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

Last week's update was such a hit that part of it is being replayed, in a different color, below this week's update. At least one of the Ka-Chings noticed that I had failed to update my pointless nostalgic reminiscence, and to that end, I have related two of them this week.

This has also been a shortened week not exactly devoid of activity, but certainly devoid of a lot of meaningful activity worth reading about, so there is not much to report. And there certainly are not a lot of new and interesting pictures (as you will see, dear reader). The main reason for posting today is that I want to enjoy the 4th devoid of posting activity, and that I go to Yaddo on the 5th, early in the morning. So here is the customary caveat:

Don't expect another update until after my seventeenth wedding anniversary. Which is August 11, and we are expecting a LOT of gifts. I mean, you know, truckloads. That is the day I return. For those of you playing along at home, Beff will be getting back from Vermont, where she does the Vermont Youth Orchestra Camp, shortly thereafter, and on the 14th she does jury duty.

So it has been another lazy week (I am calling the five days a "week" because it has fewer letters AND syllables than "five days", not to mention, no spaces) devoid of useful activity, but certainly not devoid of fun activity. The funnest of all was half a day with the Ka-Ching twins here in Maynard, and also in Stow, on a day with much to report. And that day was Saturday.

So on Saturday Beff and I decided to do the "Firefighters Academy" bike ride, which essentially becomes a big circle around the wildlife preserve, brushes by Boon Lake, passes us by a Maynard water supply, and brings us on a long stretch of the Assabet railroad. Almost exactly halfway through the trip --- meaning at the point most distant from home --- we apparently went over some glass, and I got a flat on my rear tire. This was exciting for us, because it meant Beff had to truck on home, get the car and the bike rack, and figure out how to get to where I was going to be by the time she got to where I was going to be. So I watched Beff ride professionally into the distance while I walked my bike maybe a mile and a half -- all the while hearing the subtle scree-ock scree-ock scree-ock of the flat tire rubbing against the frame. When I got to the Assabet Bridge on what we now know to be Boon Road, I kickstanded the bike, watered some weeds, and sat for maybe 15 or 20 minutes. And Beff saved the day -- the most important part being saving me from making more small talk with the recreational crowd already in the area. We brought the bike to Ray & Son's for a repair, and they directed us to pick it up at 4.

So the Ka-Chings were slated to arrive at "2ish", meaning in Big Mike's case 2:25 and Carolyn's case 2:50. And after Carolyn moved the hammock into a more fetal position with respect to the position of the Adirondack chairs, we up and packed the canoe onto the Corolla, drove to the river, and got Carolyn and Big Mike off into the water. Big Mike was in front, Carolyn was in back, steering. Beff and I followed them along the river snapping photos until the river veered away from the path (and we got tired of slapping at mosquitoes), and we walked back and waited for them to return. And waited. And waited. Turns out they went a long way (Carolyn said they went far because of the motoring power of "Hercules" in the front), and I had to get to Ray's to get my bike back. So through a complicated set of exchanges, etc., I got to Ray's, Beff drove back, I came back in the CAMRY, and we took two cars back. And that was just the beginning of all the fun.

For you see, we had all this food. I started off barbecuing some marinated eggplant and invited them to come out in 8 minutes to view the big fire of dripping olive oil on the grill. When they did come out, they witnessed me unscrewing the propane tank from the assembly -- as it had run out. So I was very lucky that Carolyn agreed to come along for the ride to refill the propane. BECAUSE Ace Hardware was closed, and that's where I always refill ($12). On the way back, I started formulating Plan B, which included using other small grills around the house never used, and as we passed Cumberland Farms, Carolyn mentioned that there was a cage marked "Blue Rhino" that sure reminded her of propane tank cages from her experience. I said, pshaw, that's spring water, and in Massachusetts I've never seen propane tank cages. As I turned the corner after the store, something clicked. I made the full circle, pulled into Cumberland farms, and Carolyn was right. I traded the tank for a full one ($19.99), and we were -- literally -- cooking with gas. In the sense that propane is a gas. So I finished the eggplants, made some shishkebabs of lots of vegetables and a little meat, and finally did hot dogs and hamburgers. All the while while we were eating antipasto this and antipasto that (we felt very negative) and drinking lemonade this and beer that. When all was said and done, all had been said and done.

On Friday, however, the day BEFORE this masterpiece of a day, Beff and I went with Big Mike first for the Buffalo wings at the Horseshoe Pub in Hudson (it was a preprogrammed event, but they had other things -- something with a pun on "Havarti", maybe the "Havarti Told You" sandwich) and then we went in Big Mike's Big Mikemobile to the Solomon Pond Mall for the 1:50 showing of The Devil Wears Prada. All in all, a very conventional movie (typical who are your real friends/backstabbing/redemption fare) with a few memorable things in it. There was a song played during the opening montage that Beff liked, but we forgot what it might be called, and nothing on the soundtrack as available on iTunes seemed to be what she wanted. And we were the very last people out of the theater, since we actually waited for the song credits.

