Schubert&Haydn, Jupiter&Venus, Shoes&Varnish.

Yep, I think in a nutshell that's it.

Oh alright, so in February and March the first set of final exams hit home. Big time. I think the best thing that can be said about them is that apparently both Schubert's and Haydn's works are so indestructably brilliant that even months of reading about and listening to the same pieces over and over and mindlessly learning semi-scientific essays off by heart couldn't do them any harm. Of course, a talented, handsome performer might also help in securing one's lasting admiration...

The only other realisation worth of notice for me is that the brain is a marvellous thing. All questions of sense and nonsense of learning two whole essays by heart, verbatim, just to reel off one of them in a designated time slot in an examination hall put aside, I still find it strangely comforting to know that - if the worst comes to the worst - my brain is still able to process, retain and reproduce at will any load of gibberish (in this instance 12 pages of printed text) within three days. I've often wondered how actors cope with such amounts of text, but obviously it's possible. Even if I spent those days freakishly worried that if anyone approached me with any kind of information not relevant to the exam, this one piece of information might just push one of those painstakingly memorized sentences over the edge of my hard drive and into oblivion.
Which - surprise - didn't happen and I'm glad those two exams are over. Ready for more fun to come. In a little while.

After that whole circus it seems that for now I've navigated into calmer waters. Jupiter and Venus are still hanging out companionably in the evening sky (a sight which always makes me happy, no matter what - I know, I'm weird that way...), spring has finally come, the sun is out, the trees have their first touch of green back, the first blossoms are in sight (yet my personal hayfever season is still a little way off, yay!) and the girls and I have succumbed to a mild (ahem) bout of shopaholicism and general girliness. At this very moment I have a different kind of varnish on each nail of my left hand and can't decide which of them will provoke the most (silly, pitying, admiring?) remarks by my students on Tuesday.
Hm, tricky...