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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| So I managed around a minute 20 seconds of microconcerto music before I got to a texture change (or for you Europeans, a change of texture), and spent a whole day microadjusting rests, numbers of notes in gestures, timing of sustained notes, and so forth. Hmm, writing a substantial piece for an ensemble I loathe ain't at all like writing a tood, and what it is, too. And then Beff got back Toozdy night of that week because of a major fundraising event with which she was associated for the U of Maine. Indeed (and, dude!), the U Maine concert band and a band from a high school in Plaistow, New Hampshuh were to play a concert in SYMPHONY HALL. Yes, indeedy, they paid a pretty penny for that, in order to draw potential donors, otherwise known locally (and in the rest of the world) as "alumni". Beff had the concert programs and tickets, as well as a cash box ('cause you were like, supposed to pay ten bucks to get in), and they were heavy. Indeed, we resurrected, for the first time since I returned from Rome in 1996 the LUGGAGE CADDY THING. Which took a bit o' scrubbing and de-de-de-dusting to resurrect. And since the driving to Symphony Hall with all that stuff is both cumbersome and complicated (not to mention returning in the dark after the gig), I was enlisted as the driver.
This meant getting Beff to the parking garage near NEC before 4 pm, getting her and the STUFF to Symphony Hall, and then toodling for 2-1/2 hours before I was next expected. So in that time I walked back and forth through the shops in the Prudential Center, walked along Newbury Street, and had dinner at the Pour House on Boylston Street. The last time I had been to the Pour House was in the spring of 1988 with Julie Koshgarian, and I remember it being a dive with very cheap beer. And so it was. I got Buffalo wings (big plate for $5.75), a salad, and an IPA beer (anonymously -- they didn't say who made it) as big as my head. All of it for 20 bucks including a very substantial tip. Wow. (I e-mailed Julie that in another 21 years we should go again. She said she might be busy that day) And so I walked a less-than-straight line back to Symphony Hall after dinner, and hung out a lot while U Maine alums filed in, made a brief appearance to see U Maine mucky-mucks in the cash bar reception room, and listened to the concert. And boy -- all those band cliches that sickened and nauseated me way back in 2000 when I was getting ready to write Ten of a Kind -- they were all there in the high school band program. The U Maine band -- more sophisticated, harder, better sounding, and a slightly decreased density of cliche. So after was done the concert, off back we went to the garage of parking, and drove I to the usual Copley Square entrance to the Turnpike and .... it was CLOSED for construction! Those intercoursers! So this is why it was good I was there -- I knew how to get to another entrance to the Pike. Which involved getting to Newbury Street, crossing Mass Ave, etc. When we got home, alchohol was consumed, and by us, in the passive voice. Meantime, I had terminated our home delivery of the Boston Globe and started a Weekender subscription to the New York Times. With the Globe shrinking and shrinking and the arts coverage getting marginalized into the section with the comics, the impending price increase was a tipping point. So that weekend the Times home delivery started, and it was remarkable. In fact, Sunday morning, Beff brought in the paper and remarked, "Hey look. No crap." Which of course meant that there was less clipping of supermarket coupons and more actual reading about stuff. It's too bad that the New York Times still uses the New York Times music critics, though. Because their stuff is still pretty much unreadable. And speaking of terminating -- I'm off Facebook for good. I was on for a week and a half after Lent was over, and I spent a bit too much time on it, plus the screens were full of lists of 5 things and lists of 20 or 30 things from all kinds of people that were just over the top dull. So gone, and hopefully, as they say in the bassoon world, faggotten. Some time during this vacation time was spent doing yardy stuff, and that included expanding the reclaimed under-pines area and planting more grass seed. And has been the case for several weekends, the weekend was pretty durn nice. One of our old garden hoses was leaking, so we tossed it and I went to K-Mart for a "medium duty" garden hose. It leaked terribly. I took it back. Next, Ace Hardware in Acton for a "medium duty" hose for $20 more. It, too, leaked. I took it back. Then to Stow Ace hardware, where I got a "heavy duty" hose for yet $15 more, which ALSO leaked. So, I figured the 50-ft hoses I was chaining together might work better as just one 100-foot hose (as the spray nozzle attachment is permanently stuck on the remaining non-leaky hose), so I took THAT back and got a 100-foot hose, nozzle, and sprinkler attachment. Success. Watering of the new yard area succeeded. And then, I spent the latter part of that Sunday doing what I like to call "hammocking". I don't remember whether or not it involves using a hammock. Then began again the teaching, and fun was had by me. There was Broadway tune day, in which I went through a bunch