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

OCTOBER 3. Breakfast this morning was coffee and orange juice and a few swigs of pure lemon juice. Dinner was some disgusting fast food. Lunch was California rolls and some lovely Tom Yum soup made from a mix purchased at the Asian market in Acton. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES THIS LAST WEEK 39.4 and 74.5. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS "Lady Marmalade" by the Christina Aguilera et al. LARGE EXPENSES this last week are house rewiring expenses, $1177, and a new cap for the chimney in which the fireplace sits, $275. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: The day after I announced to my Music 123 class at Stanford that I had gotten engaged (it happened over the phone), my class brought champagne and cookies to class. I didn't ask how 9 underage underclassmen managed to get booze to bring to class -- instead, we drank up. Eventually, I tried to give my prepared lecture, and nothing happened. So we enjoyed the sun. COMPANIES WHO HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY THIS WEEK are any place we looked for a ketchup squeezer that didn't have one. COMPANIES WHO HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY is, again, Inko's Healthy White Tea, who sent specimens of their new flavors. THIS WEEK'S COSMIC QUANDARY: What is the difference between pillbugs and sowbugs? THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: interadsinklamaniationousness. RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS: hamburger dill pickles, real lemonade and limeade, jalapeno stuffed olives (nobody locally carries the Santa Barbara brand any more) DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK my old piece "Terra Firma" sucks a little less than I had remembered. THIS WEEK'S NUMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 10: 3.8. REVISIONS TO THIS SITE: upcoming thing at Walnut Hill School added. FRAGILE THINGS DESTROYED BY THE CATS THIS LAST WEEK is none. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS WEEK: 8. DAVY'S BAROMETER FOR THE FUTURE OF MUSIC this week is 12 out of 47. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: "Martian Counterpoint" ring tones. THIS WEEK'S FEATURED FAKE SENDER NAME IN A SPAM: Dervla Barth. SUBJECT OF THAT SPAM: defend Phharrmaceutical. FEATURED FIONA APPLE LYRIC: I had to break the window. OTHER INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE some overlwrought interadsinklamaniationousness, a toilet, three years' worth of lovingly collected snot with a rubber band around it, a pair of scissors that magically appears in your ears.

A Monday update! Yes, dear readers, I am somewhat trapped in my Maynard existence today, as Brandeis operates on a Tuesday schedule and the electricians are here doing Phase III of the rewiring. The head electrician guy -- the guy with the Doppler shift as mentioned last week -- is out with a bad back, so the namesake of the electric company is subbing for him. Thus, I have to be around to clarify what has been scheduled to happen here. I also asked for dimmers to be restored where there were dimmers before, and that meant a re-rewiring of the paddle fan in the dining room: as it had been set to a regular switch, and a dimmer would damage the fan part of the light. Oh, lawdy. And I had to mention the extra outlets we'd ordered, what switches were still off, etc., and make a request as to the first things to be rewired upstairs. And I did all of that, but I have to make sure we're getting what we want .... I'm pretty sure they won't finish today, alas. So that probably means more D-battery powered lighting and drum major high-stepping over extension cords for a while, dontcha know. Soon, though, I will go out for some staples. And when the temp rises about 70, I'll correct the rest of my Music 5 stuff. Outside. In the Adirondack chairs. With pillbugs and sowbugs.

And meanwhile, the deadline for the composer position at Brandeis has passed. Precisely half the applications received as of Saturday were taken home by committee members to review, and that means that yesterday, in my office, I made it up to half of the current pool. Again, dear readers, numbers and details are confidential, but I suppose I can say that: it's a strong pool, there are several very good composers who were unknown to me that I now know, and fully two thirds of the applicants ignored the specifications of the job listing. Of the applications read so far, I have counted a prime number of candidates I am still considering seriously. For them of you what are playing along at home, the possibilities come from the sieve of Eratosthenes: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, and so on. This is not a Fibonacci sequence, but then again, who is? Incidentally, I used the example of the sieve of Eratosthenes as an analog to composing with various scales (you know, filters), to a room full of blank stares. That was, okay, I guess, because "Who wants to rock and roll?" done at full voice produces similar blank stares. I suppose next time I'll need the blue wig.

