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

So after I became ready to drive, I did, and stopped at Warner's Snack Bar on my way out for some of its sterling cuisine. It's the only place I ever ask for fried onions. Then, of course, I drove back in the most eventless way possible.

So on Wednesday morning I discovered that Galen had put a little feature on the YouTube etudes on Sequenza21, and yesterday -- the day after Wednesday -- a piece by Amy D showed up in New Music Box about those movies, with an introduction that the two of us were suddenly everywhere, stars of YouTube. Which gave me a little Scooby Doo moment. ??? Obviously it's a slow news week.

And so today Beff gets back from Maine. During her time there, which included fevers up and down from 96 to 105, she took the Subaru in for its official state of Maine inspection -- a very quick and inexpensive affair. Chip had recommended a big garage near where Beff had to go to pick up a lawnmower part. And on that morning, I got a call from her: "did you get the windshield fluid thing to work?" I said I thought I had, and she said the guys doing the inspection said it didn't work and couldn't pass inspection because of it. She gave them permission to try to fix it, and I told her to take it to the dealer where it would be, like you know, free. But they had started already. Meanwhile, I trolled over to the dealer where we bought it, told them about the problem, asked if there would be more like it, communicated with Beff about taking it to the dealer, etc. And so meanwhile back at the garage, they couldn't figure out how to fix it, put it back together, charged her $40 for looking, and Beff took the car to the dealer. Who said, "what do you mean it doesn't work? You press the button next to the icon of a windshield wiper with fluid coming out..." So Beff took the car back to the garage, complained vociferously ("your guys failed my car because they didn't know to PRESS A BUTTON to make the windshield fluid work?? And this is what they do for a living?", and the manager even banged his head on the desk (I would have liked to see that part). Further, as Beff was dressing down one of the two guys who were such screwups, in came another with his face all black, who said, "at least you didn't have to work on a truck that caught fire". Classic Laurel and Hardy, lemme tella you. So Beff got her inspection sticker and forgot to ask for her $40 back. Which she went back and got. So the little "in and out" place that Chip recommended -- ended up costing her 3-1/2 hours. One of these days I'll post the name of that garage so that it can forever live in ignomy.

Also creating unexpected excitement in Bangor was Beff's discovery of large holes next to the garage. Suspecting it was animal-related, Beff called a company that takes care of such things, they set traps and caught a very large woodchuck, and Beff paid them more to fill in the holes and screen the area around the garage to make it woodchuck-proof. Exact amounts paid can be seen above. Meantime, we purchased Shake-Away, a powder to go around the new shed here in Maynard to keep small animals from congregating under it. Active ingredient: fox urine. Harmful, and pretty gross, if swallowed.

I expect Beff around 6ish, a little after Martha Horst gets here -- Martha was just at MacDowell, and tonight she's coming by for dinner. Yes, my second consecutive day for seafood at the Quarterdeck. Lovin' it. Tomorrow Beff and I may try putting the bikes on the Subaru's bike rack and maybe doing the rail trail in Ayer or the Minuteman trail in Concord. And on Sunday is my last mentoring, for which I am slated to arrive quite early. The afternoon will be spent a-packin'. For you see, this Monday the 30th we go to Vermont for a month, takin' the cats with us, and while we are gone, that big kitchen window is set to be replaced, and, I suspect, the other little tasks we had for MDAW.

So live with this News for a month. I WILL be back during the day of August 11 (our 18th wedding anniversary) to mow, pick up mail, and be in the MacDowell thing for which I have been mentoring all this time, but it's doubtful I will post here. Perhaps a supplement, but not much else. Meanwhile, some people have said they might come to visit us while we are there (our coordinates: 44 degrees 30' 45.79" N, 73 degrees 16' 12.43" W -- check it out on Google Earth), which we will believe when we see.

And that third song of the Phillis Levin set progresses. I stole from myself, which is okay -- because now I have more evidence that in etudes I sometimes think up things that end up in other pieces. In this case, it's from the echo etude, as the poem is about overlapping senses of time, and talks about echoes. So there.

This week's pictures include two more views of the Subaru (can you see the bike rack?), two views of Sunny trolling for vermin, two views (south and north) of the Main Street of St. Albans, the church in which I was baptized, and the fountain in the park in the center of town. Bye.

AUGUST 31. Breakfast today was rice link sausages, orange juice, and coffee. Dinner last night was barbecue at Brandeis and later some salad at home. Lunch was some bread and hot sauce. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES THIS LAST FIVE WEEKS 47.5 and 95.9. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS Peter Gabriel's "Big" LARGE EXPENSES THIS LAST FIVE WEEKS include a canoe with oars and life preservers, delivery included, ca. $675 POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: During my seventh grade year, we had moved into a new elementary school, serving grades 1-8 -- instead of 3 local schools doing grades 1-4, a school doing grades 5-6 and one doing grades 7-8; one parent's night thing was an athletics/gymnastics thing and I got selected to show trampoline jumps, etc. -- there was the big trampoline and the little one, and I was on the little one, and I was supposed to show the simple maneuvers. But my ego got in the way when the PE instructor marveled into the PA about the flips etc. that the guy on the big trampoline was doing. Not to be showed up this way, I also did flips and the more complicated things. Because I couldn't let everyone think that the rudiments was all I could do. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: Bimple. THINGS I HAVE GROWN WEARY OF no real piano available, no yard, buttmunching bicycle seat. RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS Pickles in hot sauce, tropical sugar free popsicles, snacky chicken, grilled marinated salmon breasts. DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK the many different ways of pretty sunsets. THIS WEEK'S NUMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 10: 2. REVISIONS TO THIS SITE: This page, Home, Performances, Lexicon, added page to Our House. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 1. DENTIST VISITS SINCE SEPTEMBER: 15. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: They were very cute in Vermont on the parallel chaise lounges, and they spent much time in the screen windows -- sometimes jumping up 5 feet to sit in them. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST WEEK: 4. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE: I have two scars on my right leg, and a few burn marks (or "sear" marks, if you like that kind of terminology) on my hands from the barbecue that will become places that don't sunburn. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: When I twitch my nose, that "Bewitched" marimba thing actually happens. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 10,690. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE THIS WEEK: $2.86 at at a Mobil station in Burlington, $2.64 at Cumberland Farms in Maynard. OTHER INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE a cake shaped like Betty Boop, a mother for James Brown that you gotta have, one or two of the bytes on the latest Prince CD, a stick of cocoa butter we found in the grass that was really gross and stuff.

Five weeks since the last update, and boy are my arms tired. Not only is freedom no longer within my grasp, or even within my purview (which is when you see a very happy cat), but school has started, I am doing an overload, and I have another job besides. And all of this will be splained in good time (possibly compound time, but I can't promise anything).

The compressed version; Beff and I have been to our August retreat (co-owned by Beff and her siblings) in Burlington, Vermont, on Lake Champlain, each of us had a substantial trip in the middle of it -- Beff to Bangor for a rehearsal, me to Maynard and the MacDowell Colony for Landlines, the Anna Schuleit special to mark the centennial of MacDowell -- and Beff has been to Bangor since our return (two days ago) and is on her way back to Maynard as I type, and I did a full day at what some people who use informality informally like to call The 'Deis. I also spent 58 minutes this morning in the New England Conservatory neighborhood, but ahead of myself am I getting.

