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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| On the LAST Sundy of our Cassis stay, the Fellows were responsible for a "cabaret" for the benefit of local Cassideans, and we did not disappouint. The scholars gave brief summations of their work, Natalia played bits of her film, Natalie read a bit of her novel that takes place in Cassis, Eric Moe played 2 of my preludes and his own piece "The Legend of the Sad Triad", and Barbara showed her wall collages in her studio to anyone that wanted. And my function? I played cocktail piano as the guests arrived, for 37 minutes. I know so few cocktail tunes that I also played Brahms, Ravel and Mahler (!), and I even figured out the bridge to "Saving All My Love For You" to have another available tune. The room got kinda loud as I played, so I had no fear of hitting wrong notes. Surprisingly, my colleagues listened, though, and thanked me for Girl from Ipanema and Whitney Houston. And after the cabaret, it was off to Fringale, a pizza place run by a cool Tunisian guy. And we saw that it was good.
While I was in Cassis, Ash Wednesday occured. Thus did Lent begin, and I withdrew from Facebook. As I always (well, twice now) do for Lent. Today, on the other hand is Palm Sunday, which has a double meaning for basketball players. On my last day, I brought my sheets and towels, etc. back to the source, cleaned, packed, and got a ride to the Cassis train station, which I was seeing for the first time -- it's 4 kilometers from Cassis! I got a ticket to Marseille for 5.40 Euro, made sure to "composter" the ticket (validate it with a stamping machine), rode the train and no seats were available, took the bus to the airport and the courtesy shuttle to Best Western, and chilled. My flight was at 6:10 am (what idiot made these reservations? Oh yes, moi) and the first courtesy shuttle was 5 am, which I thought may not be early enough. Oh me of little faith: the shuttle got me (and two other Americans) to the airport at exactly 5 am. I checked my suitcase, went through security, and was at the gate at 5:09 am. The flight to Frankfurt had a pretty sunrise to see, and then there were those Alps, and then there were the five hours in Frankfurt. At least, amazingly, I did not have to go through security a second time. I went to duty free, and it was all crap, so I purchased nothing. The flight to Boston was uneventful, save one of the pieces of my suitcase that lets you stand it up sideways having broken off (Lufthansa's fault? LL Bean's fault?) AAA Limo took me back, and I immediately -- immediately! -- embarked for Halfway Cafe, and Buffalo wings for the first time in three months. I was as sated as it gets. Then I got food staples at Shaws, unpacked, and got ready to drive to Maine the next morning. Which I did. Played with cats. Lunch with Beff at work. Nap. Played with cats. Dinner with Beff and Sea Dog (teri tuna sandwich). Then breakfast next morning, and bringing the cats back to Maynard, in boxes. Immediately they wanted out of doors (first time in three months), and off I went to Whole Foods for food staples. Oh yes, and to the post office to mail our tax voucher for the state of Maine, since we owed a little bit, and it was tax day ... Yesterday was Trader Joes, Staples, Donelans for more stuff, as well as yard work (pick up a huge limb that broke off a pine tree, for starters) and bringing out the lawn and gazebo furniture. And since I still have that arise early jet lag, I got up at 5 this morning (the cats had a lot to do with that), and here, dear reader, is where I started to type. Boing! Upcoming, dentist for teeth cleaning. They had told me that a toothpaste called "Elgydium" was available in France, and it contains Chlorhexadine -- which is available in the US only by prescription (I get it because I have to proxa-brush one of the little caves in my teeth where a wisdom tooth was taken out). I didn't discover that toothpaste anywhere until after I left Beff off at the airport. So I'm bringing some as a gift to them. And then, and then ... well, try to start writing a quartet for clarinet and piano trio, at the end of which it is hammock time until Brandeis upstarts again. I am in DC from April 27 to May 2 for the Marine Chamber Orchestra's performance of the chamber orchestra version of Stolen Moments. The nice part about this is, unlike for the children's concert last year, the Marines are paying for gas, tolls, mileage, hotel, and a per diem for meals. Woo hoo! I will drive there, and then, in a startling reversal, will drive back after it happens. Beff, meanwhile, has a very complex schedule. I think we spend a few hours together on Easter. Then, who knows? And hey. I created a Twitter account. Beff seems to think we have decided our days to be in Vermont this summer, but I didn't get the memo. I thought we had an outline, not a plan. Soon, though, Beff will read this and tell me specifically. And, New Music on the Point. And sax quartet in New York and Philly. And, and, and .... Pictures! The assembled gang (Fellows, staff, French consulate guy) dressed up for an early meet-and-greet; my studio; Cape Canaille and lighthouse viewed from my studio; Cassis at night; unenclosed trumpets in the organ at the Marseille Abbaye St. Victor; Beff at work; town of Cassis and some kind of kid's parade; limestone bluffs on the Calanques boat ride; Pizza Pengui on Valentine's Day at Disco Pizza; and the town of Cassis in January. Bye. MAY 6 Lunch was hot dogs and a plate of tomatoes with dressing. Breakfast was a plum, orange juice, and coffee. Dinner last night was blackened swordfish and half a scallop cake. