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

JANUARY 9. Breakfast today was rice link sausages with 2% cheese, orange juice, and coffee. Lunch was a hot and sour soup made from a powdered mix. Dinner last night was Progresso turkey noodle soup. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE -1.3 and 62.4 (possibly the largest differential in the history of this update). MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS slow movement of the Rakowski piano concerto. LARGE EXPENSES THIS LAST NINE DAYS the cost of a passport, $67, lunch at Not Your Average Joe's in Lexington, $47, copying at Staples, $86. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: I played basketball, on teams, from fifth grade to part of my tenth grade year. In elementary school, especially seventh and eighth grade, the coach gave me the nickname "Rake". Apparently he'd had a college roommate named John Rakowski whom he called Rake, and this was what we call transference. I was normally the starting center(!) because I could jump well, and for maybe a month I had a good hook shot. Band and drama, plus the fact that the same coach from elementary school was now coaching in high school, and thus I was getting called "Rake", pulled me out of basketball into less remunerative pursuits. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: sarroyalage. THINGS I HAVE GROWN WEARY OF the way TV news covered the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS pitted cajun olives, and we're back on Inko's. DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK the passport backlog no longer exists. THIS WEEK'S NUMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 10: 4 . REVISIONS TO THIS SITE: This page, Performances, Compositions, Bio. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: with the warm weather and the chaise lounge mattresses on the side porch, the cats have been having a ball. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST NINE DAYS: 11. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE As Beff often notes to friends, there are always at least four kinds of pickles, all in significant quantities, in the house. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Global warming is more than a sometime thing. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 11,019. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE THIS WEEK: $3.05 in Acton. OTHER INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE a prime number that can be drawn only with straight lines, the squeaky sound a shopping cart makes after it's been outdoors for a while, the negative space in a work of art, a pet rock.

Only nine days since the last update, AND I'm doing it later in the day (it's already dark, but who's counting?), so something must be up. Or, as Josh Skaller always used to say, "Up?" Or as Jason Uechi is about to say, "Josh, why did you always say, 'Up?'" Yes, something is up, for you see, I have finished a piece that's been biting my butt for more than six months now. And I did make mention of this piece in the last update, and that seems so long ago now in the history of the piece. Arrr! It was last year!

But first, some details and stuff. We did manage to stay up -- well, technically, we stayed awake -- until midnight on New Year's eve, though we went bedwards a little shy of 2008. Though all our European friends were already firmly ensconced in 2008. We heard fireworks around 12:10 am, and that prompted the not-unexpected comment from me: "Hmm. Fireworks." Then we spent New Years Day aching for pierogis and salty soup and so on ... yes, the Lee Hyla New Years Day bash was not happening! At least not in Boston, but possibly in Chicago, where he lives now. Past New Years Day parties of his I remember for having a motley cast of characters -- not least a composer of cabaret songs who played us as best he could to reveal the names and contact information of performers that would be interested in them. And also at a New Years Day bash I discovered SMAK pickles. Of which I've been deprived now for three or four years, alas and alack. Are you following this? Are you taking notes?

The Them What Make saga continued around New Years Day, because as you may recall, Them What Make filled the airwaves with a Heavy Snow Warning and then a Winter Storm warning, the second of which was to coincide with Ann and Jack (my sister-in-law and nephew) returning from England. Those two dire storms each dumped an inch and a half at most. And Ann and Jack had no problem getting here at the end of New Years Day, in the dark. Pictures and little videos (we gave them my old Flip Video, for you see, I have a Flip Video Ultra now) were shown, and when they went back to Albany, we made them take the steak sauces and other counter space usurpers with them. And I had my kitchen back. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

And then by January 3 it was time to hit my stride. I had finished "On Time", the Phillis Levin setting that had tormented me for so long (if not having time to finish it qualifies as tormenting). And in the new year, I did two more settings to FINISH THE WHOLE PIECE (yippee and rastarattinfrattin!) -- an extremely fast scherzo setting of "In Praise of Particles" and a sort of flowing and long-term rising setting of "Promise". The reason for the long-term rise in register, you see, is to give palpability to the poem's central metaphor of planting a tree (which grows and gets higher -- get it?). One has to wonder if palpability is anything like Wessonality, and if anyone reading this is old enough to remember the old Wesson oil commercials that used the slogan, or even worse, if anyone has read this far into this sentence. I sure didn't.

So the piece was finished yesterday and I spent a lot of the day finalizing the poem order, writing the inside-the-score text, typing the poems and proofreading, and all. And of course I let Judy (who will sing them) and Phillis (who wrote the poems) know that the piece was finished. I gave the piece the unsurprising title "Phillis Levin Songs", a title that won't need much splainin. Or at least I hope it won't. See the yellow link to the left and below. Meanwhile, all the other links there are as they were, and what it is, too.

In evenings, during the rather cold weather of the first week of the new year, we watched all of the second season of EXTRAS and half of the first season, which we both thought was very funny. Funny enough that Beff ordered the complete series, including the more recent Christmas special, on DVD. Well, she pre-ordered it. We'll have it in due time. And while I've been cranking on songs, Beff has been writing a piece for alto sax and wind ensemble, to be titled "Sax and Spend". Yes, the title was one we came up with together after a long walk, etc., etc. that we took in downtown Lexington on Saturday, just for the heckofit.

There were a couple of days where not much work got done, though -- I took Big Mike into Boston for an appointment, but it turns out I got a full day's work done around that appointment. And then on the coldest day of the year BY FAR we went into Boston for an appointment, to see the new waterfront Institute of Contemporary Art, and to try the nearby "test kitchen" of Legal Seafoods, mainly because Beff got a Legal Seafoods gift certificate for Christmas. Of all things, I got fish and chips (how plebian). So the new ICA is gorgeous, and there's a hallway you pass through with a big panorama of the water and bits of the islands and East Boston. The collection itself is ... is ... shall we say incomplete. And it's weird that such a giant building devotes maybe a fifth of its size to displaying art.

The high for that day was 12, so walking around Boston, especially near the water, was something to be done as little as possible. So we got a CAB from our downtown appointment (it would have been a 12-minute walk), and the walk to the restaurant from the ICA was pretty short. And the walk to South Station after our (very early) dinner was quite taxing. Because you see, as I've been saying all along, it was really cold. We made the 5:40 Fitchburg train, which we took to West Concord where we'd parked.

Now I brought the iPod Touch on this trip, 'cause Beff had the idea of getting wireless and browsing during down time. And I actually answered e-mails in the restaurant, which (duh) had free wi-fi. Most of the e-mails I sent said something like "in a restaubant using ipod touch, tuping w one fingr, get bacj to yoi latr." In the "Tools" of the iPod, you can see all the wi-fi networks it detects (this is how you join a network to surf), and for some reason I got fascinated on the train just watching the list of available networks change rapidly as the train moved. Incidentally, the "Free Wi-Fi" that the train apparently gives you did not work.

