Beff's semester finishes today, and she is due home after dark tonight. Tomorrow night we take Big Mike out for Chinese buffet
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| Beff's sister Ann is now here for Christmas (which was being yesterday, as of when this was typed), and we also saw 2 of the 3 brothers for Christmas (which was, as you know, yesterday). We did a Christmas eve thing at brother Matt's Cambridge apartment, where he had made exactly seven times as much food as was needed. Brother Bob, whose Cambridge apartment is next door, was counted on to make Matt's cooking only four times as much as was needed, but he couldn't make it. Beff and Ann and I took the commuter rail to Cambridge for this fest, which was a cool $40.50 round trip for all three of us, but you know, it's the holidays. And yesterday I picked up the two guys at the South Acton commuter rail at 12:13, we did Christmasy stuff (because, you know, it was Christmas, and yesterday) including a complicated meal made mostly by Ann of pork thingies that were *really good*. I made my usual celery stuffed with cream cheese things, and ate almost all of them myself. Because, you see, I like celery stuffed with cream cheese. Oh yeah, and because it was Christmas, gifts were given. I now have some nice bendy spatulas, for instance. The bigger gifts -- already given, so there. Tonight -- Cast Iron Kitchen with Ann. Last Saturday night: Cast Iron Kitchen with Eric and Pat Chafe. Cast Iron Kitchen: I like it. Beers ordered by Eric: Hop Devil and Rapscallion.
And also. Because of Beff having to use Facebook for her job (to save money, the concert publicity is done on Facebook), I finally caved and re-upped. That's me there. And I got a bunch of new "Friends" owing to uploading a bunch of my Auvillar pictures and "tagging" James Wiznerowicz (the only classical composer known to me with two z's in his name). Now that it's the end of the year, it's the time for the end of the year roundups (hence the name). So here I try to remember what I did and what I wrote. Which is not hard, because it's all written down somewhere. Newly written: Hecuba music, Mikronomicon, This Means Warble, Solid Goldie, Whole Lotta Shakin', You Blew It, Polkritude, AhChim AnGae, Harm's Way, and Double Fantasy. Trips: Baltimore for the Amy show, Fredonia New York for the Davy and Amy show, Bangor for the Amy show, Cleveland for the Davy and Claude show, New York for Stolen Moments premiere, France for Etchings, Vermont twice for the a-summerin', Utah for the Barlow board, Albany for Thanksgiving. Number of cars owned by me totalled this year: 1. Proper recording sessions: "Cantina" by the Marine Band. Number of new cars purchased: 1. Number of Toyota Corolla S models in our name this year: 2. Number of new 88-key keyboards purchased this year: 1. Date of first crocus: March 7. Landscaping: added new yard after much of fence was damaged by pine tree limbs felled by the December 12 (2008) ice storm. CDs released: Winged Contraption and Etudes Volume 3. Newly published: Piano Concerto. Number of times I quit Facebook: 2. Number of times I rejoined Facebook: 2. Number of mortgage re-fi's this year: 1. Current mortgage rate compared to 2000 rate: -2.75%. Number of times I barfed in 2009: 0. Number of times I metaphorically barfed in 2009: about 20. Number of times I ate soup with my left hand in 2009: 0. Number of colonoscopies in 2009: 1. Number of dinners with Gusty Thomas in 2009: 2; number of times it snowed during those dinners: 1. Canoe rides in 2009: 0. And below, the year 2009 in pictures. You know the drill: each month is represented by one picture, in the order they occurred. Drum roll, please. January: Gil Rose and Joel Gordon at Winged Contraption editing session. February: Hecuba music recording session. March: the obligatory snowfall after the first croci emerge. April: Sunny enjoying the spring weather. May: a lady's slipper orchid growing wild in the Delaney Nature Preserve. June: the central area for Etchings in Auvillar, France. July: the Assabet River, uncharacteristically still. August: one of the many spectacular Vermont sunsets. September: the department pot luck at our house. October: isolated foliage. November: Main Street in Kensington, California. December: Cammy enjoys the box in which my sister sent us holiday gifts. Bye. JANUARY 4, 2010 Breakfast was a Thomas's whole wheat bagel with fat free cream cheese. Lunch was the Buffalo tender wrap at the Blue Coyote Grill. Dinner was a Lean Cuisine Panini (it's called "a panini" on the box, but wouldn't one be a "panino"? Does anyone ever order "a sandwiches" or "some green bean" or, for that matter, put on a pant? Or an earmuff?) TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 15.6 and 35.6. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS First movement of Stolen Moments. LARGE EXPENSES SINCE LAST UPDATE $156 at Whole Paycheck. COMPANIES THAT HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY none. COMPANIES THAT HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY The Cast Iron Kitchen continues to get my vote here. PET PEEVE roadside litter that ends up on the sidewalk in front of our house -- from milk cartons and beer cans to orange t-shirts. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: My first arranging experience, as it were, was for the jazz band in high school -- jazz band was actually a course that met daily, last period. Before that was cut as frivolous. I arranged "Heaven on Their Minds" from JC Superstar, and -- this shows how dumb I was -- there was no score of it. I simply had the instrumentation in mind, and wrote out parts, one by one. Apparently this was how some composers wrote music in the Middle Ages. I do not recall the band ever playing the arrangement, but it's probably still in the archives somewhere. My first arrangement that had an actual score was "What's This World Comin' To?" from Chicago's sixth album, and we did read through it, and it was hard. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: Beff got a little pot of plain old grass that the cats like to nuzzle, as is their wont. UPDATED ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: This page. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: schaloogeau, an ear trumpet perfected before the word "trumpet"existed. Thus the name. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWO WEEKS: 9. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE I have passed the average age for reading glasses and still don't need them. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Jingoism recognized as jingoism. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 14, 364. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE RECENTLY I have not bought gas recently. Woo hoo! TRY THESE WHEN YOU RUN OUT OF TREMENDOUS my head, ladybugs, a tree trunk, manhole covers, 'Round Midnight. Dear reader, two things are unusual about this update, at least one of which is only virtually visible, and in your mind, if you do not lack reading comprehension. I am typing at night (thus it is dark), and I am about five days early compared to my usual timing. Maybe I should oughta splain. It's simple, really. My indoor/outdoor thermometer which has been in the master bedroom for about seven years was blinking at me. Blinking, can you believe it? Does it need to salinate its ... eyes? Nope, for the first time since I installed it in that there north-facin' window, the batteries are low, and I had to change them. Thus eradicating the record of highest and lowest temps since the last update! Jiminy Cricket, and a box of hundred pound anvils! So I wrote 'em down. And will get back to you, dear reader, the next time the "thermometer" (at least that's what it calls itself, even when no one is around), needs new batteries. Again! It's two triple As, by the way, which is kind of a sextuple A, unless you were born into it. So the mere nine days since the last update have had what one might call nein-days -- how ironic, eh? As well as a whole bunch of things that don't rhyme with "purple". Since it has been academic vacation for all concerned (except frogs, but that doesn't concern me), Beff and I have been spending our days almost exclusively inside and at home. Chez Nous. Nostra casa e nostra casa. And as far as writing away, goes, a storm is what we have been. And seeing as that's just about all we've done -- except troll the internet for news and weather -- there won't be a wide variety of experience reported today. Deal with it. So yes, on the day after Christmas, Beff and Ann and I did the Cast Iron Kitchen at 6:45 pm, and I got the swordfish puttanesca. I make swordfish puttanesca a lot myself (including last night, too long ago to report up above), so it was interesting to see what the pay-to-eat-it version is like. Well, it turns out it comes with Brussels sprouts (who has time to go to Belgium?) that were grilled, and the volume of puttanesca sauce was about equal to the volume of swordfish. Which means the sauce was pretty durn a-thick. Tasty, too, and that's alliterative (and I'm not alliterative because my parents were married when I was born). Beff got the scallops thingie again, and I don't recall what Ann got. But we got the requisite excellent beers -- Rapscallion for me, and some Grimbergen Christmas for Ann, and Old Speckled Hen for Beff ... along with the grilled bread and artichokes we always get as appetizers. Then we came home, celebrating the end of (see last week's update) Massive Storm #2 by walking home in the ... nothing. Ann drove back to Albany the next morning, and Beff and I were, by default, free to begin our post-Christmas work. And we did, Oscar, we did. Beff started a duo for clarinet and cello for herself and Noreen -- who, by process of elimination, can be discovered as the "cellist", or cello player, in this duo. Beff's piece had lots of little notes and warbles and harmonics, and we spent some time with her hobbled copy of Finale un-hobbling it and coming up with the most efficient ways to notate those complicated harmonics thingies. "Most efficient" being somewhat analagous here to the "best sounding" group of nine hundred bagpipes. Lawdy, I swearzit, notation software makes sure you really *want* those special effects. Um, because, like, and you know ... um, notating them is ... time consuming. And this weekend, she finished the piece, bandied about weather words related to yet another weekend storm (dear reader, can you believe it took me until the fifth paragraph to bring up the weather? More later, as I'm sure you expect), and decided it was a toss-up between Winter Weather Advisory and Special Weather Statement. I believe she chose the former. 