Ho Hey

It's been a fulfilling past couple of days.

Thursday night marked a return to teaching allonmyown after a six-month hiatus. You see, the department I landed myself in has this policy that requires newcomers to "shadow" a course before they are able to teach it independently. So all last semester I sat and shadowed. At first, I was rather insulted by this whole process, but then quickly realized that I was getting paid to watch, do a little bit of co-teaching, and not do any grading. Win!

But Thursday night, the class of five students (yes, five!) was all mine and I learned that they had been fearing me all week, since I had assigned reading and a pretty hard study guide for them to complete and bring to the first day of class. I also hit them hard with theory on that first night, but with only five students (yes, five!), it was refreshing to be able to really spend the time to answer all of their questions and ensure that the theory actually became more concrete rather than remaining forever abstract for them. They left class that night telling me that I had assuaged their fears and had learned quite a bit. It was all pretty dang satisfying.

However, given that this class of five is at an off-campus location about 90 minutes away from home, I walked through my door after 11pm and fell into bed. The next morning I realized how not-in-teaching shape I am and spent the next day in workout wear, zoned out in front of my computer, willing my brain to finish revising some data charts.

So Friday night's events were well-welcomed. My made-in-Salt-Lake friend from years ago, Jess, who now lives in the OC, needed little convincing to attend a small concert that she was already planning on attending. And even though Deborah and Li-Ling had never heard of The Lumineers or their music, we headed to Hollywood for a rather intimate performance by a band who was so visibly excited to play for their first sold-out show.

Given that this band is young, their set was short, but high-spirited. Watching musicians play with such passion makes me wish that I had just a teensy bit of musical anything in me.

After the concert, we wandered past the many trying-too-hard women and starving artist sorts and down the street to Amoeba Music.

Jess settled on an album by M83.

After purchases, we sat on the bus stop bench and asked Siri for the best dessert place in the neighborhood. The only problem was that Siri couldn't differentiate between "dessert" and "desert."

Deb was incredulous that Siri was so unhelpful.

Yelp ended up beating Siri to the chase and directed us to Mashti Malone's Ice Cream, which proved to be a charming dive from the outside and a place where exotic ice cream flavors reminiscent of the owner's native Iran were made on site.

The owners even promised that our tastebuds would moan. (You really need to give Incredible (!) Legend a listen).

I'm pretty certain that moaning did not escape anyone's lips while in the ice cream parlor. But I was pretty satisfied with my lavender and orange blossom flavored scoops.