The only other tremondous activity worth reporting is that we returned yesterday to the Minuteman Trail. Actually, I think the official name would be the Battle Road Trail of Minuteman National Park, which is a sometimes crushed gravel, sometimes sandy thing that goes through an immense number of different scenery scenarios, and which was longer than I had remembered. I would guess about 8 miles in each direction, and given the number of hills and the humidity, we lost a lot of liquid that day. Which was replenished later very nicely, thank you.

I have not supplied pictures (for something must be left to the reader's imagination), but I am happy to report that the little percussion instruments that I ordered from Musician's Friend arrived, and they were fun to play, and play on. Most will occupy my office, when I next actually have one. Talking drum is harder than it looks, and bongos are both easier and harder than they seem. They came with a tuning key!

This morning Christy came to pick up her stuff because she got a studio! (See her website, lower left) But it turned out she was short by one key in order to take the whole bunch o' hardware. So she got out what she could into her vehicle and will come back for it later. Meanwhile, the air got drier today so I started mowing the sticky (full of sticks) yards, and 4 minutes into my mowing, the lawnmower up and quit. The sound it makes is of a piece of engine broken off in the engine. So Beff and I hopped right into the car, drove to Ace Hardware, and got a new one, just like that. I don't know if you're supposed to be impressed by the progress of lawnmower technology, but this one is much like the old one, and feels significantly lighter, meaning an easier mow. One sacrifice: you can't adjust the height of the cut. One height fits all. So after I got all that mowing done, we walked downtown and got very hot. Thermally hot, silly.

For those of you playing along at home and reading the above, it's been six weeks since I posted. And the internet suffered no serious damage while I was gone. Today is different from all other days because it is the only day that will be my 17th wedding anniversary. Note that this is one wife, 17 years, not 17 marriages. And what a wife that is. A gwamowous wife, as Sheila E. would put it. As I type this, the gwamowous wife is still in Vermont, instructing high schoolers in the Vermont Yoot' Orchestra. She will be back Sunday night and immediately prepare for jury doody -- and she has to report to some God-forsaken location in Cambridge. Regular readers will recall that I did jury doody about 14 months ago, but in the Framingham courthouse, very easy to get to, and I was a jury foreman. Not guilty of passing counterfeit money (no evidence). So since Beff is in Burlington until Sunday, that means the hammock is mine, all mine, all mine, all mine. More fun to type than it is to say.

I spent the last five and a half weeks at Yaddo, in Saratoga Springs, being embarrassingly productive. So embarrassingly productive, in fact, that I skipped town a day early, and left my bongoes behind. My original intent for the summer was to work on a very difficult ensemble -- fl/picc and two pianos -- in June and write a piano quintet at Yaddo. Instead, I spent June with a beer bottle soldered to my left hand, and I hoped for the quintet there and a start on the other piece. It turned out that I wrote both pieces with four days to spare. So on a suggestion from Michael Kirkendoll, I wrote a 73rd piano etude (the fortissimo etude) and STILL had a day to spare. Saratoga Springs is in the middle of tourist and racing season, and it's not such an interesting town that I could spend a day in it. So I packed up and left yesterday instead of today. And Maynard's cultural life is the richer for it. So is Yaddo's, as it turns out.

Before I disquisite on anything that happened at Yaddo, let me disquisite on things that happened away from Yaddo, while I was away from it, while I was at Yaddo. It turns out that of my 38 day residency, I was away from Yaddo 4 days -- for those doing the math, that means I did the two substantial pieces in 31 "working" days (at Yaddo there are no Shopping Days). All the more impressive, since that's about 75 "working" days of work I got done in those 31 Yaddo "working" days. Ooh, the scare quotes are scaring me (which means they're doin' the" job"). That puts the Yaddo "working enhancement" coefficient at just over 2.4. So here are the stories of the non-working days: one day I came home to call Sunny, who had gone missing (more in a lower paragraph); one day I drove to Lake Carmi for early morning beer with Lieutenant Colonel Colburn; one day I drove back specifically to mow the lawns and retrieve mail; and one day I came back to pick up a prescription and spend some time with the gwamowous wife. The latter three are pretty dull to describe.

