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Thursday: Janauary 01, 2004 - Happy New Year! Happy New Year! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Saturday: Janauary 03, 2004 - Florida Vacation I'm back in Florida, why don't you just wait a little while and I'll put a new post up later.

Well, I'm back in Florida after a long, long time in Naperville. The trip on the whole was very pleasant but with my dad asleep in my bed right now, I just might possibly be counting down the hours until I have my house, car, dog and life back within my control (as far as it ever was). We almost got in a fight at dinner, when my dad "made a case" (I use the term "made" to mean "weakly attempted to make") for me getting a job because of my German skills. I admit, I do have a .0005% knowledge of German (if that), BUT 75% of that knowledge comes from babel.altavista.com I'm not too proud to admit it. I passed the final test with nothing but my German dictionary, verb wheel and a pencil. Anyway, I know nothing. I would be just as lost as anyone else in Germany since, well, I can't read, speak, or understand German. I guess technically, in the loosest sense of the word, I can read a couple things. The point is, I am another useless American in that country. My dad insisted this was a marketable trait. Had he been offering me financial, economical or any sort of relevant advice I would have at least considered it. However, he thinks I could move to L.A. and get a job writing music. And somehow, this job involves traveling to Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Namibia, Romania, Switzerland or any other country that involves having German fluency. I informed him that my knowledge of German consists of yelling "Scheisse!" when I got Steve and I euchred. The lecture series concluded with him saying, "I'm not going to tell you what to do." after telling me that I needed to vacuum. Twice. Because it was so bad it would go through at least two bags. What I'm also sick of is his telling me about MY dog. I feel like one of those bitches on Judge Judy yelling, "On't you tell me how to raise MY kid bitch! No, bitch. He's my kid!". I think I know when Chompy needs to pee. I think I know when she needs to eat. I can tell my the look on her face. I know you're just trying to make up for the fact that you screwed up with your dog but don't take it out on me. Finally, don't pretend like you're doing me this huge service taking her out in the morning. It's not like I can't do it. I've had Chompy for roughly two years. In that time, I've probably taken her out about 2000 times. (365*2*3.5) Somewhere in that number, surely must exist instances where I took her out in the morning. Oh wait--that's every day. I'll be the first, the FIRST to admit, I've yelled at her for waking me up, thrown pillows at her, done a bunch of things. I've also just flat out ignored her until I was ready to get up. Ok, this is true. I have not been the best dog owner on the planet but I'm sure at some point everyone who has a dog has put off taking their dog out. I can think of ONE time that I left her before taking her out. And I had had her for about a week at that point. Oh well, my mom always treats me well. Not that my dad treats me poorly but hello, at what age do I get the punch-card for adulthood, where I'm not under such scrutiny? 30? 40? Never? Oh god, I hope it's not never. I'm never having children. Ever. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: Janauary 04, 2004 - Final Fantasy III No, YOU'RE a nerd. *I* just like to play this one nerdy game. Today I went to church with my dad, bought a ton of new stuff and food and then dropped him off at the airport. I picked him up an hour later because his flight was cancelled. We went to the dog park for about ten minutes and he stood outside. After that, Jamie came over for Chicken Kiev and couscous and the three of us, with Chompy and The Ab, watched LSU edge OU. My dad fell asleep about halfway through the game and with Chompy...well, chomping at the bit to kill Ab, we all kind of had to keep eyes on them. I spent the evening playing Final Fantasy III on a SuperNintendo emulator on my computer. My roommate David and I played this game until we almost beat it my senior year of college. It took a damn long time but we almost had it completed when I had to move to Florida. I was going to buy it but I guess it's rare and I don't have the $100 to buy it. Tomorrow I'm dropping 'pa off at 10:00 and then going to get some Atlanta Bread Company with the J afterwards. Tonight, even though I'm on the couch for one more night, I have a pillow and blanket. Last night I only had a bath towel. Sucked to be me! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: Janauary 05, 2004 - Compulsive Gambling: Pete Rose Waa waa waa. Look at me, I'm the ever-whiny Pete Rose. Sure I am a compulsive gambler and a compulsive liar but because I always ran hard to first base when hitting lots of singles, I should be reinstated into baseball because I finally admitted I bet on baseball (including MY OWN TEAM) after adamantly denying it for fourteen years. I hate you Pete Rose. Apparently Bud Selig, the commissioner of baseball, told Pete Rose that if he just confessed then he would be eligible for the Hall of Fame as well as a reinstatement back to baseball. I hate you too, Bud Selig. What could be worse for baseball than bringing Pete Rose back? It just shows that any disciple decided by the league can be randomly overturned once you admit you screwed up. I don't see any moves to reinstate the infamous Black Sox that threw the World Series for $$$ back in the 1910's. And they admitted to it right away. As much as I love baseball, which is a lot, if Pete Rose is reinstated I'm never going to another game.

