Well, that did not go quite as planned

My main goals for the day were to help my son with his thesis and finish the packing course homework.

Well, I did the first one, at least.

I had another slow start into the day where I didn’t have time to open the manuscript first thing. This is becoming a bad habit which is not good.

There were the usual morning things and a very nice conversation with my husband and then I went for a walk/run for the first time since Monday. I chose to take it slow and go only for 45 minutes and that was rather nice. Despite the weather being chilly:

I came home in time to take a leisurely shower and folded some laundry.

My husband made Indian food. Mmh, chickpeas:

I actually had worked on the new crochet blanket while talking with my husband in the morning and then, just as I was about to take a nice break, the boy came downstairs, ate lunch and then we started working on his bachelor’s thesis. He had sent his final version to his advisor, had gotten it back with annotations and now we looked over it together. I asked dumb questions, corrected his grammar and spelling and helped him find places where he could add some more text. Some sections did look like they were written late at night under pressure by someone who just wanted to be finished, plus his advisor said he might want to make the whole thing longer.

It’s funny how often it helps to talk something through with another person, and also, someone asking dumb questions can be really helpful. If done the right way, because just asking stupid questions might not lead to anything but asking things like the reason why he included this thing but not the other that he mentioned before. And asking him to actually lead the reader through the process and write down why it’s done that way instead of writing „this is what I did, step 1 through 4, and then I got this data, see table 11“ is not very reader-friendly.

He also looked at some papers and other theses to see how they had solved the same kind of problems.

I forced him to make an actual written list of everything he wanted to do after that so that he didn’t forget. Because there were quite a few things, some of which might involve reading a few more papers.

I was very impressed by him using LaTeX, it actually looks like doing to me, at least it looks a lot like html. And I have to say that the days of hand-coding blog posts are gone. But then the boy is the kind of person who’d rather write a python script to do a thing than do it by hand.

That took about 3 1/2 hours which meant my afternoon was gone. I really wanted to do my homework but no, my husband showed up again with his newly restored guitar. The hollow-body electric one that looks like the epiphany that John Lennon stripped of pain. Well, almost, I got a whole lecture on how the pick-ups are different and the new and improved tailpiece. He had been thinking of switching that out for a better one and when the old one fell off by accident the other day he seized the opportunity. And then he saw that the one he wanted might take up to four weeks to get here and was all sad that he wouldn’t be able to play that guitar for a whole month.

Well, it arrived yesterday and he spent half the afternoon mounting it. Also sorting screws in the basement, and ongoing project, this time triggered by having to find the right ones for the task.

That meant there was no time left for anything else. At least I finished watching the course videos at last. And then we ate dinner in front of TV while watching „Searching for Sugar Man“ that came recommended by one of my husband’s students. Nothing against Rodriguez but the film was weird and very, very slow and full of clichés about musicians. Like, of course he just stepped on a plane, went to a different continent and just played his old songs without a hitch.

I can tell you, the other day I forgot the lyrics to „Corcovado“ a song I could sing in my sleep in the 90s. These days I need a lead sheet, otherwise I go „Quiet stars and quiet night, lalala, quiet chords from my guitar, lala, silence that surrounds us,“ and so forth.

The big story was that he never quite made it in the US even though his voice and lyrics were comparable to Bob Dylan. Everybody was very confused by that. But I think, as a Mexican American people just found it weird that he was doing fold rock and it might just have been a bit of racism.

The film makes it out as if he was completely poor and unsuccessful, went back to working in construction even after hitting it big in South Africa and touring there in the 90s.

Well, Wikipedia also tells us tat he did an Australia and New Zealand tour in the late 70s.

Good music, very nice guy, but a bit of a sensationalist take on the story. Especially since we heard a lot of guys who were telling their hero story.

After that I realized I had an hour more than usual because of the time change, finally looked at Geshin which I couldn’t before, played for quite some time (I feel I have played these daily commission missions before, weird) started this post and still had to do the dishes at 11.40.

But I didn’t and went to bed.

I keep having to put things back in their usual place that I collected in one place for the packing homework but I need them in between and when my meds are elsewhere I don’t find them.

I put the packing sack I will use for clothes and the one for toiletries in the bag I picked and, well, things will get a bit tight in there. Especially when I want to pack my eReader, two pairs of glasses and a water bottle. I might leave the bottle out. I won’t be happy about that because I hate using the plastic ones but needs must. (I mean, not really, if I were traveling for real I would probably take my usual backpack instead because I wouldn’t be happy lugging a messenger bag around for a week but, well, it’s the principle. I want to reduce my packing so I’m challenging myself.

So, I started this post late, decided I wanted to put a few links in to posts about packing in a handbag on Her Packing List, fell down an internet rabbit hole and was very, very late.

So, I guess today I’ll do the dishes, call my mother, spend time with my husband again, do another read-through of his thesis, call my mother, finally finish the course homework including all the photos and go to bed on time. Oh, and deal with recycling, clean the house and go to bed on time.

Yeah, I’m laughing on the floor as well.