And so far the longest cover letter is 7 pages single spaced. Dear readers, please note that 7-page cover letters do not leave a sparkling impression. When this search is over, I will have at least one two-hour professional seminar to give to graduate students regarding job applications, and issue #1 will be length of cover letters. Issue #2 will obviously be read the job description.

Currently I have cold finger typing syndrome. It is supposed to warm up to 80 today, but when, oh when? This house keeps in the cold like nobody's bidness. According to Weather Bug itis 66.4 right now, and I wonder -- when did Weather Bug start doing temperatures in tenths of a degree? But am I bitter?

The event of the week was a Rick Moody reading in a bar in Newton Centre, and I was pleased and privileged to be there for it. I actually went in quite early in order to get parking, and was delighted to find that a quarter still gets you an hour in Newton Centre. John A. came along for the free ride, and I watched him eat a sandwich while we shop-talked about Mus 106, and I walked into and out of some of the shops -- or as they would probably prefer to be called, shoppes. The area is a strange conflagration of high end boutiques and blue collar hangouts, and oddly I could find no good bookstore. And the Union Street something where the reading was was definitely my kind of place. "My kind of place" when speaking of a reading or place to eat simply means that you can get Buffalo wings. And get Buffalo wings I did, I did, I did. So Rick came over to my table just as he was being introduced by a guy who'd hit his head, and Rick read from the head wound chapter of The Diviners in response. Afterwards, Rick had to sign stuff, so I gave him Becca Schwartz's Music 5 homework, which I'd been correcting, to autograph. Which he did ("Hi Becca. Rick Moody"),and Becca didn't realize what a weird but valuable treasure she was getting. I mean, come on, how many fundamentals homeworks have ever been signed by Rick Moody? And oh yeah, Rick also asked for my autograph in his bindery copy of the book. How random is that? Later Rick and I talked about the B-flat harmonic minor scale and The Doors and plenty of other random things. And it was good.

Inko's Healthy White Teas sent us a big bag of packing popcorn and bubble wrap, and digging inside diligently, one could find four containers of Inko's new flavors that we'd been sent to taste test. Beff and I each had a third of each bottle and saved a third for Carolyn, and apricot will probably be our new fave, though honeysuckle and lychee certainly gave us a tingle. Pictures below.

Which reminds me that when I told the first year theory students that normally about a quarter of their exercises get "OK" and in 2002 5 out of 838 were marked "good", I was asked what makes something "good" as compared to "ok". I said it was technical correctness together with something aesthetic that's hard to quantify. It makes me tingle. It's nice. And so the next odyssey will be explaining the aesthetic tingle, as compared to the workaday correctness. Metaphors abound, and that's me. Esprit d'escalier: I should have told them that the tingle tells you it's working, but somehow I don't think they would get a shampoo commercial from the late 1980s.

As I type this, the sound of wires being fed through the wall right next to me dominate the landscape. Talk about the tingle.

Beff's weekend residency included a pair of bike rides, seafood dinner (she got the sole & capers, I got the clam roll), a little more cleaning out of the attic, an oil change, a bit of Maynard fest (new drive through CVS!!), another trunk full of discarded computer equipment to take to recycling, and some shopping. Also some viewing of "Weeds", now on Showtime On Demand. And the first of Geoffy's 2005-6 Musica Viva residencies. Yes, Geoff is here now, enjoying the D-cell experience, and, as usual, washing his own dishes. Gotta get him some more of that spring water stuff. And Beff spent a long time editing her trio, which now finally sounds very cool. It can be accessed from her web page.

And everything else is what it appears to be. I moved some more old stuff to my private Brandeis web space, and there it will stay. This week's movie is the cats playing in the computer room, sped up greatly ("Cats tussle", to the left in yellow text). The pictures include Sunny in the attic window, the new cap on the chimney, the new Inkos flavors, and diametrically opposed cats in window and yard.

