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

As I type this -- Friday morning -- new storm windows have been installed in the window seat windows downstairs, a new lock/doorknob combo has been installed on the front door, and a new handle for the storm door in front is being installed and a piston being added. I am so special! Naturally, Cammy has been hiding under the sofa for about two and a half hours, and I have no idea where Sunny is. I sat in one of the window seats with the storm window and -- it felt suspiciously WARM. This is what happens where there is a screen AND glass between you and the outside, not just a screen. I think I'll start telling myself that "I am saving money in the long run."

Beff, meanwhile, is in Lake Forest, Illinois in the CENTRAL TIME ZONE at Ragdale. And she was crazy enough to drive there from here, which, given the current weather pattern (trough over the Great Lakes and Northeast turning on the lake effect snow machine), was a day and a half ordeal. There will be a sidebar once I've started my story, so I'm a-warning you NOW. Beff left for Ragdale on Wednesday morning, and she had to be there by 4:30 Central Time yesterday. So she got up at 5, and I, miraculously, was still sleepy. So I stayed in-a-bed for another 35 minutes.

SIDEBAR: and during those 35 minutes I had another vivid musical dream, albeit a fairly boring one. I dreamed a showy piano introduction in minor utilizing most of the keyboard and going up and then down, followed by the beginning of what I think I understood was a Chopin mazurka in the relative major of the introduction. There was a full accompaniment, and a tune that alternated scale degree 5 and scale degree flat-6 a lot. And I when I awoke, I realized that the accompaniment figure was more habanera than it was mazurka. But they BOTH end with a.

Meanwhile, I got up, Beff filled two travel mugs with coffee and carried a buttload of stuff to her car (it was 6 degrees out), and for once left before I did (I left for Brandeis at 6:15). Both Wednesday and Thursday were long days at Brandeis, and on Wednesday I got back at about 6:30 and listened to a message on the answering machine from Beff stamped at 5:27: "I'm in Erie, Pennsylvania and the lake effect snow has been incredible. They closed the interstate and I'm following some trucks who seem to know how to get around it. I'm leaving my cell phone on." So I called her. By the time I caught up with her, she had driven through Erie and gotten past the closed part of the interstate, and was back on her way. Later she called from WILLOUGHBY OHIO, a suburb just to the east of Cleveland. While she talked, I looked it up on Streets and Trips 2004, and just as I encountered "Travelodge" and "Bob Evans Restaurant" in the detail, she told me she was staying at the Travelodge and was walking to the Bob Evans restaurant for dinner. Ah, computers. She also asked me to ask the program how long the drive to Lake Forest from there was, and it answered 7 hours and 40 minutes. Yesterday in my office at 1:30 I got a call from Beff, and she was walking around downtown Lake Forest, if such a thing exists.

Nonetheless. Them What Make did pretty well with the last Nor'easter. The newspapers, of course, covered the local winter weariness (the Globe showed a graphic of how much snow we've had this season in Boston -- 78 inches (8th highest ever, so far) and compared it to David Ortiz (76 inches). Cute), and I note that the temps have been about 10 degrees below normal for the last two weeks. I hate it when that happens. The Nor'easter passed through without much fanfare on Monday night, but did leave nearly a foot here (our forecast was for 8-12 inches), which caused me to cancel my Tuesday teaching -- as it took Beff 'n' me until 11 am to clear the sidewalks and driveway (including my FOURTH use of the snowblower this season). What's more, we got another inch during the day and another half inch Tuesday night (trough over the Great Lakes and Northeast, dontcha know). Beffnme took advantage of the snow day by walking to the Quarterdeck seafood restaurant, being waited on by the actual cook, and having a nice lunch with beers. I had the clam roll, and Beff didn't.

Meanwhile, Them What Make say another storm's a-comin' this Monday night. Oh lawdy.

One of the largest sources of stress shrunk considerably yesterday, as the Dean withdrew his proposals and sat there at a special faculty meeting to be scolded by the faculty. A computer science professor delivered a masterful speech, and everyone went home.

Then there was Allen Anderson's colloquium back in the music department yesterday. I was late because of the faculty meeting, but did get to hear part of a sax quartet and all of a piano trio. Allen has changed! More propulsive and dynamic, and still that lovely sense of when to start a new tune. And part of his piano trio was (gasp) perpetual motion. I kept the CD, since it's cool. There were WHEAT BEERS at the reception.

