It's the first day of (meteorological) spring, and the weather is actually reasonably nice!

I'm spending most of the day working on various things to do with Scottish dancing:

• I'm putting the finishing touches on my preparation for the Easter workshop – some dances from the “strategic reserve” don't have teaching points and/or background notes yet. It's fun to dig into the history of Glayva (the drink), to try to find out what happened to the bees of Maggieknockater, or who Mrs MacLeod was. I'm not sure I'll be using any of that during the workshop, but it's nice to have something just in case.

• The Bonn Spring Workshop is actually two weeks from today! I have the lesson plans from Gisela and Heike and can start looking for tunes. I don't yet know whether I'll be playing for a third class and who the teacher will be; I'll have to ask Uta whether they have decided that yet.

• Next weekend is another one of the taster courses we're running together with the VHS (adult learning centre). This doesn't need a whole lot of preparation because I can probably do pretty much what I did the last time around, but I may still replace a few dances just for kicks.

We also wanted to go to the Episcopal Museum downtown because they have a special exhibition that one of the professors Marie is working with is involved in. Today is the first Saturday of the month, which means that public transport is free in the city of Mainz, but when we get there it turns out that the museum is closed (presumably for carnival). Marie is miffed because she specifically checked their web site and it didn't say they weren't going to be open, but apparently this is so obvious and clear that it does not deserve special mention. (Certainly the people from the cathedral shop have a sign at their door saying they're closed for carnival, so that probably also applies to the people from the museum.) But it's not a wasted trip – we spend some time shopping for various bits and pieces and are delighted to find that, because it is the first Saturday of the month, everything is 10% off at the big Asian supermarket, so we get to stock up on some food items, too.