So we plan on being at this place in Vermont just about every August. That timing coincides with Beff's yearly summer gig at the Vermont Youth Orchestra camp nearby, which gives me full days of ... well, as it turned out, of nothing. But nothing was what I wanted and needed. Like wasabi. The place is summer only (actually April to October -- the water is turned off in the colder months), and we just do August, has five beds, a bunch of rooms, basic cable and wi-fi, and lots and lots of screens. And therefore lots of air, and lots of light. On most of our days, we took a ride on one of four bicycles stored at the place, and the one I got was called (by me) The Buttmuncher -- Beff's sister Ann's high school bike. Very close to the place is a bike path built on an old railway bed (okay, let's trot out the real terminology: a rail trail) from a railway built in 1900 and closed in 1963. It goes either south to downtown Burlington or north to the Lake Champlain islands, the latter by way of a long causeway perhaps 15 feet wide and 4 miles long. 'Ceptin' there's a "cut" in the causeway where a turnstile bridge used to be, so you can't make it all the way to the islands, except by a teensy weensy ferry -- which travels 100 feet, and only operates on weekends in August. Below you can see the cut, or my name isn't Raffi Turmostabile. Actually, I meant AND my name isn't Raffi Turmostabile.

So for those many weeks the day consisted of going out to get the paper and the food for the day, using the internet, relaxing, eating, occasionally swimming, doing a bike ride when possible, or doing a walk when possible, having dinner, and spending the dark hours on the massively parallel chaise lounges -- and later, many hours watching "Ugly Betty" episodes (later, 30 Rock) streaming on Beff's computer. I wrote only 15 bars of music my whole time there -- as if I were still a graduate student or something -- and the diversions and variations from our routines happened only on our trips and when we had visitors. Now a little bit about all of those.

The Ka-Ching Twins -- Carolyn and Mike -- came up for a three-day festa while Beff was teaching, so there was a bit of biking for all of us (we went to the causeway, and then Carolyn went on alone to the cut) as well as trips both to downtown Burlington (Brew Pub, place to buy socks, etc.) and St. Albans (Warners Snack Bar), and a bit of water recreation (known locally as "swimming"). Carolyn found out what we already knew -- that the water is shallow and you can go out a long way before it even comes up to your belly button (or to someone else's, not seen in this photo) -- since you see New York from the beach, the "I'm going to walk to New York" joke got told a lot. And Carolyn bought goggles for swimming, and we made sure she got the cheapest ones in the state of Vermont (Rite-Aid, seasonal items, nearby).

Gusty Thomas drove many hours (maybe 5) to have dinner with us and see a sunset before she had to get back to guests at her and Bernard's place in Massachusetts the next morning, and we took her to Tilley's Cafe in Burlington --notable because of the free ("free") valet parking, and because of the fish flown in daily from Hawaii. Alas, the owner visited our table twice to chat -- and try to get us to come back again -- but we continued to eat nonetheless. And I had sesame-encrusted salmon.

And later Ken and Hillary made the big drive for a three-day thing, and we biked a lot -- in every direction (well, two of them) on the rail trail, making it to the cut and to the waterfront, and also to Warner's Snack Bar in St.Albans, as well as to Lunig's restaurant in downtown Burlington. Things did not suck. And we went wading and swimming as well, despite the cloudy weather on that date. And Hillary, who had an old boy's bike, kept complaining about her butt -- while Ken instructed me not to look at his. Ken was just back from Rome, so he brought Italian poetry fridge magnets, as well as a CD (actually a CD-RW -- what a dirty trick -- car CD player spit it out) of some recent big pieces. And stuff. So see the light blue links to the right for our big biking day, at the Winooski River bridge.

After all our guests were gone, Beff had the kuh-rayzee idea that "Canoe Importers" in South Burlington might be having end-of-season sales, and we went there to look. Heck, durned if she weren't right. We got a great price on a new Old Town canoe and oars and life preservers. And we took a few very short trips in the cove by the camp, since on most days the lake water tended to be a bit active for canoe rides -- but then on our next-to-last day, things got really calm, and we took a medium-length ride followed by a long ride -- almost all the way to the mouth of the Winooski River, where a bridge has been built for the rail trail. Doing a mile and a quarter on a lake is way different from doing it, say, on the Assabet -- since on the Assabet there's always the next bend that you're shooting for, maybe 5 minutes of rowing. Whereas on the lake, the next landmark in front of you is an hour and a half of rowing away .... And we think that at no point in our big ride did the water get more than five feet deep.

As to our trips out -- well, Beff had a six hour drive to Bangor for a rehearsal and to take care of mowing lawn, bills, etc. And I had my trip on our anniversary to do my part in Landlines at the MacDowell Colony. Which was fun. Especially since there were all kinds of dress rehearsals put into place that I refused to go to and I showed up just about 5 hours before the show (after spending the morning mowing the lawns in Maynard), for the final rehearsal. Karissa did a great job, and our pre-piece patter was cut for length (all of the ten acts began with a ringing phone sound and a mentee running on stage to "answer" one of the giant phone props hanging over the back of the stage). Between the rehearsal and the show I hung out a little in Colony Hall, saw the current Fellows there that I know already -- especially Susan and Sebastian, but also Tarik and Matt and so on. And then I got to hang a very little with Alvin Singleton and Tania Leon at the actual show, and I had a brief conversation with Nicky Dawidoff (a Pulitzer finalist -- in biography, which actually means something), all of whom were there for Landlines. After the whole show, it was dark, and there was a big anniversary cake at the amphitheater, and I didn't get the memo to bring a flashlight. Also, there were a hundred phones set up all over the Colony with former Fellows calling in and people mulling around having the opportunity to talk to these people -- and anyway, I stumbled in the dark to the amphitheater, saw the cake(s), and skedaddled. And then drove the next day back to Vermont.

AND MEANWHILE, while we were gone, the kitchen window got replaced, the bulkhead got painted, a ramp for the shed started to get built, the faux railings on the front porch roof got taken off, the loose tiles in the bathroom got fixed, and we all just had a wonderful time. So things look a little different right now and we are the lucky beneficiaries.

And most of our dinners were grilled, by me, on a barbecue and were either snacky chicken or a marinated salmon from the local Hannaford's. Toward the end of Beff's VYO gig, we invited most of the (adult) staff of the camp over for a big, big party, and had tons of food waiting, and it was a very festive affair indeed; most of the group hung out on the beach to see yet another ... sigh ... gorgeous sunset. And Beff got to relax and hang, mostly, while I kept going outside to the grill with yet another bunch of food. When we ran out, we started cooking Flatbread pizzas that we had gotten for ourselves for future lunches, but hey, they're worth it.

I also uploaded a few more etude movies to YouTube and redesigned my "channel" -- which just means I made it blue. I could tell that the etudes were starting to be considered important when no fewer than three of them got spammed -- on YouTube there are a few Sexy Coed webpages that add comments to the, um, more important movies, enjoining the reader to go there instead of here on YouTube, where there's not much nudity.

