Friday, April 23, 2010

land of bluebonnets

We are visiting MP2, making the best of furloughs in the form of travel. Last night, we had dinner with him and his gf  (CG) at a fun restaurant to which TH and I had never been. MP1, who has only been here once before, then got to see all the various and sundry music buildings, then CG took us on a tour of the library (my favorite of all venues to hang out in and yet I'd never stepped foot inside this one these last few years).   She works in the music library, so we got to see it's vastness. It is really, and I mean *really,* impressive. The rare music book room was closed, not that we would have known what to ooooh and aaaaah over, but still--very cool that there is one.  I was also  floored by the number of music periodicals that are 1) apparently in publication and 2) subscribed to by the university. (And here, I just have to say how depressing it is going to be to go home to my institution, which has such a pathetic library when it comes to research. When I was hired, it was not spectacular by any means, but it was at least up to the par one expects at a teaching univerity. NOW, it is pretty sorry. I was in the stacks two days ago checking that the most recent issues of a journal were still on the shelves and not off at the bindery,  so that I coud send students over to work on a journal-related assignment , and I nearly fell over when I saw how many journals have been dropped). The most impressive and simultaneously depressing thing about this tour? This library was open and very much in use after 10 pm.  Good luck with that at my place.

This morning (after a night of little sleep), we dropped off MP1 to hang around with her sib and go to some music event, took care of some apartment issues for next year, walked around the downtown square (with a brief side trip into the antique mall to look for Americana Indian crap for MGC), and got ourselves some coffee. We are back at the hotel for a while, trying to cope with the effects of the time change. This is why I hate giving papers anywhere outside of my timezone--I'm just a zombie if I don't get at least 6 good hours of sleep. On the  paper-giving front, I got some work done in that direction on the plane. So I don't think I'll be in horrid shape next Friday, especially since I have to get home from here and that will be 3 more hours of being "unplugged" from distractions, plus another furlough day on Monday (oh,  yeah, on which I will NOT being doing any  'work.'   Can you tell that  I am pretty fed up with not being paid my full salary under the pretense that my workload can be reduced by magic and nothing in the scope of my job will suffer?!).

Here are a few random photos--iPhone and in the dark quality. Too lazy to bring along my good camera or my personal computer (which is loaded with software that might correct these somewhat).

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