It just takes a little Mozart...

...for me to find focus. One of the first CDs I ever bought was a recording of the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 26 in D-Major performed by Murray Perahia. This is the CD I'd put in whenever I was in crunch paper-writing time in college, graduate school the first time, and now graduate school the second time (TEN years later...ugh, age, where are my cane and vitamins?). Why I don't remember to put this CD in every morning, I'll never know. I always focus and get a lot of work done when I hear this piece. It's benign enough that I don't just space out and listen to the music. It helps me filter out the rest of the world and do nothing but write. There are three movements: faster, slower, and fast (my translation of the Italian). During the fast movements I write, and during the slow movement I read and proof. I don't mean to do it that way, but that's just the rhythm I've established. I think it's subconscious. Many times I just put the CD on repeat mode and so I can crank through a big paper.

Guess I'm going to have this tune running perpetually here in my office for the next couple of weeks. I've just burned the CD to my office computer.

Chester is Flatulent

Get out of my office, smelly dog!

The poor thing. I wonder what he ate.

Elusyve letter y

Y am seryously thynkyng of removyng all ynstances of the letter “i” from my dyssertatyon and replacyng them wyth the more elusyve and less-frequently used letter “y”. Wouldn’t that be nyce?

OK, Y realyze that’s probably not the best ydea. But yt would be pretty funny nevertheless. You can tell Y’m goyng styr crazy wyth dyssertatyon-wrytyng these days. Perhaps the upcomyng snow storm wyll bryng me back to a mode where Y can be more productyve? Y hope so.

Friday Haiku

My friend & colleague, Jon , and I wrote this today after a meeting at work.

Our meeting is done
The decisions have been made
Let’s go home and drink

Dude, that's a Haiku.