of stuff designed for musical theater, including the Susan Boyle tune from Les Mis -- as they say in pretentious educational circles (also in the trapezoids, which are rarer), I turned the huge internet phenomenon into a teaching moment. And there wasn't even enough time to get to the Adam Guettel tunes I like so much ... in orchestration was ways of grouping the orchestra hierarchically followed by score and parts layout. And for Theory 2, which is doing final projects and the like, I started a massive office hours trope: 13 of them in toto. Theory did not meet on Wednesday because it was Brandeis Thursday, and what it is, too. So, there were 6 of those office hours that day. And at the end of the day Wednesday was a happening in Shapiro Campus Center to kick of the Festival of the Arts. I brought a toy piano and melodica and was slated to play for six minutes -- some of that included me playing a "bass line" on the melodica while Neal Hampton comped some C blues on the toy piano. And during that week I plowed through some more notes of my microconcerto. Meanwhile, toward the end of the week, the temps finally exploded. It had not gotten above 68 and suddenly it exploded into the upper 80s, setting two high temp records for the weekend, and today is hotter still. It is 87.6 degrees at 1 pm as I type this, and going to the low to mid 90s. After which it will return to "normal" in the mid 60s, which will still be pretty durn nice. And since Beff was stuck in Maine for the hot weekend, there were bike rides for me to take alone (the Boon Lake ride, the Maynard circle, the South Acton train station ride), hammock time with Sunny, and gazebo time. Oh yes, and I had more ... office hours ... on Sunday, a day it got up to 88. I had, however, noticed, while the cats were doing kitty TV, that there were scrapes and nicks on the bulkhead (the direct entry to the basement from the yard) with some rust associated with them. The nicks could have been caused by workers stepping on the bulkhead while doing the new siding last summer, or ditto for the painters. So I stopped briefly at MDAW for advice on re-rustproofing it (while sighing that I could have chosen the wooden bulkhead door option), and I got advice to "scuff" it with 100 or 80 sandpaper before applying Rustoleum. So off I went for a can of green rustoleum, a paintbrush, and two "sandpaper sponges" of 100 coarseness. After sanding down the rust spots, I opened the rustoleum and discovered that a 4" wide paintbrush for a can whose opening is about 3-1/2 inches is improperly sized. Square peg in a trapezoidal hole and all that. So, sigh, off I went for a 2-1/2 inch paintbrush, and on this Friday, I painted as smoothly as you can with an oil-based mix. There was so much left over that I applied another coat on Saturday, and that meant getting another paintbrush. And now the bulkhead is very shiny dark green, and a solid color. And one of my cuticles continues to resist becoming not green. Then again began teaching, which was yesterday outdoors for Theory 2 as we discussed everyone's final project and I had a teeny boombox and battery-powered keyboard at my disposal (and beck, and call). I had some free consulting time during the day, and in the morning was a nice old PhD oral exam (his teeth were fine). And when I got back I immediately went to Ace for more fertilizer and topsoil so I could patch up the part of our new yard where grass seemed NOT to have taken root. And that is what I did. Meanwhile. Geoffy is out and about for the Musica Viva at 40 thing, and last Friday we turned his presence here into my usual Friday lunch at the Cast Iron Kitchen recast as a duo. Then he went back to do auditions at his 'hood, Hunter College. Back he got Sunday night, and last night we did dinner at the Blue Coyote Grill in Maynard, hence the dinner up above there. And he practices at Brandeis during the day. At night, who knows? Oh, right. Blue Coyote Grill. Last Thursday Gusty Thomas came for a colloquium, which was pretty much the most well-attended colloquium since I've been here, and it was very, very good -- playing music a lot more than talking about it, and then answering the questions that normally arose. Then we did dinner at the Treetop restaurant and I had the garlic salmon and tom yum soup. Because, you see, it is what I do. At the reception afterwards, I drooled over Eric Chasalow's digital camera of many bells and whistles (including 12x optical zoom, automatic settings, etc.), asked him the model number, and durned if I didn't up and get one myself. Indeed, said camera arrived via UPS this morning, and I have learned some of its functions already -- hence the pix that will be showing up below. Meanwhile -- tomorrow is last day of classes, and it says above what will happen. Monday, all the final stuff is due, as well as my grades for anyone graduating. Then what's left is a faculty senate meeting, department luncheon, faculty appreciation event at which I must say a few words (I am practicing saying "glurp mov naxxy" with a Slovenian accent), commencement, jury duty, performance of Stolen Moments in New York, trip to France, and ... but I am revealing too much. Or going too far into the future, or something. So with it being HOT here I have debated whether or not to install the air conditioners -- given that the next time