Beff's semester finishes today, and she is due home after dark tonight. Tomorrow night we take Big Mike out for Chinese buffet
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| Since the computer has an iSight, plus software to use it, and Beff's MacBook Pro that she got from work does, too, we both installed Skype, tested it out by making a video call from the computer room to the dining room, and it worked fine. So much so that I looked at Staples for a good web cam, and all of them only said they worked with Windows. Ditto the web cams at Geek Boutique in Maynard. So Beff ordered one from amazon that said it could do a Mac, and it arrived, and I installed it in my office on my Brandeis computer, so we can now be Skypely from four locations or more (her two, and my two, duh). The connections at school are fast, so it's like TV -- but the network here in Maynard be slower, and some of the things Beff says get cut off or become static while her face freezes. So we talk a little more slowly. BUT NO LESS INFORMALLY. Yes, dear reader, we are informal Skype users.
Another longstanding narrative of the winter turning to spring got finished over the weekend, as I finished my decimation of our way-back yard apple tree. What once was tall and high (is that redundant? yes!) and producing wormy apples that dropped and rotted and attracted bees during raking season is now a modern sculpture with a handy-dandy cat seat. See pictures below. So that last bit of sawing was the hardest, of course, but it was quite satisfying, gratifying, and other things that rhyme (including cat, sat, and hat, and lucky and plucky). Now I plan to transform the ground around it, mossy because of all the shade ("under the shade of the apple tree" is in the lexicon not for nothin'), into a grassy, not at all mossy area. How? It may be tricky, but I've heard that planting grass seed can work wonders when growing grass is all or part of the intent of an activity. And you know me -- I'm all intents, and stuff. And scarily (reaching into a dark corner of the only part of my technophobia that is still intact), the batteries on the Honeywell thermostat finally died -- two AA's that were installed in late February 2007 when the old mechanical thermostat was replaced. For a while now, pressing buttons to reset it has sometimes resulted in the display going blank and then coming back on. Well, on this day, it was cold outside (30) and I noticed by 11 that it was cold in the house. I went to the thermostat for some relief (which for some reason was being spelled R-O-L-A-I-D-Z), and saw that there was NO display. Hmmph. I finally had to figure out how to open in and get the batteries out, and some new ones in .... and by putting my fingers in the little -- what shall I call them -- finger holds -- I wrenched it, and dramatically so, off the wall, put in new batteries, and then de-wrenched it. The display came back, and for several minutes I saw "wait" under the temp setting. Finally, it cranked back up, and warmth returned. With coolth being vanquished, or sent into a distant video game. Beff and I had been to Staples to get some Maxtor 500 gig drives that were advertised in a circular (the squarer was being saved for April), and after mine was reformatted by the Mac (it had to be to be used), it stopped working. Sigh, so I exchanged it. And now Beff tells me hers isn't recognized at all by her computer, and I haven't tried the new one yet -- but geesh, Maxtor, 2 for 2 in drives that don't work. Whassup with that? That's nutty! I heretofore resolve to end at least one paragraph in each update with "That's nutty!" until I stop. Saturday was a BMOP concert with "inspired collaborations" including pieces by Lisa Bielawa, Dewek, and Ken, so I drove in a little early, motored around the Pru and Copley Place, ate at Pizzeria Uno, had a beer at a bar specifically to use the wi-fi with my iPod Touch, saw the preconcert thing, and heard the concert from the balcony. It was yet another fantastic concert, Derek's piece was quite original and came off as too long (partly because it was), Ken's piece featured him doing what was billed as "overtone singing" (partly because it was) and found very resourceful ways to repeat the same gesture in the orchestra without it being repetitive, and Lisa's double violin concerto was really, really beautiful (partly because it was). And in the last of the Things to Report category, the CDs of my DC and North Carolina performances finally arrived -- though dammit, no CD of F This yet -- and I have put samples up in my webspace, with the links as featured to the left. Geoffy's Clave and Moody's Blues are in yellow (his rendition of Dorian Blue was also great, which I had heard for the first time! -- not to mention, of course, Schnozzage (which hardly anybody seems to know he PREMIERED) and Dirty Rag), and the Marine Band's official performance of Cantina at Northern Virginia Community College is there in green. Amazing stuff going on in both sets, and I'm getting used to the new piano and the new acoustics for Cantina. The performance of Cantina 3, in particular, amazes and delights. Well, it does me, anyway. With today's burst of warmthositudinousness, all the standing snow, even the high piles by the front door, is finally gone. Excellent, so my nefarious plan is working. I resolve to end at least one paragraph with "Excellent, so my nefarious plan is working." in