'cause, like you know, who could ever sit still for a performance of something called Special Weather Statement? I mean really. And yes, weather has played another important role in our lives, but in this case since we didn't really have to drive anywhere -- wait, that's not actually true. Well, it kept us inside a lot. I actually spent some time in this update period reading through some old postings from the News Archive, as evidenced on the left, and they are chock full (chalk full?) of lovingly detailed details about weather stuff that I've completely forgotten about, and ... I like them anyway. So for over this last weekend, yet another big storm formed near Texas (I've never liked that state. Much), moved toward New England, strengthened in the gulf of Maine into an ocean storm, and ... missed us! But then due to some atmospheric block of some sort, it .. backed in! ... and gave us about eight fluffy inches meted out over about a forty hour period of very light snow. It was water torture, I tell you -- frozen water, actually. And Beff had planned to drive to Bangor on Sunday (made especially possible by her finishing of her duo), but the storm backed a back-door *warm* front way up north, so that Bangor was 20 degrees warmer than Maynard, and for a while it was ... rain! ... on Sunday. But too dangerous for a 250-mile drive, so Beff left at 5:45 this morning, arriving to a foot of heavy snow to shovel in the driveway. Ewww. She says it took her an hour and a half, and boy are her arms tired. Even though she got to use her electric shovel thingie. *Had* to use her electric shovel thingie. And she had to postpone her early Monday Subaru maintenance appointment, since she was -- not within a hundred miles. She comes back Wednesday. And will still be on vacation. Meanwhile, the me that is I, assuming we use predicate nominative here, started the weird premised piece for the Marine Chamber Orchestra late in the afternoon on the second day after Christmas (you know, the two turtle doves day). As noted here already, the piece is specifically for a family concert on May 9, it's a sleuthing theme, and I play the part of the thief who stole Beethoven's Fifth. And the premise leading to the theft is performances of a bunch of different composers and an explanation, such as it is, of how to recognize each one's music. In my case, they are doing the first movement of Stolen Moments, the "response to jazz", and with some hip stride piano in it (Played with the hands, not with the hips, silly). Thus my piece has stride piano in it, and Beethoven's Fifth. Talk about fun -- it could have been a harder assignment, such as make the quote in the shape of a trapezoid, and slyly quote all the other music on the program, but they didn't go that far. And ... the piece was started, and quoted the Fifth in bar 65 (yes, I know -- 106 bars or so and it becomes the Fibonacci point, and what it is, too) after a development of the three repeated note figure without a fourth note, etc. I am now doing the ending section of the piece, which is going much more slowly. Indeed, today's output is gross thirteen bars, net five bars. As they say anagramically, carp. In any case, if this piece doesn't kill me, it looks like I'll have some time to write more four-cello music. Excellent, Mozart, I'm coming along. The piece's working title? "Foodstuffs: III. Pompelmo". I don't understand it either. We did spend the dark latter part of the day before the water-torture storm driving to the "wisdom of" Solomon Pond Mall, parking, and watching "Up in the Air" in a movie theater at the matinee price ($7.75, why I never). It was only the second movie we've seen in the theater this year (that I recall -- the other was "Up!", in Burlington), and it was a very good movie. Three very good performances, and story lines that enhance the metaphors, which in turn enhance the story lines, etc. This is called symbiosis, and anyone can have one. There were other small side trips to Whole Foods, BJs (logs, batteries, toilet paper, dish liquid, etc.), Trader Joes, Staples, and Donelan's Market, but mostly that was us in our house. There are now fifteen days of writing time before I return to Brandeis and do that wowin' 'em thing again. And I plan on using them all. MWA ha ha ha ha. Ha. The only other stuff of note