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 37.4 and 79.5. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS first movement of "Stolen Moments". LARGE EXPENSES SINCE LAST UPDATE Roof work $1190, new printer and briefcase $154, iPad and iPhone with cases about $1100 collectively. COMPANIES THAT HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY CVS and Walgreens for having two of the three possible Proxabrush sizes in stock, but not the size I needed. COMPANIES THAT HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY Trader Joes, for the big and inexpensive thing of blackberries and 29-cent limes, Apple Store in the Natick Collection for procuring me an iPad from a secret location in back, Twelfth Century Slate Roofing for the quick service. PET PEEVE big branches that fall off of trees into my yard and driveway. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: When I was upgrowing, the family owned a small portable reel-to-reel tape recorder, which Jim Hoy and I used to use to record our jam sessions -- me on a toy guitar strumming one chord, and Jim on a toy drum kit. Jim did all the singing, except we had one standard in which I would occasionally intone, backup, "End of the world, end of the world, end of the world, ..." My sister probably has all those tapes in a box somewhere, which someone one day could be used for serious blackmail purposes. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 1. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: Loud purring, taking turns right under my armpit at night. NEW ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: This page, Lexicon. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: boriofa, a rare truffle found only where the sun don't shine. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWO WEEKS: 1. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE I have no tattoos. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Zero-one-five means "pretty chord" to composers. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 16,741. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE RECENTLY $3.72 in Maynard, $3.79 on the NJ Turnpike, $3.79 on the NJ Turnpike, $3.95 in Maynard. IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO'S GROWN UP RIGHT sticky gold stars, the corner of the bedroom, some wainscotting I forgot about, a head of steam. Dear reader, so little and so much has happened that I'm going to have to step on the brake and floor it a lot in this update. It's okay, you can get used to it. I think. First, there was the summerification of the back yard. That involved bringing the Adirondack chairs out of the shed into the yard, bringing the gazebo furniture from the porch to the gazebo, bringing the picnic table stuff from the basement to the yard,and of course, reassembling the hammock. And using it. For I am Hammock Guy. Hear me snore. My easing back into the American-life-that-is-not-the-south-of-France was assisted by some pretty serious Apple technology. I am and have been immersing myself in the oh so coolness that is the iPad 2 and iPhone. I had chosen a day to drive to the Natick Collection (formerly the Natick Mall) to procure said Apple products, and online it was reported that the Apple Store there opened at 10, but at 9 to sell iPads only. Hmm, iPads are popular. They get their own opening time. So the Collection is no longer exactly the same as the mall, and I took a turn too soon and got completely lost -- this during the Boston Marathon, and one route had been closed off to me because of it -- but eventually I made it to familiar territory, parked, entered through JC Penney, and followed the mall map to the Apple Store. Nothing in the mall, or Collection, seemed familiar. And I made it to the entry of the Apple Store at 10:01, with the buzz-buzz-buzz of people with pursuits at least as nerdly as mine already evident. I approached the back of the store just as the sales associates seemed to emerge from their meeting, and I buttonholed one. "I'm here for a 32gig iPhone, Verizon, and 32gig wifi black iPad 2." I did not have to translate it into French, but I could have. I would have said largely all the same stuff, with an accent, and then, as if I were in France, sneering. Sales associate guy was great. He said iPads were so popular that nobody ever got one after 10 am and they were out of them, and some might be delivered around noon, but ... he saw a suspicious box in the back that may actually have iPads in it. Back in he went, and emerged and said "even the manager doesn't know about it, but it's iPads, all right. Let's deal with the iPhone, and then I'll snag an iPad for you." It played out as advertised, and at the end of the transactions, I was informed that I was the first customer since March 11 to get to the store after it opened and emerge with an iPad. Now there's a distinction not destined for my resume. Or is it? I had entered the store with my VG Smartphone, which seemed so pathetic and creaky at this point, but it was put into service: to transfer my Verizon wireless account to an iPhone, I had to call Verizon and set up a different rate plan. So I did, from inside the store. And then everything else went swimmingly. 