every update until I stop. Indeed, I'm adding that one to my Lexicon. Woo hoo! The Quarterdeck is closed! Forever! While walking to the Post Office, I saw a sign in the window for "Last Meal, Saturday March 29". Beff looked it up in the local papers, discovered that the Quarterdeck Market and restaurant were opened by a bunch of brothers in the 1980s during the heyday of Digital Equipment in Maynard, some of whom went to the docks to buy the fish, some of whom ran the restaurant, and one by one they exited the business. The last one got tired, is keeping the fish market, but according to Steve at Maynard Door and Window, an "American" restaurant is coming in to take its place. But seafood! No more seafood restaurant in Maynard! No more clam rolls! So I invited Big Mike (ka-ching!) to share in the death knell (both words of which have five letters), and on Friday night he had crabcakes and I had clam rolls. And, dear reader, you now know why: because we're worth it. As I was grading earlier, I started getting kind of informal with the marks. I had remarked on a student's page "there's more dominantness here than tonicness." And instead of writing "A" for the grade, I wrote in "A-ness". When I said it out loud, I immediately scratched it out and wrote just "A". And oh yes -- with the warmer weather, there's been more time spent out on the side porch -- because it is that which I do do -- and several years ago we had blocked off the two little arches making openings in the stone-cement foundation of the porch because Cammy, in particular, just vegged in there when he went outside and could not be called back inside. Recently we've heard the scratchings of squirrels going in and out, which intrigued the cats to no end. So we unblocked one of the openings to see what would happen. The cats have been going in there but coming out when they hear the magic word, so Beff said let's just leave it unblocked. But TODAY, dear reader, Sunny stayed there for many hours and was hard to get out, even with the magic word, so, sigh, I reblocked it. It's what I do. And what it is. Too. Upcoming: Passover vacation, and some more alarmist updates that will pan out into nothing from Them What Make. Plus, people will be born, and people will die. Today's pictures include the current and final artistic state of the former apple tree, Sunny looking out wistfully from the porch, under that my office as seen from the web cam with the "thermal camera" filter, two Photobooth pictures of me in my bathrobe, a Skype session with both of us at home and one with both of us in our offices, Sunny on the cat perch of the former apple tree, Cammy in the porch opening, and Great Road just before sunrise after a rainy day and a quick freeze overnight. Bye. APRIL 12. Breakfast today was lite breakfast sausages with 2% cheese,orange juice and coffee. Lunch yesterday was a flatbread Ionian Awakening pizza. Dinner was fried clam appetizer and grilled salmon with a funny red and yellow chunky salsa. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 27.3 and 70.0. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS "Trust in Me" by Take 6. LARGE EXPENSES THIS LAST WEEK AND A HALF Two trips to Whole Foods, $infinity, purchase of rights to poetry, $300, tax owed to state of maine, $661. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: The first several months of this webspace contained no Pointless Nostalgic Reminiscences here. EVEN MORE POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: One summer -- probably around 1972 or 1973 -- my mother got obsessive about pulling vines out of everything around trees and other vegetation that was on, or close to, our yards. There had been a big, big tree that was probably not ours that we kids liked to climb partly, because there was a long horizontal branch about 8 feet off the ground and we could climb up to it and just walk along it. Once my mother pulled out the vines around it, we could also climb UP a little farther, OVER about 20 feet, and DOWN into a yet different part of the treeful experience, thus giving us maximum variety. Also, once after a storm, a big tree fell over in the neighboring yard, missing our house by about five feet. And there used to be a little parking space we would use in the neighboring vacant lot,and a tree near it that we liked to climb. And, and, and ... THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: sorpriza (strangely enough, not a cognate to the Italian "sorpresa", but apparently a food that pre-dated pizza by about three hundred years in the mountainous region of the Thames River, and which was carried on skiffs from landlocked countries). THINGS I HAVE GROWN WEARY OF the not-so-closeness of the end of the school year, weather too cold for the gazebo.. RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS stuff with hot sauce, low fat Velveeta on nonfat saltines, reception cheese. DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK Detritus Review. THIS WEEK'S NUMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 10: Love to love you baby. REVISIONS TO THIS SITE: This page, Performances, Home, Bio, Reviews 4, Compositions. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: They will sit in the half-bath window for hours on end if the window is open. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST WEEK AND A HALF: 2. