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

After the quasi-food dinner, I spent some time napping and coughing, while Beff discovered the wireless and did some e-mail. Later I did e-mail, too, and we retired to bed and coughed a lot. On Saturday there was a bit of coffee and not-quite-edible pastry products available, so we drank and not-quite-ate. There were plenty of walks around exactly the same parts of Oberlin, as well as nostalgia trips to various buildings where classes were given, now-retired or dead professors had offices, and long-gone hangouts. For lunch, the 25th reunion class was given what amounted to an appetizer lunch at the President's house along with white wine that made your nose crinkle, your eyebrows arch, and your eyes water. What had become The Group sat at one circular table, and sat through an "umm" and "uhh" filled narrative from the President about how Oberlin has grown since 1981, including the largest PV array in Ohio (nobody knew what that was, but from context we surmised it had something to do with solar power -- yes, it means Photo Voltaic). After lunch, Beff went with her friend Joan (who married us) to see the Frank Lloyd Wright house in Oberlin while I napped and coughed. After more walking around, there was the "picnic" at a superstructure also known as the skating rink. Here the group sat together again, there were Mexican, American, and Italian buffets along with Labatts Blue (the closest thing any of us had to a real beer all weekend), and there I accumulated one more superfluous apostrophe. At night there was a talent show and karaoke thing that Beff went to while I went to bed. At 2 that morning I was forced to yell at people having a loud conversation just below our window, and given that I had nearly no voice, it was something to behold.

In the afternoon The Group had also spent a long time at the closest thing to a hangout that Oberlin has, called The Feve. The fries I ordered arrived an hour later, lukewarm, but at least the weather itself was quite warm. And I delighted at being The Spouse. Since I never had to participate or react to anything in the conversation.

On Sunday we repeated our walks of earlier, got coffee, went to the champagne lunch (two gulps of it was all you got), which was another mondo affair, under a tent, which also was an official meeting of the Alumni Society (as in, you others better join the group or we will speechify mercilessly). We exited before what was certain to be The Big Fundraising Pitch, and got back on the road. Again, it was a fairly uneventful drive, and sunny all the way. We made it as far as Batavia, where we stayed at a Quality Inn with wi-fi and ate at an Applebees -- what a combo, since our room keys included a 10% discount voucher at Applebees. I got the buffalo wings, duh.

Monday we left early, but late enough not to encounter severe thunderstorms happening about an hour and a half into our drive at the time we embarked (parse THAT one), and arrived home at about 2. I marveled at how high the grass was already (when you go on a trip you apparently presume that time stands still at your place of residence), and continued to marvel that Shaw's was open -- where I got some staples, and hamburger for grilling. HEY, it was Memorial Day, and it's THE RULE that you grill burgers on Memorial Day. It's also THE RULE that as the Fromm deadline approaches, more and more plaintive e-mails accumulate asking for letters. Which is what I did.

Yesterday, John Aylward and his sister Claire visited for exercise, and we got them out onto the Assabet in a canoe. I could tell by both of their forms that they had never done this before -- it was more like they were stirring the water so that sugar cubes would dissolve than trying to get the canoe to move. Indeed, I was able to saunter on the bike path at a greater clip than that of the canoe. But they eventually figured it out, John did excellent steering, and the canoe made a nice zigzag a ways down the Assabet and back. Lunch downtown was followed by Beff and I returning the rental car and walking home. And me checking my e-mail and getting more plaintive Fromm requests.

Today Beff has embarked toward Burlington for a day spent with her father. She back tomorrow. I also finished reading Dewek's dissertation, and he is just about ready to become Doctow Dewek. Meanwhile, I have to return to the piano quintet and make the sucker work. And (sigh) mow all of the lawns, as soon as the cloud cover burns off. And cough a bit. In the coming week, Mary Fukushima and Michael Kirkendoll (who call themselves, modestly, the Fukushima-Kirkendoll Duo) give a recital in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, including my own travesty FIRECAT. This is on June 4. I know it's going to be good because both of them contacted me and said they were having "fun" -- in stark contrast to the "torment" that usually comes with people doing this piece. And since you're in town (I can't be), stay another day and hear Ross's cello concerto with Sequitur on the 5th, at Merkin Hall. It's going to blow all the other pieces away.

Tomorrow is my birthday. Deal with it. According to my giftology this is the intersection of the year of the trampoline and the year of the pony.