Iowa and New Hampshire happened, and we watched some of the political coverage, and for the first time in years actually had something of a conversation about politics. Of course we're not into any of the Republicans (we are especially repulsed by Romney), but one of us ends up being for Obama, one of us for Clinton. I'll not say right now who likes which. One of us would say Clinton feels entitled and is too beholden to special interests to make any real difference, one of us would say Obama gives a good speech but he's an empty suit with not enough experience to know how to back up his ideas. While one would also say Obama is an extremely inspirational speaker who is attracting new voters in droves and one would say Clinton may not give a great stump speech but she knows how to get things done. So we let it stand at that. Always stay away from politics when the idea is to have a pleasant conversation.

And then -- Them What Make got this part right -- it got really warm here, into the 60s, right on schedule, as Them What Make had been predicting for many days. The snow has been melting pretty fast, and all the roofs are currently free of snow (even the gazebo!), and large patches of back yard are now bare. Of course, it's still a foot deep in the shadier places. But the January thaw thing has been good for morale here.

Beff is in Bangor for three or four days, expected back in the dark tomorrow. Rehearsals, etc., and making sure the much snow in Bangor (when we got an inch and a half, they got a foot, and when we got another inch and a half they got about half a foot) is manageable and isn't making the house fall down. So of course the Maynard place is slowly becoming a pigsty, as is its wont. Only other thing to report is that my new passport already arrived -- it took only a week from when I mailed the application for me to get my new one. So that backlog of passports thing you may have read about -- old news.

So a while ago -- last spring, I think -- when Beff's dad's condo got sold and they had to empty it, Beff rented a van and brought a bunch of furniture her brother Jim wanted for his place in Nantucket. Some plush chairs have been clogging up space in the side porch for quite a while, plus a small table and some other chairs have been in the attic. Today Jim finally came and took them off our hands and -- it's really sunny on the side porch now! And we're also storing the chaise lounges from the gazebo (on their sides) there along with the cushions, which are now near the outside door to the side porch, which gets direct sun in the afternoon and ... Sunny really likes sleeping there now. And I took a nice 4-minute nap there, too, shortly after the sun came out today. Of course it's going to get progressively colder, and there is some snow forecast right for when I plan to drive to Philadelphia (I'm going to drive to Philadelphia). I may be staying with Hayes and Susan in Bronxville the night before if Them What Make are actually right.

After Jim left, I went to Staples to get piano concerto copies made, and to Trader Joe's for tasty delights. And both yesterday and today I did a lot of walking in the outdoors. For you see, it was warm.

So --- exactly a week from today, SEX SONGS is premiered in Philly. This would supply the meta-narrative for why I am going there. There are afternoon rehearsals on Monday and Tuesday, and the concert is Wednesday. I drive back on Thursday. I am supposed to teach both Wednesday and Thursday, as school begins around then, but I've got that covered. I like it when that happens. Anyway, Soozie is singing, Jan Krzywicki (buy a vowel!) is conducting, and Network for New Music is performing. Soon I'll see how it's going.

Meanwhile, Marilyn (the non-Ken) is doing the one-note etude as an encore on her two mid-February shows (she's already done that intense performer questioning about extremely specific things thing about the score), and she's also doing a piece of Beff's in the actual program. I may not be at either, but Beff will be at at least one -- at which time, by the way, she'll meet with our accountant. Who will have another big job for him this year.

And then, and then .... well, school will start to devour my time and eat away at my soul, and it'll get a lot colder, but at least the days will be getting longer, and the sun will get higher in the sky, and the crocuses will come out in about 65 days and I'll take pictures and put the Adirondack chairs out and it'll snow on them and I'll take pictures and that will all melt and I'll put the picnic table and chairs out and the chaise lounges into the gazebo and I'll take pictures of that and I'll get spring fever big time but not able to act on it because our Passover vacation is so late this year, and I'll go to Dallas for some of it and perfect the art of the run-on sentence.

This week's pictures include the cats enjoying the new configuration of the side porch, the 3 mechanical birds we have next to the front door (if you turn them on, they chirp when you walk by. what will they think of next?), a big hunk o' snow fixin' to drop wholesale off the roof by the dormer, the local dam about 5 days ago, a picture taken this afternoon in the back yard showing bits of yard becoming bare, and a picture of the Assabet taken today showing a reflection of the sky on a bunch of melted Assabet ice (which some people call "water"). Yowza.

So I was talking to Martler yesterday -- I was in Massachusetts (still am) and he was in England (still is), and he told me he'd just had a big premiere -- his piano concerto, with him as soloist, with the local orchestra. And so I said, "you only had ONE premiere this week?"

It turns out that last week I joined Jennifer Higdon (a surpassingly nice person) in the multiple premieres club. This won't happen again for some time, unless each piano etude counts as a separate premiere. Actually, now that I think of it -- March 1 and 2, it's Cantina and Clave, not in that order. My c-word week. But I digress. And I'm afraid I'm going to have to continue to do so.

Last time I reported here, I said I had just finished a big piece. I was wrong. Not about it being big, but about finishing it. While I was out of town (more on that to come), I started thinking about the first line of another Phillis Levin poem called "Letter to the Snow", which is simply, "Why aren't you here?" For some reason, the contour of one of the lines of my first atonal piece (or contextually tonal, as it were) for voice and piano came to mind. It was a setting of Marge Piercy's "Quiet Fog" and the line was "Why am I happy?" Four notes going down, and one going up, for the last syllable. I replicated that contour in my mind for the Phillis Levin line, and when I got back, I did a very sparse setting of Phillis's poem. This jacked up the duration of the set to 19 minutes, and the page count to 57. Then I had to decide where to put it in the performance order, and I put it fifth, just after the wacky song "In Praise of Particles." Felicitously, Particles ends on a sustained D for the soprano, and Letter to the Snow begins unaccompanied on that same D. Really, you had to be there. See the green "The Quiet Fog" link for the performance of this piece of 1976 juvenilia. The Phillis Levin songs link is updated to its current version.

Now there's some shop talk for you.

And since the last update, the cats have been carted, with Beff, to Maine. The reason for that was my trip to Philadelphia (details coming up) and the unavailability of cat sitters. On the day Beff went to Maine with them -- Sunday morning the 13th, we did our usual thing of closing off the living room so the cats wouldn't settle themselves under the couch, but now they know when we do that they're going to be in a cat carrier for a while. So Cammy hid under the bed upstairs, and Sunny positioned himself inside the pump organ. Sigh, I had to take all the stuff off it, move it out, and lift it up so Beff could get him out. But they made it to Maine, they stare at the stove a lot, and they're coming back to Massachusetts on Friday.

And on Saturday the 12th, the Maynard Door and Window people came by to price out some new storm windows for the master bedroom and the mail/fax alcove downstairs. Indeed, downstairs there are three narrow windows that were hermetically sealed and painted shut by some clueless previous owner, and last August and September Beff was noticing how stuffy it always got in that part of the house. So we're gonna replace the windows. Turns out it's $167.70 per window, installation included, and there are three of them. And two in the master bedroom. Do the math.