Wednesday (two days ago) we both drove back to Maynard -- I left at 6:30 am (nella punta!) with the cats, and Beff was a little later. The cats became reacclimated to Maynard in about a minute (they were already trolling for treats), and the unpacking was no big deal -- nor was lawnmowing, for you see, August has been such a dry month that much of the lawns got brown, and therefore not mow-worthy. Still, I had to mow them in heat and humidity (and a black t-shirt), so there. And Beff had to do a lot of cleaning because of the dust and stuff left behind by the construction and other work on the inside of the house. So we were swamped -- enough so that we went to the Quarterdeck for dinner, and what it is, too. Beff got appetizers, I got a clam roll and shared the appetizers. As if you cared.

Then WORK started again. I had to give a diagnostic test in Theory 1, we opened up a 2nd section that I'll teach this semester as an overload, I had lunch with Big Mike (ka-ching!), there was a faculty meeting meaning I had to blow off the Faculty Senate meeting, and then a music department barbecue right afterwards wher we met the new people, and so forth and so on. When I got back I started doing the busy work to produce lovely scores of my SEX SONGS for the January premiere in Philly -- generating PDFs from the Finale files, concatenating the PDFs, and printing double-sided. Which turned out to be real fun for the 11x17 score. This morning I was somehow obsessed with getting a TON of work done today, and get this -- I got up at 4 am and bound the parts and scores, then put together some packages, did a large-violin-line small-piano-staff score for Dan Stepner for "Pied-a-Terre", did some grading of tests, and next thing I knew it was 8:00 and I went to the post office and filled up the Corolla at Cumberland Farms, and went on to Great Cuts in Acton and got a haircut, and drove into Boston to establish myself, yet again, at New England Conservatory.

Which is my alma mater. But whenever Lee Hyla leaves -- temporarily in 04-05 and forever starting this year -- I seem to get in on some of the private teaching action. Not a ton of money, so it feels like a service for (and practically a donation to) my alma mater.

Before I go further, I remind you that I got a haircut this morning.

So I got an on-street meter parking space near NEC on Gainsborough Street, and the idea was to go and get my ID and possibly the key(s) to where I would be teaching this year. I am taking 3 students, Mondays 1-4. Again, for not much money. So I got the ID by flashing my letter of hire and my old (04-05) ID, and went in to the Faculty Mailbox room -- where I had a mailbox! I thought that was so efficient, having an actual mailbox even before I filed a W-9, etc. And then I saw that there was a huge pile of stuff IN my mailbox -- stuff going back to May, 2005. Whoa. When I was in HR doing the forms, I sorted through the mail and encountered an Interdepartmental type envelope with my name handwritten -- it was my reimbursement for parking from when I taught there before! $249! And the check was dated May 12, 2005. Whoa, so I had to go through payroll and another office to start the process of exchanging that check for one that would actually clear -- and then I finally got out of there. I ran into interim chair Mike Gandolfi on the stairs while there, and we talked over what I'd do, when I'd come in, etc. And of course I have no key yet.

So besides Beff getting back later this evening, much doing here. Tomorrow we put chaise lounges together. They will go into the gazebo that is supposed to arrive a week from today. And then we will be the weirdest people on the block. Actually, we will continue to hold that distinction, only moreso.

And what else? Beff goes back to Bangor on Sunday on this long holiday weekend because her faculty group has an early concert AND it includes a piece by me. And, later on in September I am off to NYC for a perf of LOCKING HORNS -- my first opportunity to stay with Hayes and Susan in their new Bronxville digs. Perhaps I'll hear a little bit of Marilyn playing the concerto, who knows? And I have a dentist appointment, for a cleaning, on Tuesday. Everything else is just a light.

About this week's pics ---- Carolyn with her cheap goggles, me and Mike mugging at the Vermont Brewpub (well, ME mugging), Ken and Beff and Hillary taking a break on the rail trail causeway, Ken looking at the "cut" on the causeway, three various sunsets, the new canoe on the beach, Beff looking (from the canoe) at the rail trail bridge over the Winooski River, the cats watching squirrels and chipmunks, a possible advertising campaign for my new wind ensemble piece (at least it will attract the brass section), and a view towards the Adirondacks from the waterfront in Burlington.

So BOTH my jobs have now started up, and I am pleased, or sorry, to report three long days per week ahead of me, at least for the next term. Theory I is so friggin big this year that I volunteered to teach a second section an hour later (overload!), and I have a composition studio of six, as well as a nice senior honors project to advise. And on Monday afternoon -- this was the first one of this sequence -- I drive to NEC and teach three students left high and dry by Lee Hyla's departure for Chicago (and, not inconsequentially, by NEC's failure to make a replacement hire last year). So ...

Beff was, of course, in Maine for most of the week teaching and doing rehearsals for her Cadenzato concert, coming up in less than two weeks, and with a reception she had to go to, she was delayed in her return Maynardwards until Saturday morning. And moi, I started referring to moi-meme in French, wrote some actual music on Labor Day and the day which follows Labor Day, before I started my Brandeis teaching in earnest. In dead earnest. Poor Earnest.

So on Wednesday it was up to me to do the first "listening" soft lecture in theory 1, both sections, which was preceded and followed by composition lessons. After that, I packed up, scheduled my so-called studio, and called it a day. On Thursday (the very next day!) I began with my review in Theory 1 -- which includes my now-famous drinking straw oboe trick -- and got a minor declared, and met with one student, and then failed to meet with the student that followed -- left music at home. So Rick B walked by just as that non-lesson was starting and stopping, and I suggested we meet Davywards to talk about his summer fun and his dissertation piece. So we both drove Maynardwards, parked Maynardwards, and decided to meet at the Quarterdeck for a little beer. Since the Quarterdeck is next to Door & Window, we first popped in, gave bones to the Door and Window Doggie, and then saw the Quarterdeck was closed. So off the the Sit 'n' Bull Pub we went. Bored yet? But he gave a fascinating story of writing for European singers, meeting singers and conductors, etc., and now here he is. Ready to start finishing his dissertation, and opening up a file for professional letters. His letter was one of the ones I wrote this week. After our beer, he went home. And so did I.

The BIG EVENT of the week had been scheduled about eight weeks ago -- Beff having decided that she could sure use an enclosed outdoor work space for the summer months when she is at home, and we like the shed that Reeds Ferry delivered, and she ordered us an Amish-made (or so they claim) gazebo for delivery last Friday. Since Beff couldn't make it (rehearsals, meetings, receptions) it was up to me to direct the gazebo guys on where to put it, etc. So at 7:10 in the morning I got a phone call from them saying "we're in front of your house". I said "no you're not. You're in Sudbury". For you see, many times Dominos pizza delivery has stopped to deliver to our house when we haven't ordered anything -- turns out there's a 47 Great Road just 2 miles down the road, and the GPS unit the gazebo guys have directed them to the one in Sudbury. After we all had a jolly laugh over that, a truck with a huge trailer and the makings of TWO gazebos backed into the driveway, and the guys unloaded it.

I guessed where I thought the gazebo should go -- Beff wanted it close enough to receive the wi-fi, so I planted it square in the middle of where the Adirondack chairs (used to) go. While they were banging and whirring (they had their own power source), I was writing some music. At one point a workman asked if I had C clamps, and I resisted the urge to say I only had C sharp clamps, because that would have been a very nerdly joke that would have elicited no reaction, especially if I also added that we only to make major triads with our A clamps and E clamps. So the gazebo guys had to take that entire truck convoy to a lumberyard for the clamps. And they still made it back and finished in about two and a quarter hours. Where I chose to put the gazebo is not quite level, so they used cement blocks to level it. And I wheeled in the chaise lounges that Beff and I had so painstakingly assembled the previous weekend -- and then brought in the cushions the Beff got for them -- and brought in a little table we hadn't been using, and ... we had gazebo. Gazebo Guys left, off to their next gig with the makings for only one gazebo.