New York New Music Ensemble is rehearsing at Brandeis this weekend for tomorrow night's grad composers concert -- there will be an expensive reception because the Grad Student Association is paying for it to make a point about what would be lost under the Dean's proposals. It was nice to see old friends in a new but strange context -- Linda Quan, Chris Finckel, Jean Kopperud, Don Palma, Jayn Rosenfeld -- and I reminisced (briefly if nerdily) with Linda and Chris about when they were in the Atlantic Quartet, all of whom stayed at our place on Berrien Court in Princeton the night after they played a concert there. Insufferable we are, yes (that's me doing the prose style of the beginning of CITIZEN KANE, which Beff watched a few nights ago).

Last night when I got home, the application packets from the Atlantic Center were a-waitin' for me on the back porch in a FedEx box. I presume the contents of same are confidential, but it turns out it'll be more work than I thought. There are more applications than there are available slots. So I have to pay attention, really look at the applications. And continue to wonder why I asked everybody to list their five favorite pieces. Was I a-smokin' something?

Ken Ueno sent an e-mail letting me know about Gizoogle, a website that makes webpages talk sort of like Snoop Dogg. For an example of the hilarious results, click on "Gizoogle this page" to the left.

A large part of Sunday was spent compiling my Activities Report for 2004-5, something we tenured and tenure-track faculty have to do every year, as it's part of how they determine who gets merit raises and who doesn't. Mine came to 17 pages, some of it because I quote in full every review I've gotten everywhere, and every performance I know about in the report. And when I compile these things I realize -- geesh, I've got a buttload of dissertation advisees! And new pieces -- 7 etudes, Sex Songs, Sibling Revelry, Four Rivers and Rule of Three. Gawrsh. Since last March 1, that is.

As I typed this, Sunny showed himself to sit in the sun here in the computer room. Now I know where he is.

The window and door guys are now gone. The storm door has a piston and needs weather stripping. So there. Yes, Beff, they did measure the basement windows and the other storm windows upstairs.

The pictures today are at last partly for Beff's benefit, as she's in that other time zone and stuff like that. So the new stuff just installed figures prominently below, but first, cats. There is Cammy at play under the bed, and hiding from workmen under the couch. We have both sides of the new door assembly, evidence of the FIRST TIME THE LEFT WINDOW SEAT WINDOW HAS BEEN OPENED IN FIVE YEARS, a detail of the new vinyl storm window, the early part of the door process, and the strange curvy icicles outside the bedroom window from early in the week.

MARCH 11. Breakfast this morning was coffee (Beff still out of town, dontcha know). Dinner was crackers with lowfat peanut butter and a tomato. Lunch was Chunky Chicken soup. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES THE LAST WEEK 6.3 and 50.5 -- wacky, huh?). LARGE EXPENSES this last week are none. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS Prince's "Willing and Able" from the Diamonds and Pearls album. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: Beff and I took a train trip to Princeton -- before we were going out -- to celebrate (and revel in?) our job offers (Stanford and Reed College). On the way down I commented on the antimacassar on the seat in front of me and mused as to why they bothered. Beff said, "it lets the people be able to not clean them." I wrote that down in my calendar. We stayed with Martler, as I recall, and during this time he and I "invented" the nonsense joke genre. Examples: What do dogs have that cats don't? Credit cards. What's the difference between a pizza with the works and the Queen of England? Pepperoni on the Queen costs extra. We made ourselve sick with laughter until we realized that nobody else would think the jokes were funny. RECOMMENDATION/ PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS WEEK 1. DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK Everybody else has winter fatigue, too. THIS WEEK'S COSMIC QUANDRY: Why does Cammy sniff Sunny's butt so much? RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS: limeade, Bartlett pears. NUMBER OF FRAGILE THINGS DESTROYED BY THE CATS IN THE PREVIOUS WEEK none. FULL NIGHTS OF SLEEP THE LAST WEEK: 0. INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE a bug's life, a shark tale, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty.