My plan for Philadelphia was to drive there on Monday the 14th, go to rehearsals on the 14th and 15th and the performance on the 16th, and drive back the 17th. It was just my luck that a sloppy snowstorm got predicted for the evening of the 13th and morning of the 14th, so I up and called Hayes to see if I could drive to Bronxville on Sunday, stay overnight, and drive to Philly from there on Monday. He said okay. But then Them What Make put in a Winter Storm Watch for Bronxville, too (4-6 inches), so I up and drove all the way to Philadelphia on Sunday, making my hotel reservation while on Route 290 just east of Worcester. With the extra day in a hotel, and even with my AAA discount, the hotel and parking (only $10 a night!) exceeded my reimbursement by about 20 bucks.

And then of course, the storm brought only rain to Philly and virtually nothing to Bronxville.

So I left at about 11:25 am on Sunday and arrived in Philly around 4:15 or 4:25. I used the Garmin GPS thing to get me to the hotel, and it was a little comical that even after I took its turning suggestions it kept saying "recalculating" ... and the shape of the path I drove from the Benjamin Franklin Bridge to the hotel resembled the outline of that digital Aqua Teen Hunger Force character. But I made it, I parked -- it was my first time in Central City in Philadelphia since 1980 -- and found a lovely pub nearby with 21 beers on tap where I watched the Giants-Colts game. The pub also advertised that it had the BEST WINGS IN PHILLY, which I tried -- the wings were not separated (they were three-segmented) but they were good. I would put them in the top 75 percent of all the wings I've ever had. The hotel had iffy wi-fi, but it worked, so I could do my e-mail, and I could inform my theory class that I would miss the first two (they were covered) and in which room we were meeting and where they could get the syllabus.

The big event was Susan Narucki singing the Sex Songs I wrote for her during the Year of Great Excitement at Brandeis (I was definitely medicated) getting their premiere with Network for New Music, and Jan Krzywicki (buy a vowel!) conducting. Soozie had alerted me to the fact that they were starting before the time that they'd told me, so I nonchalantly got into the auditorium in the Kimmel Center -- with fantastic acoustics -- and heard some music I'd never heard before (duh, but I wroted it) and a velvety smooth clarinet sound that was amazing. I commented on the velvety smooth clarinet sound and apparently I made an impression. The ensemble worked on ensemble and balance, and it took a bit to get the somewhat ambitious instrumental writing soft enough so Soozie could be expressive, but they did. And when they got to the last song -- a rock and roll, Jerry Lee Lewis inspired one, they ran it at quarter 120 and worked on it, and then tried it up to tempo -- quarter 160-168. And it smoked. And it turned out to have be-bop in it, too.

After the rehearsal, I went with Soozie and Jan and Susan Nowicki -- Jan's wife AND the pianist in my piece -- to Jan and Susan's house for dinner, stopping at Whole Paycheck along the way for provisions. I played with their cats a bit, showed my pictures on my iPod Touch, and had an amazing spicy chicken with penne that Soozie cooked. Jan brought out some wine, and brought out some wine, and brought out some wine, so it became an interesting evening. Then I was brought to a commuter train that took me back into the city, about seven blocks from my hotel, and off to bed I went.

For Toozdy the rehearsal was at the Settlement Music School about 1.3 miles away, so I left early and found it, and ate at a restaurant nearby and had a salmon fillet sandwich that wasn't very good. Rebecca, of Rhode Island fame, was at the school just before the rehearsal was to start -- she is from Reading and was on a trip to the old country -- and she sat in for that afternoon's rehearsal. The group worked more, and it started to sound amazing, and I brought my Edirol and captured the dress rehearsal as best I could given the mike placement on a chair. See "HTR Dress" link to the left for the dress rehearsal of the last, zany song, and "SS 1 Dress" for the Millay setting that begins the set. So after the rehearsal I walked back to the hotel, checked my Massachusetts messages, and there was one from a Philadelphia artist I know from MacDowell. I called her back, and we set aside Wednesday morning to get together. Meanwhile, I went back to the pub and this time got the sausage sandwich special and asked for extra wing sauce, because it's what I do.

And this Philadelphia artist? Emily Brown, who's been on the "Home" page all this time because her names both have five letters. We went to the Art Museum, to her place nearby, and then she had to teach, and her husband drove me to a gallery where she currently has some really nice work on display. And I walked back to my hotel, having Chinese lunch on the way.

The concert then happened that evening, and I even wore a tie. I traded some chuckles with Jennifer Higdon, who had a set of four songs on the concert, and also with Ricky Belcastro, who studied with me at Brandeis and now works for the Philadelphia Orchestra. And it turned out the person who took care of my comps not only knew Rebecca (of Rhode Island fame, also at the concert), but had sat in on one of my classes when she was looking at colleges. There were a whole bunch of songs by local composers set to texts by local poets on the concert, and all of them were good. The two slow songs in my set sounded amazing, and the tempi of the fast ones came out a little on the slow side. I'll see how good my memory was when I get the recording. Afterwards it was me and Ricky and Jan and Susan and Soozie at a local bar for munchies and beer, and Soozie asked them to put on Bravo on the TV so we could catch the end of Project Runway. What, Ricky has STILL not been eliminated?

Then I drove home. Left the hotel at 6, used the Garmin to get me from the Ben Franklin Bridge to the NJ Turnpike (it's not straightforward at all, trust me -- 676 to 30 to 70 to 295 to 38 to the Turnpike. Wow) and the ride home was eventless, save some slow traffic on the Garden State Parkway. Tappan Zee Bridge was easy. And I couldn't help noticing that after all the screaming about Winter Storms that Them What Make had been doing that I didn't see any snow until I passed through Wallingford, Connecticut. Admittedly, it piled up rather quickly after, and it had been a heavy, sticky mess here that had melted and frozen a few times while I was gone. I had been plowed and shoveled out, but obessive me got out a shovel and edited a bit -- especially that little bit of schmutz left behind at the top of the driveway that was benign on Monday and hard as a rock on Thursday. The snow had been so heavy and wet that four giant branches had broken off a pine tree in the back yard, and I had to cart them off into discard land, and the shrub next to the shed, normally straight up, looked like it was bowing in submission, in every direction at once (see picture below). And as I look out the computer room window now, I see that little bit of backyard that always clears first starting to clear again.

Meanwhile, I had a second premiere, and it was also surpassingly good. I had to go into Brandeis on Friday to hear Dan Stepner and Sally Pinkas play my "Pied-a-Terre" from 1999, and it was the the premiere. They sounded fantastic, and the piece is really hard -- including fast unison writing, etc. And the piece is in three connected parts: Prelude, Fugue, Presto. I remember at the time Ross Bauer had said I should add a fourth part, "Changio". Rim shot. I was pleased to be no longer in my fugue period (Ten of a Kind and Dream Symphony have fugues, too), and you're probably expecting a joke to follow that. Okay, then -- is Massachusetts a fugue state?