Of course Friday was one of the hottest days of the year. Both Friday and Saturday reached the mid-90s, so being somewhere, even a gazebo, away from air conditioning was not to be cherished. So when it got dark I tested its worthiness, and slept on one of the chaise lounges until about 11, until I felt too sticky and tacky to stay outside. During the day, the cats were first scared and then awed of it, and both of them climbed under -- paying no mind to the fox urine mix I had sprinkled around it to keep skunks and woodchucks away.

And on Saturday, Beff got in around 11:30 and immediately tested the gazebo. It was still hot. Big Mike came in the afternoon to help us inaugurate it, and we got pizza from Domino's for the celebration, and went in and out -- because it was HOT outside. By 5 there was a Severe Thunderstorm Warning (not Watch) listed, and it missed us by probably about 5 miles to the north -- but Beff and I steadfastly lounged in the gazebo to experience rain with it, and ... almost nothing. Though there was plenty of distant lightning, and ONE lightning strike very close where there seemed to be no delay between the flash and the sound. Impressive.

Sunday got much cooler and very cloudy, and we took a nice bike ride before the yearly monster.com road race, after which we watched some of the runners going by our house. For the halibut, I took a blanket out and took a brief nap in the gazebo while Beff did some reading for her Stravinsky seminar. Then there were lovely chicken kebabs to make, and Beff left for Maine around 6 pm. I, meanwhile, went to my e-mail program and literally every 15 minutes for about 2-1/2 hours a request for a Guggenheim reference came to my mailbox. Of course I said yes to all of them, and it makes me believe that deadline is pretty soon. So I was busy replying.

Ach, and after some mildly fitful sleep (two weird dreams, including one where I couldn't find a place to take a shower, and everywhere I went things were different and different people were in charge...) I got up, fed cats, went to work before the newspaper arrived, and did my first very full day of the term. To wit: 9-10 Rachel's Senior Honors project 10-11 Theory 1 Section 1 11-12 Theory 1 Section 2 12-12:30 drive into Boston 12:40 get my teaching room key 12:45 get a cheeseburger 1-4 teach three NEC comp students 4-4:51 drive back home. Just out of Brandeis on South Street, I went over what looked like a small gray bag, which turned out to be a big piece of cement probably dislodged from a sidewalk. It made an unexpectedly loud CLUMP sound on the bottom of my car, and luckily nothing seems to have gone awry or askew. Leaving the Prudential Center tunnel I had thought that the big smoke smell might be my car, but it turns out it wasn't. So there.

And this is a short week at Brandeis because Rosh Hashanah closes it down for Thursday and Friday. So my stranded Thursday student from last week becomes my end-of-day student on Wednesday. Keeping me busy without break or meal from 9 to 4. And I must mention that this TMJ thing persists, and it takes a bit of extra concentration to get through lessons with it.

Meanwhile, here I am back at home, and ready for a little more writing tomorrow, I would hope. Also on Thursday, I would hope. For the weekend -- nothing planned, 'ceptin' a week from Friday Beff is driving to NYC for an ACA Board meeting and I'm tagging along. Weekend after that is horn concerto at Juilliard, and I'm staying with Hayes 'n' Susan, and the MacDowell Centennial Picnic in Central Park is happening that weekend, woo hoo! Even Beff is, I believe, coming to the picnic. And -- this just remembered -- next Wednesday night the 19th, John Aylward does a recital at Brandeis with two of my toods. And of course Beff's group does my fl cl piano piece a week from Sunday, the day after Yom Kippur. Which we do NOT have off from Brandeis this year.

More exciting things to report later, but that's it for now. I really have to go to the bathroom. I didn't take many pictures this week EXCEPT ones to replace the outdated photos on the "Our House" page (the gazebo is now there, for instance), so all I've got is a picture of the Assabet dam showing signs of the August drought, and various views of the gazebo at various stages of completion. Bye.
-----------------
SEPTEMBER 25. Breakfast today was meatless sausages with nonfat cheese, orange juice, and coffee. Dinner last night was two Boca meatless Italian sausages in hot dog buns and salad. Lunch was the whopper with cheese meal at Burger King on Huntington Avenue near NEC. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 37.8 and 80.1. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS Chaka Khan's "Be-Bop Medley". LARGE EXPENSES THIS LAST TWO WEEKS other than mortgage and car payments are none. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: For a while in maybe fifth or sixth grade, I had a strange bird art project going on. I had all kinds of free colored cardboard that my father brought home from the paper mill, and I started doing bird pictures, thusly: I drew the birds freehand, from our bird books, then marked out areas on the drawing representing solid colors. I then cut the shapes out, traced them onto cardboard of that color, cut the shapes out, and reassembled them with glue into a bird art drawing thing. Who knows where they all are now? THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: Stindle. THINGS I HAVE GROWN WEARY OF TMJ, long teaching days. RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS celery and lettuce in hot sauce. DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK the Inwood neighborhood of New York. THIS WEEK'S NUMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 10: more than you know. REVISIONS TO THIS SITE: This page, Performances, Lexicon. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: Cammy's purring becomes louder as he expects breakfast and he nuzzles the catnip sock. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST WEEK: 8. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE: I have exactly one pair of red socks. Which I wore yesterday. To match my exactly one red t-shirt. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: When I raise my hand, stuff happens. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 10,754. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE THIS WEEK: $2.62 at Cumberland Farms in Maynard, $2.82 on Route 2 in Maine, $3.05 on the Merritt Parkway. OTHER INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE a piece of chalk just before you break it in half, the jingle bell that fell off the strap, a big can of whupass, the pile of slag left over from a sculpture.

The academic year continues on apace, and stuff happens. With the double overload I am teaching, personal time has been kept to a minimum. Teaching Music 101 with 35 students means the grading time is about double the in-class time -- moreso during the first weeks when the review stuff generates lots of homework. Last week I spent 6 hours (2x3) teaching Mus 101 and 11 hours grading the homework. Good thing I can do that in the gazebo, where at least there is a view of screens all around me. And the proportion of students needing extra help and students not seeming to get around to doing the homework on time is about the same as usual when I teach first year theory. Aw, geez, ya know, even the process of recording the grades for the homework handed in is time-consuming. Which is why it's a good thing I get in so early on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

So on Mondays after I finish my 11-12 class, I drive to the NEC neighborhood and park -- sometimes in the abutting garage, sometimes in the ice hockey rink when that garage is full, and get a little lunch somewheres on Huntington Avenue in the 20 or 25 minutes available to me. Then I have two sophomores and a second year graduate student at NEC, and they are very much different from each other, and pretty different from Brandeis students. The gear shifting I have to do in those three hours is invigorating. And I talk a lot, and my jaw gets a bit stiff, you know, with the TMJ thing. And then I just barely beat rush hour, normally getting home by about 4:50. Yesterday I got back a little earlier, and of course there was a pile of e-mail to deal with and recommendations to write. Hoo boy. Not to mention a pile of grading ahead of me for today before I go out and do anything remotely fun. Or productive.