Stupid, stupid weather continues to be everyone's obsession here. We have a winter storm warning for tonight and tomorrow (again), and a freak windy storm passed through here on Tuesday night. During the day it got up to 50 and I drove home in the rain. Then the rain changed to snow and the wind kicked up to, occasionally, over 60 mph. I actually got up twice -- once to see if shovels had blown away downstairs and once to see if the window in the attic was still in place (hey, I'm obsessive sometimes). So of course I knew I would have to shovel before leaving my place at 6:30 am, so the alarm was set for 5:15. Dreading getting up and doing something hard kept me awake. And when I woke up, the new snow piled up very unevenly, anywhere from a foot to an inch. After an hour of shoveling, in two shifts, I made it to work and did my teaching (dadburn Brandeis didn't cancel anything), and stayed there until (shudder) 4. I still feel burning in my lungs (vestiges of childhood asthma), and hey, we'll do it all over again tomorrow. So you see, we are all bummed about the weather. Dadburned upper level low over Quebec. Oh yes, there was thunder on Tuesday night, and near-record low barometric pressure. Wouldn't that bum you out, too?

Getting home while it was still raining on Tuesday, I noted that water was seeping in to one of the new storm windows. Window guys have to come back and do a little sealing. Meanwhile, though, it has been nearly surreal using the front door as a normal door to get the mail and the newspaper. I mean, really. No, really.

Since those paragraphs were typed, I went into Brandeis for Seungah's dissertation defense, which was successful. John McDonald, from Tufts, had some nice questions and led the session quite well, and afterwards we went to the Tree Top restaurant, which was pretty cheap considering. So, Doctor Oh, sounding a lot like Doctorow, is now one of our products. This was the only dissertation I've advised that said anything about Circadian rhythms -- so we also talked about Arcadian rhythms in Maine, Cicadian rhythms every 19 years, etc. When I got back The Maids had just pulled into the driveway, so I went to the Sit 'n' Bull for 45 minutes while they cleaned, and watched parts of some godawful yet strangely seductive soap operas. I took a picture of my Buffalo wings with my cell phone camera and sent it to Corinne. She probably will think it's spam.

On Saturday night was an excellent grad composers concert, probably the best such concert I ever went to -- and I've been doing this since 1989, after all. The New York New Music Ensemble were the main event, and every single piece had value and merit, and some even showed signs of a compositional voice. Gasp! It was the rare occasion when I didn't have to avoid any composer whose piece I hated, since I liked them all.

And here's something odd -- I spent most of Saturday and Sunday writing music. I don't foresee that happening again for some time.

It has been snowing for about an hour as I type this, and there is accumulation only on some of the pine branches so far. That should change by tomorrow. I am supposed to be at Brandeis from 9 to 4 tomorrow for yet another one of those gonzo retreat things where everyone shares their feelings and then someone with a clipboard writes it all down and e-mails us. Think of Saturday as the day of much self-expression by banal platitude. With any luck the roads won't be conducive to this event, though, and I can stay at home and fall asleep, finally. Nonetheless.

Googling myself paid off again, and allowed me to add two performances to the performances page. Dear almost eleven, can YOU find what is new?

Meanwhile, Earthlink got itself in a little hot water with a lot of customers, it would seem, when I was billed for this DSL/Home Networking service at the usual rate, but the amount was more than twice the usual. In the detail, the "USF recovery fee" -- described on the Earthlink page as state and local taxes on internet use, and which said the Massachusetts amount never exceeds 97 cents -- was billed at $73.56. It is usually 67 cents. A call to Earthlink provided no relief on Sunday except "we have a team looking at it, could you please call back Thursday." So I did, and the "on hold" message was "Earthlink customers billed excessively for USF recovery fee, we know about it, and you will receive refunds." And it DID happen. But boy, I hate having to be the squeaky wheel. I would love to see what programming algorithm led to this revoltin' situation.

Meanwhile. The kitties are still freaked about The Maids having swept through, and even Sunny was cowering under the couch. He has just entered the computer room as I type this, and there is no sun for him to sit in (see "it's been snowing for about an hour"). So he's just doing generic cat things -- a generic purr, a generic silent meow, a generic pawing at me to pay attention.

