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

Fourth paragraph! Sunday morning I put some DVDs into the player and none of them worked. "DVD Video" appeared on the screen, and then "reading" and then ... nothing. Sigh. So here I went to Radio Shack again in another downpour, with all the boxing in hand (lucky thing I instituted that policy of not burning our boxes), confirmed the DVD player was a dud, and was given the display model (which I could have been given a week earlier, but noooo...). Which works, and is very, very cool -- not much larger than an actual DVD, fits in your hand, etc. But why me, Lord? Last time we made a substantial purchase at this particular Radio Shack was to get new cell phones a year and a half ago, we had to wait while one worker went to the Acton branch to get one of our phones, and only after I had entered 80 numbers into my phone book did I realize that MY phone was the one whose microphone didn't work -- as in, I called Eddie Jacobs, and he said, "Hello? .... Hello? ..... Hello? .... Well, I don't know who this is, but I have your number, and maybe I'll try to call you back." Eddie heard nothing, but my part of the conversation was actually, "Eddie! ... Ed! .... Hello, Ed, this is Davy! .... Eddie? ..... THIS ... IS ... DAVY! .... CAN.... YOU.. HEAR .... ME? .... (word that means) Intercourse."

Stacy, stop calling me Mr. Wordy. By Davy, age 9.

Only scheduled event this week is dinner with Lee and Kate at Taranta, in the North End, for Boston Restaurant Week. We hear the food is great. Lee and Kate are doing the Rolling Stones Tuesday night, so dinner is Wednesday. By then, I will have finished a third piano trio. And by the way, the movement names, right now, are I. Felinious Assault, II. Sostenuto, III. Scherzicle. I don't have a title for the trio yet, and normally I ask in this space for suggestions, but what I usually get when I ask that is really dumb. So if you have a possible title -- keep it to yourself.

We watched the series finale of Six Feet Under last night. The series had jumped the shark last year with the stupid kidnapping episode, but it was nice to be able to say after this episode -- Everybody Dies! Claire being the last one, in 2083, at the age of 102. With her photographs from age 22 decorating her wall -- apparently she didn't have much of a life after the series ended.

This week we have three mini-movies, activated in the yellow text on the left: a much sped-up movie Beff made of the ferry into Vinalhaven, Maine; a sped-up movie of Cammy rushing up the stairs for some good ol' fashioned kitty-lovin'; and 3 instances of Sunny jumping for a little cat toy, proof that he's back up to speed. Pictures include the "School of Philosophy" next to the Alcott House, Hayes at seafood dinner, another picture from the ferry, Hilda and Beff before dinner, Soozie 'n' me, Soozie 'n' Curt (under that), James Bolle and Alan Feinberg late at night, fresh-squeezed orange juice next to cartoned (can you tell the difference?), Cammy in the reddened sunrise light made by the stained glass panel in the living room, and the cats at the top of the stairs.

AUGUST 29. Breakfast this morning was orange juice and coffee. Dinner was chicken sandwiches and salad; the chicken had been marinated in a toasted sesame marinade, which I smelled on my fingers all night. Lunch was tomato sandwiches and ham and cheese Lean Pockets. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES THIS LAST WEEK 53.8 and 84.6. LARGE EXPENSES this last week are dinner in the North End, $120. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS The frustrated climax from the Tristan prelude. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: After many years of work on the essay portion of my dissertation, the defense finally came in February of 1996. I was in the middle of my Rome Prize year, and also on deadline to have the PhD by the time I started at Brandeis. When I showed my passport and ticket on the way out of Rome, the Customs Agent remarked, "ah, vacanza in casa." I made the 3-hour drive from Salisbury to Princeton, stayed with Lee Blasius, jumped through all the hoops to get the degree, and showed up to my defense,which began at 5. The first heartening comment was from Peter Westergaard: "let's get this thing over with. I have to be somewhere at 6:15." The rest of the faculty assembled said, "we haven't read your paper. Can you give us a summary?" I did. I played the recording of Cerberus, which was the dissertation piece, and the junior faculty commented on "ironic perturbations". The second reader remarked that my paper was proof that those who have taught write better papers, without agendas. And, as all dissertation defenses are, it turned out to be a non-event. Cindy Gessele and Lee and I went to the brew pub, and that was that. Doctor Davy. COMPANIES WHO HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY AND THEN SOME are none. We've avoided the Service Industry this week. THIS WEEK'S COSMIC QUANDARY: How come no one has commented on the irony of the current President being an advocate of Intelligent Design? THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: squimp. RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS: Real Pickles, Inko's Peach Tea, olives from the olives station at Shaw's, Wickles. DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK Essex, Newburyport and environs, including Woodman's. THIS WEEK'S NUMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 10: 6. CHANGES TO THIS SITE: new piano trio listed on Compositions page; links broken by Web Easy fixed. FRAGILE THINGS DESTROYED BY THE CATS THIS LAST WEEK is lots of small flying insects. BIKE RIDES CONCLUDING BEFORE 9 AM THIS WEEK: 2. DAVY'S BAROMETER FOR THE FUTURE OF MUSIC this week is 13 out of 47. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: no more articles on spectral music. THIS WEEK'S FEATURED FAKE SENDER NAME IN A SPAM: Dunk A. Killjoy. SUBJECT OF THAT SPAM: original Peorpcia, Viagra available. INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE a pile of vomit, a pile of puke, a pile of that which was spewed, a pile of upchuck.

