cello there

so yeah, here i am sitting at my old desk with my old group at my old job. on paper i have gotten a promotion to a different job in a neighboring department, but my computer is not ready, so here i am. i actually have some lingering projects to wrap up and/or hand over, and also a training manual to write; so it's not a big deal that i'm stuck here. but at the same time i wish it were just over already and i could get into my new job. i'll be travelling, regionally, in stead of coming to the office every day. the travelling in the beginning will probably be the toughest because i will be in training mode. that means that i will be travelling with other people, to "shadow" and learn from them in the field. this means, of course, that i will be a slave to their schedule, and also that i will be travelling all over the place, even across the country, since there aren't enough people around here who can train me. whatever! the point is, in the beginnign it will be tough... so it will be a sink-or-swim test for whether or not it will throw my family-life into disarray. if we make it through this summer, the rest should be easier, because i will be making my own schedule and also staying closer to home, generally. furthermore, i am excited to start already because i will be learning a whole lot more than i ever would in this old job- i'm finally getting into the mainstream research side of the business.

oh yeah, and also i got a package in the mail yesterday from this lady who i met in europe at my training seminar. background: we were all cooped up in this hotel & conference center, and there was a billiards room with a piano in one part of the building. i was sitting and enjoying a beer in an adjacent room while flipping through a dutch art history book, when i heard the piano next door. it was beautifully played classical piano music, i honestly thought it might be a player-piano becuase it sounded that good. anyway, she was someone who i knew, and i complimented her between songs but then retreated back to my couch in the next room- i got the feeling that she didn't like to be watched. i sat and enjoyed a few more songs, finishing my beer and looking at more paintings in the book. later, at dinner, i brought it up again and we got to talking about music. she said she had studied piano ever since she was young, and that she continued to play as often as she could. she mentioned that she would always play for her family, but liked to provide background music for dinners and get-togethers, as opposed to recitals, where she felt that she was being watched too closely. we got to talking about how she is in the process of learning the cello. i mentioned that i know a little about cello music, and that i really enjoyed yo-yo ma's bach cello suites; and i asked if she had any reccomendations. she told me that she has friends who are professional musicians and music teachers, and that they have an excellent CD. they are a couple that play as a duet; one plays a classical guitar and the other plays the cello. the cd sounded very interesting, especially since i also like classical guitar music. so i gave her some money and she promised to send me one. i listened to it last night while having dinner with my son. he didn't seem to mind it. i liked it very much. it's a pretty diverse selection of songs; and the arrangement is very dynamic, including some string scraping and guitar/cello body tapping for precussion. all in all i like it very much. oh, and in the package was a photo of a mountaintop (the alps?), towering above the clouds, and a note. i plan to write back and tell her i like the cd very much.