John Colton's blog

Been a while since I posted. Here's some catching up, in no particular order:

* The semester is almost over. Teaching Physics 105 has been pretty fun. Gotta love the demos! I think the students are very happy about my teaching style, but not too happy about the difficulty of the exams. We'll see how the end-of-semester evaluations go. I'm teaching Optics next semester, Physics 471.

* Our La Crosse house is still not sold or rented. That's not happy.

* We've been going to a slew of musical events. These include:
- Our stake "Choirside" last night (Dec 9). (Just Emily & me.) That was a singing where all the choirs in the stake sang one Christmas piece, and in between the congregation sang carols.
- a Messiah sing-along concert last Friday, at the Alpine Tabernacle in American Fork. (All four of us.)
- BYU's "Octubafest", must have been back in October. A concert with ~30 tubas & euphoniums (euphonia??). (All four of us.)
- BYU's "A Cappella Jam" on Nov 29--performances by various student a cappella groups (mostly contemporary music). Some were really good, some not so good; in general it was a lot of fun. We got there really early, and basically got front row seats. All four of us went. As an added bonus, we got to see Roger & Darlene Young, some old friends from California who I think live about an hour away.
- Synthesis concert on Nov 28, BYU's top jazz band. It's directed by Ray Smith, who is in our ward (I'm his hometeacher, actually). Just Pauline and I went.
- A performance of Thoroughly Modern Millie, on Nov 9 (all four of us). A lady in our ward played "Muzzie".
- a Utah Baroque Ensemble concert, on Nov 18. (Just me.) They are about the same quality as the La Crosse Chamber Chorale was, and I'm planning to audition for them in the next week or two.

* Speaking of auditions, a week or two ago I auditioned for the "Deseret Chamber Singers", which is apparently even more top-notch than the UBE. I haven't heard them in person yet. The audition went quite well, I though, but the director didn't know if he would have any openings. The way we left it (I think), is that if any of his current basses drop out after their Christmas concerts, he would give me a call.

* I also auditioned for a want-to-be-professional contemporary a cappella group a while back that is just forming (no name yet). They complimented me on my voice & musicality but in the end decided that they wanted someone who had more experience in contemporary a cappella and/or who had a stronger bass voice. That was fine; I wasn't necessarily ready to go professional yet.

* Utah Jazz games: I've been fortunate to be able to go to a number of Jazz games this year. My dad & brother-in-law bought season tickets, and they've been inviting me along when one of them is out of town. And once when they were both gone, I was able to take Leslie! She had a lot of fun. The Jazz are now something like 7-1 when I am personally in attendance. :-) (lifetime)

* Undergrad researchers: I signed on four undergrad students as research assistants:
Scott Eldredge, Benjamin Heaton, Daniel Jenson, and Michael Johnson. So far they have seemed pretty sharp and hard-working. In a "small world" story, Benjamin turned out to be from my sister Marci's ward in Georgia and used to babysit the kids/teach piano to Jacob/accompany Marci's choir.

* In another "small world" story, the student who is probably going to be my TA for Optics next semester is the brother-in-law of one of my former roommates (Kirk Hawkins).

* We went to a "Keele memorial pie party", on Nov 17, at the home of Ken & Angela Wade, some friends from Berkeley. The Keeles used to host a giant pie party in Berkeley the day after Thanksgiving (still do, just not in Berkeley any more). We were trying to be as cool as they are. Two more quick "small world" stories: (1) Ken left Berkeley to take a job at Waterford, a private school in Sandy. That's where my sister Nancy works. (2) When we first arrived here, Pauline and I were walking around BYU, the upper floor of the Wilkinson Center, to be precise. We passed by a girl who was sitting down in a chair, and she blurted out "Are you the Coltons!?" It was Leslie Keele--we had last seen her when she was ~12. She's now a freshman at BYU.

* I gave a talk in church yesterday about missionary work. It was well received, I think, despite me opening my remarks by complaining about the courtesy, or lack thereof, of many Utah drivers. Pauline spoke last month.

* I took a trip to the National Science Foundation (DC area) back on October 21-23, to review proposals for them.

* I found a local table tennis club, only ~10 minutes away. We play every Wednesday evening. Check out how I'm doing: http://www.utahtt.org/tttc/rank.html I'm back to close to the top of my game.