'ceptin' I think I made a bad choice for an iPhone case. I intend to buy a different one shortly. And then I was all giddy, and stuff, for a while while playing with the iPhone and the iPad and downloading free and cheap applications, and playing with them, and, and, .... and then there was a dissertation defense to attend -- Jeremy Spindler's. The external reader was Martin Bresnick -- because the paper topic was Ligeti -- and a great time was had by all. There was Thai lunch, and I was Marty's ride to the Route 128 train station. During that ride I got to tell him his sax quartet was terrific. Because, you see, it is. Meanwhile, there were some stabs at starting a quartet for Quartet For The End Of Time ensemble. So far, a few notions and some unstemmed notes on a page. Net note count today: zero. Did I mention that this one actually pays? Okay. So. Beff downloaded Face Time for her computer, and we've been doing the Skype-like thing with it, 'cept better. And the cool(er) thing is that I can dial her from the iPad, and if her computer is on it will ring -- accordingly, if she calls me, the iPad produces a ring tone. And speaking of ring tones -- I remember when iTunes gave you the option of turning any of your sounds into a ringtone. That was, seemingly, before their business model inserted "sell ringtones" as a major source of income. Thus, I downloaded a simple ringtone maker from Ambrosia Software, which works precisely as advertised. And so when Beff calls my cell, her ringtone plays -- her saying "Flibber Flabber Flubber Boo-Boo." It must be experienced to be experienced (it's the reflexive property). And then Geoffy and Mindy started coming by for their own nefarious purposes. Geoffy for a nearly 12-day span, with interruptions, for two Brandeis gigs and a Musica Viva gig -- and Mindy for the usual reasons. It came to a head one night when they were both in search of accommodations, which was fine, because it meant I got to sleep on the side porch -- and I did! And why was I keen on sleeping on the side porch? I'm glad I asked me that. I had a 5-day trip to Washington on tap, with me driving both ways. Yes, about eight hours each way, though it was nine hours down (traffic) and seven and a half hours back (no traffic). Marine Chamber Orchestra conducted by Jason Fettig was doing the new chamber orchestra arrangement of Stolen Moments, and I was invited for several rehearsals and the gig itself. Woo hoo, said I, thought I, and did I. I stayed about four or five blocks from the Marine Barracks, where they had the rehearsals, and the same distance from a new up-and-coming yuppie dining neighborhood called Barracks Row. Where I ate several times, with several people -- one dinner with Carolyn "Ka-Ching" Davies and a brunch with David Smooke and Emily Koh -- Emily being a doctoral student who will enter Brandeis in the fall. All was fine, good, good, fine, fine, fine, good, fine, and good, and then some. On Barracks Row, you do not get Buffalo wings. You get Chesapeake Wings with Buffalo sauce. There was no functional difference. While I was gone, the two-year oddysey of fixing and replacing (slate) tiles on the roof ended. The roof got fixed. And all I had to do was call. So I went to those several rehearsals, and of course my music is hard enough for ten people, and when almost thirty have to do the same stuff, including a full string section -- whoo doggies, that's a lot of counting. It sounded pretty great, though, and of course the wind playing was a fuori di questo mondo. Jason and La Famiglia Colburn did Famous Dave's Barbecue one of those nights, and I saw that it was good. The gig itself was great, and my piece went quite well. And I heard a Ginastera piece I hadn't heard before -- wherein the only way to begin a section was imitative entrances. Kind of an interesting conceit. And then there was the drive back, beginning at 5 Monday morning, an undergrad composers concert to go to at Brandeis, and ... goodness, the lawn seemed kind of barren and sad when I left for DC, and it ... needed mowing! ... when I got back. So out came the lawnmower, and in the gorgeous Monday weather, there I was, mowing the lawn as if it were summer. And it wasn't! And still isn't! And I played with my iPhone and iPad some more. I even noticed various mentions of "Air Print" available from iPads and iPhones and certain HP printers. I looked up just which HP printers supported Air Print, and mused that we could use a wireless printer for the place in Vermont -- thus did I go to