Beff's semester finishes today, and she is due home after dark tonight. Tomorrow night we take Big Mike out for Chinese buffet

In the course of making fun of Grammy presenters and advertisements, Hayes and I came up with a joke that's a variation on an old Yogi Berra line that only a very, VERY few people would ever get -- since the cultural intersections are strange indeed. Yogi said about baseball "Ninety percent of this game is half mental." Hayes and I said about Tristan, "ninety percent of this opera is half diminished". Rim shot. But a very soft one.

And why was I in New York? Why, Mike and Mary, who brought me out to Kansas way back in November, were doing a 1:00 concert on Monday at St. Paul's Chapel, way, way downtown -- a block from the World Trade Center sight. Well, that, and I took the opportunity to schedule an appointment in Manhattan with Jonathan, our accountant, that morning. Activity! Dense! Aaagh! So after the typical lolapalooza session with Jonathan (and free breakfast), I caught a cab to the chapel ($10.10 plus tip) and got a driver with a Jamaican accent who wouldn't stop talking about Anna Nicole. And there, inside the chapel, were about a hundred tourists, and Mike and Mary, on a stage, roped off, trying to do their dress rehearsal in the din of touristness. Which they did, just fine, I guess. The duo was doing myold flute and piano piece FIRECAT, and Mike was premiering two of my bangiest etudes -- Moody's Blues and Heavy Hitter. The piano for the concert was in serious need of ... being junked ... but Mike did what he could with it. His playing on my aggressive pieces was so aggressive that there were literally times when I thought he was going to break the piano in half (and in the performance he knocked the music of moody's Blues clean off the stand and had to restart).

I brought my Edirol to record what I could, and I actually made a brief movie of Mike playing the first 50 seconds of Moody's Blues -- and you can see the sound files in the red links on the left, and the movie in the magenta link. Mike's new colleague Forrest Pierce -- whom I also got to know in Kansas -- wrote a dynamite new piece for them which also got its premiere there (fortunately, it had very little banging). And Mary did a couple of very lovely solo pieces that I liked a lot -- including one by Paul Yeon Lee, who was there. Paul brought greetings from Rachel Peters, who had done an independent study with me at Brandeis in 1998. And so the world becomes smaller and smaller.

Despite the chapel being very noisy -- traffic, truck backing up sounds, subway, and old radiators hissing -- it was a fun affair, a great concert, and really kind of cool. After it was over, an old woman asked me questions about my piece as if my name were Gabriela Frank. Which it turns out is not my name. Then I cabbed it to where my car was parked, and zipped right out of New York. Traffic was fairly light, and it was a pretty dull drive, actually. And then I got home. No, really.

Today is usually a non-Brandeis day, but I gave 4 more office hours for Theory 2, and here I am. This morning, for the first time, a few workmen from Door and Window showed up, moved the fridge out onto the back lawn, and started making noises. Good thing I had to leave for Brandeis. When I got back, I went to Door and Window itself, paid for the fridge, ate at Neighborhood Pizza, and came back to lots of dust in the place. And saw a big pile of wood and stuffing (insulation?) in the back of a truck, as well as an external window placed aside for safekeeping. The old pantry is now ENTIRELY gutted, down to the studs and plumbing. Literally. And the mud room closet is now nonexistent. Exciting, isn't it? I hear some wiring gets done tomorrow, plus some plumbing, and the refrigerator gets delivered next Tuesday, or something.

Meanwhile. Tomorrow is forecast to be the first significant snowstorm of the season, and everyone is hoping school will get cancelled. As to here, it should be a sloppy mess -- 2 to 5 inches before changing to rain and freezing rain, which should make driving a breeze. Or something like that. And then another 2 to 4 inches on top after it changes back over. Yuck. Big Mike (ka-ching!) has already said he probably won't make it. And the theory students probably hope for cancellation, too, since that would give them the whole winter break to finish their variations. Which are due tomorrow.

Meantime, what's coming up? Well, some construction in the house, obviously, and incidentally, I used the FRONT door today out of necessity. Cleaning at the dentist on Friday, after a lesson with RB. Then a drive to Maine where I should be spending most of the winter break. And hey, my Nygar is still not ready as far as I know, and it was fitted when I had thirty-two teeth.

So the next update will not be within seven days. Deal with it.

