Have you seen my bedtime? I seem to have lost it somewhere...

First off, a huge THANK YOU to all of you who expressed your sympathy after Grandmother died. It was a tough week. Y'all made it easier. Now I'm back in my routine, though it's not the same routine, which really makes it not a routine at all right now.

I'm kinda aimless right now, and this is not the time to be aimless.

I have a paper to rework (40% of my music history grade), a paper to write (50% of my Bach seminar grade), and an audition to prepare (which will make all my coursework futile if unsuccessful). At this point, none of the three are ready, but I have a month to get it all done.

So I'm not doing as many lunch/dinner things as I like, which makes me a bit lonelier than I would prefer. It has been incredibly good to have some friends hang out over here (Mitch & Nate, to name a couple. Well, not "a couple" like that. Perhaps I should have said, "to name two".) I've even taken to watching March Madness. I strongly dislike NCAA and NBA basketball.

God continues to bless me, even as I continue to rebel against Him in my heart. Grandmother changed her will last summer and left me the house. Being a homeowner is good, but being the one responsible for the bills is not so good. (I have written "I will not practice law" on my whiteboard about 50 times.) I am so relieved that I have a place to call "home", a place that has been in my family and will contintue to be. I can keep running my studio here and eek out a living. I can live in central Athens and resist the white flight to Oconee County. I can finally order stationery with printed envelopes.

OK, my bedtime passed a few hours ago. This has become usual in the past three weeks, and I hope to get back to my regular old-man schedule in a week or so. Night, friends...

Today Was the Day

My grandmother passed away this morning. I came home from the dentist and found her in her bed, clutching her Lifeline pendant. It appeared she did not try to press it, but instead chose not to call for help.

God's grace is in this, and I see it in some ways. In other ways, I don't yet see it, but that's OK. He is still Good.

Please pray for me as I remember her and handle her estate. For the past four years, my whole life has been spent serving her, so I face two things I've not had to: 1) a house without her in it, and 2) my life without her in it. Thank you for your prayers.

Finishing up

I'm about to call it quits on the paper. Safely over 10 pages, not yet at 12. The concepts are fragmented, but the germ of a decent paper is there. I'm sure I'll have to rewrite most of it, and I'm sorry that my TA will have to read it and comment on it over his spring break.

Numb & Numb-er

My moufh ifh numb.

Get this: the half-tooth that fell off wasn't my biggest problem. I had another tooth that had been causing some pain, and x-rays showed that to be a bigger problem. So, the dentist filled the upper tooth (which will one day need a crown), and then we scheduled the lower half-tooth to be crowned on Monday.

The total for this dental work represents nearly half of my savings account. Yippee.

Paper Update

It's 12:15 a.m., and I now have 20% of the first draft completed. In these past few hours of writing, I have also been able to add many of my Facebook friends to my AOL Instant Messenger™ Buddy List®. This has been a truly productive evening. Now I am going to bed so I can make it to my dentist appointment. More updates in the morning...

Probably Not The Nicest Thing I've Done

Before I tell you what I did, know that at this moment I am not working on the 10-12 page research paper that is due Friday morning and represents 40% of my grade in music history. In total, I have about 5 sentences written. I predict that I will pull an all-nighter within the next 24 hours.

So, I keep track of who has paid his lesson fees each month with a little Excel spreadsheet I developed a couple of years ago. I print it for the first week of each month and record who has and has not paid his lesson fees. I have it sitting on my music stand for easy reference while I'm teaching.

This one kid wended his way in, let's call him "The Winder Wunderkind", and played so poorly that my mind began to wander, and I wondered (did you catch all that, CW?) to myself, "Self, which students would you cut if you had the financial freedom to get rid of the dead weight in the studio?" So I picked up that list of students and started marking which ones I would keep, which ones I would cut, and which ones I would have to pray about. I smiled as I looked over the pared-down list and thought of the lack of frustration I would have were these eliminations to become a reality.

I didn't do this during his entire half-hour lesson, mind you, just the times when his playing showed how little he had practiced. This afforded me approximately 24 minutes to weigh the pros and cons of each of my 30-plus students.

For the rest of the day, whenever I got frustrated with a student, all I had to do was glance quickly at The List to be filled with a sense of joy mixed with longing. I might have to laminate this little piece of paper happiness and keep a copy in my wallet.

In other news, half of my back tooth fell off during dinner last night. This is a previous injury (1-2 years ago) that was supposed to have been fixed with a good filling by my dentist. If it can fall off just by eating a piece of garlic toast at Buffalo's, then I might ask if the filling is still under warranty. I have an appointment tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m. and will spend the rest of the day avoiding anyone with a camera and a Facebook page (or blog) while I try to stop drooling before the anesthetic wears off.

Midterm is OVER...bring on the papers.

So my "poor me" phase is over now that my midterm is done. I wrote and wrote for an hour, and I hope I at least get a "C". Right now, that's all I need to avoid retaking the course.

Now I'm on to write two papers. Since one is due next Friday, you can guess what fun I'll be having over the next 7 days. I'll finish just in time for spring break, which I'm looking forward to very much. The roadtrip to St. Louis fell through, so now I'm going to be working on the second paper and traveling to Carrolton, GA, to be part of a panel discussion for a piano pedagogy class at the University of West Georgia, formerly known for ever and ever as West Georgia College. As one of the panelists, I'm supposed to tell the students how to start and build a private music studio. Considering God built the studio I currently have, I think they'll get a right smart lesson in faith.

Y'all might not know this, but I run my studio differently from most other teachers. Matter of fact, I'm the only teacher in town, and perhaps in a larger region, who does what I do: I pray with each student at the beginning of every lesson.

From what I remember, this was my conviction from the first student God brought my way. I told God that I would publicly declare Him in this work, and I mention this aspect of my teaching method in the initial interview before I commit to working with a student and his family.

God has blessed my studio. By my second year of teaching, I was teaching 41 private students each week. This year, I cut back to go to school, but I still teach 31 private lessons, including three music theory students. God has taken, is taking, and will continue to take care of me, and I am awed at how He cares for me.

Tonight I went to a concert by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, directed by Paul Hillier (co-founder and former musical director of the world-famous Hilliard Ensemble). I haven't heard such beauty in years. Their program was as follows:

--Kreek: Four Estonian Religious Folk Songs
--Britten: Hymn to St. Cecilia, Op. 27
--Part: Magnificat
--Britten: Hymn to the Virgin
--Part: Nunc dimittis
--Poulenc: Mass in G Major, FP 89

The music was clearly religious, and I felt as if God has crafted a concert of music that would touch me personally. I was familiar with all but the Kreek pieces, and those were so beautiful. I bought two of their CDs and a book on Arvo Part written by Hilliard, who stayed after to autograph each of them.

There is a line in Britten's "Hymn to St. Cecilia" that brought me to tears, and it is my prayer:

Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire:
Translated Daughter, come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire.

Being a "composing mortal", I pray that God Himself (and not St. Cecilia) would appear and inspire me by startling me with the immortal fire of the Holy Spirit.