they'd be turned on after today is likely mid to late May -- and it's not important what I decide. I will probably ... not. So many concerts to attend this week -- Nina's song concert, Alexander and Gil's recital (with the premiere of High Def), Brandeis new music, and other things that use vowels in their names. Then, well, you have that list up there. TODAY -- I have already taken two bike rides. TOMORROW -- is Wednesday. All of this week's pictures were taken with the new Canon camera except the first -- we have Sunny looking out Kitty TV and giving a view of daffodils and distant forsythia -- then the 2-year old asparagus from Mindy, already too late to pick it -- the current state of the reclaimed area (the outer strip and some of the other area have been reseeded with more grass) -- an auto-macro closeup of a grape hyacinth, and two views of Sunny using the mode that isolates one color and makes everything else black and white. Cool, huh? MAY 12 Lunch today was a blackened chicken Caesar wrap and some calamari appetizer. Breakfast was the Red Sox special on a bulkie from Prime Deli, down the hill from Slosberg. Dinner last night was jambalaya from Whole Foods and salad. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 42.6 and 92.9. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS The scales that Beff is playing in the other room. LARGE EXPENSES THIS LAST TEN DAYS None that come to mind. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: I was the lead character in our senior play, The Imaginary Invalid, a Moliere play in a high school adaptation. My character had no name, but I pretended it was Argan Rashforth, and I used that alias in a few competitions. I was unprofessional in two ways -- by saying "Oh Snowflake!" instead of "Oh horrors" at one point when Margaret and her mother were in the audience -- and emerging after "hiding" under a sheet, seeing the shadow of my fluffy hair (it could be fluffy in 1976) and I cracked up. Terry, who played the maid, had to ad lib to get me to be serious again. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: Sunny looks cute chasing bugs outside, since it seems to happen with great spontaneity, and you can't see the bug. UPDATED ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: This page. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: pippilage, a process of granting promotions within the servant class. Fell out of use in the 16th century, back into use in the 18th, back out in the early 20th century. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWO WEEKS: 7. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE I have no idea how many Flash drives I own. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Counting backwards is really funny. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 13,200. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE THIS WEEK: $1.83 and $2.09 in Maynard. CUT THE PILLOW LABEL OFF IS THIS IS ALL IT SAYS my head, ladybugs, a tree trunk, manhole covers, 'Round Midnight. We decided to use the Dutch spelling, "trippel", because it looks better in brown. On the other hand, the nefariousness of tree robbers makes me think about the way I used to eat pudding. So everything was made available to us, and that seemed to cause dogs to find fault with each other. But seriously, my fingers didn't waffle the way they used to when pink cash registers were all the rage. So I ate some tuna. Since our last update, dear reader, were two mini-updates -- for those of you who didn't catch the mini-updates, it was a tedious paragraph about me painting the bulkhead (external entry into the basement) with green rustoleum, and me announcing that I'm off Facebook for good. Or for evil, I'm not sure. Other things that have happened include the end of school, grading, entry of grades and the like, and the like, meetings, more meetings, and more meetings. As of today all that is left for me is to sit on the dais (which I now have heard pronounced day-iss, so I can say it out loud -- not like Brand day iss) at commencement, and I'm through. Followed by, on the very next day, reporting for jury doody. But way ahead of myself have I gotten. The heat wave finished up with a high of 93 on the day of the last update, which was the second warmest April temperature on record here. the warmest being 94, which is higher. Since then, only a few dashes into the mid-70s threaded between very nice sunny dry days in the 60s, and one dreary day it was rainy and 50. So there was plenty more yard work since last time, and I'm finally finished planting grass seed in the new organic reclaimed area of the lawn (see tedious narrative-in-pix, below), and there was the first mowing, finally, of some of the faster-to-grow stuff way out in back. After a pause of a little more than a week, it was time for the first full lawn mow of the year, and I was reminded (by doing it) that it takes an hour 45 minutes and a little more than a tank of gas in the lawnmower. This was on a strangely humid and warm day, so it felt good indeed, ending in t-shirt and shorts only. Also, the bike rides are getting somewhat longer and more ambitious now, when they are taken at all. The Boon Lake ride is most popular right now, and I now know that the old mangy dog in the pink house on the far side of the lake is named "Goosy". Obviously