happiness a-splode

Too bad I said I'd give it back when he comes back...

I'm having trouble typing right now because I've literally played the piano for 6 of the last 16 hours.  It's kind of starting to feel like acute carpal tunnel syndrome, so I should probably cool it for a while, but I just can't stop.  Ohmygodit'ssogood.

My friend Florian left for France this morning, so that makes me kind of sad, but I get to babysit his piano while he's gone, so that makes me ecstatic.  It's actually a really nice, full sized keyboard with weighted keys and everything, so it sounds and plays a lot like a real piano.  I went and picked it up from his house last night, got it home around 10:00, and played the darn thing until 1:15 in the morning.  I just kept going, "Mmmmmmm maybe one more song."  And then 10 or 15 minutes would go by, and I wasn't ready to stop, so I'd find another one.  I even downloaded some sheet music online and I can already play it fairly well, and I was just re-figuring out the chord progression to "Ice Cream" by Sarah McLachlan.  I actually came home from campus around noon instead of doing work because I was so tired from lack of sleep and couldn't stop thinking about playing the piano anyway, so I thought I might as well throw in the towel and play some more.  But it's getting to the point where my fingers aren't responding very well and my wrists hurt a little, so it looks like 6 out of 16 consecutive hours is approximately my limit.  (For now.)

So what does a sleepy, hand-crampy girl do at 2:00 on a beautiful, sunny Friday afternoon?  Eat a bowl of cereal, for one thing.  And blog.  And once that's done, I think I'll actually do some cleaning around here, since the little piles of dog hair and unopened mail and dirty laundry are getting a little ridiculous.

I had a pretty excellent week, all things considered.  I got comments back on my qualifying paper from both of my readers, and they were pretty good.  I've got some semi-major revisions to make, but nothing I wasn't expecting, and now I have some guidance as to how to go about making them.  I met with my advisor yesterday, and as always, it was a pretty great meeting.  And actually, I met with my new advisor today - I recently asked the other professor reading my paper if she would be willing to be the co-director of my dissertation along with advisor #1, so I officially have two thesis advisors now, and I am also officially starting to use the phrase "my dissertation".  Yikes.  I hope I don't regret the "two advisors" thing - I know people have enough trouble trying to get a dissertation approved by one professor, let alone two of them.  The thing is, ultimately it's going to be a much better dissertation, and it's going to make me a better researcher, and I know that, and that's why I did it.  But I'm also trying to be realistic about it and remember to not freak out when I'm trying to please two very smart people who are telling me different, perhaps sometimes conflicting, things.  Hop là, c'est parti!  Too late to turn back now!

I bought my plane tickets for Seattle this week, too.  I'm going to Seattle for a conference during the last week of May, and I'm pretty excited about it.  I don't know what exactly I'm putting on my poster for that conference yet, but I've never been to Seattle, and I have some friends there now, so I'll have fun one way or another!  (But I think the conference itself is going to be pretty great too.)

Well jeez.  I'm pretty sleepy and spacing out, so I might do some laundry and even (gasp!) get out the vacuum.  Unless I get distracted by my new piano again.  Which I'm going to do right... about... now....