Staples in search of such a printer that also supported Air Print, and voila! One such printer was on special, 35 percent off. So I got one, and also a sort of padded binder to use as a case for the iPad, and brought them home. Installing the printer was complex but fairly painless, and the way to get Air Print going is to give the printer an e-mail address on an HP webpage, for which you register for free. I got it to work with both devices, and so did Geoffy, with his iPhone! Success. Consummate nerdliness. Tuesday was predicted to be dank and gloomy, but was sunny and hazy-clear. I spent most of the day hammocking and Adirondack chairing (not in the adminstrative sense), and ended up with the first sunburn of the season. And last night, Geoffy and I did the Cast Iron Kitchen. And we saw (and tasted) that it was good. So now here we are at the present, the sun has just re-entered after a brief shower, I took the big exercise walk over and around Summer Hill, and while I was gone, the masonry guys fixed the grout that has broken and dissolved since their repair of the front steps from 2008 .... And it's kind of cold. Coming up -- dentist to fix a broken filling, Beff's school year ends and we go to get HER an iPhone, must to write quartet music, and so on. Not much else in May, but there's June a-splode, details to follow. Oh, and Beff goes to Mexico to perform, and it'll be cool skyping or Face Timing with her, assuming she gets wi-fi wherever she is staying. The first two pictures are my yearly ritualistic shots of First Beer on the Hammock and First Beer (same one, actually) in the gazebo. Then it's the Capitol Building from the neighborhood where my DC hotel was, Sunny coming back in after rooting around in dirty places, Beff's appearance as "January" on her department's calendar, a really big typo at Shaw's, and two shots of the Marine Chamber Orchestra in rehearsal. Bye. MAY 22 Breakfast was rice link sausages, orange juice, and coffee. Lunch was hot dogs. Dinner was Trader Joe's mahi mahi burgers and salad. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 48.2 and 77.5. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS "Easy Come, Easy Go." I'm not sure who the artist was for that. (Google identifies George Strait as the artist, 1970) LARGE EXPENSES SINCE LAST UPDATE No large expenses! COMPANIES THAT HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY Whoever manufactures the Sound Machines, for shipping a defective one. To me. COMPANIES THAT HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY Amazon, for having an easy returns policy now, CVS for having lots of stuff. PET PEEVE spring bush trimming, dandelions gone to seed everywhere. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: Once in a while when I was in high school, my sister would curl my hair -- the old fashioned way, in curlers and under a hose hair dryer. I once had the curled hair for costume day my junior year, and in American history class, the wizened old teacher ignored all of our costumes. Except maybe halfway through the lecture at a natural break, he turned to me and queried, "Rakowski, what happened to your hair?" Of course, that's not something I would, or could, do now. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: they're really into the catnip,which has grown huge, and they continue to flank me at night. NEW ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: This page. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: fliorifia, the imaginary puff of smoke when your head imaginarily explodes. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWO WEEKS: 6. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE I seem to be immune to poison ivy. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Every verb ends with an e-aigu. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 16,984. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE RECENTLY $3.95 in Maynard. THINGS THAT EASE THE TRANSITION TO OLD AGE sticky gold stars, the corner of the bedroom, some wainscotting I forgot about, a head of steam. And so it goes. It goes so, and. So, and it goes? It goes so (and). A pitifully small amount of actual work done in this reporting period, but that's okay. I was due, having written two hours and five minutes of music since the last class I taught. As I type this, that number is two hours and six minutes. But oh, lemme splain. The reader may recall from the last update that my decompression from not being in France was to immerse myself in technology. Specifically, I went all out (all out went I, I out all went, went out I all, all I out went) and got an iPad and an iPhone. There has been much playing with them and the exotic applications. For a while, I got into the free autotune apps, into which I would sing glissandos and then go goo goo and gaga over the playback, wherein my voice was turned into melisma abuse. Then there was the Hipstamatic camera and its accessory paks -- various combos of lenses, flashes and films for retro style and very stylish picture-taking. Now there's HDR photo stuff, photo editing stuff, stuff to take pictures or movies in