farmer's market, and I got there just in time.  I managed to get some good bread (finally!), and really at the last minute; I was saying hello to the nice lady who sells hand made mustard and she asked if I wanted to buy some bread.  Yes, why not!  Anyhow.  On the way home I passed by a parked taxi with a copy of Gilgamesh in the front window.  What a literate working population.

Not much else happened this weekend.  I made a squash curry with coconut milk (Thai-style, yum!), played the smallest amount of bass possible to still call it practicing, and then brought some curry over to my friends' house.

Classes seem to be fine.  Baroque and Classical Theory, Notation, German for foreigners (Auslanders).  My Notation class is interesting.  The idea is to place the piece in a time and location, based on the physical clues you can look at.  Like Art History for musicians.  This includes looking at things like instrumentation, why and when different markings were used, how you can tell which country the music was written in and where it was printed, and, consequently, what technique was used to do the printing.  !!  The teacher is great, she's smart and funny and very enthusiastic about her subject.  She also wears a little watch on a chain around her neck so she can end the class on time (charming).  She explained a little in class about different printing techniques, but the students seemed generally confused about the concepts.  After class I asked her if she might be interested in having the class come over to Druckwerk so I can show them what copper plate etching, lithography, and letterpress printing actually are, and how they work, and she liked the idea.  So, we're setting something up for the end of the month!  How exciting.
Every student also has to do a presentation about one subject at the end of the year, topic of our choice, and she has approved further research on my part into how and where music was printed.  I plan to do a few physical experiments, too, of course.

I have homework for other classes, too.  Come up with 6 - 8 variations on La Follia.  Write a 4-bar minuet using a specific chord progression.  Look at this, I'm back in school.  Weird.  Well, in typical form (as far as I can remember) I am putting of my homework.  Hopefully not until the last minute.  That would be depressing.  I'm 30, after all.  One would hope I've learned not to procrastinate so much.  Ha.

little web of roots I found while cleaning up the balcony today



Meanwhile, fall is starting.  Pictures to follow.