I also do six private lessons and a senior thesis at Brandeis, and they are fun, too. Well, not fun so much as somewhat invigorating. And the Brandeis schedule with the Jewish holidays has been kooky at best, and only getting kookier. Last week was the first "normal" week of teaching, the likes of which won't happen again until mid-October. THIS week we have Thursday off, as we do next week, and to make up for it, Wednesday is a Thursday schedule. The week after next, Tuesday becomes Thursday, which gives me four straight teaching days, and what it is, too. On top of all this, I have meetings double-booked tomorrow -- music department and Faculty Senate, and I can only do a half hour of the music department meeting. After which I'll see Rick B here, in the gazebo and at the piano, for a dissertation consultation followed by pizza. Yes, the academic life is exactly the cushy life they say it is. Of course, I left out the fact that I didn't lift a finger for Brandeis from May 4 to August 27.

Ooh, ooh, ooh -- and since the first of the month, not a day has passed when I haven't been hit up for a letter of recommendation. Today already is no exception. I wrote the letter already, since it could be done online. So there.

Outside of the job stuff, there was a wild and wacky weekend, and it was this most recent one. On Friday Beff had to go to an ACA Board meeting, being as she's on the ACA Board. I went along for reasons to be disclosed later, and we took the Subaru. We got back in the dark, of course, and utilized the gazebo in order to contextualize exactly two beers each. On Saturday, after I installed our new mailbox next to the front door and took down the old one, we had lunch (tomato sandwiches) and then both drove, in separate cars, to Bangor. We arrived within a minute of each other despite my big head start (or my big head), owing to my stopping at Shaw's in Bangor for breakfast food materials. I got to experience the cool wi-fi there on the network we called "Beffle", and then we went to Cristor's in downtown Bangor for dinner, because, you see, it was Beff's birfday. Liz and Denny joined us, and we had a good meal and beer, except for me, who happened to choose an entree that cook undercooked (ribs) and a replacement entree that cook also undercooked (salmon), but in their favor, the vegetables were good, if cold.

And then Sunday I spent the morning and part of the afternoon grading theory homework (wouldn't you?) while Beff went to the U of Maine to do a rehearsal for her faculty ensemble concert (they are called Cadenzato, because all the good names seem to have been taken). At the last minute she reminded me that the concert was at 2 and not at 3, which was a good idea. I was there because the group was doing the American premiere of my RULE OF THREE for flute, clarinet and piano that had been commissioned in 2004 (at the beginning of my soon no longer to be legendary Chairmanship) by Kettle's Yard at Oxford U in England, and it was my hope that they would take the tempi I wrote, not just the convenient ones. It turned out to be a rather good performance, and so far I have no opinion of the piece, which left my memory so long ago -- but I will get to know it from the Edirol recording that Beff made (how come the U of Maine doesn't record their official concerts on their own?) and form one. The last movement, which "swings" Raymond Scott-style occasionally swung, occasionally didn't. Being that it was a strange hybrid of swingy cartoon music and dissonant mod music, what can you do? What can you do? What can you do? But I am repeating myself.

After the concert, of course I had to do the four hour drive back, and it was just my luck to pass the Bangor Mall area after there had been a big accident just before a construction area where a lane was blocked off anyway -- but the accident blocked off a different lane ... Nonetheless, I made it back in the late dusk, fed the cats (who were nonplussed but not at all minussed), and went straight to bed. For you see, I noticed during the drive to Maine that I had come down with a cold and was doing a bit of sneezing in my car on the way up. I was reliant on Alka Seltzer Plus and lozenges for a while, and still am, and that moment about 45 minutes after you take the Alka Seltzer Plus where you suddenly feel spacy and like a renter in your own head -- well, I could do with less of that. Funny, during my teaching day yesterday, I felt pretty good after about halfway through the first theory class I taught, and no TMJ problems -- but the TMJ was back for my NEC teaching, and I hate it when that happens.

Much earlier in this reporting period was the Rosh Hashanah week wherein we had yet another Thursday off, and there was bike riding to be done, and a network to set up so that the wi-fi could reach to the gazebo. Plus, I used my bike riding to go to West Concord to get the various weird pickles that I like and carry them back in a backpack, so all of that was going on. And the Airport Express we got had been delivered to Brandeis, so I went in to get it, and the department was a humming beehive of activity -- on a day of no classes! Coming back that Friday with the Airport Express, I also stopped at BJs for cat litter, tomatoes, pickles, other big stuff, and started reading the instructions to set up the AirPort Express in the "extend an existing Airport network" mode. Which was ... as is usual for setting up or configuring home networks ... NO FUN. The printed manual referred to some nonexistent things in the software, and I tried to configure and reconfigure from various computers, and at one point seriously hobbled the network and changed some sort of password so that all the hardware had to be cold-reconfigured and we had to start from scratch. After finally getting a computer that would recognize the Airport Express so I could configure it, the "configure" buttons were grayed out. And I hate it when that happens. So in the true American entrepreneurial spirit, I just kept running configure programs until one of them let me do what I wanted to do, and .. voila, I got the "configure" button, but was stopped by not knowing the hardware password to the Airport Extreme. Sigh. So I had to change that on ANOTHER computer, go try software until it worked, and .... finally it did.

So now we have the Airport Express in the downstairs bath. When it is plugged into the wall socket, it "extends" the network, but not far enough so that our laptops in the gazebo can find it. Turns out if we put an extension cord into the socket and place the Airport Express on the windowsill, then there is plenty of wi-fi signal in the gazebo. So we are ... set. At least for when the weather is nice enough to be using the gazebo anyway. We just have to remember to take the hardware out of the windowsill when the weather gets wet, etc.

Speaking of said gazebo, we slept in it two nights -- once until 2 and once until 3. It gets strangely quiet out there at night, especially if you are accustomed to the sound of traffic on Great Road, and I noticed the distant St. Bridgets church bells chiming on every hour, which I don't normally hear inside. Nice. But the second night we slept in the gazebo, the buttons on my cushion started digging into me, so I went in, Beff followed.

Now there's hot weather forecast for today and tomorrow, and I used that last night to sleep in the gazebo again, but I got tired (so to speak) after 45 minutes, and came back inside. So there, smarty pants.

And now .. on to my shower, and theory homework grading. After which it'll be nice and warm and time for a bike ride. This week -- no school Thursday. Thursday afternoon I drive to Bronxville to stay with Hayes and Susan, as my horn concerto is done at Juilliard Saturday night. Friday is a dress rehearsal, Saturday is a MacDowell Fellows picnic in Central Park, and I also will meet with Marilyn to hear her part in my piano concerto that afternoon. Beff is coming just for the day on Saturday, so she won't see Hayes and Susan's new place, nor hear my piece. Which is fine -- as she has to drive to Maine, again, on Sunday.

And that's what's up now. Not many pictures takent the last two weeks, so enjoy just the gazebo shots included below. Except for the one of Cammy kind of not acknowledging the gazebo, from afar.

A mere 12 days since the last update, and boy are my arms tired. The academic year has continued to do what academic years do (such as seem to go on forever as well as provide a steady paycheck), and the two sections of Theory 1 have moved past the introduction/re-teaching of tonal materials into (drum roll) species counterpoint. This means I have resurrected all the old correcting marks I haven't used for at least two years (such as OOR (out of range), tt (tritone), no news (starting on a unison and moving right to an octave, or vice versa), as well as various arrows and parallelism markings. Think 34 students times 8 1st species exercises per class, and we are talking lots of red ink. Teaching at NEC continues Monday afternoons, and composition teaching features, for the first time in my life, some referring to music of John Adams for models.