My dad left town around 10am yesterday after his flight was delayed. I spent my day making lists and playing Final Fantasy III. Chris and Jamie came over last night for veal and potatoes. Kathy also had a game night, that I'm sure would have been fun, but I didn't want to go because I absolutely hate one of the people she invited. Today I need to go to PetCo. and run other miscellaneous errands before school starts tomorrow. I need to do a lot with the Music Tech website in putting up the final updates before students are going to be looking at it on Thursday. If I have time, I might sneak in some FF3 because, well, I'm a nerd. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: Janauary 06, 2004 - Winter Vacation Ends Today I slept in late for the last time, went out to lunch with Jamie, her uncle, her cousin from Venezuela, her cousin from Germany and her grandma at Momo's. My God, the slices really are as big as your head. Her uncle used to live in Trinidad and was able, if nothing else, to throw around some really impressive names. He said that he would see what he could do in terms of arranging for us to go down for Carnival. That would be fun. In the afternoon, Jamie sorted all my pictures into books and I spent 2.5 hours cleaning my bathroom from top to bottom. I am now, for the first time, not embarrassed to have people take dumps in my house. At 7pm, we went over to Chris' for dinner. If it wasn't for my aversion to tomato based sauces, the actual food and consistency was delicious. After dinner we came back here and played Scattegories. I must wake up early to register for classes tomorrow. Hoorah. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: Janauary 07, 2004 - Atonal Analysis Today was the first day of the semester and after much pleading, the benevolent Dr. Rogers let me into Atonal Analysis. Tomorrow I need to beg, borrow, cheat or steal my way into both Ethnomusicology Seminar and Music Bibliography. Ethno shouldn't be a problem but Bibliography might. If only I thought I was going to be back this semester instead of in Pensacola! I saw almost all of the students I failed today. That sucks. I went out to lunch with Beth, Theory-Chris, Marty, Marty's (girl?!?!??!)-friend Reina and...well, me. We went to Chili's. It was ok. After that, Kathy came over and we talked for a while about some despicable stuff. After she left, Jamie and I ordered pizza and played Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture (DVD) with Chris and Mike. We all lost due to time constraints. I also got my syllabus and calendar ready for tomorrow, my first day of teaching. Oh, and my rosters still aren't up. Ah, the Music Education department. God bless them. The 800th person read my journal today. Thanks, I guess. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: Janauary 08, 2004 - FBI Crackdown at FSU When they give out awards for worst-days I think my day needs to be in the running. I woke up with ample time for class but had no rosters. When I got there to teach, Doug told me that OTTO was semi-down. By this he meant that the idiots that run the university servers made him run a virtual host and OTTO was a slave to it. This translated to me as: no one can sign up for new accounts, I can't change passwords and anything that involved any interaction between OTTO and Joe-Student was not going to be possible. My first class went smoothly enough. There were enough computers for everyone and that was a pleasant change of pace from last semester. After class, I ran into Marty, Ian and Chris and we tried to get Julia to give us our SUSSI forms back early. Only Chris got his, though. I managed to kill the hour easily enough and went back to teach. There were well over 300 million people in my class and I can already foresee computer-sharing to be a problem for the second semester in a row. All of the students seem intelligent enough, though, unlike last semester when they all just looked scared. I made everyone introduce themselves and had them tell everyone one of their New Year's Resolutions. What a great idea, if I do say so myself. You learn a lot about them from the piece of information. After class I went to try to find Dr. Bakan to see if I could join the Ethnomusicology Seminar, as I had hoped. I walked into his office as he was reading my email. He told me that the class was not named appropriately and that I would not be able to take it because it was a secondary course to one in the fall, which I obviously had not taken. Unlike most of the other faculty that I have run-ins with occasionally, he could not have been more helpful to me. He went over to the other building and helped me choose and get into a full section of Music Of The Caribbean. I give him two thumbs up. I then went home in the hopes of calling the courthouse so I could be excused from Jury Duty for tomorrow. The woman employee and I got into a yelling match and I am embarrassed to admit that I might have inferred she was an idiot working for minimum wage for a reason. And what I say inferred, I mean out-right stated. They had lost all records of me from the past and she insisted I had never been there. They didn't even have my record from last summer when I had been in the jurors' box. I was really, really pissed. After slamming the phone down for effect (not effective with a cell-phone I learned), I went to see if I could sneak into Music Bibliography. The class is going to suck suck suck suck suck but at least Meg is in it with me. Our professor was my old TA-Boxmate and I had no choice but to play that card when I was begging to get in. I think the secret of my begging was writing my name first on the top of the Please-Add-Me-List even though I received it last in the class. I wrote in my smallest hand-font above everyone else's name. Anyway, long story shortish, she let me in because she wants my help doing the computer research stuff in class. (She found out I teach the Tech class). With that done, I hauled ass home, ate some chips and then went back for Music Of The Caribbean with Dr. Olsen. He's an interesting guy who clearly knows what he's talking about--the problem is that the class is for anyone so there are freshman business majors in the same class that can't find Cuba on a map. A map that has Cuba labeled in all caps. Whatever. Afterwards, I went to Mas rehearsal and Chris and Ryan auditioned the new people. I fear members of the group might come to the website to see this, so I will not comment upon what I heard about the new people. Not that it was bad but it wasn't good in some cases. There were 17 people auditioning for 3 spots, which is always good. After rehearsal Jamie and I went to Olive Garden for dinner, came home watched the Pete Rose story on ABC and yelled at Chompy, as she got into my garbage and left it all over the house. Again. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Friday: Janauary 09, 2004 - Get Out Of Jury Duty This morning I had jury duty. I made some friends there. The four of us could have made a perfect sitcom: me, a Hispanic girl of about 20, a black guy (with dreds) of about 35 and a 60-something disgruntled white woman. I didn't get called (again) and they let me go. Apparently this time, unlike last time, it counts. I spent for a good two hours of it but I still resented every minute of being there. Afterwards, I went up the Public Defender's office to say hi to Jamie's dad. I got the grand tour. "Some ghetto kids" painted a hideous mural in the lobby and I also got to see the collection of "nice" clothes that they provide for their clients that have to show up to court but are only wearing 1991 K-Mart's best. After I left there, I came back home to check on my tuition waiver status and it was all good. I also found out that one of my particularly cranky students wants to appeal a grade. Lovely. Another one talked to me about it but this other one was very reasonable. Anyway, I fell asleep around 11:30 because, well, I'm getting old. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Saturday: Janauary 10, 2004 - Sheer Apathy Boy, doing nothing is great. Jamie and I went to the store and I bought some new supplies for the big tank. While moving rocks around, I discovered the most disgusting, rotting, dead fish I'd ever seen. Chris and Mike came over and I showed them the next movement of their piece. Oops, I did it again (wrote impossible bass parts). Just grow another finger, Mike. I also showed them Mike's X-mas present, a suckfish. Jamie went to a party and I hung out with some theory friends. The night consisted of the over-readings of an old porn script someone wrote. The whole night reminded me of a high school party without the parental pick up. We also wrote a combined story of our own. It was...well, not very good. I think I should be in the next My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé. I could really scare a family. My God, Chompy. I could really scare a family. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: Janauary 11, 2004 - Car Wreck (The Steve Version) My brother was in a little traffic scrape. Poor kid. He's fine, though, so don't worry. I watched some TV today and made a rare To-Do List. It's only 7pm and I'm just going to be doing odds and ends tonight. Sorry but it was a boring weekend. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: Janauary 12, 2004 - Spring Cleaning Today was a good day. Maybe not good in the conventional "I got lots done" sense or the "whoa, there's a $50 on the ground" sense but in a lazy, sort of apathetic sense. I actually got a lot done tonight, including sorting out some students from last semester. I woke up on time today and made it Atonal Analysis with my homework done. Too bad my undergrad professor did a HORRIBLE job explaining things and he managed to teach me wrong. That being the case, I screwed my homework up big time. Oh well, at least now I know how to do it. I had heard horror stories about Dr. Rogers and Atonal Analysis but I think she teaches the class well. What I like already is that she always goes through how the proofs are made and does them for us. That is so much better than saying "this is rule X, like it because I told you to." She has a very dry sense of humor, which I also like. I feel badly for the non-theory/comp people in the class that still can't count to twelve. I can tell this because they look down for the full 50 minutes. Like, they don't even come up for, like, eye-air; just looking down the whole time. After that I met with Dr. Clendinning about my theory thesis. Even though I had nothing new to show her she pointed me in the right direction. I talked to Dr. Stanley for a bit about a problem with a former student and he helped ease my mind a little bit. I received another email from Student-X tonight and I did my best to reply without giving my personal opinion about anything. If s/he decides to challenge it further I'm ready to defend my position to whatever powers may be out there. This afternoon Jamie and I went to the dog park. Spring must be in the air because it was a venerable hump-fest out there. Chompy and The Ab were both able to dodge the cartoon dog that was chasing them (one of those big, fluffy dogs that I think might be in Family Circus?). After the dog park I came home and took care of my stuff for tomorrow's classes and cleaned my kitchen. And by "cleaned my kitchen" I mean "put non-rinsed plates with week-old mashed potatoes permanently affixed to them into the dishwasher." Tomorrow is going to be a long, long day. I also am going to write a guest entry for Brian's journal this week. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: Janauary 13, 2004 - Teacher Confessions I am way too pissed to write a good update. On top of a very long day, I still have Student X being completely unreasonable and just owning up to the fact that s/he screwed up would solve all the problems. Although the powers that be have supported me so far, I feel like somehow this is my fault. I didn't make any mistakes and have been more than reasonable. My current students have all shown up so far and seem very bright (hooray). I hope they don't find secret ways of disappointing me. They also seemed keen on the idea of helping their peers out, which I'm going to try to instill into my teaching. Even today, students showed other students how to sign up for accounts. It was very nice. Today I got to have a tour of the library in Music Bibliography. God help any grad student who doesn't know where the reference section is. Admittedly, I do not frequent this particular locale on a daily basis but I'm pretty sure I could find it underneath the "REFERENCE SECTION" sign. I'm glad Meg is in my class. I think I would go insane if she wasn't. I forgot how much I hate all-lecture classes. This class I have with all the undergrads is terrible so far. I'm sure the professor hates teaching it as much as the older students hate taking it. If we could have a smaller reading/discussion class it would be much more beneficial. I'm assuming he knows that undergrads need their readings force-fed to them. If it wasn't such a long class, it would be bearable but at 1.5 hours, it just kind of drags by. I also wish s/he'd lock the door five minutes after class. I've been late for class too but not 10-20 minutes. The problem is that I think the material is really interesting but the class make-up makes it move so slowly. The only questions are asked by people who don't pay attention and ask him to repeat things he could not have said any more clearly. Tonight was the first Mas rehearsal of the semester and other than the usual first-day-mundane-talking the actual playing sounded extremely promising. My "Former Students Now In Mas Count" has made it up to four. Ian gave me a ride home from school today via the scenic route. We walked by Marty's car. No wonder girls love him. Put the top back, baby. Put the top back. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: Janauary 14, 2004 - Happy Birthday Chris! Happy Birthday Chris!