Today's pictures are all from New York. First, Hayes and Susan's two cats Rasia and Fritz as viewed from lofty perches. Then, the Empire State Building viewed from Seventh Avenue Sunday night, and the spire of St. Paul's Chapel Monday afternoon. Next, Michael and then Mary in the dress rehearsal -- Mary is the one mugging for the camera. Then the big picture within the chapel, and Mike, Mary and Forrest after the show. Zounds.

FEBRUARY 25. Breakfast today was a hot croissant thing from Dunkin Donuts and coffee. Lunch will definitely -- DEFINITELY -- be Buffalo wings at Neighborhood Pizza. Dinner last night was Trader Joe's hot and sour soup. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES THIS LAST WEEK: 7.9 and 50.7. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS Offenbach's Can-Can (because I was thinking about the movie "The Cutting Edge" (I don't know why) and it was their skating music). LARGE EXPENSES this last week include new thermostat $99, heating oil $357, today's New York Times $5, various and sundry cleaning things, cassettes, and cooking things for the Bangor house, unknown. UNEXPECTED INCOME THIS WEEK was $406 royalties for font payments from Daniel Will-Harris's site. Oh joy, that part of my tax return gets reactivated next year. BIRDS HEARD RECENTLY: chickadees, Canada geese, cardinals, and this morning I thought I heard the incipit of a song sparrow with the part that follows kind of mixed up -- if it is, then it is spring. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: As far as I can recall, the first pun of mine to get a big laugh was in fifth grade. "I have to go to the rest room. Yeah, to get a rest from the teacher." THIS WEEK'S COSMIC QUANDARY: Why do they let Cheney talk? I mean, really. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: sliddle. THINGS I HAVE GROWN WEARY OF Dust, and passing through shrouds to get to/through the kitchen. RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS: Real Pickles, lowfat cheddar cheese slices, Peets coffee. DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK Maine is still friggin cold. THIS WEEK'S NUMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 10: 4. REVISIONS TO THIS SITE: This page, Performances. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. DENTIST VISITS SINCE SEPTEMBER: 11. FRAGILE THINGS DESTROYED BY THE CATS THIS LAST WEEK Itty bitty bits of wicker from one of the Bangor chairs. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST WEEK: 1. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE: I once owned green hightop sneakers. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Nygars for everybody. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 10,350. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE THIS WEEK: $2.33 in Maine. OTHER INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE the letter "p", a seedless grape, the last place you would ever look, a snood.

I still have thirty-one teeth.

Does anybody out there actually know what a snood is? It's in the Bacchae -- so-and-so enters, wearing a snood. Turns out it's a fishnet-y kind of hair hat thing. And now I'm three times as smart as I was just 17 seconds ago. In three seconds I will be one-seventeenth as smart. And time marches on.

Now that it has been 12 days since the last update, I am pleased to report that the amount of real work I got done was as follows: nothing. But lemme go back in time a bit, and lemme splain.

Wednesday, Valentine's Day was indeed, as predicted, a messy slopfest of a storm. In Bangor -- later in the day -- there was a foot of snow, whereas in Boston there was rain, snow, ice, rain, ice, and snow, not adding up to a lot, but making travel pretty crappola. Here in Maynard it was a little dusting of snow followed by about half a foot of sleet, with some ice on the top of all that -- oh, just try shoveling THAT stuff, kimosabe. I got up plenty early to go to work (for I start at 9 on Wednesdays), and pulled out of my driveway with a left turn -- even though I was trying for a right turn. After passing through downtown Maynard toward the train station, I slid a lot on the teeny little hill past the Avis place, and decided it just wasn't worth it. I went back home and cancelled my teaching. On the WBZ website, which compiles all the cancelled stuff, it seemed everybody -- EVERYBODY -- except Brandeis -- cancelled school for the day. Eventually, Brandeis did cancel everything happening past 3:30, but that was too little too late. The conditions here were awful by then -- actually, they were awful by 7 am.

I used my day off to catch up on dissertation reading. Finally, I was able to get to a Haydn dissertation, and I dispensed with half of it while it was crappola outside. For lunch I though I'd just motor on down to the Quarterdeck, not suspecting that the sidewalks had yet to be plowed -- meaning I walked on the road when I could, but there were whiteout conditions that made that strategy eventually useless, so mostly I was goose-stepping on the sidewalk. And then -- the Quarterdeck was closed. So I ate at the Sit 'n' Bull pub, next door, and it was okay. It was very smoky inside because apparently the sleet had clogged the exhaust fan. And I motored back, and the sidewalks STILL had not been plowed, and the streets were nearly deserted. Then an e-mail arrived from the Provost (how did SHE get into work?) informing us that the Faculty Activity Report was due by April 1 and there was a new online format/interface for it, and I spent a lot of the afternoon and evening getting my information into my report. There is still work to be done.