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE I used to like to make bird art from cardboard cutouts of solid colors (what?). WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Irony and bitter irony are understood to be separate. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 11,069 (and a different number on the Mac Book Pro). WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE THIS WEEK: $3.15 at Cumberland Farms in Maynard. OTHER INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE the length of your lips, something without a label that we need to create a UPC code for, the habit of adding "ness" to a noun to describe its affect, some ear buds that just won't stay in your ears. Dear reader, yet only eleven days since the last update, and it's hard to remember everything that has happened (because, like, for that you'd need superpowers or something). And I am wearing my bathrobe. That's nutty! This particular weekend is more full of space because of weather (cool and damp and rainy and icky and gray and early springlike and full of chattering blue jays and robins and wrens and the lawn is greening up and skunks are making little holes in the lawn looking for grubs but I seem to have lost my train of thought here) and Beffness. Indeed, Beff's supreme dedication (more expensive than the "superior" dedication, which is itself more expensive than the "better" and "generic" dedication -- check the brochure) to her students is keeping her in the big New England state (hint: Maine) for the weekend, thus making it my prerogative to stay at home and work and scoop kitty poop and take out the garbage, etc. Some of which I do anyway. All by way of saying -- I sit here Saturday morning updating my update because there's not much else to do. Well, I do have a pile of hand-ins to mark up (but NOT GRADE!) for Theory 1, which would seem to explain that updating today instead of Tuesday is a serving a procrastinatory function. Procrastinationness. Excellent, so my nefarious plan is working. I have, as is my wont, been teaching minuet stuff in Theory 1, and this week, highways and byways -- that is, a smattering (wha smatter wit choo?) of mode mixture (not mowed mixture as we get on the lawn in July), the Neapolitan chord (funny joke for these parentheses deleted), and augmented sixth chords. Indeed, on Thursday it was Brandeis Open House day (a day important enough to capitalize not once, but twice), and my classroom -- which easily holds a class of 40 -- was filled to the brim. Despite the fact that the course has 15 students in it. Dear reader, can you make the logical leap to why it was filled to the brim (with the great taste of Rihm)? So parents of students accepted to Brandeis and the students themselves were other-than-clandestinely watching what a theory class at Brandeis is like, and I used all my reserves of energy and teacherness to show them that augmented sixth chords aren't just really complicated, they're fun! That's nutty! And otherwise, teaching one student at a time (the "private lesson" thing they don't write about in crime novels) proceeded as if by magic. We are also having a search in the department, for a musicologist with Renaissance specialty-plus, and I am on the search committee; in addition, April is the Month of Many Colloquia (note that it gets THREE capitalized words. I'm just nutty that way), which has meant lots of eating out at the expense of others, not to mention cheese cubes placed on top of crackers one-tenth their thickness and digging in. And celery. Always celery. Excellent, so my nefarious plan is working. On top of that, the Brandeis Festival of Creative Arts is in full swing (they don't do Half Swings at Brandeis, especially the kind that are capitalized), and tomorrow (Sunday) is the Day Of Many Simultaneous Performances. Being that I was on the selection panel for this day, fill in the rest of this sentence as you will. So I will be at Brandeis most of the day tomorrow, not just to do my official function -- introduce Seunghee's piano performance in Slosberg Hall at 3 -- but also see lots of interesting performances, not least a performance by the jazz ensemble including Dave Guerette's phase piece he wrote with me last fall. That's nutty! So a Candidate Interview Day, Wednesday, overlapped with the official kickoff of the Festival of the Arts, and -- get this -- the Brandeis chamber choir PREMIERED my "Sonnet 22" setting from 19friggin76 that night. And it sounded rather good. It's still a piece of juvenilia (note to self: pronounce with a "j" ("dzhay") incipit, not a "y" sound), and the phrase connections are bumpy, but I enjoyed it. I noted with glee (not with glee club, but that's a pretty cheap joke, and shame on me) that I "waited" 32 years to hear it. Only a third as long as Bach waited to hear his B minor mass, by which time he had been dead for 91 years. Why, you! The first half of that concert ended with 4 settings of jazz standards, with alto and soprano soloists taking solo turns, making it the first time I'd heard several of the students who've taken theory with me perform, and they were rather good. There was also a choral "arrangement" of Ives's "Serenity", which wasn't an "arrangement" at all -- same piano part, and the entire chorus sang the tune in unison/octaves. Not a heck of a lot of work for the "arranger". Excellent, so my nefarious plan is working. Meanwhile, LAST weekend, which featured Beff at home after having spent