OCTOBER 11. Breakfast this morning was Morningside Farms vegetarian sausage patties with 2% cheese, orange juice, and coffee. Dinner was chicken sandwiches and salad. Lunch was hot and sour soup. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES THIS LAST WEEK 47.7 and 80.4. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS "Extraordinary Machine" by Fiona Apple. LARGE EXPENSES this last week are none, yet. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: In mid 1985 after moving from Princeton to Brookline, I joined a temp agency and was sent to the Boston YWCA. After a week, they hired me without compensating the temp agency. I left shortly thereafter, joined another temp agency and was sent to the Boston YMCA (Droolie was my immediate supervisor), who also hired me straight off without compensating the temp agency. Soon the YWCA asked me to come back. And my weird years with two part-time jobs began. Now it can be revealed: Droolie and I always lunched at Our House East, and I got paid for lunch. I was still a bargain. COMPANIES WHO HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY THIS WEEK is Earthlink. COMPANIES WHO HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY are also none. THIS WEEK'S COSMIC QUANDARY: Does the melody still linger on? THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: tortle. RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS: deli pickles and olives. DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK a lot more people want to teach at Brandeis than I had predicted. THIS WEEK'S NUMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 10: 12, if you bend the rules a lot. REVISIONS TO THIS SITE: New double-fiver on home page, new performance noted. FRAGILE THINGS DESTROYED BY THE CATS THIS LAST WEEK is none. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS WEEK: 2. DAVY'S BAROMETER FOR THE FUTURE OF MUSIC this week is 16 out of 47. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: on Tuesdays everybody wears sky blue clothing. THIS WEEK'S FEATURED FAKE SENDER NAME IN A SPAM: Zeki Clair. SUBJECT OF THAT SPAM: Re: Sayyid Mcintosh Phaarmcy. FEATURED FIONA APPLE LYRIC: ...after all the folderol... OTHER INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE a bag of green tortles, the length of your lips, a blank DVD-R, a song without words.

This will be the week where local weather will start to take more of a center stage in this update. For you see, a week of gorgeously overwarm and sunny weather -- coinciding nicely with a Brandeis vacation -- came crashing to a close with a big, big rainstorm over the weekend that promises to continue on and off until Friday of this week. We have probably gotten six inches of rain since Friday, and of couse with the high water table here that caused some water to come into the basement. No fear, though, because we have a very effective sump pump, and a basement floor perfectly designed for the water to flow right into the sump pump's evil grip. So I checked the basement last night to see if any water got in, and there was a lovely stagnant puddle oovering up the whole middle. Turns out the evil grip of the sump pump is somewhat mitigated when electricians have been rewiring, unplug the sump pump, and just leave the plug hanging ("Current! Must have current!" I heard faintly from the third prong of the plug). So I wetted myself -- actually just my slippers -- to atone for the electricians' unforced errors, and was satisfied by the giant sucking sound as the water apparently got jobs in Mexico.

It was quite juicy by Thursday (my only teaching day of the week) and Friday, and I started having regrets about having taken out the air conditioners and transported them into the attic. We had a few fans still downstairs, and we did what we could with the air.

In the meantime, Beff has a four-day weekend and I don't -- though this coming weekend, with Yom Kippur, ends up being a four-day weekend for me. Beff came in at her accustomed time. On Friday I went into Brand-x twice, the first time for a meeting to confirm what we could spend money on for the search, and the second time to go to a concert of Bob Nieske's big band. For the second trip, I was heartened by how many students in my classes made it to the concert. And then I was spleened, kidneyed, and small intestined, in precisely that order. Friday was a day of dire rain predictions, and everyone was talking about when the rain would start. Answer: not until early Saturday morning.

And for the big, big, big rain -- including a few incredible downpours -- we went to Trader Joe's in Acton, and a bookstore that plays classical music, and Colonial Spirits on Route 2A. Colonial Spirits is this gigantic place with so much in stock and all kinds of exotic beers that I have to be sure either to tell or NOT to tell Eric Chafe about it. We got some sort of fisherman's brew we'd never heard of, as well as a wine that comes in a cylinder that seemed okay. And earlier in the week, I had gotten some Sharpe Hill wine that Beff like, and not just because there is a picture of a 19th century child on the label.