Meanwhile, the work downstairs has progressed quite a bit. The pantry was gutted right down to the studs, the closet in the mud room was dismantled, and plenty of new plumbing was installed in the basement -- as were three basement windows, as it turns out. New insulation was blown in, new flooring installed (the tiles are not yet installed), and a hole made for the toilet. Plasterers, meanwhile, have done their duty. Our new fridge arrived and it is sitting in the middle of the kitchen because a whole bunch of old cabinetry to the right of the sink was taken out, and a new ... um ... presentation cabinetry using some of the old little door handles ... was built for the fridge to go into. This fridge is noticeably quite a bit bigger than the old one (AND IT HAS AN ICE DISPENSER I CAN'T BELIEVE I FINALLY AM GOING TO HAVE ONE WOO HOO HOO), and it will be fun, I guess, once all the work is done. The toilet, sink, etc. still have to be installed, but that's after the tile, and the dryer hose has to be reconnected to the window by the dryer. And, and, so much!

What the work has done is spread dust all over the house -- even a little layer of it into the upstairs rooms, and a fairly substantial layer in the living room and dining room. I had not known that that would happen (this is why the kitchen doorways were covered with tarps, but that was an imperfect solution), so I didn't think to close the living room doors (which are French doors) until too late (thankfully, there is no more dust there now than there was last Friday).

So back to our narrative. Late Wednesday afternoon when the storm abated, I shoveled the two walks, which was actually kind of a mammoth undertaking -- for two reasons: sleet is extremely heavy compared to snow, and it doesn't stick to the snow shovel (it tends to slide right off as you try to move it -- but luckily sleet also doesn't stick to the roof and thus no big whoomps later when the snow falls off the roof). Door and Window was contracted to do the driveway, and very late into the night they still hadn't shown up. Indeed, I awoke at about 1 and got nervous about being able to get out of my driveway in the morning, so I ended up not sleeping any more. Then at 5:50 Steven and Jeannine showed up, did some movin', and I drove to the South Acton train station, got the 6:20 train ($6 roundtrip to Brandeis, same as two years ago, and $2.50 in quarters to park), did my teaching for the day (two students cancelled because their cars wouldn't start -- being covered with ice and all that) and attended a faculty senate meeting. Then my train back was half an hour late (which is a long time when it's 20 degrees with gusts to 40 mph). I was, of course, being me, unsatisfied with the plowing job on my driveway, so I gassed up the snowblower and widened the plowed area, thus making my hands both fatigued and very cold. Wow. Then I returned to a dusty house with, um, no food. So I got a chicken sub at Subway. And then I (you won't believe this) ate it.

Friday morning was first a lesson with Rick Beaudoin at the house -- who was a little late -- which was a real trip, because it kept being interrupted by workmen (he had to move his car, and then they asked about where I wanted doors, etc.), and a dentist appointment for a routine cleaning. And boy was the cleaning routine! Vast improvement, no bleeding of the gums, etc (oh, they were so proud of me). And finally my Nygar was ready, so there was an extra 20 minutes as I was fitted. I slipped it into its very un-deluxe carrying case and into my pocket, got some groceries at Whole Foods (which is close by), motored back home, picked up my stuff for a week in Maine, and ... believe it or not ... I drove to Maine.

One pretty important thing we had to do in Maine -- since this was the first time that both of us would be there and cooking at home for a whole week -- was get utensils and cooking stuff. Beff had only one soup bowl, for instance, no good frying pan, and no medium size pot. We also got a nice griddle, a pizza cutter, a good spatula, and so forth, as well as snow melt for the front steps, a new thermostat for the Maynard house (it will be professionally installed this Tuesday), a special dust-vac for after the work is done (spring cleaning, such as it is, is going to be very complex this year, obviously), and even some exotic beers to be given as gifts. I meanwhile slept every night wearing the Nygar ("Night Guard," for those of you not in on the joke) which was alternately droolmachen and not even noticed (my teeth feel funny the first half hour after I take it off). And on Sunday I did the other half of the Haydn dissertation, and sent it off.

