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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Triple miles and purple shoes. Neither of them convinced me that I should stop whining about all the snails. Into which the glass was poured, though, is the piece I would shoot if I had hands. With blood working into the plastic systems, some of the other branching algorithms might have to be skewed in favor of the violet revolution; this is not my problem. Dear reader, Beff has been on vacation for the last two weeks, and nearly always at home. Which is a pretty good indicater in and of itself that Beff is on vacation. Though she was gone for about 50 hours for things in Bangor related to things that have to be in Bangor. She's back, but soon to be unback. And so much of unusual size has been accomplished in the last couple of weeks, both creatively for Beff (who has done the lion's share of work on an orchestra-with-video piece in this time), and yardly for both of us, thanks to an unusually long string of good weather. And Beff is so upandat'em that she yearns to read a new update by he who is moi -- even though she's, like, been living it. And on the weather front, we begin another one of those typical ohmigod that's a lot of rain and wind storms as I type this, with both wind and flood warnings up on the Them What Make pages. Though in the interim, there has been an unusually long string of beautifully sunny clear days with temps 5 to 15 degrees above seasonal averages, thus resetting my Spring Fever Gauge from Woo Hoo all the way up to Zowie Powie. Indeed, this wild wacky upside down winter (yes, it's still winter, for another week), Beltway weather has spawned numerous additional global warming skeptics, while New England weather has spawned lots of If This Is Winter I'll Take Two More Please. Last weekend we spent nearly every moment of daylight outdoors (except when we didn't), and hey -- the crocus record was shattered yet again. As I reported last year around this time, the First Crocus date was March 7, shattering the old record by almost a week. In this reporting period, the first one was spied -- and, of course, photographed -- on March 2. All while I was getting e-mails from acquantances to our south and west complaining about how much snow there was there still to melt. Hee hee hee. I took crocus censuses (censi?) twice -- we had 93 by last Sunday and 226 by Wednesday. And on my non-teaching days we also did some yard work, which consisted of various rakage and picking up of acorns, and expanding the "new lawn" area near where the other section of fence was taken out (this involved shoveling and carting) -- see pic below of the expanded area, awaiting seeding and leveling at a future date. Also happening were the liberation of the Adirondack chairs -- it was so sunnily warm that we HAD to have a place to sit outdoors -- and the hammock, and even the bicycles. Yes, dear reader, I up and oiled the bicycle chains, inflated the tires, and a week ago today, Beff and I embarked on one of our baby bike rides -- the first of the season. We are terribly out of shape (even though we just got some new shape the other day ...). On Sunday I took another bike ride, in a different direction, even though Beff didn't. And, by the way, on Sunday we also went into Brookline for an Alvin Singleton premiere with the Walden Chamber Players (very cool) and took advantage of one thing we don't have in this area -- a good Chinese restaurant. Meantime, Beff had a little oral surgery, and cuisine was adjusted around that healing. Our old ice packs of various stripes were rediscovered and put to use. And, uh, this should be in the previous paragraph, Beff teak-oiled the Adirondack chairs, which is something she does every other year. Also at various points she and I did plenty of rakage, thus bringing the 2009(!) raking season to a close, finishing at 114 barrels. Still six fewer than last year, but on the other hand, last year didn't have the buttload of pine cones and acorns with which to deal. And Brandeisness? Art song in theory, plenty of the usual stuff with composition students, and plenty of extra office hours for the Theory 2 students -- including two tomorrow, since their songs are to be performed, in the concert hall, on Monday (mwa ha ha, I say, but then I have to take it back). Plus, I am on the committee to name my successor as the Reigning Lerman-Neubauer Teaching Award Guy, and that involves reading a lot of nominations -- which, as you might imagine, pretty much all read the same way. Here I reiterate that it sure has been nice to be able to spend a lot of time outdoors. Zowie Powie. And on the Friday of last week, we had received a new DVDVHS player for our system -- Beff ordered it online because our current DVD/VHS combo had a nasty habit of making you insert a DVD ten times before it would deign to recognize it. And we noticed, to our chagrin, that on the back it didn't have the right sorts of connections available for our current configuration. So