The electricians have not come near to finishing the rewiring, and have scheduled November 3 and 4 to finish up. We have bathroom lighting now, and a hall light upstairs, but there is still much to do. And I have become an expert on lighting solutions that involve D batteries. As has Geoffy, who stayed several nights while he was in town for his regular Boston Musica Viva gig. Now Musica Viva hasn't done anything of mine since 1997, which is too bad, because I rule. But this week I have my own Musica Viva premiere, and it turns out it's the name of the festival Curt Macomber et al run during the foliage season in Norwich, Vermont -- right across the Connecticut Riever from Dartmouth. On Thursday I drive up and hear my new trio in the afternoon for the first time. I looked at the PDF yesterday, and there are some nice things in it. Damned if I remember much of it, though. I also will get to see my old student Galen, who seems not to be able to get enough of that area. I come back on Saturday, and that is when Beff will be getting in from Maine. I will probably still be reading applications. And, back to Vermont, I'm told I'll be staying in a house whose owners are out of town this week.

So anyway. Sunday night I had a performance of Toucan Play in DC and was told it killed (literally!), there's this piano trio thing, Adam Marks premieres the funk etude, and E-Machines is a tiny part of a Powerhouse Pianists concert on Saturday night that was highlighted in the New York Times over the weekend. Too bad I can't make it. When more info is available, I'll be sure to neglect to say anything about it here.

On Wednesday when I started up the Earthlink software on this Windows computer, I got a message that updates were available for the software. So I downloaded them. And when the "Fast Lane" software for DSL/Cable was downloading, suddenly the task bar and all the shortcuts disappeared from the desktop, and there was no Start Menu. Meaning the only was I could figure to shut down and try again was to press the power button for five seconds -- always one of my favorites. Upon restart, I got the task bar and shortcuts back, but they again disappeared after about ten seconds. I figured out that I could run some programs by doing the Ctrl-Alt-Del thing and switching processes (not to mention shut down more elegantly), but the lack of lots of stuff weighed down at me. After I called Earthlink to ask if they knew that their installer could do this sort of thing, I got the standard reply: contact the hardware manufacturer. We didn't do it. Damned if I was going to do the on hold thing to explain something as scwewy as "task bar disappeared" to a rep who was going to say reinstall Windows anyway. So I tried restoring my system to an earlier version. Windows very nicely had about 20 earlier dates I could choose -- all of which I tried, all of which failed ("Windows cannot restore your system to September 21. No changes were made"). Talk about Windows as a rinky-dink operating system.

And so I reinstalled Windows to the factory settings, i.e., a clean system reinstall. And had to reinstall Office, Media Creator, etc. And then the installation of Norton System Works 2005 failed due to an "internal error", the task bar started flashing YOU HAVE NO VIRUS PROTECTION, a retry of installing System Works gave the same error and taskbar flashing, and ... I reverted, yet again, to a clean system reinstall. Gfornafratz rinky dink operating system. But this time, things seemed to take. No more "SetConfig cannot run" messages and ... well, I've put off installing System Works for the time being.

Beyond all of that. Beff went to Vermont on Sunday to see her dad and returned yesterday afternoon, calling the stretch between Concord and the NH/MA state line a "parking lot" -- something to do with all the rain they got there, I suppose. And scant moments ago, she off and went Mainewards. I have to go to Brandeis today for a few minor events, and of course tomorrow I become the teaching machine that Fiona Apple wishes she was.

Speaking of which -- Monday was an open house day for Brandeis. As it's a holiday FOR EVERYBODY IN THE COUNTRY EXCEPT BRANDEIS, lots of parents and prospective students come to campus to be talked effusively at, and to observe classes. Observers came in 20 to 30 minutes late into first year theory, without apology, and I made them introduce themselves. Meanwhile, I had to administer the championship of first species, and one with a dramatic and well prepared octave leap won the prize: a cheap ornament of a frog playing the trumpet that I probably got in a Christmas box from my sister some while ago. I also awarded a Yak Bak to the student who identified the song behind "Four Rhythms" which I had posted on the online class archive. So it was Free Stuff day. And meanwhile, Fundamentals got themselves awash in a sea of enharmonically equivalent major, minor, diminished and augmented intervals, I made up an Encyclopedia of Intervals for them, and the twain actually DID meet. A very nice family with a daughter who goes to LaGuardia High School of the Arts observed, and I got to talk about the program with them (I did not bring up faculty morale). And then I saw my independent study, who is writing a climax worthy -- in dimension -- of Beethoven. Which is what I said, but I don't think I used the word "dimension". Oh yeah, and as usual I went to schmooze with parents at an 8 am breakfast -- of course I found nobody interested in music, just theater and political science -- but I wore a black shirt and a tie. The chalk dust that accumulated during the teaching machine part of my day was gentle reminder of why I don't wear black to teach any more.