Today marks, as far as I can tell, Day 23 of my just-can't-shake it summer cold. While I am, in general, far better, I still get the nighttime coughing fit, as I did this morning. Which leads, in the morning, to a voice that makes me seem like I should audition for the voiceover part on the Men's Wearhouse commercials. As I said today to Beff -- "everyone in the room is looking at the bride. And the bride is looking at you. Tux rentals from $50." Three coughs and an orange juice later, I was back to my usual sexy voice, saying things like "the coffee is ready to plunge" and "Cammy's outside."

We are just back from a weekend trip to New York City for Beff's performance on the ACA (American Composers Alliance, NOT Atlantic Center for the Arts) American Composers Festival, where we stayed with Hayes and did plenty of New York things during out down time -- and the most New Yorky thing of all is to spend too much money. Which we did with great glee. But let me step back in time just a bit.

Last week on an early morning day, we went to the Toyota dealership in Acton for a 7 am appointment, where we left it for an oil change and a "the cassette is stuck in the car player" diagnostic. While that was happening, we went to the usual breakfast and sandwich place nearby. The oil change happened, and the cassette was ejected, but no cassette of any kind would go back in. The dealer said that Toyota parts to replace it might run as high as $800 (of which I presume $750 is pure profit), so we made a trip of it. We drove to Best Buy in the Shopper's World area and got the ONLY car cassette player they carried. And while it was being installed, we drove to BJ's for some staples, and also to Trader Joe's, nearby -- the one that has beer and wine, unlike our local iteration. While near the car stuff, I strangely started lusting after a little handheld GPS thing. Not that I have any real need for it -- I was sucked in by the cool coefficient of having such a thing. So we examined what Best Buy had, which was deemed either too small ($150) or too expensive ($600). After going to Trader Joe's, we looked into the adacent Staples to see what GPS they had, and it was both too small and too expensive. Meanwhile, using my Red Skelton voice, I put an end to Beff's constant queries about what I wanted for my birthday by saying "I want a GPS thing. Good night, and God bless."

When we got home and installed the groceries in the correct places, I researched GPS stuff on the internet, and found that Magellan and Garmin were the two Big Players in that arena, and after lots of hemming and hawing, settled on the Garmin 320. I read that it took an SD card for the map data, so I also got a gig SD card from Staples (delivered for free!), and the unit itself arrived the day before we took off for New York. Warning, though, the software for loading maps only works in Windows, and we do have the Windows computer specifically for emergencies like this -- that, and for making CDs and DVDs, that is.

So the software was loaded, the Garmin unit connected to the USB port, and I was able to select, state-by-state, all of the east coast and Quebec and all of the midwest and south as far west as the Mississippi River and just beyond. Any more would not have fit on the card. Loading the maps was a 45-minute affair (preceded by a 20-minute configure-fest), and immediately -- in some rain -- I tested the unit. I had it direct me to the Air Field Cafe at the Minuteman Airport, which it did flawlessly, after taking a little while to lock onto the satellites. It also talked to me: in point three miles turn right. In four hun-dred feet turn right. Turn right. And I discovered that if you took your own route, it recalculated and said "recalculating" to you. For our drive to New York we punched in Hayes's address, and watched the fun ensue. Beff reconfigured the unit with the "British" voice, so we felt very sophistiphistiphistphistphisticatedcatedcated.

Meantime, we discovered that the Garmin wanted us to take 95 all the way to New York, and I preferred the Wilbur Cross to Merritt to Hutch, etc. And it kept trying to get us to exit the Parkways to get on 95. And finally it gave up and let us do what we wanted. The next day, when we had to drive to Nyack for Beff's rehearsal with Soooooooooooooooooooozie and Chris, it wanted us to take the GW Bridge and get on the Palisades Parkway, but we did 87 instead, just to spite it. On the way back, I decided to yield to its whim, and it gave us a very scenic route south of Nyack and got us on -- yes, the Palisades Parkway. Gotta admit, it was actually faster than the route I would have taken.

And meanwhile, in New York, Hayes was a very gracious host. For our first afternoon, Beff decided that we would do the Pierpont Morgan Library ($12 per adult), and we looked at a lot of nice stuff there -- including fair first copies of pieces by Brahms, Verdi, Puccini, etc., and old illuminated manuscript pages. Beff got me a real cool tie, and we walked back home, ate at a Mediterranean type restaurant, and went to bed. I was tired early, alas. On Nyack day we ate at a diner in town before Beff's rehearsal, and then got to see Chris (Oldfather)'s house -- very close to the Hudson, in fact. I knew my old friend from VCCA, Don Iannucci, had a place close by, but I could not get permission to leave the rehearsal to try and find him. Which is fine, since his house was a lot farther away than I thought it was. And uphill. That night Hayes and Beff and I did Chinese at this really good place around 24th and 9th.