Outside of all that, there has been the one long trip to New York spanning Sukkot evening until the following Sunday morning, encompassing much, much activity. So lemme splain. It used to be that on every other trip to NYC I would sponge off of Hayes and Susan, who had a small apartment in Chelsea, on West 21st Street. Not to say it was REALLY small, but it used to be Susan's apartment by herself, and even the mice are hunchbacked, and when you put the key in the door, you have a serious chance of breaking the window. Rim shot. Rim shot. So last spring (May, to be more precise), they purchased a co-op in Bronxville, about a half-hour by train north of Grand Central. This was my first time seeing (and staying in) the place, so it was an adventure, and hey -- there was free parking on the street right in front of their building. As to the co-op, it is roughly 3 to 4 times the size of the Chelsea place, and Hayes has a regular parking space in a lot. Or a lot of parking in a space.

The co-op is a mere 12-minute walk to downtown Bronxville, which reminds me in tone and tenor of one of the villages of Concord (Massachusetts), where there is a train station, on the Harlem River line. Round trips into the City are $11 from there, and, as I mentioned earlier, the trip is about a half hour. So there is great flexibility when you have stuff to do in the city and I did, Oscar, I did. So on Sukkot eve, I took Hayes's driving directions, which were precise and perfect (composers tend to give precise and perfect directions), involving the Sprain Parkway and then the Bronx River Parkway off of the Cross County Parkway, and whoops, before I knew it, there I was. I got there before either Hayes or Susan got home from work, and just barely before dark, so I walked around to see the vastness of Bronxville -- a bedroom community if ever there was one -- not to mention the bridges over Central Avenue, the Sprain Parkway, the Bronx River Parkway, and all sorts of other things going north-south (as everyone is either escaping New York, or rushing into it).

I had come to New York because Joel Sachs was conducting my horn concerto LOCKING HORNS at Juilliard Saturday night, and the next to last rehearsal was slated for Friday night from 9 to 10:30. All kind of other appointments were scheduled around that, and felicitously enough, the MacDowell Colony 100th Anniversary reunion picnic in Central Park was happening Saturday afternoon. Woo hoo, and wa ha. Also, wee hee, and way hay, but slightly less so. Hayes is on the MacDowell Fellows Committee Something, so he was going to be working the picnic, so I knew there would be a ride into NYC available, should I want one. Plus, Beff decided to pop into town for the picnic, but not the horn concerto. So.

So Sukkot Evening, I ran into Susan coming home from the train as I was going toward it. We entered the co-op, I marveled at its size and newly outfitted outfitness, and we served ourselves more beer than was feasible. When Hayes got home from his faculty senate meeting at the Manhattan School, Susan put together a little pizza from readily available ingredients -- after calling Hayes on his cell to pick up mozzarella on his way home (she expressed his tone as "grumbling", and then giggled). The next day Susan got up early for work (5:10 am, as I recall), and Hayes and I walked to the train station for HIS train at around 9:30, so I would know where the station was. Then I walked back and experience the great joy of grading theory homework. I then took an 11:30 (or so) train to meet Jay Eckardt in the Columbia neighorhood for lunch. And we had a Thai lunch with plenty of Singha to go around, I went back to Bronxville, graded more homework, came back, and met Hayes near Lincoln Center for dinner. At which time a sudden unexpected half-hour cloudburst happened. So we walked up Columbus Avenue until we found the Something Grill, where we ate, and while we were standing under an awning I thought I saw someone who looked just like Dalit Warshaw walk by. I thought of calling out to her, but what if I was wrong? So we ate and paid way too much (it was my treat), and then Hayes went his merry way, after dropping me off at Juilliard for my rehearsal.

Juilliard is under construction and reconstruction, so it was pretty hard to find out where to go in -- in fact, following the arrow that pointed toward "Juilliard" brought me to a dead end. I kind of ended up using a back entry for students only, but persuaded the guards to let me in, especially when the bass player in my piece said to me, "I'm playing your piece". And so I went to rehearsal room 309, sat down with a bunch of strange people, and watched instrumentalists warming up. Joel Sachs found me (we hadn't encountered each other since Dartington, summer 1994), situated me near the front, kept telling me the balances would not be like those in the hall, and ran some things. Meanwhile, there were about 15 students to the side seated in folding chairs, who were introduced to me as "the entire first year graduate drama class", who apparently were there because someone in drama decided drama students could learn about cooperation and working together by watching a music rehearsal. Woo hoo, paper pushers to the rescue! After about 65 minutes of rehearsing and me making comments (mostly positive ones -- I know how to butter up conservatory students), questions were taken from the drama class, which fit into two categories: do you carry this stuff around in your head? and who listens to this stuff? After the rehearsal ended, back to Grand Central and to Bronxville. One piece of information, by the way, had been imparted to me for the first time EVER at this rehearsal -- that my dress rehearsal, in the hall, was the next morning at 10:30. Wow.

So on Saturday it was into the City with Hayes, in his Honda, who left me off close to Lincoln Center. I went to my rehearsal, and made my comments -- Tianxia Wu, the solo hornist, was sounding fabulous, and the balances came together nicely, so I whistled my way out of the hall. Then subwayed up to the 103rd and Broadway area, got subs at Subway for me 'n' Beff 'n' Hayes, found where the MacDowell picnic was (the "great lawn" or something like that, on the "great hill" near 103rd and Central Park West), sat on a park bench for a while while the people I recognized from Peterborough were dealing with the "swag", and greeted Beff when she arrived. She'd parked on 103rd, slightly legally, and was okay. We situated ourselves on a MacDowell swag blanket, and ate our subs, along with Hayes, who was manning the cupcake number. After a while we spread out a bit and found some other people we knew -- and most of the people we saw we knew either from Yaddo or the VCCA (exceptions: Anna Weesner and Pat Oleszko), including a big pack of Yaddo '07 people congregating around Sebastian Currier. After the various awkward "I know you, but from when....?" moments, there was a bit of filming with the flip video, posing for the big picture, and then escaping with our swag, which now included a red frisbee.

From there we walked around Central Park West, Columbus Ave, and the low West 100s, until it was about time for me to get on a B train to meet Marilyn Nonken at NYU, where we were to meet to go over her part in my piano concerto. Beff drove off, I found a station on 96th and CPW, was informed by the conductor that THE B DOES NOT RUN ON WEEKENDS EVERYBODY GET ON THIS TRAIN AND LISTEN TO THE FOLLOWING FIFTEEN POSSIBILITIES FOR HOW TO GET WHERE YOU WANT TO GO, and I got off just a few blocks from where I'd intended to get off. Meanwhile, my feet were kind of hurting from all the walking, and I walked with a stance that was designed to stave off blisters, but that probably pegged me as a bag person.