But wait, there's more. Friday was a bizzy, bizzy day because I wrote ALL of that Phillis Levin poem setting AND I entered it into Finale. It was practically artist colony speed. ALSO, Jim Olesen was interested in doing a choral piece that I'd written in 1976 (other than functional stuff, it's my only choral music) and wondered if I had a better copy than the one I lent him maybe 5 years ago. So on Friday night, after getting that score from my Brandeis mailbox, I entered THAT into Finale, too -- see the "Sonnet 22" link on the left. So I been busy.

Saturday night's concert was extremely good, and my piece sounded even better. There was a piece from the 22-year old Harold Shapero that was also very good, and the 88-year old Harold Shapero was there to soak it all in. And the second half was all Faure.

And now it's MLK Day and if possible I plan to spend it all in my bathrobe. Just because it seems like the right thing to do. Upcoming is the BMOP concert on Friday, so I won't be home when the cats arrive. And I have to remember how to teach phrases, cadence, and period for theory this week. Also upcoming -- not for quite some time -- is my other big trip, end of February, and the Marines were in contact about the particulars for that. And here come four weeks of teaching, and then already a vacation. This weekend -- a two-afternoon affair -- is calculate the taxes weekend. Always both fun and complicated. Well, one of those.

Recently I have been pointing in every direction at once, and I'm not sure yet if that is a good thing. Or even if it is a thing. There's a certain sense in our part of the world that I could have done it seven times, but we won't know until the pictures come back from the One-Hour Photo place -- which we all know isn't as red as it seems. So the people that were looking at it (you know who you are) forgot to bring their pajamas, and when I counted them, they were fast asleep -- what cruel irony! Good thing the sock puppets were able to restore irony.

When last we visited this sorry little corner of this sorry little site that SOME people think is funny, I was about to begin (for me) the school semester, about a week into it. For you see, I had been in Philadelphia for the start of classes, enjoying myself, enjoying my two premieres that week, and I had yet to experience the bitter taste of working for a living. We all do, Oscar, we all do. So now I have reversed myself (which is not the same thing as turning myself inside out, but what if it were?) and done actual work for a living, and as is customary, I spent about twice as much time grading homework as I did teaching the stuff about which the homework was -- which is a good ratio, since in the last fall semester it was a larger ratio (or fraction. Go to your room). I got to the part of the year where I get to talk about PEDAL POINTS as one of the prominent non-harmonic tones, and, as I have done so many times in the past (or maybe twice), I pulled out the beginning of Prince's "1999" for pedal point in the bass, the Supremes's "Keep Me Hangin' On" for pedal point in the guitar, and -- everyone's favorite, soon to be one of yours, the opening of the K. 331 piano sonata with me playing the middle voice pedal E with my nose. The gesture of which was quite literally the gestation of "Schnozzage" -- and it's not often you get to read a sentence with TWO words that both begin with "gest". Surely I gest. But anyway, it becomes disheartening year after year when the pop references upon which you've counted for so long begin to fade in their effectiveness -- to wit, none of the students seemed to think "1999" was familiar. Furthermore, no one had heard of Carly Simon's "Anticipation", which I sang a bit of for the nonharmonic tone of EXACTLY THE SAME NAME (my counterpart in the other section had done the same thing, which just goes to show you). In a concerted effort to "show them", I downloaded the song from iTunes. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

In addition, I have my private teaching schedule set, and I have precisely the same number of students Mondays as I do on Wednesdays and Thursdays, the only difference being that on Mondays I am in Boston. I have also done some of the usual Brandeis stuff for this time of year, which has been speaking to prospective students, both graduate and undergraduate, and taking students to lunch who have not written any new music in the last week. Well, that only happened once, but I did get to have Buffalo wings for no reason (which is usually the only reason to have them).

So while the TMJ issue kind of faded during the vacation time and had become hardly an issue by the time I was in Philly, it was remarkable how when I came to Brandeis that Friday for Dan and Sally's rehearsal, it suddenly and forcefully piped in -- as if there was something in the air of Slosberg. About this I do not know, but I do know -- that Slosberg's climate control is pretty awful. Not only is my teaching room (and especially the room next to it) too hot in this coldest month of the year, my office averaged 80 degrees when I got into work, and by opening the window, running a fan, and keeping the door open, I was never able to get the temperature below 77. Don't you hate it when that happens?

So weather has not been a big, big issue in the last couple of weeks, though we did get a slop storm changing over to rain on Friday -- a half hour of sleet followed by a half hour of sleet mixed with rain, followed by five or six hours of rain. Beff would have driven back on Friday if it had not also been an ice storm up Mainewards, but instead she came back on Saturday (yesterday), making her time in Maynard a mere 24-1/2 hours, since she had to get back today for a rehearsal and to do grading. So we took the opportunities, such as they were, for a few nice long walks, since the weather was conducive for it.

However, speaking of weather -- that storm of heavy wetness in the snow department that caused me to leave for Philly a day early seems to have made its mark around here. Several other fallen limbs, especially pine limbs, were spyed on our big walk yesterday, and before Beff got in yesterday I noticed that one of the very large branches of a hydrangia in the driveway was bent over and pretty much broken -- so sigh, I got out the big saw from the basement and neatly sawed it off to put it out of its (and my) misery, pulling it out to the discard pile way out back. While doing that, I got flashbacks of all the barrels of rotten, smelly apples Beff and I had to take care of during raking season -- I had actually entertained the thought of getting tree removal specialists in to cut the tree down -- and I emaciated the tree. Which is simply to say, I cut down all the mid-sized branches I could reach without a ladder, and carted them, too, off to the discard pile. I remember that the last time I trimmed that tree, the following year it yielded only four apples. My hope is for a repeat of that in the fecundity department. And while I'm thinking of it, what do I have to do to get the quince bush to produce more quince?

I did not write any music since the last update, but I DID take notice that it's still fairly light outside at 5 pm, which is a non sequitur. Besides going to Staples to get a bunch of Piano Concerto scores made, I used our lovely big HP printer to make a full-sized score of Phillis Levin Songs, which I actually bound myself, using strategy, trickery, and a binding machine. And two binding coils, since they don't come in the 11-inch size at Staples. And I sent that score off to Judy Bettina so she can start working on the songs.

I also had a performance tape arrive, but not of one of the recently (or ever) reported performances here. Alexander Lane got (from me) Carson Cooman's transcription for organ of my piano piece SARA and performed it last June, getting me the recording this week. I think it is cool and weird and very different, and the sort of thing that I don't get too often. See the green "Elegy" link on the left.

And I got my paperwork from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation -- a residency near Umbertide, Italy -- where I will spend June 18 to July 29, the last week of it with Beff, too. We had to sign waivers, and that we did, and mail them back to the Foundation. Apparently they hold you to working on what you described in your application, and since I didn't know whether I'd be going this summer or next (as the applications are for a 2-year residency period), I just said I'd write piano etudes. So .. that's what I'm a-doin'.

