End-of-the-semester update

I've mostly been browsing my flist on my iphone and haven't had a chance to reply to much, even though some of my friends have been posting some interesting stuff.But it's that crazy time known as end-of-the-semester. I'm attending two student recitals on Saturday as well as rehearsing for a concert I'm singing in on Sunday!I did want to drop by with a couple of things, though. Writingwise, I haven't done much. I did get a rejection yesterday from the one flash piece I had out on the market, and immediately sent it out to another market. I've even decided where it should go next. Go, me!I did some prioritizing and am almost convinced I need to put the novel off for a little while longer after I get my two remaining stories for TNEO out the door. Next, I really do need to get back into revising my novelette, "For the Love of Trees," and submit it for Writers of the Future like I meant to a long time ago before the school year hit and my life went crazy. I've got the first third of it revised and decided I will submit it in three chunks to my local writers' group, then make some final edits, and send it out by the end of September. Then, it's back into the novel! I haven't completely forgotten about it and do write notes sometimes of ideas I have of ways to fix things.On my way to Earlham on Wednesday, I heard some really fun music on the radio and had to download the recording from Itunes. It's a one-act jazz ballet, "La Revue de Cuisine," scored for clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, cello, violin and piano, by Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu. The music is lots of fun, often whimsical, sometimes angular. The recording by the Sinfonia Lahti Chamber Ensemble contains the four-movement suite, and now I really want to hear the other movements from the ballet.You can see a video excerpt of a chamber group performing it here.If that's not to your taste, you may enjoy doing aerobics with Snowball, the dancing cockatoo. Wait till you see this little guy bob his yellow-feathered crest to "Another One Bites the Dust!"Ok, now back to work!