I have to presume that some students taking my classes are going to discover this page -- as I'm sure its de rigeur for new students to look up their professors on the web (which I never did because I did not have complete control of the dimensions of space and time, but I'm a-workin' on it) and read this thing for the first time this week and wonder how I can be so self-indulgent as to chronicle so many of the exceedingly dull events in my life. And believe me (actually, regular readers don't have to believe -- they are with the program), they are dull. I have decided, nerdlike, that it's like The Riddler. Story lines made it clear that the Riddler couldn't successfully carry off a job unless he sent Batman a clue embedded in a riddle. Similarly, the only way I can keep my e-mailbox clean of "where the heck is your update?" e-mails is to make new ones weekly. Plus, it's a "nice" way to spend a Monday morning. Hey, why "don't" I start using more of these "scare quotes"? After all, they are bound to produce "instant irony". I'll try, but "dear" reader, you'll have to "bear" with me.

As I predicted in this here very space, I finished my piano trio several hours after posting, entered the notes into Finale, and got ready to produce parts. I still had no title, and dadburned if I was gonna "call" it "Piano Trio No. 3", especially as it's really No. 4. So on my VERY early Tuesday morning bike ride (to West Acton), I gave myself the ultimatum (and there was no space to negotiate): come up with a title by the time I "return", because it's time to produce scores and parts. So just as I passed the Apple Country Animal Hospital (our vet), I "decided" on "Inside Story." The first movement "portrays musically" the cats playing, and the other two movements reference it mercilessly, so it's certainly an "inside job". Hey, it's "better" than nothing. I decided the piece was 14 minutes long, so don't hate me for being "beautiful".

This means that on Tuesday I made a big, wide trip. First, to "Brandeis" in order to use the "big" paper cutter so I could cut the 11x17 pages down to 11x14 for the pianist's score. Next, Kinko's in Framingham -- now called Kinko's-FedEx -- to bind the "sucker". Then, BJ's for more Inkos, tomatoes, what have you. And "back". And, finally, the trip to the post office to send the materials to Curt. Who got them and is already asking questions about notation and editing. Woo hoo. Curt confirmed the September 22 performance at Rice, which I won't make because it is Beff's birthday and because it is in Texas. This meant that I could spend the rest of the week on "other" things.

"Other things" included writing my 3 Brandeis syllabi (very time consuming, as the holiday schedule this year is extremely complex -- Music 101 has two fewer meetings than it did the last time I taught it), fielding e-mails about Brandeis stuff, and slowly weaning myself away from checking my e-mail every five minutes. Like Bruce Willis, chairman habits die hard. With a vengeance.

But a significant "other" thing was taking advantage of Boston Restaurant Week on Wednesday night. This included a drive to Alewife station, where we parked, a boring subway ride to Haymarket, a walk to Lee and Kate's place for hors d'oeuevres (I kinda pigged out on the gorgonzola) and then dinner at the Taranta restauarant in the north end. They were fun to be with, as usual, and the food was really good. And also as usual, Lee and Kate seemed on intimate terms with yet another restaurateur -- and by that very "familiarity," we learned that 90 of the 250 reserved for dinner that night were no-shows. Obviously a side effect of restaurant week, wherein hicks from the exurbs (me 'n' Beff, for "instance") make reservations at half a dozen restaurants, check them all out and park at the one that seems the "nicest". All the more food for ME! Actually, I had the chicken, which was delicious, and which reminded me of why I buy boneless breasts and not half chickens or whole chickens. Them what had the trout also said their meal was delicious. But fishy fish. Ewww.