because the old lady who owns it asked me, in the least pleasant voice ever, "Did you come to see Goosy?" No answer gave I except to award said Goosy a dog bone. Because, you see, it is what I do. We also went to K-Mart to get tiebacks for the curtains in the bedroom -- after Beff had got new curtains for the bedroom -- and noticed the usual spring confluence of plants for sale out front. We got some catnip and some mint and I planted them by the back porch. Sunny discovered the catnip and nuzzled away and got real spacy, so we decided to get yet more catnip and mint and plant it all around -- including by the bulkhead, by the garage, and in the new organic part of the lawn. The cats do find it and nuzzle on occasion, but so far it bounces back -- leaner yet meaner -- after the experience. We think it's cool. And of course I have had plenty of hammock and gazebo time, as has Beff, who has also had plenty of Adirondack chair time. For you see, her commencement happened already, and she is back, sort of, for the vacation. Though, being Chair and all, she has stuff to get back to Maine for. Not even included in that is Maine All-State at the end of next week. So there. Before Beff went back Mainewards, we stopped, in her car, at the local Cumberland Farms, who sell Gulf gasoline, it seems, to fill up her tank. There were a couple of guys there letting everyone know about a promotion involving our Shaw's cards. Now everyone has got Shaws and Stop and Shop and Hannaford cards, since the daily specials only take effect if you use the card at checkout. We had to get new Shaws cards because suddenly the old ones would expire in five days and ... for the moment it also takes longer to check out because everyone in front of you is being told to get a new Shaws card, etc., and they have to be filled out, but anyway ... These guys told us we'd save money on gasoline if we'd spent as little as 50 bucks at Shaws in the past week -- 10 cents off per gallon for 50 bucks, 20 cents for 100 bucks, etc. Beff had the large wallet version in her wallet, so we did what they said -- swipe credit card, swipe Shaws card, and BEE-OO-BOOP (the sound I imagine the pump made), the 2.03 per gallon magically bee-oo-booped to 1.83. So for a few minutes there, the coolness factor made us want to do yet more shopping at Shaws, nay all of it! Until, when doing the math, you realize I get 8 gallons when I fill up normally, and do I really want to pad my spending to a hunnert bux a week just to save a buck eighty at the pump? Answer: only to see the bee-oo-boop thing. Later in the week Beff found my wallet-size card, and when I filled up a second time, I got ... ZERO discount. No bee-oo-boop whatsoever. Bee-oo-boop-free zone. But back to where we left off. My string of concerts-must-be-attended happened, starting with Nina's song recital, which was a very nice affair. Her band was a bit loud and inflexible, but that will improve with time. Then there was Gil Harel and Alexander Lane (both of them appear on the Home page here as 5-letter people, in slightly different spellings), who gave a 2-pronged recital that included (and started with) my own "High Def" which I wrote for them on the text "Hey Davy". I Flip video-ed it and stuck the sucker on YouTube, and so far 3 people give it five stars. See the "High Def" green link below and to the left. The second half of the concert was an arrangement of the Eight Songs for a Mad King for piano -- where a score is torn up rather than a violin smashed -- that came of very cool and entertaining, and as Gilad and Alexa marched off, Gil howling "Howling!" from offstage for what seemed like forever, it was very funny. And the applause was organic. Then was the graduate composers concert, an affair with nine pieces and some of them for as many as 14 instruments. I excused Beff from that one -- it promised to be long -- but it ended up being a thoroughly enjoyable affair, no clunkers or even semi-clunkers, and some pretty spiffy orchestration to boot. So that's TWO really fantastic grad concerts I got to see this year, which exceeds the average by ... by ... by I won't say by how much, since some of the old guard (le vieux garde) may be reading this. I assure you, it is a real number. Then of course Beff was gone for almost a whole week, getting back late Saturday instead of Thursday night -- she made it back from her commencement in record time, remembering correctly to bring our shared stripy Princeton robe so that I can sit day-iss-wards. Oh yeah, and what did I do that week? Poring over final orchestration portfolii and reading final papers for theory took about three working days. And of course there were meetings to attend, including a faculty meeting and a faculty senate meeting. I always like the last faculty senate meeting of the year, because no one is looking to form subcommittees, and I don't have to practice my invisibility skills (undergraduates are better at it than I am, anyway). Geoffy was still out and about for the beginning of that period, and we did another Cast Iron Kitchen lunch, which was good, and Geoffy had some leftover chicken which he forgot to brink back with him. Geoffy, Beffy thanks you for the chicken. Meanwhile, Yu-Hui helped me discover other features on my new Canon camera -- which, by the way, I dropped onto some tile and it doesn't