E-mail during the week was not that much fun, since it was all dial-up. ONCE I was able to piggyback on a nearby wi-fi named Caitlin, but otherwise it was slow a-goin'. And of course this was the week that everyone I know started sending links to YouTube videos. Rarr.

Also, the cats are in Maine so as not to be terrified of the workers, and the smaller space is fun for them -- they delight in going into the attic whenever they can (they do squeaky meows to get us to let them in), and in slowly destroying one of Beff's wicker chairs. Since Beff was not also on vacation, she went to work during the day -- and over the course of the week I got into the now-cancelled Showtime series "Dead Like Me" -- done by the people who did Wonderfalls. I watched the entire first season plus eight episodes of the second (and final) season, and really got into it. Something about grim reapers among us, etc. and the multitude of layers and irony in the interaction between dead/living and living people (i.e. the expected "I never felt this alive when I was actually alive", etc.). And music by Stewart Copeland (whom we had seen in England on TV as a celebrity judge for an American Idol type show).

We of course did dinners with various of Beff's colleagues, and I let Chip -- the band director -- give me the first note for my band piece -- concert D in all four horns. Chip also asked what "grade" my piece would be, and I guess I said "Six. I mean, duh." I don't know what grade 6 means, but that's okay. Six is apparently the highest. Ten of a Kind and Sibling Revelry are both Grade 6, and that would add up to 12 if I were doing that -- adding things together, that is.

The only obligations for me during the time in Maine were food shopping, cooking, going to SIX places in search of replacement Primatene for Beff, and going to a piano recital by one of Beff's colleagues -- who studied in eastern Europe, back in the day, and that meant that Bach, Mozart, Scriabin and Rachmaninoff pretty much all sounded the same. I left at 6:15 am yesterday in order to retrieve our held mail before the Maynard post office closed, and I was successful at that. And I had called Door & Window to see how the work was progressing, and they said they'd plug in the fridge so even if it wasn't in place I could keep stuff cold -- so Beff packed some fridge stuff for me to take back. Of course, the fridge is not yet in place, or even plugged in, or even with the blue tape stuff peeled off. So the porch is my fridge (as God is my witness, as a smile is my umbrella, etc. -- I see an SAT question here). Upon return I of course had to unpack stuff, and pass through the big tarps, etc., and shovel the front walk from the small storm that passed through here on Friday.

And so today is veg day, as far as I can figure. So I paid an oil bill and did an invoice for when Amy D and I go to U of Southern Maine, mailed them at the Stow post office, bought the New York Times at Shaw's, and got some Dunkin Donuts breakfast stuff, and now I am here. Thinking about a complicated week ahead. Observe, grasshopper.

Monday I do four regular lessons and try to get a time to work with Adam Marks at Brandeis (i.e. reserve a room) this Friday. At 1 I leave for WGBH in Boston, where there is a 2 pm sound check for an appearance by Amy B-D and me 3 to 4 (yes, it will be streamed on wgbh.org and on the HD classical part of wgbh.org at 10). Then Amy and I will hang out a little bit afterwards, as her dress rehearsal is at 8 tomorrow night. On Tuesday first thing I let a guy in from Dunn Oil in to install my new deluxe thermostat (it's digital and has 7-day programming and makes users feel superior), and later I have to motor into Boston for Amy's concert at Boston Conservatory (which the appearance on 'GBH is promoting) -- where I guess I'll do some live program notes, just like back in the day (4 and 5 years ago -- whoa, where does the time go?). Wednesday is an ordinary day except for an 8:30 meeting of which I can only catch the first half hour, and Thursday is as ordinary as it gets. Hey, I think I get to leave school at 1! But on Friday I have a 10-11 meeting, and then I meet with Adam Marks, who is going to run the new talking pianist etude by me (by, um, playing it) and I think I will bring the Edirol and videocamera to capture it. For those of you not in the know, Adam is doing Rick's Mood, Absofunkinlutely, and Not at the Salle Cortot in Paris on the 9th as his/my reward for winning me that Chevillion-Bonnaud thing last year, and this will be my chance to see if the monstrosity I created is funny, sad, funny/sad, or funny/sad/bad/stupid. And on SATURDAY I believe I am driving to the MacDowell Colony for lunch with John Aylward (and to leave a little beer gift for John Sieswerda), and I just MAY be his ride back to Boston. And that is the day Beff returns from Maine with cats in ... well, not in hand, but in cat carrier. CarrierS. I hope there's not much work to be done after that, since they are going to get all skittish about strangers again if they're back after this week.

