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-Went on a three-day business trip. To the South. Was weirded out, in a really good way, by being in the South and deferred to as the Grown-Up Responsible Adult Who Was Going to Make Things Run, because usually when I'm below the Mason-Dixon line I'm with my parents, who still think I'm five. It's also the longest I've ever been away from E. She took it very well, only on occasion remarking to D. "Mommy bye-bye!" Thank goodness she wasn't sick. She's had a really bad cold for the past week and it has been pretty miserable for her. (For us, it hasn't been all that bad, because it does mean she's been sleeping a lot more. Whee spare time!) (ETA: Well, days haven't been too awful. Nights, on the other hand... but that's gotten a lot better. YAY humidifers!)

-Speaking of E, she's getting very opinionated. Not only does she constantly demand songs (many of which have their own names, like "tree song," "colors song," and the "glass of water song" I made up when I taught her a couple months ago to drink from a cup -- which by the way was awesome, by pure luck she managed to spend most of the "let's dump the water all over everything" stage with sippy cup), she has Distinct Ideas as to How the World Should be Run. For example, everyone should take shoes off after he comes in the door. ("Daddy shoes off!!" is a refrain we frequently hear.)

-Have given up on Well of Ascension. I'm sure it is a perfectly nice book (in fact, D read it and told me so), I just ran out of my Epic Fantasy quota for the year. Maybe next year.

-I've taken a job as the alto section head for a Catholic church choir on Thursday nights and (irregularly for now, but regularly starting in January when my church gets pushed to afternoons) Sunday mornings. (That makes it sound rather more portentous than it really is; alto section ranges from two to five people.) It's certainly not the way to riches and fame -- per hour, I make a little less than a quarter of what my day job pays me. Still, it's kind of fun to actually make use of my music knowledge and my Decided Ideas Honed Over Many Years on How Choir Music Ought to be Sung, and it's good for D to get some regularly scheduled alone-time with the Little One, and the conductor promised me today that when I can do Sundays regularly, he'll let us do more polyphonic music, which will make me really happy. And it's not the same as singing in a good choir, of course, which I'd of course far prefer to do even if I had to pay for the privilege, but there's something kind of nice about holding a section together (and the choir -- as everyone knows, the altos are really the backbone of the choir! Well, that's what we altos think, anyway...) Of course, this means I will potentially be attending THREE churches on Sundays starting in January; let's see if I survive...

-Fortunately, the Catholic church appears not to not do extra music in December (except for Christmas Day, but I'll be gone then) which is really really good because December is super-turbo month for musicians at my own church. Fortunately times two, the people who do December music are busy or out of town this month, so my church has also been a little less crazy on this front than it was last year.

-Speaking of which, I really, really like accompanying people. I really, really like small-group music and fitting with another musician. And I have to practice like whoa every time I do it because my piano reading skills are so bad. And I hate practicing, and I especially hate practicing religious pop songs! But I love accompanying people! Oh well.