the previous one in Maine, featured Beff at home. Weather was chilly but not poopily so, so we took plenty of nice walks and even did some time in the gazebo on Saturday when it got strangely and briefly mild. We were both tickled (or, exhibited tickledness) that we got very strong wi-fi in the gazebo, and I used the occasion to use the wi-fi in the gazebo. And of course I played a bit more with the iSight camera and making goofy pictures with PhotoBooth and all that stuff. And errands were run, mostly in the passive voice. And I had taken a bunch of samples of colors home from MDAW for the siding that's going on the house this summer (as in, "this summer, we are re-siding our house"), and with much deliberation, the color we chose -- a lightish bluish grayish thing with lots of ish's attached -- is called Pelican. That's nutty! Meanwhile, plenty of stuff related to my Life As A Composer arrived in the mail, and that included our tax return (gotcha! faked left, went right. You're welcome), which was complicated, as usual. But then we got broadsided by a K-1 (not soon to be an etude title), meaning we're going to be filing a supplementary something, sigh. And the Collage for Judy commission arrived, as well as the recording of Marilyn's premiere of "F This" (see mp3 and score links on the left), comp copies from Peters of Etudes Book VIII (still counting in Roman numerals, since the Etruscan ones are in the wash), and of my two hand drum pieces in the Michael Lipsey-commissioned collection published by Calabrese Brothers (see pictures below). Excellent, so my nefarious plan is working. So last week's initiation of the Colloquium Fest began with Sam Adler, of to-die-for orchestration textbook fame. He talked and played music until he stopped. This week, Gus Ciamaga, Brandeis's own graduate, and the guy who started the Brandeis electronic studio, talked and played music until he stopped. It turns out Brandeis had, chronologically speaking, the fourth college electronic studio established in North America. We even beat Yale by 5 months (as we do in many time-based things), and even though I was 3 years old when the studio was established, I speak in first person plural about it. Dear reader, you may subtract 3 from my age to come up with a number to represent how long Brandeis has had an electronic studio. But then you'll have to eat it. By the way, "Ciamaga" turns out to be a Polish name. I asked him "what kind of Polish name is 'Ciamaga'?" He asked me "what kind of Polish name is 'Davy'?" That's nutty! Just one more week until our strangely timed Passover vacation ("strangely timed" meaning very late in the school year, not its relation to the timing of Passover, which would be how it got its name), and the Colloquium Fest ends Thursday with Super Daron. We've already set up a post-dinner meeting in or near the gazebo, for which I purchased some not-at-all-execrable red wine. If all goes as it has in the past, I will wake up Friday feeling as if my head has been nailed to the bed. Meanwhile, Daron is getting a car service to take him to his hotel in advance of his Friday flight, all of it paid for by person or persons three time zones distant. Excellent, so my nefarious plan is working. Yesterday was Rick Beaudoin's dissertation defense. That is, DOCTOR Rick Beaudoin's defense. Or, how we refer to him after the fact, though DURING the defense he wasn't a doctor. Nor did he play one on TV. The outside reader was David Sanford, who proceeded to be 45 minutes late, causing consternation and, uh, a late start. But it did come off successfully (the content of the defense will remain Top Secret), and afterwards David followed me to Maynard (because I asked him to) and we walked to, and ate at, the Blue Coyote Grill. Now considering that when the same restaurant, under previous management, was called "Amory's" (nonsequitur alert), and Beff and I once ate there for lunch and she got a soup in a bread-like bowl that she could eat -- and also considering that when you enter you get all the tasty ambience (but none of the ambivalence) of a sports bar -- the food was FANTASTIC. And not so expensive. We got a fried clam appetizer that was at least as good as you could get at the now-former Quarterdeck, and I got a salmon special that was even better, so there, nyaah nyaah Quarterdeck. Or should I say ... Cast Iron Kitchen? Yes, for those of you grasping at straws trying to find a thread of narrative in this paragraph, the space formerly occupied by the Quarterdeck is said to be soon occupied by the Cast Iron Kitchen. And so after dinner, we walked back, sat in the gazebo and talked about how soon we will be reminiscing about having sat in the gazebo, and David drove home. Which made him go in a generally westerly direction. That's nutty! For the upcoming vacation, all that's planned is for me finally to write that etude for Nathanael May on the vaguest possible parameters -- you may remember, dear reader, that I began it during the WORST FEBRUARY VACATION EVER and chucked it forthwithness. Then, perhaps I'll write more. Because Peters likes etudes. And, believe it or not, they are thinking about various compilations of editions -- the "easy" etudes, for instance, and don't look at me like that, because some of them ARE easy. Excellent, so my nefarious plan is working. So last night via a link from Danny's blog, I happenstanced into Detritus Review, a