Today was another slow day. I did not do very well on my Atonal homework as I predicted. Curse you Professor X from UWM. Learn your terms before you attempt to "teach". I think Dr. Rogers is great regardless of some horror stories. Alex did well on his homework so I guess I will have to ask him for help in the future. Maybe I can give him some composition lessons or something. Break him out of that Spanish style. This afternoon I read a book written by a less witty version of a female David Sedaris. It's pretty good for killing time and is way better than the other stuff I should be reading. Speaking of David Sedaris, Jamie got me the complete books on tape for Christmas. I thought it would be great but his voice is arguably the most annoying voice I've ever heard. Picture Fran Drescher(?) as a very gay man and that's David Sedaris. For some reason I pictured him to have a very masculine voice but his stories he always makes it sound like he's the more effeminate one between him and his boyfriend so I guess I should have seen my disappointment coming. This evening we celebrated Chris' birthday. I saw a couple of my students from last semester as well as Miranda. We got some good gossiping in because Jamie and I had never seen a couple of these people before and even though Chris referred to them as 'cute' well, they weren't. One of them looked like a Cyclops because her eyes were so close together. From here in, I'm calling her Clops. This other girl looked like she was swimming and two fisherman had simultaneously hooked her by her eyelids. Poor girls. I am not looking forward to tomorrow because I hate Thursdays. I might start weight training Chompy to enter a weight-pulling contest. The record in her weight class (50-59lbs) is a little over TWO TONS. I'm not sure what she can pull right now but I predict that she could tow a WV Bus back to my apartment if we were on a walk and someone set off a firework. And at the same time she was tied to a VW Bus. In neutral. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: Janauary 15, 2004 - Music Bibliography I hate Thursdays so much. That's probably why I'm writing this a day late. I got to the computer lab ok to teach but the computers decided not to let anyone new access the network. That sucked. I cancelled my 11:15 class because it just would have wasted their time. I felt badly for the 9:05 kids since they just had to endure me getting angry when they could have been sleeping. I don't blame them one bit. I blew $84 at Beethoven & Overpriced my favorite Tallahassee music store. It's not that they don't do a good job there but the prices are absolutely ridiculous. Had I not had to have the book I would have waited it out for the $68 one I found online. Financial aid came in and after making a complete idiot out of myself at SouthTrust (NOT NOT NOT to be confused with SunTrust despite their almost identical logos) I finally made it to SunTrust and back to Bank of America to deposit the moolah. After that I came home for a brief moment with the pit and then went to Music Bibliography. We had an online tour, much like we had with Dr. Jones. The girl in front of Meg and I made a great (and I mean GREAT) picture in MS Paint instead of going through the library look-up program that we've been using for three years. Ah, busy work. I ran home, walked the pup and then went back for the Music of the Caribbean class. I (literally) slept through most of it because we watched a video. Well, three videos. I forgot what undergrad classes are like. I'm sure my professor saw me sleeping even though I have a cushy seat in the back but to be honest, I don't care. After waking up I went to rehearsal. Rehearsal was ok--I always seem to forget that the first week of the semester consists of playing pieces that are fourth-grade level. When I think back to my first days, though, I was grateful to see those easy ones scheduled. Now, though, I'm annoyed that I have to stand there. I just cannot be happy! After rehearsal Jamie and I tried to make chicken soup but the milk was a day old and it came out in long, sinewy strands so we ordered pizza. Jamie went to some lame-o undergrad party while I stayed home like a nerd-o and did my Atonal homework. I screwed up again but I'll save that for the Friday entry. Around 3ish I finally went to bed.

In other news, the small group of us that plays the gigs has decided to become official. I'm still not entirely sure what this entails but as a more autonomous body I can demand the $300/hr we deserve. There are a couple downsides and other odds and ends with which I am not completely satisfied but I think everything will work out. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Friday: Janauary 16, 2004 - Scenes From The Dog Park I love Fridays. I admit to not being the greatest atonal theorist in the world. Or this half of the world. Or even on my half of the class but I like that class. I like it a lot. I screwed up my homework again last night. Stupid Joe Straus and his stupid bad examples. I learned a lot in class today. I feel like after each class a door leading to the soul of atonal theory has been opened. I have officially disregarded the bad things said about Dr. Rogers now. I think she's great. She has not quite attained Evan Jones status but anything is possible. Her giving the proofs for everything makes all the difference in the world. She really needs to sit down and write a new textbook. I'm sure Joe Straus is a great guy and he might even be a phenomenal teacher but his writing style just is not conducive to learning the material. It might be ok for people like Alex that already know how to do things but I would be willing to be a Dr. Rogers book would be much better. Now, back to my usual complaining. I hate the guy in class next to me. I don't know what his name is but he always looks annoyed when someone asks a question. Well excuse us for wasting your time. After class I hung out with Rob and Theory-Chris for a little while and Rob regaled us with some clever jokes and made a case for going to SMT Southeast. It's in Atlanta and I'd like to go but I don't want to leave Chompy. This afternoon Jamie and I went to the dog park. There was this emo couple there with their bratty dog, Zero. It had a head the size of Chompy's but its body was like a basset hound. Its ugly looks aside it tried to be tough and beat up on The Ab. As if this wasn't irritating enough, it barked. Constantly. Its owners didn't do anything about the beatings or the barking, which was irritating. Once it gave up on Ab, it decided to "play" with Chompy. It walks right up to her and lets out two barks right in Chompy's face. Well, on Chompy's Top Ten Things I Hate List either #2 or #3 is dogs barking in her face. Before the dog could fully emit the second bark Chompy bared her teeth, let out a "I'm going to kill you Ab" growl and grabbed it. As Chompy dragged it down, I snatched her by her collar. Sense their dog was about to die, the male emo kid came over and says, "Ah, she's all bark and no bite." I look at him and say something