Indexing and piano duets

My head is swimming. I have reached page 100 in the book I am indexing. When I stopped yesterday, I was at page 80. Twenty pages a day is about as fast as I can go with this project. No wonder Kathy said I could have five weeks to do this project. If I can average 20 pages a day, I will have come to the end on August 27. Then I will move into the final editing of the index. The index is due September 10.

I will do another 20 pages tomorrow and then e-mail the index (in progress) to Joel back at the publisher for his comments. Joel has been a big help thus far. I know almost nothing about the subject (6th century Byzantine Arabs) and must rely on his guidance.

After so many hours of indexing, your brain starts to buzz. I am going to make a few notes here and then go to bed.

Yesterday, Gail came over for two hours of piano duet practice in the morning. Playing duets with Gail is one of the more enjoyable activities I engage in. It is a challenging task, but it is very rewarding when the two parts come together, as they should.

Playing a duet is a real workout, usually. The pieces we play vary in their level of difficulty. Sometimes I get really exhausted by the time we reach the end of a piece. I recall that a couple of weeks ago we were playing a Wagner “March,” and by the time we got to the end, I had perspired so much that I had to change shirts. I am usually so worn out that a nap is in order that afternoon.

That evening I attended a poetry group meeting at Border’s bookstore. There were eight of us in the group. We read some poems by William Blake and talked about them. Next month we will be reading poems by William Butler Yeats. Yeats will not be as hard to figure out as Blake. Yeats is closer to our age and that will help a lot. The meeting lasted a couple of hours.

I am going to suggest that we move upstairs. Meeting in the café as we did, I found to be too noisy. You are too close to the cappuccino machine. Ever time it starts up, you have to stop speaking until it finishes. I was with a group that held meetings upstairs there about a year ago. It is much nicer up there.