We listened to and analyzed "Nuages" in orchestration this week, and there were some pretty good insights -- in fact, some of them helped with the larger point of "is F or F# the stable harmonizing tone for B?" Other stuff about orchestration was pretty good -- we decided that the orchestration alone made the recapitulation just before the B section not a concluding sort of recap, just a reference. We talk funny at Brandeis (because of all the stuff we put in our mouths, I guess). Meanwhile, the other teaching was as it was.

While Beff has been gone I have gone to no great lengths to make complex meals for myself, as I do when we are both here. This means that I finally used up all the microwave meals that have been taking up space in the freezer, due to our having had coupons for them, are gone, and there is luxuriant space in the freezer for future stuff. Like popsicles. Turkey medallions seems to have been a favorite microwave choice back whenever we got these things.

On the serious side -- the Rivers School symposium is upcoming, and I will be going to plenty of those events. I had to deal with W-9 and other such stuff for the "daylong celebration of creativity" at UMass Dartmouth on April 15, and even come up with an abstract for my talk -- I had no idea how to relate it to "creativity" without showing the unbearable pretentiousness of being, so I winged it. I think I said something generic about it being both musical and visual. It doesn't really matter. I doubt I'll get a question from the audience asking why my 45-minute spiel wasn't closer to the abstract.

Meanwhile, I was also two panels this week. Nuff said.

I am leaving Claire Colburn's Winnie and Lion Drawings on the page for this weekend. It has been very dreary weatherwise -- 15 degrees below normal except for that brief period where the temps went way up -- so I have nary a new photo to display. But display I will anyways. We have Sunny outside this morning, Cammy inside yesterday, the backyard covered with pine droppings afer the big wind, and our display of a ruby slippers doorstop in the living room -- we are probably the only straight people who own this particular doorstop.

MARCH 25. Breakfast this morning was toasted English muffins with lowfat peanut butter, green tea with peach, orange juice, and coffee. Last night's dinner was chicken sandwiches, chicken marinated in Emeril's rosemary and gaaahlic, and salad. Lunch was Trader Joe's gazpacho with pepper and hot sauce added. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES THE LAST WEEK 21.7 and 52.7. LARGE EXPENSES this last week are the other half of the work done on the door and the new storm windows, $333.50. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS "More Than Words," an early '90s acoustic guitar tune by "Xtreme" which we heard recently in the Boston Bean House in Maynard. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: One day when we were at Tanglewood (1982), Ross, Nami, Martler and I decided to drive up to the last concert of the Johnson Composers Conference (now in Wellesley) to hear stuff and generally suck up. We started by going to St. Albans, met my grandmother (who was still alive at the time), and ate at Warner's Snack Bar (where I had worked for a summer six years earlier). We ate outside at picnic tables, where seagulls tended to lurk, waiting for handouts. At our urging, Ross picked off a piece of his roll and tossed it towards the gulls, and that motion coincided with the landing of a big blob of bird poop right on his arm. Laughter ensued. Ross cleaned himself off in what passed for facilities. At the concert, Mygatt and Winslow were played, and the last piece EVER played at the Johnson version of this concert with the Musical Joke -- in the curtain call, Don Palma carried out a violin and Linda Quan carried out a double bass -- great sight gag. On the drive back on 91 south, Nami was driving. Ross looked at the speedometer reading 75 and said, "Come on Nami, step on it!" RECOMMENDATION/ PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS WEEK 0. DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK I like olive antipasto. THIS WEEK'S COSMIC QUANDRY: What is the significance that the root of "analysis" is "anal"? RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS: olive antipasto, olives, dill relish, Tazo teas (on special at Shaws). BIRDS HEARD OR SEEN THIS WEEK FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A WHILE pileated woodpecker (heard), Canadian geese in flight (heard), chimney swifts (seen and heard, WAAAY up there). FRAGILE THINGS DESTROYED BY THE CATS THIS WEEK 1 (the glass part of a picture frame holding a piece of art by Tama Hochbaum). FULL NIGHTS OF SLEEP THE LAST WEEK: 7. INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE an Italian word, a dictionary, an icicle, four pairs of gloves.

I had been told by one of the almost eleven that vivid dreams came with fluoxetine hydrochloride, but I hadn't been sleeping deeply enough to get to that point for a while. On Thursday morning, though, I played timpani and an electric guitar (I think) in a mondo improvised performance inside what seemed like the gymnasium of my high school. I must say, the electric guitar chords were perky. The sound of the electric guitar was a little bit like that in a Crowded House song whose name I forget.