We haven't seen the sun, except in pictures, since Thursday. But the Yankees will have plenty of time, at home, to look for it. The defeat of the Red Sox was deserved. But the defeat of the Yankees was delicious. And best served cold.

The Tussle movie from last week remains for this week, to which I add a cats Wrassling movie. Pictures include Cammy in a new favorite napping place, an artistic silhouette of Sunny in the attic, both cats trying to fit on a chair, and nascent foliage in our yard.

OCTOBER 18. Breakfast this morning was a Lean Pockets breakfast pastry, orange juice, and coffee. Dinner was Chinese style hot and sour soup and salad. Lunch was leftover rolls with Arthur Marc's hot sauce, and some pickles. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES THIS LAST WEEK 39.7 and 61.5. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" (I had been looking for tunes that use augmented triads). LARGE EXPENSES this last week are software $69, more electrician expenses $1044, HP all-in-one (scan, print, fax, copy) $75, ink cartridges $68, insoles, $9. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: When I was about 8, I got watermelon seeds (for who knows what reason)and I planted them in the front yard. After lots of patience and watering, after a couple of months one melon was getting substantial in size. I had anticipated that it would eventually reach some version of storebought size. Then one afternoon, my brother mowed the front lawn, incidentally ripping my watermelon to shreds. I was livid, even though I didn't know what that word meant. And the parents seemed to think it was funny that I was livid, and my brother even moreso (they had better vocabularies than I did). Scarred for life. COMPANIES WHO HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY THIS WEEK is Norton/HP as software partners (I am weary of being prompted to configure Norton Antivirus and Firewall every time I start up). COMPANIES WHO HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY are the sponsors of Vermont Musica Viva. THIS WEEK'S COSMIC QUANDARY: How many ways can wrinkles be made funny? THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: scabbadab-doo. THINGS I HAVE GROWN WEARY OF this week include cloudiness, rain, and cars that drive below the speed limit. RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS: Real (tm) Pickles, red beer of various sorts, jalapeno stuffed olives, Buffalo wings. DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK nine straight rainy days makes everybody a dull boy. THIS WEEK'S NUMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 10: 9. REVISIONS TO THIS SITE: New performance noted. FRAGILE THINGS DESTROYED BY THE CATS THIS LAST WEEK is the insoles of my new(er) laceless teaching shoes. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS WEEK: 4. DAVY'S BAROMETER FOR THE FUTURE OF MUSIC this week is 18 out of 47. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: everybody wants to rake Davy's yard. THIS WEEK'S FEATURED FAKE SENDER NAME IN A SPAM: Charita Shifflett. SUBJECT OF THAT SPAM: Re: Hotaka Carolan Medibctions. FEATURED FIONA APPLE LYRIC: Fast as you can fast as you can fast as you can fast as you fast as you can fast ... as ... you ... can. OTHER INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE half a fingerprint, a spent C battery, a roll of Tyvek home insulation, an unclassifiable chord.

This week the weather is on everyone's lips -- in more ways than one, as it turnsout -- and them what make certainly had plenty of self-inflicted egg on their face. For those of you playing along at home, there were nine straight rainy days in this part of the world (more even in some places to our north), and many of us could only dream of having our irises burned to a crisp by staring directly into the sun. As I drove through drizzle, showers, rain, showers, drizzle and rain on my way to work on Wednesday, the Them What Make commentator remarked that a strong High in Canada was pushing against a strong storm and it would limit the area to light showers, and "on Friday you will be surprised at how fast things clear out". A true statement if "fast" is treated with extreme irony. Those scabbadab-doos were off by about 36 hours at least. On today's Them What Make cast, the same guy noted "the two storms that combined over us on Friday to make a bigger storm have moved out over eastern Nova Scotia now..." Needless to say, the surprise on Friday was not how fast it cleared, but how much it rained. And rained. And the same for Saturday. And in times like these, I recall yet again (sigh, goes the gentle reader....) hearing the 2000 story on the radio about how the Them What Make service put a new supercomputer online that would make more accurate predictions and long range predictions as well -- which was ended by a forecast of overnight flurries. And we woke up to 10 inches of snow.