We have a plethora of comments on our papers at the moment (and it's a good thing).

My big paper at the moment has come back with reasonably positive reviews. One referee is actually quite happy as is, the other referee isn't very happy with some parts of the paper and has not recommended it for publication. However, even that isn't such a bad thing. So why is it not a bad thing that the review had some negative comments? Well, to be honest, it's almost expected! The referees are expected to be tough on manuscripts (especially for journals like this) and it's rare to find even one referee with only minor revision requests, let alone both. However, what's good is that the referee, while skeptical of certain elements gave concrete questions and feedback. It's easier to evaluate and address concrete items than it is to deal with comments that are essentially rhetorical.

The referee gave several questions which we are capable of addressing, some that are already answered in the text (though perhaps not clearly enough), and a couple of misunderstandings (which again points to us needing to clarify our prose). The major objection I think we are more than capable of answering. I'll spend much of the next few days working on this, fixing certain problems, clarifying our text, and digesting the comments.

We've also gotten back comments on Dan's paper and we're almost ready to send it back too. It's a good time to be in our group with a few papers almost ready and a few more approaching initial submission.

It has been interesting to see what has returned to me musically in the past week and what is more slowly developing.

One the whole, things associated with my head seem to be coming back much quicker than I thought they would while physical things appear to be returning at a much slower rate. For instance, coordination of my hands, speed of clean notes, sight reading, implicit and explicit memory of songs and progressions all are returning very fast. I've already started trying to play what would be considered somewhat challenging material. On the other-hand, finger strength and calluses are quite slow. Not having properly "prepared" fingers can make quite a few things either painful or impossible to play. I really like to bend notes, at least I used to. Many large but simple chords (typically requiring a finger bar) are difficult to play without accidently muting at least 1 or 2 strings.

It's also interesting that I'd had a large resurgence in listening to "good" music. It's something that I used to really enjoy, but in the past several years my ears had just packed up and left. It would seem that they've also returned and are happy with the change.