The day of the gig was fairly eventless, save my having to bring the camcorder and tripod to the dress rehearsal, as we now have gotten into the habit of getting movies of our performances. Especially important in Beff's case, since the piece is for piano, voice, and projected video with sound. This was the one where I had to roll an orange down the dining room table, and Cammy came after it at one point, and that made it into the piece. After the dress, the four of us (Soooooooooooooozie, Chris, Beff, me) went to a diner nearby (the gig was at the Thalia Theater in Symphony Space). The gig itself was fine, though there was some music that I probably could have had a full life without ever having heard -- and one piece promised some nice tricky formal devices that had no payoff (for instance, a double fugue that simply stopped halfway through the first entrance of the second subject). Soooooooooooooozie wanted to go out during intermission, since Beff's piece was on the first half, and this performance marked the end of a particularly busy performing time for her. So Chris, Soooooooooooooooooozie, Chris's sister and I meandered into a French restaurant called Alouette and had beer called 1664. After the gig, Hayes and Geoffy and Beff joined us, and French desserts were the order of the day. And Geoffy got a, um, watermelon martini or something like that. Pink martinis just look funny.

Yesterday we drove back and it was amazing how deserted New York is at 8 am on a Sunday morning. It was a nice clear drive, and there was even sun! -- for apparently the first time in about 10 days in the Boston area. It was good to get back with our stuff and with the cats -- returning from a trip is always nice that way. And it even warmed up a bit for the first time in a while -- which is where I start to complain about the weather here. According to the Boston Globe, the jet stream has been stuck in a winterlike pattern here since early May, and the 18 inches of rain or so that's fallen in that time would have been 15 feet of snow in cold weather (a likely story -- in the winter the Gulf of Mexico wouldn't yield anywhere near as much moisture as it does in the spring -- I mean, totally duh). The pattern breaks late this week, they say, but meanwhile it's not been above 90 yet this year (the latest in recent memory). And right now it is 79 and it seems very balmy.

Beff did a mini-trip to Vermont in this last few weeks, where she picked up a used Peugot bike for her to use in Maine. We tried it out, and brought it to the bike shop in town just to be sure it was okay. And two really funny guys run the shop, gave us the bizness, and even adjusted my bike while it was there. And that inaugurated a few exercise bike rides -- to West Concord, Boon Lake, and West Acton for starters. Later today I take a bike ride, but not until Maynard Door and Window gets here to (finally) vent the bathroom fan.

Meanwhile -- Michael Lipsey sent more recordings of Snaggle movements (my hand drums piece), and I spent some time in iMovie getting more of my Bogliasco little movies online and into my webspace for the gentle reader's pleasure. So in that list of stuff above and to the left -- yellow is a movie, red is an mp3, green is a PDF, and sky blue is a web address. Framer's Intent is piece for frame drum, played, I believe, on the djembe, whereas Trampoline Man is a passacaglia for talking drum and tabla. As to the movies -- you probably need QuickTime 7 to view them. I don't make the rules. I merely enforce them. So the grounds of Villa Orbiana -- in which I had a bedroom, study, and veranda -- are represented, as is the inside of the villa. Glasses and bottles is the fellows getting silly with wine glasses and bottles. Villa Pini is the main building, where writers and scholars stay, and there are movies of the front of it, and walking into it from the street.

The only immediate things to note coming up are The Maids coming to clean tomorrow, Beff coming back from Maine (she went there today for a lesson, to fix the lawnmower, and who knows why else), and dinner with the Hylas for my birthday. It is not known how soon there will be enough stuff to report for the next update. So be patient, be patient.

Not many pictures this week. First there is the Garmin, suction-cupped to the windshield, as I departed for Trader Joe's this morning, Soooooooozie at dinner with her cell phone, Hayes and Geoff at the French restaurant, and Beff and Chris at dinner. So there. Chris got a mondo haircut!!!!!