And this week, "Powerhouse Pianists", a CD made by Stephen Gosling and Blair McMillen for the American Modern Ensemble, is officially released; Stephen Gosling playing my "E-Machines" is on it, and I'm curious, since I have never heard him play it (but everyone who has told me they thought the piece was fantastic -- which means the performance must have been amazing). Not curious enough to buy it, however -- since it turns out I'm the only composer on the CD whose name didn't manage to get onto the cover. But go to "Recordings" and click on the last CD image to see its listing on amazon.com.

The real big event of the last 10 or 11 days was last weekend. As is usual, it was about a two-day affair to put together all our receipts for the year, separate them into related piles, put expenses into the correct lists, and calculate all the expenses that are deductible. So Saturday and Sunday were "go figure" weekend, which ended with me putting all the calculated amounts into a printout to bring to our accountant -- which is being done by Beff this year, since she's going into NYC for a performance anyway in about three weeks. Less, actually. MWA ha ha. We have a very good accountant and a very complicated return, and the number of numbers is -- legion. And one has noticed that W-2s and 1099s are, on average, arriving later and later every year. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The Super Bowl happens later today, and there's nothing I can tell you about it that hasn't been reported in excess and repeatedly, so I merely pass on that observation for the sake of history. And by the same token, since so much of the activity since the last update has been of the academic variety, there is no need to make this one go on as long as the last few. So here we are, about the embark on the paragraph that I use to preview upcoming attractions.

So this coming Friday I talk to the composition seminar at the Longy School (weather permitting), and Geoffy inaugurates his 2008 guest room schedule this Friday and Saturday. We are slated to do dinner with him Saturday night. The following week I believe I take over for Whit in his section twice, in return for him doing my section twice while I was in Philadelphia. Then the week after that is our first school vacation, and I'm going to use it as a hat, or at the very least, as a piece of spinach (the kind that doesn't come with screws). And after THAT week is the gonzo week of DC, North Carolina, and DC again. It kind of makes you want to go to the bathroom.

While pining for gum, it makes sense not to put squirrels into the shredder; for you see, intoxication is making me waste (but not want). So when your lemons start gunning for childhood, give them a bone -- you'll be glad you did. And if anybody gives you any guff, start spelling things for them. That will show them that you mean business.

In the two intervening weeks since the last update, not a whole heck of a lot has happened, but I can say that teaching went as it always does, though there was a little more of it -- on the 13th and 14th, I took the 10:00 sections of Theory 1 to make up for Whit taking my sections when I was in Philadelphia. I pretended I'd forgotten all the students' names, and called them all "George". Meanwhile, my teaching at NEC has been back at the full load, meaning my time for lunch is a scant 40 minutes or so -- which I always have a Conor Larkin's because if I have it at the bar, it comes out fast. Which is not exactly how I meant to say that.

Tomorrow is President's Day, which is a rare day I have off at both institutions. I had offered to come in and give lessons at NEC anyway, weather permitting, and as it turns out -- it does not. Following in the slopfest tradition that has characterized this miserable little old winter, a big rainstorm and rather elevated temperatures are forecast for tonight and tomorrow -- bearing in mind, of course that it was Them What Make that made same forecasts.

And while we speak of these forecasts. On Tuesday it was doubtful, according to Them What Make, that I'd make it in to do my teaching on Wednesday. Snow followed by sleet followed by freezing rain, finally capped off by all rain in the afternoon, was forecast for Tuesday night into Wednesday. Indeed, in the WINTER STORM WARNING text was this gem: "travel before noon on Wednesday is not recommended". I arose at 5:30 on Wednesday morning and shoveled the two walks -- the temp was 29, but it was raining, and there were 3 inches of snow, very heavy, on the ground. I didn't bother with the driveway, which would have been very time consuming, so I just exited straight out at 6:15, and the roads were not too bad. It rained at various intensities during the day, and the drive back home was very easy, and the plow guys had been by. Though in the slopfest, they had left some schmutz behind that I had to go out and clear. And it was very heavy, and it was still raining hard, and I got soaked. That night the temperatures got into the upper 20s, and driving to work on Thursday morning was actually harder -- I had a bit of a delay starting up at a stoplight due to black ice.

Now on the previous weekend we had also had some heavy wet snow. The snow weighted down the pine branches by the gazebo enough that I went out with a saw and sawed them off -- thus hopefully ending for a while the sweeping of the gazebo's roof by pine branches every time there's a heavy wet snow. Use your imagination,dear reader, about how much of that snow went onto me while I was accomplishing this trimmy operation.

By Sunday, a very strong cold front was sweeping through, and the temperatures dropped pretty quickly. But it was mostly sunny, with an occasional snow shower briefly passing through. There was a Brandeis New Music concert at 7 that night, and the roads were clear, so we were ready to go. Then a big, big, big, big snow squall pushed through at about 6 for about 10 minutes, gave us big wind, and a marvelously icy coating on all the roads. Indeed, we saw emergency vehicles in the squall's wake, and knew it'd be a bad drive to Brandeis. So we stayed home. Good call -- those there say that on Route 117 around the hill in Waltham, cars could not make it up, and also 2 cars were stuck at the entrance to Brandeis not able to get up that measly hill. So home we stayed, and awkward and mannered was our spoken syntax. The next morning was fine and that's when Beff drove back to Bangor, leaving very early. And, as is often the case, one stretch of Route 95 between Waterville and Newport was slippery and glazed from snow squalls, and at one point the draft from a passing truck caused Beff to do a full 360 -- luckily depositing her on the shoulder, facing the correct direction. That's not something I want to do, though I did do that once while driving from Boston to Vermont with Martler -- this happened near Concord, New Hampshire, and gave us the idea to stay in Concord, New Hampshire overnight.

And today, like two weeks ago, Beff left early on Sunday (today) for various obligations at U Maine, leaving me here to do my own work. Which, Friday night, most of yesterday, and all of this morning, was comprised of extracting the parts for my Phillis Levin songs, printing the movements as PDFs, combining the PDFs into single part files, and duplex printing them. I also did a full sized tabloid full score, double sided. And bound them all. Now they, and a W-9, are ready to go to Collage, who commissioned the piece. Thus providing a dramatic double bar to THAT project -- at least until the players start complaining about how hard their parts are, or about the 0.13% of the parts with mistakes.

And so it's Brandeis vacation. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Still, I had to go in Friday for a search committee meeting, and have to go in on Tuesday for another meeting (it does me no good to send the dictionary definition of "vacation" to those who call these meetings). LAST February vacation I spent in Maine while our pantry was being converted into a half bath, so some room's anniversary is coming right up! And LAST February vacation marked our first significant snow after a mostly snowless December and January. I am hoping this year is the mirror inversion, especially given that we've had about four feet of snow already this time.

And I may get to start work on an etude (I've got one in the wings, but without a clue what to do in it).