Beff and I also decided to take our yearly end-of-summer little adventure trip to places nearby we've never seen. Last year it was the central south part of Massachusetts and we made some cool discoveries. This time Beff decided we'd see the Cogswell's Grant museum in Essex, followed by some random sightseeing without much leaving the "car". So we stopped first at the music department so I could leave my big keyboard off (I need it for my "teach-in" tomorrow and they will be closing off the Slosberg lot, those dummies), and Carolyn advised us to do Woodman's for lunch after the museum -- as they apparently "invented" fried clams in 1916. So the museum is an old farm house with lots of period stuff and a plastic porta-potty (as much fun to say as it is to eat) and a couple of Belgian show horses in the barn. We took the "tour", plowed into an antiques place on the main drag (which was a drag) and went to Woodmans. Which was a real adventure. The inside was like a seaside resort attraction from, well, 1916, and lots of clam things to order for lunch and dinner. Drinks come from a separate line from the food, and we both got the fried clam plates. Said plates included a mess o' fried clams, a mess o' fries, and a mess o' onion rings -- all of which tasted exactly the same -- the only difference was texture and hardness. I was "heartened" that Frank's hot sauce was among the available condiments, so I mixed it with ketchup in order to make the food taste a little less exactly the same. And it worked. Later we drove north on Routes 133, 1A and 97 and saw the very pretty downtown area of Newburyport, plowed through Haverhill (sort of Fitchburg with less character), and got back home in time to use the hammock.

And on Thursday we reacquainted ourselves with the "Battle Road" in the Minuteman Park. What is different this year is that there is now a bridge under a road, where last year there was a menacing looking sign saying END OF TRAIL GO AWAY I DON'T EVEN LIKE YOU ANYWAY. It was much more of an exercise than I'd remembered. And I was glad.

On Saturday Carolyn herself came over to rent some hammock time (please hammock don't hurt 'em), and due to a bicycle mishap (is there such a thing as a bicycle hap?) she got here later than planned. We fed her olives, pickles, Inko's and beer (oh my!) and struggled mightily to have conversations about things not related to Brandeis. We mostly succeeded, but that subject does tend to turn into a vortex from which one is lucky to escape. After Carolyn made it homewards, we took a long walk for exercise, and repaired homewards, although the location of our home is already fixed (think about it. Now stop. And stop again).

Yesterday was the day I set aside to begin my article on titles for New Music Box. After our very successful bike ride in the morning (one of our more exotic ones), and mowing the front and far back lawns, I decided to set up the backyard for casual computer use (that looks weird, but that's okay, because it "is" weird). I got a 100-foot extension cord, which I plugged into one of the outlets in the garage, plugged a surge protector into it, plugged my Power Book into it, and typed away. I didn't type "away", because that word isn't necessarily in the article. So I "typed" away. I had to run inside a few times for internet research (looking up titles), and I got about 6 or 7 paragraphs written before it started to rain. And then, to my complete surprise, I finished the article not long after coming inside with it. I was very proud of one joke in the article, which had to do with a possible Country and Western song title: "Even My Dung Beetle Don't Like You 'Cause You Ain't S**t". And Beff and I speculated on what life would be like for a cowboy who had a pet dung beetle. Well, not that much, because we have lives. But we "did".

This week classes begin, and I hop right in with three of them on Thursday. And every Thursday. And every Monday. And every Wednesday. Tomorrow -- the day that those Brandeis dung beetles are denying me my usual parking -- I do my Rubber Bands teach-in (a delightful meditation on the notion of tension and release, and everybody gets a free bouncy ball). Thanks to the parking thing, I'm taking the commuter rail in and back, and Beff has to drive me there and back, before she goes to Maine for a few days. Meanwhile, the big classroom in Slosberg (212) has been outfitted for bigtime AV, and I was given 3 possible times to come to be trained on it -- which, of course, I had to turn down. I can't give a teach-in at the same time I train on AV equipment, and there's the parking thing, and ... and meanwhile, it actually took quite a bit of time to write another diagnostic test for Music 101. I was reintroduced to the wonders of white-out (we had none in the house less than four years old) because I thought the points added up to 139 and they add up to 149 -- not to mention, I forgot that G above the bass staff has 3 leger lines and not 4. But I digress.

