I’m getting up at 4:19 these days. Compared with having my husband out of work, this is good, but compared with, say, sleeping till 5:30, it’s not good. The big question becomes, do I try to go back to sleep, and possibly waste an hour or more lying in bed trying to sleep, or do I go ahead and get up and work, even though I haven’t had enough sleep?

Insufficient sleep keeps a person focused on very small, dull questions.

Last night, we worked on the Brahms German Requiem. I wanted to show you what the music looks like, so you’d grasp how difficult it is. We worked through two pages last night and will reconvene in late January to give it another shot.

There’s a party next week. I don’t plan to go. Much as I enjoy singing with this group, there are really only a few people there whom I actually like in social terms. And there was such a lot of joking about drinking… Somehow, when a group of people that old finds it funny to joke about drinking at length, it seems very likely that it won’t be my sort of party. Not to mention that the entertainment for the evening is the auctioning off of wrapped gifts. The auctioneer said that people should make sure to let him know which gift they’d brought so he could embarrass them during the auction, which could get dull otherwise.

Nope. I think I’ll skip that.

#2 daughter should be home this evening.

I’ve got class today, and had intended to do some stuff for the evaluations process, but I have a worried email from my Aussies, so I’m going to do that instead. And also instead of trying to go back to sleep.