funny, smart, rude, smart, rude, funny, smart, rude, smart, funny, spam, spam, funny, spam, and sympathetic blog about bad writing on music. Since there is so much bad writing on music to be covered, there were a lot of entries, and I read many, many of them therein, and was up until midnight plus two minutes. Occasionally laughing out loud, occasionally laughing inwardly, and occasionally wondering what that funny hairy feeling in my nose was. And now I have satedness. That's nutty! And oh yeah -- I updated COMPOSITIONS here with hotlinks to YouTube videos of the pieces listed in the list. I don't know why, I just did it, okay? And so this program (which cost me less in 2002 than a lot of desserts I've had) won't necessarily line up the YouTube link with the name of the piece, so it'll be an adventure for both of us. It's fine on a Mac using Safari, and in 1956 that sentence would have made no sense whatsoever. Excellent, so my nutty plan is working. When vacation is over, just three days of classes left. Then lots of office hours to help out with minuetnesses, the readings themselves on May 6, and a river runs through it. Are you still reading, dear reader? After that's done, things crank up -- what with etude recordings, going to Chicago to hear and film Her Amyness, meeting here with Mary Fukushima about a flute piece (she is coming from Lawrence, Kansas, which will involve being on a plane at least twice, assuming she intend to go back to Lawrence), some sort of half-concert at Mannes in New York, and then I turn half a century, and then I go to Italy (and, by the way -- YOU DON'T! -- unless you do), and then I come back. And meanwhile, we are thinking of hanging in the Vermont place for a week or so right after Brandeis graduation. Or, commencement as they call it. Excellent, so my nefarious plan is nutty. Naturally, the iSight and PhotoBooth distortion filters haven't gotten unfunny yet, so such pictures dominate the gallery for this update. But first, yet another, slightly artistic (shadows! Oooh!) picture of the emaciated apple tree, a twisted Cammy, the entrance to the dining room from the kitchen, the TWO publications that arrived this week, and four pictures that will speak (metaphorically) for themselves. That's nefarious! Bye. APRIL 24. Breakfast today was lite breakfast sausages with 2% cheese,orange juice and coffee. Lunch yesterday was a Red Baron deep dish pizza. Dinner was 93% lean grilled cheeseburgers and salad. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 27.5 and 83.1. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS Etude #81, Kai'n Variation. LARGE EXPENSES THIS LAST WEEK AND A HALF Various extra last-minute taxes owed due to an unexpected K-1, gasoline, pointy things. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: During hockey playoff season in fifth grade, the Eastern conference championships were soon to get under way between the Canadiens and the Bruins. We lived 75 miles from Montreal and got "Hockey Night in Canada" with its cheesy theme song, and I was a Canadiens fan -- I even have, somewheres, an autographed picture of Yvan Cournoyer ("corn - Y - A"). And this was the timeof Phil Esposito and Bobby Orr in Boston, along with Jean Beliveau and Maurice Richard in Montreal. Arguments abounded within the fifth grade class as to the merit of the two teams, and I and two others stood steadfast that Montreal would win. One student on the Bruins side talked the teacher (Miss Crafts?) into letting us take a secret ballot as to who would win. Final results: Bruins 26, Canadiens 3. In reality, the Canadiens won the series and the Stanley Cup, thus showing that Just Desserts aren't just desserts. THINGS I HAVE GROWN WEARY OF primary season, skewed political reporting, political reporting on political reporting, political reporting on political reporting on political reporting, Anthony Tommasini using the word "astringent". RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS Davy's extra secret hot sauce concoction, blackberries, mouth-size tomatoes. DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK Verizon FiOS. THIS WEEK'S NUMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 10: Grok. REVISIONS TO THIS SITE: This page, Compositions, Home, Lexicon, Performances. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: They are currently in Bangor, and Sunny spends much of the day under the covers of the bed. Plus, I get to see them often on Skype. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWELVE DAYS: 2. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE My father worked at a paper mill where they recycled unsold comic books with the covers removed; hence I was always well-stocked with comic books, but I never cultivated an appreciation for comic book cover art. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Uptown and downtown are just words. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 11,191. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE THIS WEEK: $3.29 at Cumberland Farms in Maynard, and later, $3.39 at Cumberland Farms in Maynard. OTHER INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE trail mix in a small porcelain container, seventeen of those things you put on the back of your neck, a public transit schedule from 1957, tintinnabulation inside a horse's mouth. Download 2.79 Mb. Share with your friends:
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