This week's pictures include two shots from Minuteman Park, the pumpkin-colored Cogswell's Grant farmhouse, Woodman's, Beff inside Woodman's, our food at Woodman's, the icky green stuff on the Assabet (it was supposed to be a picture of a distant Great Blue Heron, and our recycling bin, revealing mass quantities of Inko's consumed over the weekend. The movies ("yellow" text) are greatly sped up, of Beff riding by on our Wednesday trip to West Concord, passing through the tunnel in Minuteman Park, and crossing the commuter rail tracks on the West Concord trip.

SEPTEMBER 5. LABOR DAY. Breakfast this morning was a Smart Ones breakfast sandwich (major miscalculation on their part: the English muffin part comes out hard as a rock), orange juice, Trader Joe's grapefruit juice, and coffee. Dinner was super-lean cheeseburgers, salad, and home fries. Lunch was a Buffalo chicken sandwich, New England Clam Chowder, and Tazo tea at O'Naturals restaurant in Acton. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES THIS LAST WEEK 52.9 and 86.4. LARGE EXPENSES this last week are a new can opener and wok at K-Mart, $31, pickles and vitamins in Groton, $38, and half a tank of gas, $22. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS "I had to break the window" by Fiona Apple. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: When my high school band was rehearsing (I use the word lightly and ironically) my first piece ever, I was the conductor and Verne Colburn -- being the regular conductor -- looked on. It was plain to see that lots of the band members didn't dig the piece, as it was atonal and strange, and they were doggin' it in one of our rehearsals. Verne came to the podium and chewed the band out (he did this at regular intervals, as it was the only thing that worked), and finished with a flourish, followed by a devastating silence. Which was broken by me remarking, "You're cute when you're mad." Verne struggled mightily not to smile, and succeeded. Just barely. COMPANIES WHO HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY THIS WEEK is Sylvania Monitors, who, more than two weeks later, still have not sent the missing screw. THIS WEEK'S COSMIC QUANDARY: Why are Katrina victims being called "refugees" in the press? THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: narkle. RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS: olives from the olive station at Shaw's, Inko's White Tea. DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK The true extent of the original 1910 wiring of this house. THIS WEEK'S NUMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 10: 7. REVISIONS TO THIS SITE: Performances updated to 2005-6, Signal to Noise link replaced. FRAGILE THINGS DESTROYED BY THE CATS THIS LAST WEEK is a few small flying insects and small strands of screen window. BIKE RIDES CONCLUDING BEFORE 9 AM THIS WEEK: 0. DAVY'S BAROMETER FOR THE FUTURE OF MUSIC this week is 23 out of 47. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: competent FEMA administrators. THIS WEEK'S FEATURED FAKE SENDER NAME IN A SPAM: Imani Klopp. SUBJECT OF THAT SPAM: Re: Really Works VÉry Good CíAIS VIAGRRä. INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE a pine needle, the smaller part of the wishbone, a rolled-up newspaper, an electric grape.

The federal response to Katrina has been pathetic. Beff and I gave money to the American Red Cross, and hope that it will do some good. The FEMA response to the ice storm in Maine in 1998 that Beff and I lived through was excellent. This time, the fund raiser who runs the agency didn't even know that people needed help. Dear readers, can you tell the difference between Democratic and Republican appointees?

Classes started this week, and I was roarin' and ready. As usual, I taught unimpeachably, though it looks like this overload I'm teaching is going to wear me out a bit by November, especially with the composer search going on at the same time. I was a little wrecked by the end of Thursday -- which ended with me 'n' Justin going over, fine-toothed-combwise, his dissertation piece. On the plus side, the piece breaks a lot of new ground for him. On the minus side, the weather was gorgeous, we were inside, and the day made the end of summer official.

