Swimming is good for you. Caffeine is bad.

Budgens, originally uploaded by vansgirl12.

I went swimming this weekend. I spent the entire weekend away from my readings. I think I probably needed the break after having such a busy week!

Swimming was really nice. We went to a fitness centre in Guildford where Richard had guest passes to. There was a sauna, jacuzzi, and steam room as well so I really got to unwind! The steam room was so great.

After having a relaxing afternoon we decided to head over to the high street to eat dinner. We ate at a restaurant that was not really specifically any sort of asian food but a mixture of all types. I pretty much ate my usual Thai Basil style dinner. Veggie spring rolls, vegetable yellow curry, and fried rice. The pad thai wasn't vegetarian so I didn't get any of that. The curry was a bit spicy for me but it was good. I topped it off with a pot of soothing jasmine green tea.

So I thought it was soothing! I have been having problems with caffeine lately that perhaps I have always had (as I can at least recall a few other occasions where I have reacted this way to caffeine when i was younger and there is a reason why I cut out coffee from my diet when I was 17) but have simply ignored because it has not always been such a serious problem.

Caffeine makes me feel agitated and anxious. My thought process gets cloudy and I am highly fidgety. My heart starts beating rapidly and I feel like running away from whatever I am doing at the moment. I have no idea that this is being caused by the caffeine in my drink when I'm at the peak of the...I don't know what to call it--reaction? It's not any fun.

So I ended all tense by the end of the night! What a way to end what started out as a relaxing day.

It's Monday now and I am reading for my seminars this week. We got our schedulel of deadlines for the rest of the year and my first assignment is due on the 31st October. I have to do a couple of transcriptions of 'non-western' music and present my findings to the class. I am finding that it doesn't matter how accurate you are, actually. Mostly what you got out of it. Should be easy.

My least favorite seminar is "Techniques of Performance Studies" but I am going to attend the seminar even though I find it annoying because I imagine there must be something I can get out of the lectures and discussions. I am not required to do any assignments for the course since I am just auditing it.

My most favorite is probably "Techniques of Opera Studies" because we actually talk about operas that I like. We've gone over Kurt Weill operas, Monteverdi operas, and this week we are going to even discuss some Steve Reich stuff and John Adams' "Nixon In China." That is going to rock. I remember talking about that with Lloyd in composition class once. We were talking about text setting and I brought up how the libretto to Nixon in China seemed so cumbersome for Adams to have set.

Carl, that's what the Budgen's in Egham looks like. It's a "quickstop" that is why it looks like a liquor store and not a supermarket. Egham is tiny, everything is either "express," "metro" or "quickstop."

Cheers all.