we packaged it and sent it back, and resolved only to get something we could see physically -- such as at Best Buy. Beff looked up a bunch of possible DVD players online, and discovered that a lot of the cheaper flat screen TVs came with DVD players built in, and that was intriguing. She found a few passable ones on Best Buy, so off we went, stormed in, and discovered something pretty nice and not too big -- 30 inches, I think -- and brought it back and connected it. Since we have an internet/TV package that specifically pays for about 60 HD channels (the brochure was pretty subtle -- it says "INCLUDES 60 HD CHANNELS AT NO EXTRA COST TO YOU!!!!!!!!!!!), I thought it'd be cool to see various channels in full HD. And when I switched to such a channel, up came "HD settop box needed for this channel. Call 877- ...." Which I called, alas, to get into a morass of "we save money by making it impossible for you to talk to a real person, press 1 or 2 or 3 for about 20 or 30 more menus designed to make us not have to talk to you" options -- so I called the closest Verizon retail store, who said, "oh sure. Come on by. We'll swap your box right now. The box is $5 extra a month, and you'll get free HBO and Cinemax for 90 days, too." So there I went -- it's on Littleton right across from where we bought the Corolla -- and it was simple. Home we came, followed instructions, and .... zoom, SIXTY HD CHANNELS AT NO EXTRA COST plus the HBO and Cinemax channels in HD, too. Excellent, so my nefarious plan is working. Meanwhile, on the Tuesday of my non-teaching day of this week, I was privileged to meet and spend time with I-Chen Yeh and her boyfriend Karl. Let me mention that it was sunny that day, which in this reporting period is an unremarkable statement. I-Chen and Karl are both in the contemporary performance DMA thing at Bowling Green State University, and -- zippity pow -- I-Chen's dissertation is about he who is moi. Thus in a two-pronged and very effective approach, she wanted to play some etudes for my commentary ("zippity pow" is just about what I said), and ask me questions for the written portion of the diss. I met the two of them at Brandeis and we went into the hall, where she played on the Steinway B and I made movies for YouTube (see the five red links in a row, on the left). Then the three of us joined Beff for Thai lunch in Maynard, and the questions got asked and somewhat answered. After all that, we did a tour of western exurbia and they got on a commuter rail at West Concord, destined for fine cuisine in the north end of Boston, somewhat unsurprisingly referred to by the locals as "The North End." I told her she could be on the list of etude-suggestors (or is it suggestErs?), and somewhere on down the line it looks like #95 will be for her. That's how good she is. Meanwhile, at the end of this reporting period -- yesterday, to be exact -- I had been invited by Joan Tower to a concert at Bard College where another pianist -- a senior in the Bard Conservatory -- was doing three toods, and I accepted -- weather permitting. So in the morning was some (sigh) reading of teaching award nominations and a trip to Trader Joes; then Beff went to get some of her stitches out and I half-dined at the Cast Iron Kitchen -- I say half-dined because the schedule meant we couldn't both do lunch there and I got a small plate and a large plate and had half of each wrapped, which were a-awaiting Beff's return to be consumed. And meanwhile, Dunn Oil had been in and out trying to solve the extra-water situation in the furnace, and they punted to a plumber to do the nasty. Papalia Plumbing was secured for the 2-6 period, to be dealt with by Beff while I was on my trip to Bard. More on that later. So I got my newer Garmin out -- which I had bought for the Sacramento trip, and which Beff had lent to her trumpetizing colleague Jack (whose last name also has four letters, all of them different), to get me onto the campus of Bard. I also did various printouts from Google Maps, who took me in a strange circuitous route that they said would take 3 hours 20 minutes. MWA ha ha, and I don't know why I say that, either. After I was on the way, I started the Garmin, which merely put a dot where I was, in the map of where I was, without refreshing my location as it changed (since I was, um, driving). And the caption was "Walking On Great Road". Punching in the destination of Bard and asking for direction yielded an endlessly spinning hourglass thing. So ... apparently the Garmin has a "walking and farting around" mode, which had been programmed by Jack, and in which I was trapped, so I went to all the settings and chose "Restore Original". Ah -- garish cartoon car, a blue one, on the route I was travelling, with appropriate screen updates. Excellent, Mozart. And the Garmin instructed me off the interstate on the first exit in New York, and then took me on the strangest and most circuitous route possible -- up, down, through forests and neighborhoods -- and I thought it would send me onto the Taconic