Another spectacular storm � spring weather here is so dramatic. Around 9:30 this morning, it suddenly turned black as night and the wind kicked in, whipping around the 200-year-old oak tree in front of the house as if it were made of paper. More torrents of rain, more spectacular lightning, a bolt of which appeared to hit next to the barn behind our house, sending the horses tearing around the paddock squealing � the storm had rolled in too quickly for the stablehands to get them inside.

Yesterday when we went to bed it was 85 and tropically humid. It was in the 50s when we woke up. I�m not sure how that happened. AJ and I bought a new wading pool for the yard � the one we had last year sprang a leak over the winter. Plus that one took nearly three days to inflate. We found one that springs open and you only have to blow up the rim. It took 5 minutes to put together and another 15 to fill. AJ was in heaven, splashing around with his bath toys. He wanted to hop in again as soon as he got up this morning and, despite the cold temperatures, we hauled the boats out and took them sailing in the early morning breeze. Despite the chill in the air, it was pleasant to sit outside with my coffee and inhale the perfume of the lilac bushes, which have suddenly burst into bloom. Or at least, it was pleasant until AJ decided he needed to jump into the pool and I had to haul a sodden, sweatpants-clad boy into the house kicking and screaming. That was the end of my bucolic morning.

I am feeling rather diligent today, and will probably spend the rest of the morning trying to write up a couple of the more theoretical sections of the introductory chapters so I can get them out of the way. It�s not that I don�t enjoy theory, just that the material I need to write about seems so obvious to me that it doesn�t feel necessary. But of course it is. Not just because my judgment is clouded from being overly familiar with the material, but also because these are the very sections that make it most obvious how my work ties in with the field � a key ingredient in any dissertation, if not in a book. Still, I find the explanations tedious. Of course, there are other points where I really want to explain how I got to where I am where the explanation doesn�t really belong. For instance, I have proved that an ensemble performing in Europe is the same as one performing in the United States under a different name. The process of figuring this out was interesting and I feel compelled to draw the picture of how I got from suspicion to proof. However, it is completely unnecessary to do so to understand what I�m talking about. Fortunately, there are always footnotes. Most of my favorite stuff is in footnotes. It�s where all the tangential but really interesting stuff ends up. I should probably cut some of it, but a lot of it is what keeps the project feeling personal. And it�s that personal connection that�s keeping me going.

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