various pencil sketches or cartoon styles, Bloom, sketching stuff, and especially lately 3-D photo taking stuff. The 3-D stuff lets you take those stereoscopic side by side pictures like the Magic Eye stuff that was popular in the early 90s, if I recall right -- it also does the green and white pictures called Anaglyphs. I never Anaglyph I didn't like. And so there's been time trolling the App Store for apps. As well as recreation, the usual long walks, playing with the cats and all. I had two doctorial things in this reporting period -- a routine visit to my GP doc for a blood pressure check, which was fine, and I had also lost 10 pounds since leaving for France. Putting me at one pound below my grad student weight. I don't know what that actually means, but it also puts me 27 pounds under what I weighed the first time I saw this particular GP in 2000. Woo hoo! As to the dentist, it was a routine replacement of an old, old filling that had cracked. In and out in 30 minutes. The most strenuous career- or work-related thing was the production of 9 scores and 36 parts destined for the saxophone quartet consortium that commissioned "Compass". For those who haven't figured it out by context, Compass is my saxophone quartet. The commission is for a 10-minute piece, and I wrote 19. And the printing and binding of all that stuff took a full day. Actually extracting and transposing the parts -- as I had worked from a C score -- was three days, but that all happened before I went to France. Addressing 9 mailing bags and producing cover letters -- about an hour, I guess. I made two trips into Brandeis in the reporting period -- the first was for a grad student composers concert, which was, as usual, wonderfully played, quite varied stylistically, and -- not usually -- not overlong. Mindy was here for that, so she did her teaching the next day -- which was a Sunday, and then had a party here, at the Maynard homestead, for her students. That was a good party, with nice pizza from the local pizzeria, and there I discovered what one student had brought and left behind: unsweetened cranberry juice. Who knew? I love it! I finished it. I got more. MWA ha ha. Beff was here for the party, too, and the highlight seemed to be looking at my France pictures on the iPad. Despite that, it was a nice party. The second trip was for a reception honoring Brandeis teachers -- I had been to that same reception two years ago when I got my 30 percent of a teaching award, and a student who took my theory 1 class invited me. So I went. The outdoorization of the outdoors was completed, as one of the lawnmowers was brought to the shed, started, and utilized, and both bicycles were oiled and the tires inflated. The 2-year-old $12 pump seemed to be worthless (as in, the tire was flatter after I pumped than when I started), so I walked to the bike shop next to Maynard Door and Window and asked for their BEST PUMP. They gave it to me! Actually,they sold it to me, for $43. And boy, was it easy to use! I'll never not use it again. Meanwhile, Beff has been a drivin' fool. To Maine, home, to New York, home, to Maine. And currently she is in Mexico, having gone with two of her colleagues, where they will perform and teach for a bit more than a week. She started posting pics on Facebook today, and we had a conversation this afternoon over Face Time on her computer and my iPad. Beff, too, got an iPhone, and she got into the Hipstamatic and something called Camera Bag, an app that applies various retro styles to existing photos. Also that app for doing cartoon or line drawing pictures or movies. We both have added various silly ring tones -- it's the sound of a frame drum as her generic ring tone, and the sound of me doing tongue clicks, in many layers, for my generic ring tone. If Judy Bettina calls me, it'll be her voice singing "Why aren't you here? I await your arrival." Fascinating. We are replacing the bathroom upstairs -- total gutting, with new fixtures (the current bathtub is cracked, for instance) and layout, and that may happen as soon as the middle of July. Hmm, that's a bit of an expense... Steve from MDAW came by to scope the place out, and he's workin' on it, workin' on it. This week has been pure puke, weatherwise (today on NECN weather, the announcer remarked that this is the second cloudiest month of May since 1888, and I believe him), with temps 20 degrees below normal, and spritzy rain on and off. With a downpour every once in a while. Yesterday had been predicted to be more of the same, but instead it was 77 and sunny all day. I celebrated with a long walk AND a bike ride AND lawnmowing AND writing 15 bars of music. Woo hoo! Yes, the time is such that I have finally gotten back on the treadmill and am enforcing my 15-bar-a-day regimen. As I have a quartet to write, and then a small quartet, but for a different quartet. Currently the M.M. is 136-144, so 15 bars a day isn't a lot of music -- but it's fast! And sort of a variation on the beginning of my Cygnus piece, except tipped sort of on its side. So there. Download 2.79 Mb. Share with your friends:
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