Thoughts on a Tuesday

5:36
As I open my door to go to the toilet, I am blinded by the light in the corridor that nobody has switched off. The house is silent.

8:36
While drinking grapefruit juice and eating toast with cheese, I work on my presentation on Finnish a cappella - music, which is tomorrow. I have been sure of the pieces I want to present and the choirs I want to talk about, but now that it's tomorrow I'd like to just change everything. I'm afraid of boring everybody with Rautavaara and making my teacher frown at some really bad recordings.

11:55
At the counterpoint lesson, I always feel like I'm completely off track and suggest some very bizarre solutions to the problems, and still the teacher agrees with me every time. I don't know how I'm doing this since I am seriously clueless about what we're doing. S offers me chocolate waffles when I tell her I'm hungry. I take three.

13:07
Chicken fillet with curry sauce at the Mensa. Thomas has a rehearsal with his string quartet but he's with me anyway - after all, he needs to eat lunch just like the rest of us. I skip the piece of cake today. I like this day: it's varied, with different tasks and challenges, and I have a short train trip to look forward to. I feel more motivated than the last days.

14:58
Running from harp lesson to orchestral conducting, stopping at the copy machine to copy some music in a flash. Today, several people have called me - including two of my teachers! - and I have people I need to call. I get an SMS that puts a smile on my face and someone records a message on my answering machine from Turkey. I can't imagine life without a phone.

17:18
In the car with Erdmuthe from Gesangsverein Trofaiach, on our way to the rehearsal where I'm going to substitute for Natasha again. Sometimes, I am really bad at small talk. The social aspects of conducting choirs is one of the most attractive things in this line of work but let's face it - sometimes I wouldn't mind just arriving at the spot, doing the job, and leaving again without having to pretend to everyone how fascinated I am about the weather.

20:10
Waiting for the train back to Graz, a solitary dinner at Leoben's depressing railway station: sandwiches I packed at home and chocolate chip cookies from Spar. If this day was a movie, this would probably be the part where everyone hoped I got a happy ending.

22:05
Home. In the kitchen, we admire Thomas's dinner, a huge mess of congealed potato puree mixed with pieces of burned fish, and I get a hug from Petra who is still sick. We tell each other about our day, gossip about our flatmates (probably just as much as they gossip about us) and discuss the quality of Czech toilet paper. A happy ending if there ever was one!