diarish

[kaberett]

• Pootling along with Response To Reviewers. I'm quoting them extensively, but I'm still a little facepalm that my document is already up to 2.5k words (plus two figures, plus a table). Plan of attack: make a first pass of changes to the main text per Reviewer 2 tomorrow; tidy up the Response To Reviewers (and maybe tackle Reviewer 3's notes, which are fairly brief) on Friday; circulate to co-authors for comment by the end of the week. Science science science.
  
• Gosh but it's much quieter out. I went to the allotment today, for the first time in about ten days; it was very noticeable that people have, in that time, got a whole bunch better at social distancing. People who weren't me were spontaneously crossing the road to set up one-way systems on opposite pavements, or ducking into driveways; joggers were moving out into the (car-free!) roads to pass pedestrians, which they certainly weren't a week and a half ago; people are talking to strangers to negotiate who goes first. I, meanwhile, was in a road-legal vehicle, so took the opportunity to zoom up the middle of a normally busy A-road, thereby getting to move faster than walking pace while maintaining social distancing. And yes, from this you deduce that my seven-day quarantine is Over with no worsening or indeed persistence of symptoms, because it was in fact Just The End Of The Cold.
  
• Continue enjoying messing about with the horn. My embouchure is much more secure; I'm getting a much better tone out at the top of my range, and to my astonishment actually managed some pretty clean (if not terribly smooth) three-octave slurs this evening. I'm getting about 15 minutes in and finding that I have to start really concentrating on keeping the corners of my mouth appropriately flexed or it all starts going to hell, but definitely something. For today's practice I trialled not letting myself repeat any one legato exercise more than three times (mostly), and it worked well; I'd been allowing myself to get bogged down and frustrated in aiming for Perfect Accuracy, while getting more and more tired and less and less likely to achieve it, resulting in less variety and more disgruntlement. This is an Improvement and I'm going to keep it.
  
• PLANTS. There are so many plants. The cherry blossom on my tree's coming out. I've potted up Several (but not, by any stretch, All) of the tomatoes, and one chilli. I need to take photos for you all.
  
• <3