And there, in Marilyn's office, was my toy piano, Marilyn's piano, a desk, a harpsichord, and lots of other stuff. We spent about an hour, maybe, going through the really, really difficult stuff she has to play (I can't believe she learned it in a week), but she apologized for being rusty because she'd been doing jury duty for the previous two weeks. Yeah, she was rusty, and we didn't agree on how she was playing the scherzo movement, but everything else sounded fantastic. So much so that I took out the Flip and we filmed some of the cooler parts -- the toy piano stuff before the cadenza, the cadenza itself, the end of the first movement, and the first fast scales stuff from the finale. See "Marilyn's concerto excerpts" for the YouTube placement of those videos. Also see the "Scherzo stuff" link over there for our foreshortened filming of that music.

So after all that exciting stuff, both of us went to the Bowery Diner, or something like that, around the corner, for dinner, wine and beer (guess which I had?), and then I cabbed it to Lincoln Center (33% tip), went into the hall, and enjoyed myself. It was a vigorous mix of music, I got to sit with Hayes, it was well performed, and I even encountered Julie-Miguel in the audience for the first time in ten years (she had been an ethnomusicologist at Columbia when I was on the faculty there, and she even visited us when we lived in Maryland). Dalit was there, too, but I did not see her. After the concert, Hayes drove us home, and boy did we enjoy ourselves.

The next morning I up and drove back to Maynard as soon as I woke up, arriving home by 9:30, ready to make breakfast. The rest of the day was spent finishing my grading and watching and converting and uploading the videos I had made in New York.

Meanwhile, THIS last week was a week with a missing Thursday due to Shmini Atzeret, so after the usual bunch of teaching I got to get to work on a piano variation. I will splain, but first I will mention that Geoffy was in the guest room for a fair part of the week, so it was fun fun fun all around. So Kai Schumacher, a pianist in Amsterdam, is asking composers to write variations on a theme of his own, I said yes, and I started working on my variation on Tuesday. I finished it late Friday (N.B. all of Thursday morning until lunch time was spent grading counterpoint homework, dontcha know), and it was long and complex enough for me to decide it was an etude -- Geoffy played through it and convinced me to call it one, so now I have an ETUDE 81 (see yellow links on the left) that is also a variation on Kai's theme. The variation, such as it is, is far longer than the theme.

And then of course it got freakishly warm yet again, and slept TWICE in the gazebo, neither time later than midnight. Once with Beff. So there.

Yesterday was Maynard Fest followed by Octoberfest in Maynard, and John Aylward scheduled a brief visit, so we did that. After enjoying the gazebo in the freakishly warm weather, we walked downtown, saw Maynardfest starting and Octoberfest not yet beginning, popped into Door & Window where people were having beer in the conference room (yecch), and decided to settle in at the Sit n Bull Pub nearby, where Pete Best (yes, once of the Beatles) was to be playing that night. We got a highly flustered new waitress, ordered beer and appetizers, left a good tip, and walked back home. John left a couple of DVDs of his group's concerts in Virginia and New York and asked for me to extract the video from some of them -- and that included his performances of Sliding Scales and Chorale Fantasy. Those two are up on YouTube already. See the links up there. (Meanwhile, also see the movie of Cammy playing with the mechanical bird that Gardner McFall gave me at Yaddo -- she also got me a pony) The others have now been extracted and are waiting to be given to him. What I say.

As I type this (Sunday afternoon) I not only hear the peals of childish laughter coming from the neighbors, I am alone in the house with one toilet seat and two toilets. Beff and her sister -- who is visiting for a day on her way to Providence -- have gone to Lowes, among other places, to get a new toilet seat for the upstairs bathroom. And meanwhile, the plan is for swordfish puttanesca for dinner, because it is what I have decided the plan for dinner is.

This coming week is a weird one at Brandeis, as we pay for the Thursdays we had off -- four straight days of theory etc. and the Open House, which puts me in lots of places while wearing a tie. I ordered another toy piano because of various things that might or might not happen with bringing my toy piano from Marilyn's office up for the concerto, and besides, Marilyn wants to buy that toy piano now. Perhaps she has big plans for more concerto performances. And then, and then ... everything else is just a light.

There was no camera-lugging this last twelve days, so the pictures below are screenshots from the videos I took at the MacDowell Reunion picnic. People in evidence include Hayes (wearing a kerchief and looking away), Pat Oleszko and Anna Weesner, Dalit Warshaw and Damon, Blake Tewksbury, and the crowd being instructed by Cheryl Young (very distant and strangely isolated) about the group photo.

I know what you're thinkin'. Okay, you called my bluff. I don't know what you're thinkin'. But I can guess. You're thinkin' I've been doing just so much these last twelve days since the last update that this thing will be crammed with new information. Well, wrong you are, pieface. Last week was the long-dreaded FOUR STRAIGHT TEACHING DAY week, with eight theory classes to teach and the requisite huge pile of homework coming in as a result of it. Indeed, at one point I almost entirely burned out on the grading thing -- between Monday of this week and Wednesday of this week, I had almost six hours worth of grading to do -- which is fine if you are, say, reading essays, but not when you are correcting the likes of 150 2nd species counterpoints and 80 3rd species counterpoints. But I am getting a bit ahead of myself -- which in four dimensions is possible, but not so in three.

So lemme splain. Last week, during my week of too much teaching (compared to this week, the week of too much grading), Beff, in her parallel Maine-y reality, had to dispose of dead or nearly dead mice on three consecutive days. They had apparently crawled out from under the (electric) stove in the Bangor house in order to die with dignity. I think Beff disposed of them with as much dignity as she could muster (sniff). But it certainly put in relief why every time we take the cats to Maine they spend a large part of the day in the kitchen staring at the stove. So at first I suggested traps and D-Con for while she was gone, but then we had the collective brainstorm to have the cats in Maine for two weeks in order to have them air out their instincts and become professional mousers during that time. So they are there now, and getting them there was just slightly more difficult than usual, since they now know that when the cat carriers come out of the attic, there's a long cooped-up ride ahead of them. Cammy, in fact, ran under the couch and started growling. In the end, I won.

So Beff took them there this last Sunday, and immediately they started hanging around the stove. So our nefarious plan is working.

Meantime. I did my normal Monday Brandeis teaching -- an office hour, two theory classes; but I did not drive to Boston to teach at NEC because they get Columbus Day off and Brandeis does not. So along with UV and Bob Nieske, I manned a table in Gosman Gym at the yearly fall open house for prospective students looking at Brandeis. It was a good thing there were three of us, since there were a lot of people asking about the department, and there was a line for at least 45 minutes of our hour and a half. Every year we get at least one prospective who doesn't want to ask about the department so much as stand there and drone on about how he or she got to like music, what pieces they learned, what they've been listening to, etc., and this year I got that one. So after that was all done, back home I came, with maybe two hours of grading to do.

Tuesday was a Thursday day, so I taught straight without a break from 9 to 2:30; grading was about two hours that night. Wednesday became a bit of a reprieve day, even though I still had a 9 am student and two theory classes. My 12:00 and 2:00 had both become ill and cancelled; so at 12 I was lookin' for a lunch second, but as I was about to do that, I got an e-mail from my 1:00 saying he, too, was sick. Incidentally, every cancelling person was looking for an alternative time on Thursday to meet, and I gave 10 minutes to somebody and a half hour to someone else, simply because my Thursday people, having just seen me on Tuesday, probably could do with just a half hour of instruction, and, and, and ... so anyway, even though I have a published 3-4 office hour on Wednesday, I came home. Played with cats. Hung out and graded homework in the gazebo (for a little while, anyway -- it was in the mid 50s). Grading was two and a half hours.