Geoffy was here last weekend for one of his usual gigs, and as usual it was good to see him and to make breakfast for him. He took us to dinner at the Quarterdeck, so that was a nice thing, too. Meanwhile, he's doing a recital at the East Carolina festival where I'll be in a week and a half, though I have to leave before the actual concert -- so he gave an entertaining reading of "Clave", the most recent etude I wrote for him, which will have its premiere the night I can't be there. I didn't ask him to do "Moody's Blues", since I thought it would be nice for the piano still to be in one piece when he left.

A week ago Friday I was called on to do a colloquium at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge for their composition seminar, and I was given the 4:30 to 6:00 slot. So I whipped up a new lecture about me: my piano concerto and the six (count 'em, six) etudes associated with Marilyn that became the underpinning of the concerto's music. So with a little detail about my collaborative and professional relationship with Marilyn, anecdotes, and basic stories about the six etudes, how they all get used in the concerto, plus the story of the concerto's "lion music" and the story of the toy piano, I filled up an hour and 25 minutes, leaving just five minutes for questions, most of them the predictable ones (such as "how did you find the distinction between taking an idea and making it short and making the same idea long" -- answer being "it's different"). Now I know it's a suitable 90-minute lecture. Thankfully, nobody asked me what I was doing at 4:25 pm on April 3, 1981. Because that would have been silly.

This morning along with making an early breakfast, the drama of the stove handles came fully to the forefront again. The burner handles that came with the stove (probably from 1940 or 1950) are long gone, and a while ago, Beff found some nice substitute handles on line. Three of them fit on the four burners, but one of them has too narrow an aperture for those handles to fit on. So for that one we've been using our jerryrig of the last 8 years: get generic stove handles -- the handles and the part that connects on the burner handle -- superglue two of the connector pieces together (because one of them doesn't go deep enough in), and hope for the best. Today that jerryrig finally stopped working -- the handle failed to "catch" to turn it off, and I had to use pliers. Substitute handles were procured, and they also did not "catch". So back I went to the hardware store for more superglue (true story: when 3 years ago is the last time you've used your superglue, it's hardened and unuasable), made another jerryrig, and for the time being we seem okay. Though the two handles on the right take a lot of effort to turn. Sigh, I hope this doesn't mean we have to buy a new stove in the near future... cause if it did, I'd be steamed.

Another thing of great delight in the past few months has been our relationship with Citibank. More specifically our former relationship with Citibank. For you see, when I started at Columbia in 1989 we got a checking account and a Mastercard with Citibank, which was two blocks south of our apartment. The checking account was closed 10 years ago, but we kept the credit card. 4 years ago or so I even discovered that we'd accumulated ThankYou Rewards points, and we used them to get a color laser printer and a regular laser printer, cost $600, for $150. In November, Beff tried to use her Citicard for a hotel and was denied. After a long, twisted conversation with customer service, whatever "block" was on the card was removed, or so they said. Several weeks later we heard that our oil company was unable to charge the card our monthly budget amount. So I called and cancelled the card -- two strikes was enough. Understandably, I was forwarded to what might be called a "retention specialist" who tried to ply me with --- extra future reward points!!! After I pointed out that there wasn't much point to getting extra points given that Citibank won't even approve any new charges ... we finished the cancellation.

Fast forward a month and a half. A bill arrives! From the Citibank credit card! They had approved a $169 charge by "Connections", which was something of which I'd never heard. Lividly, I called to get the charge taken off the account. Suitably, they blamed me: there's an 800 number next to the charge on the bill, right? Call that number. So I did, and was immediately asked for my account number. I explained (in a voice about 8 decibels louder than my customary voice) that I had never heard of "Connections", had not authorized any charge, and so I didn't know what my account number was. The operator knew my address and phone number (!), and promised the charge would be lifted within three days. Which, as I found out, was.

And so given that Citibank blocked real charges we tried to make, and then a month after we had CANCELLED THE CARD, authorized a charge we didn't authorize ... well, when I read on the NY Times website that Citibank posted a huge quarterly loss, I smiled a little. Currently, I am working up to laughing maniacally.

In the meantime -- there have been all these new recordings coming in, especially in the past week, so I am pleased to make them available to you, dear reader -- see the green links to the left and above. The organ arrangement of "Sara" called "Elegy", as played by Alexander Lane, is still present. Newly arrived -- the performance recording of Sex Songs in Philadelphia -- though the 2nd one (The Gardener) is still my dress rehearsal recording. A few insurmountable glitches in the performance of that one. Then you can see a link to the January 19 premiere of my violin and piano piece Pied a Terre (from 1999) with Dan Stepner and Sally Pinkas. That performance is hot, hot, HOT --- though there are certainly things formally in it that I think were not done as well as they could have -- for instance, the ending does not work. But, for a Prelude, Fugue and Presto, it's not bad, and there's some pretty wacky stuff there in the fast music. I think, or hope, I may be done with writing fugues, but you never know.

And so the only time in the past two weeks that I took any pictures was a week ago yesterday. First, there's the icicles on the shrubs in the front yard from all the falling snowmelt from the roof, and then an icicle on the gazebo about to detach. Then there's the Assabet, downtown, near flood stage, leaving "scrubbles" on the vegetation. And then there's a hand mark and a glove on the bridge over the Assabet downtown that Beff asked me to take pictures of for a forthcoming video project. I complied. Bye.

Chrome is the finish of choice when mother-of-pearl shovels have been found to cause mass panic. If cats could talk, they wouldn't have to scratch the surface, so why do we make dogs eat meat? Probably it's because when I saw the thunderstorm coming, I made some small drawings of birds as if they could read music (with their eyes closed). Twice they said they'd use the hamburger helper, but without love there isn't a point on the end of the stick.

Eighteen days since the last update, and plenty seems to have happened, while at the same time just as much seems not to have happened. But I suppose I should splain. The timeline was a bit like this:

From Feb. 18 to 25, right after the last update, I was on winter break.

So during that academic vacation, my colleagues decided to make it impossible for any of us to do creative work, as we did two and a half days of meetings at Brandeis to go over graduate applications and start making our choices -- which were not finalized by the time we finished the third meeting. Boys and girls, can you say WORST VACATION EVER? I had actually started that week, Monday, President's Day by embarking on an 83rd etude. This one was requested by Nathanael May, with a very vague description of what he wanted (he liked undulating things and arpeggios, and what's the point of that sort of etude?). I spent all of that Monday cranking out 23 bars, contrasting some polyrhythms in the middle low register with arpeggiating gestures that "escaped" from the polyrhythms, and those arpeggios were very cool. It turned out the polyrhythms were sucking more and more rocks the more they went on. And then the flow was interrupted by them what made this the WORST VACATION EVER and the meetings they called DURING MY VACATION.