seem to have sustained any noticeable damage -- one of them an extension of the feature you saw in the last update, where a color could be highlighted and the rest of the picture be made black and white. The extension is that a color can be isolated and another color substituted for it -- my first manifestation of that being the Matisse "The Red Studio" poster in Yu-Hui's office turned into The Green Studio. Or, the color of the sky here turning to red (the red eyedropped from the taillight on my car) or the forsythias coming out red instead of yellow. So that is what I did. Meanwhile, I got what seems to be a persistent but weak back-of-throat thing that cause coughing, some of it deep, but not all that often. I don't love it when that happens. Otherwise, people have been e-mailing me and asking me to do stuff, and if I do any of it, I'll let you know. Just a teeny bit of work on this Musica Viva piece got done since the last update, but a major breakthrough happened under the influence of Alka-Seltzer Plus Nighttime just this very morning. A complicated dream last night was accompanied by a celesta-like ostinato on F and E-flat, and the idea is to use it as an unchanging -- except in color -- ostinato in the slow movement. So there. Meaning! Tomorrow we drive to Northampton to do a bit of shopping in the oh-so-tony places downtown followed by lunch at the Brewery with David Sanford. It could be fun -- I like their spicy wings, so there. Thursday or Friday I have to drive in to get my commencement regalia -- actually, I just need the mortarboard, since I already have a robe, and you can't get a mortarboard without getting a robe, so there you have it. And by the way, I've heard that Big Mike is making an appearance at the mini-commencement -- which I'm not going to -- to hood his dissertation advisee who finished this year. Meanwhile. I cut our asparagus to see when and if the next generation would grow back. All seven plants have now yielded something, though at vastly different times. And the rhubarb is huge (which is what they all say)! After all of that it's jury duty, as you know, BMOP concert on the 22nd, Stolen Moments in New York, go to France (we bought earplugs specially for the occasion), return from France, etc. And now I know there's a Yehudi birthday concert at Brandeis given by the Lyds -- on MY birthday. Talk about cutting in! Nice and short this one. No Mr. Wordy I. So there's nine pictures instead of six, as follows -- colorshifted pix from the backyard; colorshifted forsythias; a super-closeup of a wilted daffodil that came out better than I thought; then a five-picture narrative of the new organic and sculpted part of the yard going from mid-March to this afternoon. Bye. MAY 26 Breakfast this morning was cherries, limeade, and coffee. Dinner last night was teriyaki chicken kebabs from Whole Foods, salad, and 1999 Brunello. Lunch was red curry soup with saltines. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 38.3 and 88.5. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS A Brahms Liebeslieder waltz, in A minor. LARGE EXPENSES THIS LAST TEN DAYS None come to mind, but there's a birthday present for Davy in the offing. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: After sophomore and junior years of college, I worked as a security guard for MSI (Management Safeguards, Inc.) at Jordan Marsh on the graveyard shift. That involved three tours through the whole store -- the new one and the old part -- during the shift. I would occasionally make free phone calls on the WATS line in the executive offices, or do dumbass things like take light bulbs and toss them down an eight-flight staircase just because I could. Oddly, during our non-tour time we could do as we pleased as long as we stayed at the "time desk", so I wrote music there. It all sucked, but only because everything I wrote at the time sucked. I made $2.30 an hour and then $2.45, and was at times sufficiently poor that I would eat relish packets for dinner. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: Sunny nuzzles the catnip plants outside, gets high, and has so far destroyed two of the six that are available to him. Cammy doesn't seem to notice. UPDATED ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: This page, Compositions. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: sprink, having nothing to do with spritzes of rain, belt buckles, or foreign pronunciations of la primavera; it's related to a garter, made of leather, and keeps underwear from bunching up. fell into disuse in the late 19th century. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWO WEEKS: 9 (Fromm commission season). FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE The first piece I was able to play on the piano from memory was the "Our Director" march, in F major. I can still play it, and with the ridiculous fingerings I made up way back then. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Words that begin with "kn" now begin with "kgn". PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 13,242. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE THIS WEEK: $2.29 in Maynard. SECOND VERSE SAME AS THE FIRST: my head, ladybugs, a tree trunk, manhole covers, 'Round Midnight. Download 2.79 Mb. Share with your friends:
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