I'm late to the party, as I usually am on music things, but I'm completely in love with The Hold Steady right now. Part of this is because I'm in a high-energy alt-rock phase at the moment, in an attempt to combat work/sleep issues that are making it hard for me to get going in the morning, and to get things done after work. But I've been listening to Stay Positive on loop on the iNot, and I love how each song is practically a complete short story in itself. And most of the time, these stories are about people caught up in the darker side of American life, which dovetails nicely with some story ideas I've been mulling over lately.

In other musical inspiration news, the regular accompanist is back in my ballet class! He went on vacation for the last two months or so of the summer, and our replacement was not very good. She seemed like a nice person, and probably is a good pianist, but she was obviously not experienced in playing for a ballet class -- Socks (new psuedonym for my ballet instructor) would give a combination, then she'd have to waste five minutes getting the right tempo from the pianist. Plus, once the tempo was settled, she wasn't very good at keeping it consistent, which is so frustrating to try to dance to. I was actually thinking about trying to find another class if she stayed much longer. Whereas our regular guy not only keeps a consistent tempo, he pays such close attention to Socks's instructions that he often emphasizes certain parts of the melody to correspond with changes in the choreography. I spent much of tonight's class grinning like an idiot at the end of every exercise, just from the pleasure of dancing to his music.

Still no news on the job front ... I'm not sure this is a no news is good news situation, so I'm trying to brace myself for the worst. I'll update as soon as I know anything for sure.