But the first involves Beff coming back from a weekend spent in Maine and Vermont (she's been doing a lot of that), arriving Monday night to discover that the screen porch door had been blown open in a storm and the cats were not inside. Cammy came in that night, but Sunny did not, and at first there seemed to be no cause for alarm. But on Tuesday, she called and reported that Sunny was still not to be found, and we negotiated a trip for me to do some calling of him -- since the cats are more accustomed to my voice, it would seem. I did the three-hour drive, and we had some soup or something for lunch, and we scoured the neighborhood looking in every possible place, to no avail. Eventually, I made a color-laser flyer that we tacked to local telephone poles in between spritzes of thunderstorms. We did dinner at Not Your Average Joe's in Acton (it was pretty average), and Beff wanted to call it the "Sunny Memorial Dinner". Embarrassingly, Laurie called while we were at search, and we had to say we couldn't see her and Sam and Georgia for kitty reasons. So I went back to Yaddo, announced that my cat was dead (Chris didn't believe it), and had some wine. Beff, meanwhile, kept looking, and she was to leave Maynard for three weeks beginning Friday morning, so there wasn't much time. Then voila, on Thursday afternoon, Sunny simply walked in. Apparently he smelled funny because Cammy attacked him, and they fought for days. But we are back at full cat strength, after having resigned ourselves to fifty percent. Beff took the cats with her to Bangor for the time she spent doing the U of Maine summer music camp thing.

Which made the house empty for three weeks, hence my trip to mow the lawn and get the mail. Alas, the whole cadre of housesitters I had cultivated got jobs. Time to cultivate the next generation. I am using "cultivate" a lot today.

Regular readers -- or irregular ones, as it turns out -- know that my Yaddo residency was my fourth this year and my 22nd of all time. So I can put it in a little perspective. My usual practice of trying to avoid getting close to people, and especially the thief-in-the-night exit because I hate goodbyes was practiced to the extent I could. But at MacDowell and Bogliasco, somehow that was not the case (especially Bogliasco, since the group was so small and the food so marvelous). At Yaddo, though, I got the list of Fellows in residence and knew at least half of them already -- notable among them Marilyn Chin, Nicky Dawidoff, Tom Cipullo and Mark Winegardner. So it was already old home week, and bits of wackiness ensued. One thing that always happens is that I don't get the know the people who arrive in the last week of my residency, because hey, what's the point? Though I must say, there were plenty of Fellows I hung out with that I did like a lot -- are you there Gina and Julian and Beena and Maggie and Andrew and Sarah and Amanda and Judah and Tarik? And Nina?

One phenomenon was interesting, and that was that of presentations. There have been times at MacDowell and Yaddo that so many people were eager to present their work that solid blocks of double and triple headers lined up for ten days at a time. Now I love going to presentations, though I studiously avoid saying anything about the work (so as to studiously avoid saying anything dumb about the work). This, however, was a non-presenting crowd, by and large. Bill Coble and Chris Forhan did a composer-poet evening when I got there, and Nina showed all of her films, and there were a couple of open studios by painters, but that was about it. I admit I asked Chris to give another reading because I liked the poetry the first time around (and possibly because I like all the free alcohol that flows at these events). Even more better were a few dance parties -- one in West House, one in my studio, one in Gina's studio. I dressed up for the first one (Amanda, in her wisdom, insisted on it), and made it almost to the bitter end of the Gina party (I might add here that Jodi's dance mix was killa).

And another phenomenon of a residency, and in particular this residency, is that of the perceived passage of time. I am astonished at how much work I got done (yes, 27 minutes of music in all, which is almost a minute per "working" day -- gotta love those slow tempos, and hate those scare quotes) given that it seems like the time flew right by. On the other hand, my memories, say, of hanging out with Nicky and discussing the Red Sox and what a big mistake they made not getting someone at the trading deadline, etc. -- all seemed like it happened impossibly long ago. Indeed, everyone who left before I did seems to have left years before I did. Tom Cipullo left a year ago, the impossibly thin Joyce and Jean left two years ago, Nicky left at least a year ago, Nina left a year and a half ago, and Mark Winegardner -- who finished his book within hours of the deadline and left on August 1 -- left about eight months ago. Whereas Judah -- who got there a day or two after I did -- is still a newbie.

And speaking of passages of time, there is the issue of the working day. I usually got to my studio at about 7 -- note to Yaddo, 8 may be too early for some people for breakfast, but it's too late for me -- and made my own coffee (I bought a coffee maker at Target and left it to Yaddo) and had orange juice (chilled in the fridge I brought in from Brandeis that I had bought for my Chairman year and was not being used and which I also left to Yaddo). I had the Stone Tower for the first time, and that involved a walk through the woods and a constant reminder through Yaddo publications about ticks (there were also tick removal kits available for those that wanted them) -- and the wearing of a screen hat because those deer flies really like my head. Sometimes I left for work before the lunches were put out, so I would have to go back and get mine at some point. I worked straight through until about 5 or 5:15, then took my computer with me to do wi-fi in the library. I joined the pre-dinner crowd on the back veranda, did dinner at 6:30 and did the post-dinner crowd on the veranda. Not once did I go back to the studio to work after dark. So I calculate about 9 hours of work per day, or given the coefficient, about 22 hours of "real" work per day. And one day I entered to find a mouse turd on my manuscript paper, but that is a story for another day. Actually, for no day whatsoever.