This morning our awakening was facilitated by the sound of something falling in the house, and I thought the cats might have knocked a little piece of decoration over again, but it was actually a frame containing a picture that Tama Hochbaum did for us years ago that we keep on a wicker table by the window in the dining room. The frame shattered, I swept a bit, and Beff put it back together without the glass in it. So the cats can continue to knock it over with impunity.

There was a long, long stretch of sunny, just barely springlike weather for us to enjoy in the earlier part of the week, and for all the week before, and enjoy it we did last weekend. As predicted in this space, we took Saturday morning to drive to Groton, via Route 2A with a short stop at Strawberries (I think Beff got ideas for things to buy on amazon for less money -- but she did get the Thomas Crown Affair DVD, a "silly movie, but fun"). I got more Bubbies Pickles at the health food store in Groton, we got some coffee beans at Donelans, some hip wheat beer at the beer store, and had another healthy sandwich at the coffee shop thingie. Beff is now collecting video for a new project for Sooozie, and the text she intends to use has references to coffee, mist, and fish -- so we planned our route for her to get video of that kind of stuff. She got a shot of the outside of that coffee shop AND the outside and inside of the Boston Bean House in Maynard (where we returned for more shots on Monday), and when we returned to Maynard, she filmed the fish on display at the fish market portion of the Quarterdeck. We have a lovely movie of a pan of some fish in crushed ice with a voice-over said to the people who work there: "Just filmin' the fish."

Upon our return, we noticed that the sun had heated up the porch so that it was human-habitable, so we opened it up, cleaned it (well, BEFF cleaned it), and spent some quality time sittin' and relaxin'. The cats also enjoyed it immensely, and it was the initiation of spring fever for both of us. Napping on the futon was strangely satisfying despite the traffic sounds. Then I made chicken sandwiches, and all was well. Boy, that Emerils marinade is good stuff.

On Sunday we both had pancakes for breakfast -- my first in a while -- and repaired out to the porch yet again to recapture our spring fever, at which time I started taking pictures. Being documentary guy, I do that. Shortly, in order to make the porch even more hospitable, I moved the Adirondack chairs -- which we store on the porch in the winter -- out into the back yard. This is more of a chore than it sounds like because of the awkward angles I have to carry the chairs at to get them through the narrow door that doesn't open all the way. Not to mention, the yard was only about 15% bare, so there was the carrying them through the snow thing goin' on, too. I insisted that Beff document the first Adirondack chair-sitting of the season, which, dear almost eleven, you will find below. Once the chairs were cleared out of the porch, that left just the hammock net and the bigass Stoeger Prize check, and the cats went wild. Later in the day, it clouded up and Them What Make said we'd get rain, or 3-4 inches of snow. And we got neither.

The porch is also being used to store a few things that we eventually have to take to Maynard first-Saturday-of-the-month trash day. There's the TV that gives us green pictures for the first 20 minutes it ison, plus a monitor for the Windows computer that simply stopped working late last fall. We were also planning on getting rid of the old piano bench -- one of the legs collapsed in one of Ken Ueno's particularly fat moments during a late night limoncello and I'd managed to cobble it back together, but then Sara at Brandeis asked me what I could do with an extra piano bench and I said "make it mine" -- but that would have been $10 worth of Maynard trash stickers, which is way too much. So I disassembled the sucker, threw away a bunch of screws and hinges, and we burned it. The particle board part of it burned very hot, in case you were playing along at home, but the rest burned fairly slowly. The metal bracing brackets for the legs were the only part left, um, standing. So, cool. Or, hot. I took a picture of the bench burning, but did not include it in this space.

Monday was a vacation day for NEC, so I didn't have to get up. So we didn't. We did more beezness, and, as intimated above, went to the Bean House (which is really a fancy coffee shop) and CVS, and Beff got more video. I enjoyed watching the videos on her laptop. And then we discovered the movie section of www.infinitecat.com and laughed and laughed and laughed at the one called "Cat Hypnotism." And I showed it to everyone at Brandeis, whose days were therefore made.