is that the calendar year turned over, and a virtual new decade started -- even though we all know that the decade begins in 2011, as the millennium began in 2001, but will they listen? Will they listen? Will? They? Listen? Huh? But that third digit did that thing it does only once a decade, and as soon as I remember just what that is, I will not mention anything about it in this space. Bye. Bye? Wait, no, I'm not finished. Okay. Beff and I took walks, including the really big one around the Assabet (figuratively), and Beff slipped on the ice once. I obsessively shoveled MORE after we were plowed from the recent storm because I like a roomy turning-around area at the top of my driveway. And now Sunny can't go under the gazebo without what he leaves evidence in the form of cat tracks. Being that that third calendar digit thing happened, I leave you, dear onlooker, with my first decadence retrospective. Wait, decadence? You mean just because we did something for ten years we get to ... misbehave? Cool. So the decadence retrospective gives up one picture per year whose number began with 2 followed by 0, and please, no drum rolls this time. 2000: Me, Jeremy Woodruff, Allison Deane on Cadillac Mountain in Maine overlooking the Bah Hahbah. 2001: Stacy's artful photo of me, David Szmuk and Amy B after the first time she did etudes of mine in Chicagoland. 2002: More than a year later (duh) me 'n' Amy at the first etudes recording sessions 2003: me at the VCCA figuring out the multiple exposure feature on my then-new Nikon Coolpix 4500. 2004: the cats when they was new 2005: me, Beff, and John Aylward at Ines's party at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. 2006: me all dowdied up and fooling no one, before dinner at the Bogliasco Foundation. 2007: Mary Fukushima mugging for the camera in NYC before she did "Firecat" and Mike Kirkendoll premiered two Davytudes 2008: me 'n' Judy Sherman wearing each other at the *third* Davytude recording sessions. 2009: Me outside of Ross's house in Kensington. Bye. JANUARY 18 Breakfast was coffee and orange juice. Dinner was a Trader Joe's Margherita pizza (Trader Joe's has not paid a promotional fee for mention on this page, and what it is, too). Lunch was grilled chicken and Spaghetti-O's, 3 hours apart. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 3.2 and 47.5. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS Absofunkinlutely. LARGE EXPENSES SINCE LAST UPDATE $119 for a 1 TB drive for Beff, $186 airfare to Chicago, $118 hotel in Chicago (prepay). COMPANIES THAT HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY oh, let's say the pet store in Northampton for convincing us to buy a bag of cat food that the cats don't care for. But that's reaching back to June now. COMPANIES THAT HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY Brandeis University, for starting the spring semester AFTER MLK Day. PET PEEVE Sleet and ice covering our sidewalks that are pretty impossible to clear. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: Even though I'm ten and a half years younger than my brother, I frequently had the chance to hide in his shadow in elementary school -- as in, teachers who had taught him called me "Donny" until they got used to my actual name. The principal at the elementary school once made everyone in the cafeteria stay at their tables until he decided they were quiet enough. And he would look toward a table, and say into the PA system, "I see a quiet table with a [insert name] at it." He looked at my table and said, "I see a quiet table with a Donald at it", and two other tables got up to leave. But not mine. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: Beff we got another potted oat grass plant for the cats to nuzzle, and BOTH of them now like the gift box from my sister. UPDATED ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: This page, compositions, Performances. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: toosk, origin obscure but probably Finnish, was the substance used to affix the incendiary (fire-making) ingredients to the end of a kitchen match. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWO WEEKS: 6. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE I have floaters. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: People see the world like I do. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 14, 379. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE RECENTLY $2.72 in Maynard. WATCH THIS SPACE my head, ladybugs, a tree trunk, manhole covers, 'Round Midnight. If the blame were equally distributed, foxes would get all my iron. For you see, ten squirmy head lice are vastly superior to any kind of inland weather system that wasn't put upon by frogs. Once we get the refrigerator into my nose, we can find the Post-It's better half, and then we'll have to show cause for the rest of the flashlight. Could there be a better way to infract? Dreary is back! Not only dreary, but messy, sloppy, slushy, gray, and ... well, plenty of white, too. Them What Make have had a habit this winter of predicting a big storm to form in Texas and go out to sea, thus missing New England, and each time said storm has had its way with us. Including the one just about winding down as typing this is being done by me. Last night, even before the precipitating began, our electricity went off twice, each time for about three seconds, and each time preceded by two seconds of brownout (not the corporate brownout related to the nose, but a different one). You have to think whoever keeps those switches on for us is a bit like the kid putting a finger in the dike, and switch-person had to sneeze for the inclement weather, and I have no idea where I'm going with this. So I'll stop. In any case. Nothing, snow showers, rain showers to snow showers, rain to snow, rain to sleet and snow, rain to rain and snow to sleet and snow to rain to snow have been on our weather plate, and the one we chose was ... rain to snow to drizzle. There are 4 slushy, cementy inches out there, and I've already been out this morning to shovel off the flat roof and to flare the end of the driveway, and it is very, very heavy. And the pine tree branches I spy just outside my window are drooping as if they were ashamed of the F I gave them and could they please have a C because they have to keep up their GPA for their scholarship and I know I didn't do any work but I really loved this class. But there seems to be some projecting in there. But, before all this happened, we had our January thaw. Which was perfect timing, given what month it is. We had two nice mostly sunny days in the mid and upper 40s, and that meant I was able to take brief naps on the side porch, with the cats at bay (it's dogs that bay at the moon, silly). That was followed immediately by the current slopfest. And meanwhile. Yesterday I became free, or at least free enough to put my head (and part of each of my arms) fully into that teaching thing. Free in the sense that I wrote every bit of music I really had to write during this vacation, and I executed my fifth double bar since I turned in my fall term grades. This means that "I was writing music" is the underlying subtext (redundant, Davy. Get a grip) of everything I bain doing, but there is, of course, more. For some reason, I feel the need to end this paragraph MWA ha ha! MWA ha ha! There. I said it twice. When last we checked in, I was writing an orchestra piece specifically contracted to "steal" Beethoven's Fifth. Here I get to say that that was one of the five double bars thus executed during this vacation. Beff used a Them What Make Channel aphorism for her title (Winter Weather Advisory), so I did, too, because, you know, why not? So the orchestra piece is called Current Conditions, and is about five minutes long. I have already received, and deposited, the commission check. Which was FEDEXED to me! Best part -- I don't have to do the parts. Then it was albatross time. As has been reported here, Rhonda Rider asked me some while ago for a nice little piece, and I said yes, and figured I'd do a little 3-minute crowd pleaser for 4 cellos. I blocked off some time around the October Brandeis holidays to work on it, and inexplicably, Mr. Serious took over my brain. I had written a 6-minute sturm and drang kind of piece and had my V-8 moment that it wasn't beginning music I had written, but ending music. Sigh. Time to balance it with a slow movement and a beginning music movement. Me being me, I made the movement beginnings very similar, but ... it took but two days to write a passable slow movement (passable in the sense that if you eat it, you will crap it, too) and about a week for the first movement. And now I am free of it! And the here's-three-no-sixteen minutes thing has to stop. I mean, imagine being an elevator operator ... "take me to the third floor" "here you are, sir, sixteenth floor". Is that hyperbole, metaphor, or just dumb? So besides the earning of a beer daily by writing enough to deserve one, there has been some various walks with Beff -- whose classes began a week ago -- and the Cast Iron Kitchen, and the dreaded yearly tax return calculations. The tax return stuff eats away a lot of otherwise usable time, but it just hasta be done, you know? So Beff spend an afternoon putting the receipts into piles of similar intent or material similarity, and together we spent another afternoon compiling the itemized lists, and then it was my turn to tabulate the amounts and tabulate all the house expenses, etc. This year, though, the going through the bank statements thing got easier, since our bank lets us have PDFs of our statements, which makes them searchable on the computer, PLUS the online bill pay keeps a record of 18 months worth. So instead of rooting through 12 envelopes for utility payments, there they all were. What did I do with all the time I saved? Well, obviously I deserved a beer. Download 2.79 Mb. Share with your friends:
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