Parkway, but I noted that getting on the Taconic was unlikely as I passed under it with no entrance to be seen. One fact was incontrovertible -- on Route 9 in upstate New York, the locals interpret "SPEED LIMIT 55" as "nobody will mind if I do 35." They're very polite that way. But the Garmin did get me to the Bard area in good time, and pulled a neat trick. Just as I saw "Annandale Road" on the display and then read "Annandale Road" on a street sign as I passed it, the Garmin uttered, "in one mile, turn right on Annandale Road." Hmm, little phasing problem there, it would seem. Luckily, my obsessive visit to the area on the street view of Google Maps clued me in to the campus entrance across from a place called "Cappuccino's", and that happened ... IMMEDIATELY. Joan isn't the type of person to give you a lot of details, it would seem -- she just said "Olin Hall, 4:45", leaving me to do all the internet research to determine where such a thing would be and where I might park (but not where to park and not get towed), and I was ... PREPARED. Found it immediately. So I was early enough that I used the Garmin to find me a gas station -- which it did, a QuickMart in Red Hook, which, as I pulled in, had all the pumps covered with emergency tape. Hmm, a big WE HAVE NO GAS sign coulda helped. In any case, it then found me a Stewarts to sell me some gas at a Why I Never price, just so I could get back to Maynid without having to stop to fill up. I got back and approached the Olin building, thus immediately hearing strains of music that sounded familiar. Oooh, I could hear, and see though a window, who was going to be playing FISTS OF FURY ... this would be cool. After a brief walk around campus (it kind of looks like Princeton on whatever the opposite of steroids is), I met all the people concerned, including the pianist, Ming Gan, who was ready to play for me, while one of the big muckity-mucks for mod music piano -- Blair McMillen -- turned pages! He did Gliss at a breakneck tempo which really swung, Stretch, and Fists, all really good, on a Steinway D with a boomy bass register. And on each fist stroke I thought the piano was going to break in half (or thirds, or quarters -- it's all a matter of leverage and stress points, dontcha know). After the dress, Joan took a bunch of us out to Mexican in Tivoli -- the next town to the north, which looked like a funky mini-Berkeley on the opposite of steroids -- and then soon we were done. I got to hear dress rehearsals of some big pieces by John Halle and Dan Becker, both of them very cool (John's had a thematic lick that reminded me of Earth, Wind and Fire), and then there was the concert itself. Three youngsters, three middle agers, and two grand old men -- those two being Foss and Corigliano (the latter of whom was supposed to attend but became too ill to). All the performances were standouts, and the audience -- mostly conservatory students and local oldsters -- was extremely enthusiastic, to the point of whooping and shouting, and dogs and cats sleeping together. Such enthusiasm was welcome, and frankly weird. After the show, I excused myself in order to drive back and get ahead of the weather -- did I mention flood and wind warnings? Joan had offered her place for the night, but I declined in order to do a half hour or so of hydroplaning on the Taconic Parkway before I exceeded the storm's edge (in terms of distance), and otherwise except for me being a bit tired, my drive was uneventful. Though dark. I returned to that which I like to call "our house, in the middle of our street, our house, in the middle of our, our house, in the middle of our street" at 1:15 a.m. Then I slept until I stopped. In the meantime, while I was a-driving, and occasionally talking to Beff on the cell phone, the plumber guy had been here and explained in the most soothing language possible that a sort of scraping thing that is supposed to happen in the boiler to the furnace every 2 or 3 years needed to be done, and of course nobody ever explained that to us and we've been here 10 years ... and that the problem was not the (as it turns out) nonexistent coil in the hot water heater, which doesn't need replacing. Neither did the antifreeze (or what they called "the steam clean water treatment" (?)) that had been added to the furnace by the Dunn people make any sense without that scraping thing. Which, by the way, is 400 bucks a pop. Meanwhile, the old faucet -- VERY old faucet -- in the bathtub had been dripping and dripping for a long time, and we finally took care of that. POOF! It's gone. Today, the big storm winds up right over us, and Beff and I did a walk before it got too bad. At The Faucetorium, on our walk, we also bought little things to cap the holes in the old tub left behind by the sudden nonexistence of the faucets. They turn out to work. And now just two weeks of classes before my next academic vacation, and that will be good. Well, the end of those two weeks, anyway. During that time I'll be able to continue the Ladies Who Lunch