A new thing we have is an AV console in the big teaching room -- DVD, CD, and PC with a projector and a screen. The minus is that there is no equalization (can't turn up the bass or treble), that this console is only the temporary one, and that the new carpet in the room is also only temporary. All this and I doubt that the appointees in charge of wiring up the room are Republican fund raisers. However, it was a nifty toy to have for the two classes I teach in that room, as I got to demonstrate for one of them where they could go on the web to find the class materials, incidentally showing them the oh-so-crapful picture of me on the Brandeis web page. I am now endeavoring to make this room's nickname "the Boom Boom Room", and it looks like it will be an uphill battle. As if the end of summer weren't shocking enough, we already have a faculty meeting this coming Thursday. The Chair, Mary Ruth Ray, who is calling herself UV Ray now, promised the meeting would be "short and sweet, like Davy's meetings". Which was funny, because, even though my memories of my Chairman stint are hazy, I have sharp memories of our faculty talking and talking and talking in these meetings until someone came in and said, "I'm sorry, but we have the room now."

Most of my so-called productive time this week has been spent producing the materials for Fundamentals of Music, which will be, at 31 (so far) the largest class I've taught anywhere. For comparison's sake, the largest I taught at Stanford was 12, at Columbia was 24, and at Harvard was 6. How did they all get to be multiples of six? As of this morning, I have all the homework, and it has all been put online (since I didn't make them spend an extra 40 bucks for a workbook), and one of three quizzes ready. I also produced some nice little handouts with piano keyboards, a grand staff, a map of all the C's on the piano, and a nod to two very important pitches: A 440 and the 60 cycle hum. For those of you just joining in, I rule.

I also administered the dreaded diagnostic test for first year theory (this was Thursday) and promised results by day's end on Friday. And this is actually where the fun part of the week began. I would have used ironic quotes on the word fun, but I'm out of them after last week's ironyfest, and that's quite a narkle to deal with. As you can see, I'm saving them for actual quotes.

Several weeks ago you would have read here that our insurance company doesn't like houses with original 1910 knob and tube wiring. Not only didn't I know that, I didn't know what knob and tube wiring was. I still don't, but now I know what it looks like -- and it's like those spider webs in the basement: everywhere and hard not to notice once you know it's there. Okay, I have to work on that simile. For the first time I even saw a bunch of it in the attic, too. So the insurance company had sent us a cancellation notice. We promised, with little halos over our heads, to get the wiring modernized, and we were reinstated. And now that is happening. But first a little more context.

On Monday, plasterers came to fix the peeled plaster where water gets in in the alcove, and the bulge by the staircase. They plastered, but did not paint, and it was kind of destructive. Right now those two places are nice and smooth, but look like graffiti has been incompetently covered up with paint of the wrong color. We got some paint to paint over it (thus discovering an oriental market next door), and were planning on doing that painting this weekend after the plaster dried. Fast forward to Friday, at which point Beff was going to drive from Maine back to Maynard after breakfast.

A pair of electricians arrived at 7:23 am and scoped out this knob and tube stuff. At 8, as I was about to start grading the Music 101 exams, the head electrician said there were too many boxes in the attic covering all the important wiring under the floorboards and the junction boxes, and that if they weren't moved, it would likely double the cost of the job. I took stock of the situation: $2500 to rewire may only buy a tank or two of gas now, but it's still considerable money if it's double that. And the many boxes in the attic were not necessary for us to keep -- they were there more out of packrat tendencies than out of actual need. So from 8 to 9:20 I dutifully carried loads of boxes down two flights of stairs, out the front door, though the front yard and driveway into the garage. And I sweated -- it was great exercise, and I got a lovely black and blue mark on my right arm. By 9:20, noticing not a significant dent made, it occurred to me that tossing boxes out the attic window into the back yard was more efficient, not to mention way easier, and much more similar to a video game than carrying them out one by one (1 point for getting the box to land straight up, 2 points for straight up AND a ricochet off the mud room roof, 2 additional points for a full rollover on the ground and landing straight up). And I finished that part of the ordeal at 11 instead of about 2. I left the decision making on what boxes we really have to keep (turns out it's the banana boxes and the technology boxes for things less than 2 years old), and the rest were torn up into bitty pieces by Beff in order that they may be combined with oxygen to make a byproduct of "heat" in that little ol' thing we call the fireplace.