JUNE 20. Breakfast this morning was Egg Beaters eggs with 2% cheese, orange juice, and coffee. Dinner last night was two Boca Burgers with cheese and a plate of Roma tomatoes. Lunch was a small salad and Buffalo wings. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES THIS LAST WEEK: 52.2 and 92.3. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS "The Pleasure Seekers" by The System. LARGE EXPENSES this last two weeks include stuff at amazon, $33, stuff at CompUSA $52, stuff at BJ's, $43, and the 60,000 mile tuneup for the Corolla, $473. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: When it became evident that we'd be staying at our place in Spencer -- on Thompson Pond -- for a number of years, we bit the bullet and bought ourselves the red canoe, which was on special at The Fair (a K-Mart type place that no longer exists). Our first try at canoeing was on Easter Sunday, we were completely clueless how to go about it, and on our first try -- stepping into it from a dock -- we fell in. Subsequent tries were quite successful. COMPANIES WHO HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY THIS WEEK are none. COMPANIES WHO HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY are the online Apple Computer, who sent no fewer than four e-mails detailing every step of the process of sending me a simple video cable, and Whole Foods Market, which is next to the Framingham Trader Joe's, which I never went into before this week, and which has great sauce for dumplings AND Bubbies pickles. THIS WEEK'S COSMIC QUANDARY: when did product names beginning with lowercase "i" supplant product names ending with an "x" as cool and hip? THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: sleen. THINGS I HAVE GROWN WEARY OF are the phrase "cut and run", little bugs that get in my face when I'm on the hammock, and ham. I made up the last one. RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS: cherries, no-cook gazpacho, Cajun pitted olives, Unsweet tea (on special at Shaw's), dumplings with special dumpling sauce. DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK every salad dressing company now makes an "Asian ginger sesame" dressing. THIS WEEK'S NUMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 10: 8. REVISIONS TO THIS SITE: This page. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT TODAY: 0. FRAGILE THINGS DESTROYED BY THE CATS THIS LAST WEEK are a mouse and a chipmunk. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST WEEK: 1. DAVY'S BAROMETER FOR THE FUTURE OF MUSIC this week is 39 out of 100. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: massive demonstrations against the olambic. THIS WEEK'S FEATURED FAKE SENDER NAME IN A SPAM: Davy Barrera. SUBJECT OF THAT SPAM: succinct. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 9,508. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE THIS WEEK: $2.94. OTHER INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE snake oil, garlic powder, a senior moment, seventeen bottles of hot sauce.

Came and went the birthday. Three separate, but equal, celebrations happened. There was dinner at the Quarterdeck with Lee and Kate on the date of the birthday itself, bowling plus wings plus beer with Ken and Hillary and Max, and lunch at the Stein with Carolyn (ka-ching!) and Big Mike (ka-ching!). Lee and Kate came bearing gifts, including the new Stravinsky gossipfest, and a framed print of Kate's. Already hanging in the hallway is Kate's print, but not yet read is the Stravinsky book (I'm trying out Yodaspeak today). It was a nice meal (I did the poached salmon) though the service was inexplicably slow, and there were discussions of Lee's impending move to Chicago. Wow.

On Saturday, while Beff was in Maine, the Trio Coolness came with their own gifts -- a little bowling figure that made its way into the kitchen window, and a little ducky that gets way bigger over the course of 72 hours when it is submerged in what I like to call "water". There was candlepin bowling preceded by trash talking, the bowling itself, which featured an inordinate number of gutterballs, and a strange occurrence near the end of our first string: Saturday night glow bowling started. A smoke machine (I'm guessing dry ice) spewed, the lights turned off in favor of neon colors on the pins, blacklights galore and disco balls started, and unusually bad pop music spewed. We were given yellow markers for keeping score, since they are viewable in blacklights, and we had to start writing a lot bigger. Strangely, our bowling got better with glow bowling, and, to the best of my knowledge, I cracked 100 in candlepins for the first time in years. It is also true that this was the first time I'd bowled in years. All of us had at least one spare, and Hillary saved hers for the very last frame. Bowlage was followed by the Neighborhood Pizzeria in town for wings, where the parking was strangely hard to find. While we did wings and pizza, we noted with glee that Neighborhood Pizzeria now serves beer in bottles, so the experience was close to complete. After our experience with near completeness, we came back to the house and did beer -- mostly Liberty Ale and Sea Dog blueberry wheat. And Ken and Hillary finally took the olives I gave them last April. And Max got some expensive paper.