like "ok". What I was thinking, though, amounted the fact that he thought HIS dog was somehow scaring mine, which made me laugh aloud. Picture me, yelling in Hulk Hogan's face. My mom then walks up and says to him, "Don't worry--he just likes to yell." As if I could possibly inflict any harm to Hulk Hogan. I'm sure all three of us would have a good laugh at that. After that any time the barker came over a subtle growl and teeth bare was enough to have it running away. Once they left another dog appeared. It was a Chow mix with no tags and no owners (so we thought). It insisted on humping Ab. Incessantly. For at least an hour this dog tried to hump Ab. And when it wasn't trying to hump her, it was standing on her stomach. Jamie eventually found the owners, a couple of college students but she didn't say anything to them. We then went to PetSmart where some woman gave Chompy a dirty look for standing in her way. I didn't see it but Jamie told me. On our way out, Jamie said, "that's the woman" within earshot and I said, "Yeah, those shoes ARE ugly". I know it wasn't very witty but I didn't think of "Yeah, that's definitely cellulite" until after we had reached the car. After that, we ate some ice cream and I took a nap. Chris and Mike came over for a little while tonight. Tomorrow I need to do laundry. Like, crazy laundry. Woo, crazy laundry. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Saturday: Janauary 17, 2004 - Final Fantasy III My nerdyness will have to take a temporary hiatus now that I finished Final Fantasy III. I really liked playing it but the end was a little too easy. I had set aside a good half hour to kill the last boss but he died on the first try and didn't even kill any of my four guys. I didn't even have any of the walkthrough secret weapons. Oh well. I cleaned most of my house yesterday, leaving only my bedroom as a pit. The living room needs to be vacuumed still and the floor of the kitchen needs to be mopped (replaced) but other than that I wouldn't be embarrassed to have people over. Speaking of which, Chris and Mike came over after Mike's TSO concert. Jamie and Chris went but I stayed home to get things done so I'd have less to do today and Monday. One of the things I accomplished was making some atonal clocks, which you are free to use for when you feel like doing some atonal analysis! The top clips off a little bit if you print it out but it's still very legible and will get the job done. I also made an axis list as the bottom in case anyone has discovered the long-cut of doing axes of inversion. Today I need to go to the library to do my bibliography homework. I wish someone MLK day could fall on a Tuesday instead of Monday. I'd much rather get to miss one class than six. I need to send an email to "the guys" about playing some basketball tomorrow. I need the exercise. I also set up this page to record the locations of the people that visit.. Hello Romania and Hermosa Beach! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: Janauary 18, 2004 - Brian Urified Brian Uri inhabited my body today. I can think of no other explanation for the amount of stuff I got done. My day started Mike enough, though. I woke up around 12:30 ate "breakfast" with Jamie and watched some TV. Then something inexplicable happened. I got things done. Lots of them. First, Jamie and I finally made good on our birthday/graduation present to Chris in the form of a pet turtle, complete with tank, gravel, food and other turtlesque supplies. We first went to Petland, a store I didn't know existed down here. My God, they have so many fish I want. No more of this PetCo baby-cichlid stuff. I'm going for the 2-year old behemoths that currently reside in the Petland tanks. After that, we ran to Karol's Kritters where we got the turtle. Maybe I'm just a cheap bastard, but I would have been fine getting the $8 turtle at Petland. Jamie, though was insistent upon getting the really expensive one from Karol's Kritters. I must say, however, that this is a very attractive turtle. We temporarily named him Speedy but Chris had already decided upon the name Abner (he now has a turtle with sweet turtle-abs). After that, we flew to PetCo and got the rest of the needed supplies. Oh! At Petland I bought a 10 gallon "hospital" tank for when my cichlids are fighting (constantly). It was only $6. Hooray for clearance sales. I didn't get anything special for it--no filters or anything but hopefully it won't be used very frequently. After PetCo, we came back to my apartment and went to Chris' apartment. He liked the turtle (we suspect) so I don't think there's any hope of me getting him back. We then had a terrible dinner at Olive Garden. Everything was bad except for the raspberry lemonade. We decided to call and complain. They gave us some sort of Olive Garden Coupon or at least said they'd mail me one. After that, Jamie dropped me off at the library where I was able to complete all of my bibliography homework. I just have to type it up tomorrow and it'll be all good. I came home and rebuild the bookshelf in my bedroom. This was a project I've been putting off for well over a year but now that it's done I can't believe how good it looks and how much cleaner the rest of my room looks around it. I added a statistic counter to the main Mas page too. Someone from New York checked us out today. If it's you, Brian McIntosh, hello. If not, well, thanks for coming. While Jamie and I built that shelf we watched the Led Zeppelin DVD set. My God, John Bonham is the best drummer to ever live. Kill yourself now Dave Matthews and other want-to-be-cool bands. Led Zeppelin is the greatest band of all time. And since I have seven years of college and a handful of degrees I can back it up, baby. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: Janauary 19, 2004 - 1000 Visitors I must admit, that although I got a lot done, I didn't really do anything that was on any lists. The things I got done were kind of miscellaneous errands and cleanings and whatnot. I had a leisurely wake-up around 10am and ate nothing. This afternoon I went out to do some stuff with Kathy and we both spent a bit of bread at Frame Of Mind, a horribly overpriced frame store. I framed a picture I got in Uruguay that (because of its awkward size) I had been putting for, well like two years. After that we went to Home Depot and Michael's and I bought some little things. I ate a couple roast beef sandwiches for dinner and tonight we watched the single worst movie of all time. Bring It On should be somehow banned. Take Dude Where's My Car and give it some serious moments. I know it's one of Jamie's favorite movies and I guess it could have been worse (hermaphrodite cheerleaders) but it was not good. If nothing else, though, at least it was short and whoever directed it at least took the length into consideration. The big Mas N' Steel site hit its thousandth visitor today. It was someone from the Netherlands. Tonight I wrote my guest entry for my friend Brian's web page. I was trying to figure out today who keeps visiting from Level3 Communications.