And on Thursday, everyone in both theory classes had major species counterpoint fatigue, and much of both classes was themed around how completely fatigued we all were. When my teaching was up, I hightailed it outta there, came home, and ... rested. For it was the fourth day.

The weekend was largely uneventful. Beff came home on Friday instead of Thursday because of various things in academia that have sucked her in. We exercised, we played with the cats, etc. We even took the long, long walk OVER Summer Hill (highest elevation in Maynard), which is a big hike, and circled around through downtown (at which time I took the baby foliage pictures below). Alas, my new Timberland laceless shoes are apparently a little inappropriate for hiking, as I had to keep retightening my left shoe. Because it was, uh, loose. THEN just after lunch time, Cammy and Sunny got taken to Maine. And after that was the grading, about three and a half hours.

So this most recent Monday was more typical. Office hour, two classes, drive to Boston. I now don't have a 1:00, at least for most of the rest of the term, so I can have a more leisurely lunch -- which I tend to do at an Irish pub place called Conor Larkin, which has Buffalo wings. After that lunch, I found Espresso Music -- in a building owned by NEC in which I used to take trombone lessons -- which has an excellent selection, AND a discount for NEC faculty. Where I got the Stravinsky Octet and Three Pieces for String Quartet. Good thing I had the discount. Taught Miriam and Travis, had a roaring good time. Came home, and rested. Did about an hour and a half of grading.

Then Tuesday morning it hit me. At 7:30 am I saw how vast the pile of yet to be graded homework was and flipped my gourd. But not literally. I finished the grading around lunch time and finally breathed out. While I was grading, an A&E Repairman was here (I think that's what it's called -- it appears on the credit card statement as being related to Sears, who seems to own everything) replacing the broken handle on the Whirlpool front loader washer (which broke after only two years. Never buy a Whirlpool appliance again, and I won't either, okay?) -- final cost $215, of which $65 was for the new handle (the rest was for the labor), which clearly is made of about $3 worth of materials. See picture below. And then when that was all done, I reveled at opening and closing the washer door without using a screwdriver (words by which to live).

In the meantime, I had ordered my 2007 cheap percussion toy things from Musician's Friend, and they arrived on Tuesday -- a guiro, a triangle, bongos, and a shaker. They all got taken to Brandeis for the fun that you can have with them when they are at Brandeis. I also got more chatter stones at the 5 and 10 in West Concord, since they have them (I actually bought all the ones they had left), and I am obsessive about having "good" ones for the piano concerto performance. For you see, in the piano concerto's third movement, all three percussionists use them simultaneously and for the effect to be right, they have to be pristine. Etcetera. Meanwhile, I had started noticing that the toy piano I had ordered from All About Pianos hadn't arrived, and was giving it one more day. One more day. One more. One. On. O. And as if just piling it on -- one thing for which I was nominated that I had applied for e-mailed me to say, hey where's your application? The deadline passed! Sigh. As I geared up to replicate it, they e-mailed back and said never mind, here it is right here. Grrr.

Wednesday was a trippy day since it was nonstop -- Short Peter's big flute piece, third species twice, Dave's piano pieces and jazz band piece upcoming, Tall Peter's trio, Yohanan's duo, an office hour where a new major got signed up and I had to have other various conversations with undergrads, and ... I drove home. No toy piano arrival. Looked at the online banking statement and discovered that my debit card had never been charged for it. So, sigh, I did it again. Now it's SUPPOSED to arrive next Monday, and I have a UPS tracking number, and everything. Then while watching boring political TV, spent two and a quarter hours grading. And slept strangely soundly (now there's a title....).

Yesterday was Rachel's musical, the championship of third species twice (prize: goopy eyes that glow in the dark) and introduced fourth species, Florie's piano piece, Jeremy's trio, Rick's dissertation piece, and back to home. And it got strangely warm again, and very, very humid -- so much so that there are a lot of ladybugs in various windows in the house, and that's just gross. Constructed handouts for next week's theory classes (as I show them some actual counterpoint in music). I got the DVD from John Aylward's Tufts recital, extracted my two pieces and put them on YouTube (now there are four) -- and for the first time I actually liked Chorale Fantasy. Eww. And then slept in the gazebo, until 2:30. And again, strangely soundly.

I began this morning at 6:45, had what you read above for breakfast. Then I proceeded to write nine Rome Prize letters, none of which I saved on the computer (they sure better get there). I'm pretty sure at least seven of the people I wrote for won't get it, and I hope they don't blame me. When the letters were done and signed, I walked to the post office, mailed them, gave bones to Zoe at Maynard Door and Window (Zoe is a dog, incidentally), and had the Trader Joe's pizza, and here I am!

MEANWHILE. My piano concerto premieres two weeks from today. The excitement is not yet palpable, though there are bits of worrisome worrying that are not being done by me. Right now the question of the day is -- will "Marilyn's" toy piano make it from New York to Boston? I'm not stressed about that, and neither is Gil Rose (the conductor). There IS a new one coming to Maynard on Monday (so they say) but there's no guarantee it will have the requisite action to be useful in my piece (it gets played very fast). It's also being recorded in Worcester on Monday the 5th of November, so planning makeup teaching is yet another small burden being placed here -- and meanwhile, while Marilyn is in town, she's doing a colloquium at Brandeis on Thursday the 1st at 4:30 and will be speaking with me to Eric Chasalow's American Music class on Halloween -- guess what about? No, not goblins.

And as part of the big publicity blitz (on top of Gil Rose's official description of this concert as a "barn burner"), I am being interviewed on WMBR Radio in Cambridge (88.1) on Tuesday afternoon at 3. I plan to construct elaborate falsehoods, right there on the spot! And meanwhile -- I have revised the syllabus for first year theory to accommodate the rehearsals that conflict with teaching, and vice versa. And whaddaya know -- another huge big fat piece coming up with yet another equally elaborate premiere (since there are five of them) and I now know that March 2 and the USMB is at Northern Virginia Community College, and the SMU one in Dallas is on April 25. Anyone coming along for either of those? Ah, but I digress. Of course we digress! Don't everybody?

And Dalit Warshaw got a "Google alert" that this here space used her name last time (pictures from the MacDowell reunion). I had no idea such a thing existed, and she used the occasion to hit me up for a Rome Prize letter (Don't everybody?). So she says she learned of its existence from Michael Torke (hi Michael! You are a great composer!), and now she's going to get an alert that she "hit me up" for a letter. This is okay. This is. This. Thi. Th. T.

Upcoming. Duh, piano concerto. Thanksgiving in Chicago. This is midterm week, and I had to submit midterm grades (which, surprisingly, isn't even close to the top of the pile of Stupidest Things I Am Required To Do Regularly At Brandeis), so that must mean the term is half over. I prefer to think of it as half under. And as usual, time has seemed to go very fast and very slow at the same time. The slow thing -- that's what's happenin' as a result of you reading this. The fast thing -- that's what you feel when you finally throw your hands up and stop reading. So.

I just flew in from the other room, and boy is my face tired. But seriously, ladies and germs. It have been a very active couple o' weeks, and I'm just the guy to tell you about them. Just watch me!

But first. I looked at a few statistics for access to this very website. Yes, dear readers, the one you are currently reading. And these came up for last Thursday and last week: