All in the Timing

Hello, and welcome to 2011. Oh yes, it's been going on for several months already. I remember. I remember ringing it in with Catharine and Matt in downtown Pittsburgh, watching Tower of Power perform on an outdoor stage in unseasonably warm weather. I haven't blogged here since the new year, though, so I thought I'd just write a quick note.

I've been busy. Teaching again, writing my dissertation, traveling. The same old. As I mentioned in my last post, my article on Wynton Marsalis got published, although that seems like a lifetime ago (the fact that I first wrote it in 2007 may have something to do with that).

One of my last posts was about daylight saving's time. Since we have just "sprung forward," a few comments may be in order here, too. I am a huge fan of the fact that it is still light out when I get done teaching at 6:30. Class today was also particularly good--in addition to more "writerly" things, we talked about Adele, New Orleans hip-hop, and the current scandal about the German defense minister plagiarizing his thesis--so there were several reasons why I was actually energized leaving class today, instead of exhausted.

I didn't even mind "losing" an hour of sleep this Sunday. I just slept an extra hour.

The dissertation is coming along. It's a slog. But I've got three of the four chapters done, or at least, "done." The fourth involves me thinking in Spanish--perhaps I've had this all backwards, and I should have written three chapters on Latin American things and only one on Anglophone matters.

I saw Prince since the last time we spoke. He was incredible. I was a believer before, but now I think I'm a disciple. I also saw Maceo (again), who was a lot of fun, and the aforementioned Tower of Power.

I'm rooting for Pitt in the NCAA tournament, of course. I have about 15 projects that I would like to work on once I finish my dissertation, but I know that I have to buckle down and finish writing this little monster first. Then I get to write about Biggie, rock en espanol, the radio personality Delilah, jazz in Pittsburgh, etc. The goal is to get to all of those projects, sometime in the next 20 years or so.