Since my entry was boring tonight here are some fun links:

From Brian: Holy Water

From Jamie: "strange but amazing" [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: Janauary 20, 2004 - Visit The Urizone Last night, after preparing for class, I wrote an entry for Brian's webpage. Anything that can make Rob laugh must be funny. It longer than I anticipated and required a few rewrites but I think the end result was pretty awesome. This site got a lot of referred links, apparently in the thought I employ the clever writing daily here. Oh well. For the second time in the lab, the computers were not working properly. After the 9am class I went around to each of them and made a complete list of everything that was wrong on each one. Of the twelve in the room, only two were "error-free". The quotations marks are there because "error-free" just means that all the software was there--not that it worked. As if the Glord (God-Lord) of class caps wasn't fair enough to me, s/he could have at least given me a decent shot at teaching what I'm supposed to. After "teaching" the 11:15 class, I went home, typed up my Bibliography homework and sat through another horrific session on basic computer usage. Although I nodded off a few times, I never reached deep sleep. This was fine, since I got there late and had to sit right in front. There was a huge adrenaline surge when the professor asked me how to fix something. After that I stayed more or less awake. On Thursday we have a test on some German words. I thought I already took that class. Scheisse! Dit hat man wohl ins Gehirn geschissen und vergessen umzurühren! Fine. Learn to speak German on this site! After class, I walked back home, hung out with the Chomp and then walked back to snooze through another Caribbean music class. I managed not to fall asleep at all today. Glord knows how. Oh that's right, we got out early. I went to rehearsal to find out Ryan was sick and Chris was in charge. I also found out a new grad student was going to be visiting because he might be in charge of the ensemble next year. WTF? Why aren't they offering that to me? I have way more experience than this guy (although he is very nice and definitely has playing experience) as well as a great track record of teaching here (except for Student X but that was his/her fault). Moreover, this is supposed to be a top music school yet we have this half-assed steel drum band. This is not Ryan's fault. This is the department's fault for not letting us expand out to our potential. U of Miami...Appalachian State...West Virginia...all these hellhole music schools somehow manage to scrape enough funds together to have good steel drum bands, why not us? We have (I've heard) one of the best Ethnomusicology programs in the country yet we can't put anything decent together? When was the last time we bought a new pan--1983? Honestly, it's ridiculous and whomever is in charge next year really needs to bite them on the butt. We attract tons of people to play with us, fill the concert hall and put on one hell of a show. While I mean no offense, do any of the other groups outside of Salsa and possibly Blues Lab even have the potential to get people to go see them if going to recitals wasn't mandatory for undergraduates? There is so much I could do with that ensemble that would bring so much positive publicity to the School of Music that I just don't understand why hire some other grad student to do it. Because he has a degree from a no-name school but the piece of paper says Ethnomusicology? I'm not asking to teach a seminar. True, I probably do not meet the requirements to teach a lecture class on the topic but again, that's the not the class I want. I know I just ranted for a while but I'm not in a bad mood, really. Seriously. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: Janauary 21, 2004 - Inflated Gouramis Today I am mourning the loss of my second fish from the original tank. Both of my gouramis somehow became inflated and died. The first one died a few days ago and the second one died today. The both were fat. If you've never seen a fat fish, it looks weird. Like they swallowed an egg whole. I haven't scooped him yet because I'm too sad. I had the two of them for a year and a half. No one ever dies in that tank!