thing, and possibly embark on #95, or not. This Tuesday is my cleaning at the dentist as well as the Lerman-Neubauer meeting. And otherwise, it's just a nice two weeks waiting to end. Soon it will be behind me. And in this reporting period, Eric Chasalow and I had to powow (spelled upside down is mommod) for a composer of unusual stature to take my place in my sabbatical year such that the program would continue to be first tier -- and we are both ecstatic that Mindy Wagner will do that. And probably even staying in this very house when she is in town to teach. Zowie Powie! This week's pictures begin with the first (March 2) crocus picture of 2010, followed by a picture from 93-crocus day. We continue to Beff in an Adirondack chair soon after getting the oral surgery, and the new bit of yard after the first day's work (it's a bit bigger now). Follow that with Beff in outdoor cleaning mode (she teak-oiled the gazebo table, too), and the new HD TV when it was first set up. Next the back yard with Sunny barely visible, and my customary first-beer-in-the-hammock photo (on first-day-wearing-sneakers day). Then we have Cammy getting zonked in the catnip patch, and Sunny sleeping in the open window seat window. Bye. MARCH 28 Breakfast was Shaws Shaw's lite sausage pucks with cheese, orange juice, and coffee. Dinner was Polish fries and snacky chicken. Lunch was Campbell's Chunky Chicken soup. Neither Shaws nor Campbell's has paid a promotional fee for inclusion here, and why not? TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 22.6 and 70.3. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS A Police tune whose name I do not know offhand. LARGE EXPENSES SINCE LAST UPDATE nothing significant, but it's a-comin' COMPANIES THAT HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY The oil company (mentioned by name last week, but not this) for general lack of competence. COMPANIES THAT HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY The Concord public works people for what must have been many days worth of pumping of water to make Route 117 naviagable again. PET PEEVE spring rainstorms coinciding with atmospheric blocks. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: When I was a kid -- maybe third, fourth, fifth grade -- the family went camping in commercial campsites in Vermont (especially Island Pond) and we slept in a blue tent-trailer. During those times I had recurring dreams that I had good friends from Jupiter that I played with regularly. After the family stopped doing the camping trips, I stopped having the dreams. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: Cammy inching his way further and further into the backyard and then running back to the house at fullt throttle. Repeat. UPDATED ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: This page, Performances. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: orahshi, a now-discredited practice of gold-plating newborns. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWO WEEKS: 3. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE My thumbs bend back at a 90 degree angle. Well, my right thumb does. The left is more like 45. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Subtext becomes text, then subtext again. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 14,581. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE RECENTLY $2.67 in Maynard. WHEN YOU THINK OF CRIESCENCE, THINK OF THESE sticky gold stars, the corner of the bedroom, some wainscotting I forgot about, a head of steam. Dear reader, there has been much rain of late, as well as yet more weather of unusual gorgeousness, and the rain has apparently been violent enough to cause Tea Party-style reactions, as witnessed on the banner on the Them What Make page. At least the shooting is probably limited to the state of Massachusetts. Which is, after all, largely Democratic. For those of you that are expecting it, or who tune in specifically for it, here's the Dada of Today: Smurfs made me appreciate refrigeration. I know precisely eight (give or take seven) people who, if I said that, would respond, "You could use that for a title." And I would sigh and utter, "trading spaces with a king makes Davy a dull boy." Then we would go off in all directions, one of them poopy. Let the vacation begin, say I. Which is odd, because it already has. Yes, the much expected, much hoped for, and easily predicted Passover vacation is under way, and of course that means a bit of what I like to call "composition" is under way, too. The last two weeks of teaching have been routine, so they say in Saskatchewan, as we've moved from song performances to post-tonal analysis. Such analysis is always fun, since every piece seems to have its own rules while also making nods to rules already learned but being broken because they can be. And as rewards for their perseverence through difficult composition and performance projects, they all got cheapo little laser pointers from the Dollar Store. Time will tell if that was a