Next concert, etc.

Last week, the Cheltenham Symphony Orchestra had its first rehearsal of the new year.  We played through Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2, my favorite piece of music in the whole, wide world.  It was marvelous, and quite difficult in parts, and I’m so very glad that we’re playing it!  :-)

My most recent three books completed: Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi; TI, the Transistor and Me, by Ed Millis; The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  I was very glad to have read the Fitzgerald so recently when reading the Nafisi, because a large portion of the book is wound around reading The Great Gatsby, and it meant that I could understand the references.  Plus, I just really enjoyed reading it; that was a bonus, given that I hadn’t terribly liked it when we read it back in 10th grade.

Also last week: I turned in my first grad school application.  I ended up deciding to apply for only two schools, because the other ones were “backup” schools that I didn’t really want to go to, in the end.  So why waste the application fee?  This application was for Tufts’ Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning programme.  Due on February 2nd is the application for Bard College’s M.S. in Environmental Policy.  The personal statements couldn’t be more different - Tufts wanted fewer than five pages, Bard wants fewer than 600 words.  Truthfully, I think the Bard one is going to be more difficult!

Anything else?  I have new glasses, I still haven’t started training for the marathon that’s happening in early April, I’m finally over my month-long cold+sinusitis combination, and I’m currently plowing through Nicholas Ostler’s Empires of the Word.  Thus far, it’s a bit dry, a bit shallow (despite being nearly 600 pages long, and I’m not entirely sure of the strength of his arguments, but, then again, I’m only seventy pages into it.  We’ll see.