I have decided to leave lots of pictures at the bottom of this update because, well, because I can. What we have is -- evidence of dust from the work on the coffee table in the living room, Andre from Door and Window, the ceiling fan when it was just installed, the naked version of the new bathroom, Cammy looking out the window in Bangor, Sunny under the covers, Sunny going to the bathroom and staring straight ahead just like guys always do at a public urinal, how the Bangor house looks with snow, cats looking out the door, chicken being grilled on the new skillet, Sunny on the couch, the bathroom now plastered and waiting for a toilet, the not-yet-installed new fridge (ICEMAKER! WOO HOO!), the new cabinet for the new fridge, and my Night Guard in my hand.

Also see the "Kitchen Movie" link in magenta up and to the left -- this is the little movie I took to show Beff how the kitchen looked when I got back yesterday. It's your virtual tour!

MARCH 7. Breakfast today was a B'eggel from South Street Market and coffee -- I now go there in the morning because Cathy, who left five years ago after having a child, is back, and opens the place up at a civilized early hour. Lunch was an Annie Chun's Hot and Sour Soup. Dinner was fire-baked frozen pizza. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES THIS LAST WEEK: 5.6 and 55.4. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS A little phrase from La Valse. LARGE EXPENSES this last week are none. BIRDS HEARD RECENTLY: chickadees, Canada geese, cardinals, a whole bunch of birds I don't know, a song sparrow, and I have SEEN but not heard robins. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: In junior high, we used to play a lot of street hockey in Andre Menard's driveway. I had good stick handling and versatility, couldn't really defend. I was never able to make the jump to ice hockey because I had no skates that fit. In street hockey, the word "hacker" referred to someone who was wild and not careful with the hockey stick. THIS WEEK'S COSMIC QUANDARY: Does truth fit inside a breadbox? And do breadboxes even still exist? THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: pind. THINGS I HAVE GROWN WEARY OF Yet more walking through shrouds and reaching for plates. RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS: Real Pickles, lowfat Peets coffee, crushed ice. DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK Global warming doesn't always mean higher temperatures. THIS WEEK'S NUMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 10: 5.1. REVISIONS TO THIS SITE: This page, Performances. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 1. DENTIST VISITS SINCE SEPTEMBER: 11. FRAGILE THINGS DESTROYED BY THE CATS THIS LAST WEEK nothing, but potential lurks. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST WEEK: 2. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE: Because I'm allergic to wool, I always wore long johns under my band uniform in high school when we marched. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: There's a place for us. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 10,392. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE THIS WEEK: $2.42. OTHER INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE the small hands that only the rain has, steam heat, a pair of ballet shoes, the entry in Webster's for the verb "to pluck".

Thirty-one teeth is what I still have.

Our long national nightmare is nearly over, and our house is very nearly worth much more than it was three weeks ago. The conversion of the pantry into a half bath is complete save for the installation of a light fixture -- it was awaiting Beff's selection of one -- and the installation of the little shelves into the storage units. Meanwhile, there was enough tile left over from the bathroom that we also tiled the mud room, and the laying of the tile happened this morning. Meanwhile, the coat closet was rebuilt and storage cabinets were added above it, and boy was a lot of stuff painted.

And the new refrigerator WITH AN ICEMAKER WOO HOO was wheeled into place and connected this week, and there is hardly a more appropriate word for it than bigass. On Tuesday morning, the day after it was connected to the plumbing, I put some crushed ice from the ICEMAKER WOO HOO in our orange juice, and Beff made a special request for that not to happen again. Meanwhile, Beff had ordered a kitchen island online to replace the table we used to have in the kitchen, and it has storage space in it and on top of it, and just today we started putting stuff into that -- after wheeling it into place in the kitchen and methodically taking dust off the stuff that had been sitting in boxes in the dining room. There is still much to do in that regard -- as the grout has to go on the tile in the mud room and thus the sliding doors then go onto the coat closet, and THEN the storage cabinets in the bathroom are ready for being filled with the rest of the stuff, which also has to be dusted off before it's put into place.