Returning, again, on Thursday to the piece, I wrote more, and got even sexier arpeggiating gestures out, but the low polyrhythms just didn't do it for me. So I terminated work on the etude, and did my usual purging gesture: I took out a yellow highlighter and wrote "FUCK" on both pages of the sketches. Ah, that's better. Have I mentioned WORST VACATION EVER, by the way?

Actually, that Tuesday began with a brief trip to the post office to mail the score and parts of my Phillis Levin songs to the manager of Collage. Which means I spent quite a bit of time over the previous weekend generating, then PDF-ing, then combining PDFs with Adobe Acrobat, then printing, then binding, the scores and parts. I began to lust after a proper binding machine that can do 11x17 scores easily (I want one I want one I want one I want one), perhaps the continuous coil type thing. That's a future purchase, I hope. But for now, I used two bindings on the big score. And off they went. Payday (and perhaps a $100,000 bar) coming soon. Then they won't laugh at me (burp).

Over that weekend, Beff was here, but of course not on vacation. She got here early that week, because she was driving to New York City, staying with Hayes and Susan, and was seeing our accountant Jonathan on Wednesday -- what fun that must have been for her, parking in an unfamiliar place, walking to an unfamiliar train station, and taking it in to New York. Well, as it turns out, she had a rollicking good time as far as I can tell, and she was there to hear Marilyn Nonken play her piano and video piece. My own "F This" was premiered at this concert, as an encore, and Hayes and Beff said it sounded like a tabla. Aw, man, and I haven't even heard it yet! (Marilyn just sent an e-mail asking if I could wait for the recording until she did it again perfectly, and I said Are You Nuts???)

On Wednesday, them what make were predicting "few snow showers" for us on Friday, and Beff and I and Big Mike (ka-ching!) were slated for dinner at the Quarterdeck Friday night so we could pass on a house key for him to take care of the cats while I was gone. Instead of a few snow showers, we got eight fluffy, powdery inches, so dinner was postponed to Saturday night. Not to mention, Friday was Beff's day to drive back from New York. She started out from Bronxville as early as possible, but of course between Bronxville and New Haven nobody plowed, plenty of cars fishtailed and just STOPPED, and Beff with her 4-wheel drive had to go around them. In a word, Beff's drive was ... horrible. But she made it in just as I was shoveling the driveway for her arrival. On Saturday morning after the storm was over, I had to shovel the walks, as the people we pay to do that ... didn't. They did do the driveway, though. So, dinner on Saturday, Beff back to Maine Sunday.

Classes then started up again, I taught theory at Brandeis and drove to NEC and saw my students there, came back, and packed for my six-day trip. The green suitcase I used was too big for how much stuff I had to bring, but I am okay with carrying air. So early I got to bed, and early I rose, and was picked up at 6:30 for my 9:00 flight to Reagan International Airport. While a-standin' and waitin' for the ride, I heard my first song sparrow of the season. This was apparently supposed to portend well, and you know, if you asked me to define "portend" I'd stammer a lot and then walk away. Then come back. Then walk away again, in every direction.

The timing of my flight was just a few hours before another storm, this one not a very snowy one, was to hit us. It was fine weather to get to the airport, and partly cloudy when I got onto the REALLY SMALL plane that Beff had booked for me (Canair CJ50, about 50 seats). I was booked in the last row (13a) but the plane was only a third full, so I moved further up, and got a great view the whole way of -- um, nothing. 20 minutes into the 100 minute flight, the turbulence kicked in, and 2 or 3 times there was the type of bump that makes the whole plane gasp (note to self: always confirm size of plane before buying a flight from here on in), and soon we landed, none the worse for wear. My suitcase came out very quickly (there were only five pieces of checked baggage for the whole flight), and I waited a long time for the shuttle to the car rental garage (as I was to find out only later, it was only a six-minute walk to it), getting my piece of crap silver colored Chevy something with 23 mpg and Alabama plates. At which time I followed directions to call the Marine Band ops people with a description of my car so that I could be let in to my rehearsal, which was to begin about 20 minutes after I made that call.

So I drove to the Marine barracks, getting egregiously lost once, and then getting momentarily trapped in a maze of one-ways nearby, but when I got there, the rehearsal was still going on, and I got to listen. The band had begun rehearsing the previous Thursday and had put recordings on line for me to hear,but hearing it live was much better -- not to mention, it was more together and hot-sounding. I had actually started by disliking my piece after hearing the first rehearsal, but ratcheted up to indifference and then a provisional like, and by now I was liking it more. After this rehearsal I was able to drive to the Colburn homestead and meet them all -- including Winnie, to whom the second movement was dedicated. She vibrated no less and no more than usual. That night Nancy made chili, we ate it, and we ate more of it, and I went to bed on a couch in the basement.

Wednesday Mike and I drove in tandem though a maze of Virginiana to the barracks for an early morning rehearsal -- where I also got to do e-mail and the like. It was another stunning rehearsal, and I got some Flip Video movies (of mallet percussion and brass section) for use in future orchestration classes. After rehearsal, I went back to Chez Colburn, got my stuff, and began the long drive to Greenville, North Carolina -- for you see, there I had six pieces on two concerts (five of them piano etudes played by Geoffy), and had been booked to give composition lessons to ECU (Eastern Carolina University) students at this festival put together yearly by Ed Jacobs. And what did I get out of it? Lots of driving in a straight line, and a free room at the Hilton for three nights. Plus, Ed kept paying for me at restaurants.

So I arrived in Greenville after making two wrong turns (US 64 east in Virginia and US 64 east in North Carolina appear not to be the same thing -- worse, they are 120 miles apart), including missing the turnoff for the NC US 64, I was settled in the Hilton, drove to meet Eddie at school, and he took me out for Buffalo wings and beer. After which I crashed rather than hearing a solo clarinet concert that had been scheduled downtown in a restaurant.

On Thursday I met with 5 of Eddie's students, heard Curt Macomber and Aleck Karis go through my violin and piano piece, had a nice sub, hung out in a restaurant, met Chris Dietz who was also at the festival and teaching composition lessons, and at the end of the day went out with Eddie and Chris for yet hotter Buffalo wings, and beer. That night there was an all-Messiaen concert which I decided to skip, and crashed at the hotel.

So on Friday there was just one student to see, a great colloquium by David Sanford, who had arrived the previous night, a very long lunch to have, this time with David and Eddie and eventually Chris Dietz, too, where David showed us his best Soul Train dancer moves. Then we went to a really weird New Music Camerata concert that included everything from solo tuba with singing into the instrument to a Benjamin Britten solo guitar piece that couldn't seem to find the ending (number of times I nodded off: 4) to a weird-ass piece for two tubas and marimba. In the interim, Geoffy arrived, and we bonded.

Then I gave a public talk -- the one that uses piano etudes as an upbeat to playing the piano concerto. At the same time, Geoffy was giving a piano master class. After we were both done, Geoffy played for me three of the etudes he was performing the next night for the Flip video ultra, and those have gone up onto YouTube (see yellow "Geoff" links up there to the left -- you'll see that they were, indeed, spantacular). Soon Eddie, David, Chris and I were to eat some rather mediocre -- actually, about two levels below mediocre -- Chinese food, which David paid for. So I owe him. David -- you 'n' me 'n' Beff, Northampton, soon! But no mediocre food! Or meaty ochra!