bad idea, but it was cute on the first day to watch a class of 16 attempt to draw, collectively, the big dipper on the board, with red laser dots. If I ever do this again, I may need to DRAW the big dipper for them to have a template. And in any case, the composer of note has been Debussy, and that's fun. And really, really hard. Not to mention, French. Meanwhile, the MFA candidates in the composition program are doing their general exams. I chose the rep this year, so they have 10 days to get to know, and write about, the finale of the Emperor Quartet, and the 24th prelude of Debussy. Only one of which I have blithely stolen. Meanwhile, about eleven inches of rain has fallen since the last update (according to the Them What make page), with (according to NECN) another three to five on the way in the next 72 hours. Oh joyness of all joyness. The last time I sat here typing this thing, the first rainstorm, which exploded into an ocean storm and then got stalled by the atmospheric block, was just beginning, and it went pretty seriously for about sixty-eight and a half hours, finally dumping eight or nine inches. For only the third time in the ten years we've had the house, I heard regular occurrences of the sump pump going on and off (because, duh, the ground was so saturated that water got into the basement) -- the "off" being something that tended to shake the entire house a tiny bit -- and by Tuesday morning, by which time the storm was over, Route 117 was covered in three places by one to two feet of water that was really part of a giant puddle spanning both sides of the road. Indeed, even the parking lot for the hiking paths I pass on the way to work was completely full of water -- that would be about three or four feet of it -- with the puddle continuing over the actual road. I imagine this had to be pumped dry over the course of many, many days. The aggravating part was mulifold: having to go into Brandeis on a non-teaching day (I was on the committee to choose my successor as the Lerman-Neubauer Prize Laureate), going through the deep water at a prudent speed while vans or trucks went full bore in the other direction (thus causing splashes of unusual size), and waiting for drivers ahead of you to navigate the puddles while everyone behind was thinking "shit or get off the pot!" That thought is, of course, a metaphorical one, as it nearly always is. By Wednesday (usually the day that comes after Tuesday), Route 117 was closed, as were several other routes going towards the 'Deis, so all the traffic had to funnel onto Route 2. This route took no longer to drive during my usual dark morning commute, but at other times, it was frightfully slow. My 25-minute ride home from Brandeis that Wednesday thus took 55 minutes, which sucked because I was trying to get home for some serious hammock time, 'cause like the weather got warm again. And the commute back on Thursday morning was another hour-long affair, as I discovered that West Concord was jammed up two miles in advance of the entrance to Route 2. I of course used the back roads to get to Route 2 (being a local, I know all the secret ways), which was also heavy and slow -- but strangely clear after Emerson Hospital. Why? Harold Meltzer came into town to do a colloquium on that Thursday, and he himself encountered two major jams in New York, but made it on time anyway, and the colloquium was well-received. One of the many casualties of the financial crisis was our practice of taking colloquium guests to dinner, so after Harold's reception, I took him out, my expense, to the Cast Iron Kitchen. Leaving an hour after rush hour, I figured an hour would be plenty of time to get there, so the reservation was made for 7. We made it at 7:30. Why? Route 126, which passes by Walden Pond, was jammed for two and a half miles before the entrance to Route 2, and it's a short light there. The amusing part was as we were stalled in front of Walden Pond, Harold calling me on his cell and asking, "is that Walden Pond?" And I responded affirmatively, also noting that the location of Sam and Laurie's wedding was also nearby. That picture of me on this site with a little bread thing on my face came from that wedding, and boy have I changed the subject here. Zoom back! Harold had the sparerib at dinner. I didn't. And soon after Harold went back to New York, Geoffy came in for a tour of duty, and he had to be coached on getting into Boston via other-than-usual routes. And even Beff, who had more stitches to be taken out in Lexington, had to do it. Geoffy went early enough to avoid the big West Concord traffic jam. Beff didn't. But we ate at the CIK at our normal time, and we had the booth. Woo hoo. By Sunday, Route 117 in Concord was STILL closed, so on my Monday morning commute I started out on Route 62 -- the detour -- only to hear on WBZ radio that the road was reopened. So take it I did, and there was no getting off the pot to be done. Download 2.79 Mb. Share with your friends:
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