And then was the Speculum Musicae concert, which had some good music and of course good performances, and David's piece "Dogma 74" was killa! Afterward, an expensive reception with about six times as much food as was needed, various students asked me about grad programs, and then David, I, Chris and Geoff found ourselves in lobby of the the Hilton just after 11, with their bar closed, and we felt the need for a little alcoholic adjustment. The choice -- Hooters or Applebees. We chose Applebees, had two rounds, and then THEY closed, at midnight. And off I was to go, back to DC the next morning.

Driving north to DC from North Carolina is no more interesting than driving south from DC to North Carolina, but it turned out I stopped for lunch and gas at the SAME place I'd stopped for lunch on the way down -- spoo-oo-ooky. I got to Burke and the Colburn residence with plenty of time to spare, and meanwhile, the Marines were hosting an eastern division CBDNA conference (College Band Directors National Association). It was chilly-ish there (50) and sunny, but back in Maynard, there was snow and crappola falling -- Beff made it in the previous night from Maine before the precip started, but it was grody on Saturday, and she had a 5:00 plane to catch. She managed, meanwhile, to shovel the bottom part of the driveway of three heavy, wet inches, and left early for the airport -- meaning I was obliged to get her, in my crappola rental car, at Reagan airport at 7. SO, back to the main story -- we went in the Colburn van to downtown DC, left off Nancy and the kids for museum hopping (it was Nancy's birthday!) and we went to the barracks, where I was to speak for an hour to the CBDNA band directors. I came after a mock audition, and got about 20-25 directors, and Karl Jackson -- recording guy for the Marines -- had made me a CD of my piece's dress rehearsal in case I wanted to play any of my piece for the directors. Sweeet. (See green numbered CDR links to the left, which mean "Cantina Dress Rehearsal" and not "Compact Disc Recordable").

So I talked about my history of playing in band, writing for band, and how I don't understand the band world, and that talk may get put eventually onto the band's website (except for the part where I began my answer to "what's the first sort of things that go through your mind when you are getting ready to write for band?" with "Oh, shit..."), and played the last movement of Ten of a Kind and the first, MARCH, movement of Cantina (as it was already March). I liked Ten of a Kind better. Questions included things like "what's wrong with band from a composer's standpoint?" (answer: all the energy is concentrated in an octave and a half, and it's a chewy sound), "what software program do you use?" (answer: Finale) and "Do you sketch?" That last one threw me for a loop because I didn't know which of the many senses of the verb was actually meant. I said I don't write things down to come back to later because I like keeping them in my head and if they're still there a week later, they're worth using. Or something similarly pretentious. After all that, it was back to the Colburns, I drove to the airport and DIDN'T GET LOST, picked up Beff, and when we got back we had delivery pizza. For Nancy's birthday. An air mattress was aired up, and we slept.

SUNDAY morning featured a long walk around Burke Lake (which is in Burke, where the Colburns live), and Winnie pooped about every 25 feet (the walk was about two and a half miles...). After lunch snackies, it was time to get to Alexandria for the concert and sound check. There we met Phil Smith, the principal trumpetist of the New York Phil, just back from Korea, who was playing three pieces with the band, including Bugler's Holiday and a duet-solo with the principal trombonist. My piece was just before intermission, I said a few words (including something Beff thought was very funny), and people representing the Barlow Foundation were at the concert, whom I got to meet at intermission. There were maybe 1500 or 1700 people in the audience. Yes, it was a big turnout, the median age was 64, and the median scent was potpourri. I got asked to autograph a copy of a "Martian Counterpoint" CD, and there was a meet and greet afterwards, and some expected people -- the previous director among them -- were not to be found.

After all this, we were taken for dinner to a nice American grill (I got ribs), and were allowed to bed ourselves early. For you see, we were getting up at 4. Of course, me being me, I woke up every 25 minutes or so, checked my watch, and put my head back on the pillow where it belonged. Finally at 4 we got up and showered, drove to the airport, left off the rental car, WALKED to the terminal instead of waiting for the shuttle, got our boarding passes, went through security, and got on our 7:00 flight. This time it was a SMOOTH ride and we got great views of New York City and Providence, got in on time, and drove to Brandeis, where Beff left me off. I taught my theory class, interviewed a prospective grad student on the way to the 12:24 commuter train into Boston, and taught my 3 NEC students. Then I got to North Station, got on a train, and exited at South Acton at 6:08, where Beff picked me up -- for you see, it is now BEFF's vacation, and two weeks of it she gets. We had dinner, and went early to bed. I mean, duh.

So the rest of the week was spent normally, except for the weirdness of having Beff at home when I get back -- a positive element, indeed. Common chord modulation was the topic in theory, and pizza slices were the lunch of Wednesday. In the half hour between theory and my afternoon students on Thursday, we had our final admissions meeting, meaning our long national nightmare was over. And then I came home, sigh.

This morning we had the egg and cheese sammiches, and when we realized the only cat litter we had left was some Tidy Cat -- which I don't like because it sticks to Cammy, and he puts his butt near my head at night when he sleeps on the bed, and he smells like, well, like a litter box -- so we made a trip of it this morning. First to BJ's where we got limes, 80 pounds of Fresh Step cat litter, Campari tomatoes, two large things of hot sauce, 100 CD-Rs (Compact Disc Recordables, not Cantina Dress Rehearsals), and a pack of 16 scrubber sponges. On the way home was a fruitful trip to Whole Foods, where we got a bunch more "honest tea" in large containers, 4 salmon teriyaki steaks, blueberries, tofu, balsamic portabello salad, orange juice, Bubbie's pickles, and what have you, and home we came. Since then I've looked around the now mostly exposed back yard -- waiting for this year's first crocuses (the earliest pictures I have of crocuses here in years past is March 9), and was surprised to see that one of the backyard rhubarbs is already emerging (photographic evidence below). We JUST took our regular 2-1/2 mile walk, and I heard redwinged blackbirds and a robin, so spring is indeed springing. A bit. Despite the fact that Them What Make say it'll be cold again this weekend.

Upcoming: six more consecutive weeks of teaching (because the academic groundhog saw his shadow this week) before our Passover break. I am on a search committee for a Renaissance musicologist and will have plenty of stuff to go to for that, starting this Wednesday, not to mention yielding two of my classes (for a musicologist? Get outta town!) for the demo teaching of the candidates. Tomorrow night, Daylight Savings Time begins, which means it'll be dark on my drive to work again, but REALLY light on my drive back. Colloquium at Tufts on a day we're interviewing one of the candidates. And Beff is (mostly) at home for another week of vacation. Look for an update BELOW the pictures below for the date and time the first crocuses are discovered herein, once they are thus discovered.