Atonal was fine today. It's the only class that I have yet to fall asleep in even though it's my earliest class. After class I came home and studied for my Bibliography test tomorrow. I then went to the dog park and some woman said she heard Chompy whining. What an idiot. Chompy was holding another dog by its face and the other dog cried. This dried up hag somehow managed to completely lose the direction of the sound. What a moron. She had a huge Doberman/Rottweiler mix so I thought it best not to punch her. We were only there for about six minutes because Jamie had to go to a Refuge House meeting. Tonight I studied more for my test and wrote Dr. Olsen and email regarding my possible status as director next year. I also created a new powerpoint presentation for a class demonstration tomorrow. Like my older one, it's called: Led Zeppelin: The Greatest Band Ever. On some down time I watched a little American Idol. On the show I heard the greatest line ever: "her coach says she's got one of the highest E's he's ever heard". Whoa, I thought, people can now only sing in octaves. I'm sure her E is WAY higher than mine. Judging by her audition, though, I think he was secretly backhanding her intonation, which was decidedly sharp the whole time. I wish I had a digital camera so I could document the number of fries each time I get the drive-through at McDonald's. Within the week, I imagine receiving an empty container. Hmm, there was something else on my mind and I can't remember it. Oh well. Maybe I'll be crowned director via email tomorrow. Oh, I remember now. I wrote a letter to my long-lost high school friend today. Typed it actually. I hope I have the gall to mail it because it isn't very nice. The 1200th hit the site was last night. Good work me! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: Janauary 22, 2004 - Introduction To Music Technology Today was not a good day. The first batch of OTTO accounts started to work but most students were still without any decent way to save. I know come Tuesday everything is going to get worse when people forgot which computers they were on today and freak out they can't find their work. I guess I'll just have to deal with on Tuesday. Both classes went smoothly enough, though, in large part to my stellar presentation on Led Zeppelin today. I wish I had used some between-slide effects but I didn't. I thought my reason was because some of the computers have Office 97 but even that lets you put some transitions in. I hope no one checked the sources on my citations page because I made them all up. I forgot to save the links so I just made up some random websites that looked like a) they had something to do with Led Zeppelin (e.g. ledzeppelin.com) or had so many random characters in it, they wouldn't be able to remember it (e.g. http://www.google.com/?query="led%10zeppelin"frame set"$null(#*robert+pant)x(@$Jimmy+Page).cgi I hope no one caught on. I guess it's pretty obvious, though, if you know anything about it. cgi? What was I thinking? Anyway, I ate lunch with Bryan Richards today and we swapped childhood car-driving stories. I came home for about two minutes before going to Music Bibliography. I found out we didn't have a quiz today, thank you Glord. I was about to fall asleep when I was called on. Somehow I was able to eek out an answer to a question about the purpose of topic sentences Jeopardy style "What is something that tells you the topic of later sentences?" I went home for a short hour after class returning to go back to Music of the Caribbean. Class was less boring today because an argument broke out over who supported slavery. I was about to call this one girl a modern day slaver but she obviously already had some "ins" with the professor so I decided against it. She was obnoxious. I don't think anyone in the class was advocating slavery but (according to most white, Eurocentric textbooks) slavery happened. I'm sorry. My family just moved here a couple generations ago. I personally had nothing to do with it. This girl, though, insisted anyone of white skin color was at least partially responsible. I took offense to this but I let one of the rational black guys in the class do it for me. She looked really stupid when he was done and I did a little dance in my seat. After class I went to rehearsal and then another rehearsal. When I came home, Jamie left me some new fish as a surprise--all little orange guys. After releasing them, I fed the other fish and I started work on my arrangement of Hey Ya for the last concert. About twenty minutes later we noticed all the orange ones were gone. It seemed impossible to us that my other fish could have eaten them all so quickly so we decided to check the huge filter. What a mistake. For some reason, I thought breaking the airlock would stop the rush of water. Apparently this filter isn't just a vacuum filter, it's also a siphon filter. Rather than trying to stop further damage, we tried to clean up what had already happened since I was anticipating the water would stop rushing out. About 5-8 gallons later, I finally just yanked the whole thing apart. Upon taking the filter apart to fix it, we discovered no less than 3 full fish corpses and at least six miscellaneous parts and about 40-4000 lbs of just random fish guts. After dry heaving a lot and trying to talk Jamie into getting a real man to be part of a three-way relationship, she sucked it up and cleaned everything up while I gagged into my bandana. After a good half hour, everything was working again. Sadly, during this time there were cookies in the oven which almost caught on fire by the time we remembered they were there. I need to get down to studying for my Atonal quiz tomorrow. I was so caught up in Hey Ya that I lost track of the time. I think the piece will be a HUGE hit at the concert, though. I still need to find another classical piece to arrange in my "free" time. Leon High School is going to be doing a lot of my pieces and (more importantly) giving me big bucks. Now, it is time to go to sleep. I mean study. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Friday: Janauary 23, 2004 - Atonal Quiz What an exciting day. I'm pretty damn sure I aced my Atonal quiz. Sure, I was up until 4am but man, ACED. The only problem was that at 4am I wasn't thinking rationally and set my alarm for 10am and we have class at 10:10. Jamie called me at 9:45am to wake me up, though, thank you Jamie! I ran to class, took the quiz and hung out at the SMT Bake Sale. They made at least $50 while I was there. One kid was a huge pig and ate a box full of treats and then came back for me. I practiced for a while, picked up my check and came home. Once home, I took a much needed nap and then Jamie and I went shopping. I bought a new hood for the aquarium after one of the lights died yesterday. It's really, really nice. We also filled up the tank with water. Upon doing this, three little orange fish started swimming around. It was three of the four little guys we thought had died last night! I have no idea where the hell they could have been hiding because we went through decoration by decoration but since they're only as big as a piece of gravel, I guess they just kept on the lam. The tank is the best its ever looked. Tomorrow I'm going to play some basketball and hopefully it'll be more than me and Dr. Buchler. Or just me :/ [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Saturday: Janauary 24, 2004 - Zzz Basketball....McDonald's....Tennis....Arranging....Nap....Marty (Alex, Chris, Ian)...Sleep. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: Janauary 25, 2004 - Hey Ya MIDI Due to some erroneous talks, there was no small group rehearsal today. Apparently no one wanted to have rehearsal but everyone thought everyone else did. Good thing it got straightened out. This morning Jamie and I went to brunch at Kathy's before attending our first FSU basketball game. We played #9 Wake Forrest and it was a good game. We somehow managed to win at the end, despite the poor showing by our pep band. The drummer was especially horrible, slaughtering the part for Van Halen's Jump. Thank God Matt Flynn wasn't there or he would have killed the kid. He didn't even try to do the hits or play the part as performed by VH. Amongst their other atrocities was a war chant that sort of morphed into another piece and a version of OutKast's I Like The Way You Move that had the entire brass section playing the melody, which left no bass line and the two clarinets and two flutes to try to salvage a countermelody. It was Glord awful. Seriously. Anyway, we won and Jamie, Becky and I tried to storm the court after the win but by the time we got there no one wanted to rip the baskets down with us. At least we made it onto the court. I guess I'll have to hold out until we beat Duke. I found out today that this is the only site on Google that shows up when you type in: "professor hates teaching". After the game I fell asleep and had a crazy dream with anthropologists and Chompy and dinosaurs and me causing the world to end. I woke up around 9pm and watched The Hours with Jamie. I give the movie a very solid 8.5. It was definitely the best chick flick I've seen and I'm sure if I were more familiar with Virginia Woolfe I would have liked it that much more. I'm really, really sore from all the exercise yesterday and even stooping to tie my shoe requires a small crane to follow me around to get me back on my feet again. I fell out of my computer chair today because my body couldn't move fast enough to shift my weight. Upon falling I whacked my shins into my bookcase, thereby hurting the one part of my body that I thought was immune to my abuses. Looking around, I see that the falling chair knocked into another chair which knocked over a large lamp as well as a couple of those little brown trays. The arrangement of MIDI version of Hey Ya, in case you're wondering (and I know you are) should be completed sometime tomorrow evening and the Finale parts should be finished in time for Tuesday night's rehearsal. My kitchen is arguably the messiest it has ever been and I really need to clean it. Right now. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: Janauary 26, 2004 - How To Be A Good Teacher This might sound a little shocking, so brace yourself. I am officially, undeniably sick of being a student at FSU. I love teaching my classes but my role as a student here is honestly about as boring as you can get. This was readily apparent as I sat in Dr. Clendinning's office discussing my thesis. There are already four translations of this particular treatise and no one cares to read them. In three of the instances, there is only one copy buried the University of Michigan archives of graduate works. In the fourth instance, there are three copies. Two of them are at FSU because the "author" was a Ph.D student here and the last copy is at UM. It's not that I don't like theory or find it interesting because on the whole it is interesting to discover how music works. At the same time, though, I'm not going to be another Schenker or even Lewin. I just don't have what it takes to infuriate fellow scholars or even baffled graduate students with words I made up but I act as though they're in the dictionary (I use words that don't mean nothing, like loopdid). I did get an A on my Atonal quiz. Hooray. I would like that class if the non-theory/comp kids were unceremoniously kicked out. I'd even volunteer to do it. This one kid, let's call him...Generic-Music-Ed-Student-With-No-Talent-In-Any-Discipline (herein GMESWNTIAD -Anagram for "Sting me, wad"). He wasted a perfectly good presentation by Adam and a HUGE fight I was going to battle against Alex so he (GMESWNTIAD) could ask questions along the lines of: "What's that note in treble clef?--I only read bass clef. *I'm* a euphonium player". After class I broke the news to Dr. Clendinning that I was slightly changing my thesis topic. Somehow my old one has to be included, effectively doubling my workload. Once done for the day, I redid a bunch of pages for the Mas N' Steel site but I haven't uploaded them yet. I'll probably do it on Wednesday. I finally finished transcribing and arranging the first draft of Hey Ya for steel pan "orchestra". If you want to take a look at it, it's here. It's a Finale 2003 file because I didn't want little kids running around stealing my MIDI version after the 37.25 hours it's taken me to reach this point. I'm sure there are a plethora of mistakes but it's enough that I can bring it to rehearsal tomorrow night and give my buddies at least a glimpse of what it's like. Onto some sad news, I went into my bedroom today and saw all the fish in my bedroom tank floating at the top gasping for air. Apparently both the underground and the biowheel filters decided to stop working (from my closest estimates about 2 weeks ago). I quickly tried to siphon water out and replace it but it wouldn't take so I had to suck start it. Bleh, I still have the taste of that mud (but instead of the normal 1pt dirt + 1pt water it was 1pt fish poo+ 1pt water) in my mouth. I tried to refill the tank with fresh(er) water from the bathtub but my drain wasn't working so I couldn't run it on the risk of an overflow. I quickly set up the new hospital tank on my kitchen counter and moved the sickest fish there first. The first group to move were the silver dollars, arguably my favorites of the tank. One of them couldn't be revived but the other two are doing ok. Jamie moved all but about six of them into the small hospital tank tonight. The biggest ones are still in the old tank and will hopefully live long enough for me to buy a new filter. Still in the big tank is my favorite, Dr. Suck. He is so big the only place he could be moved is the cichlid tank and I'm afraid they would kill him. If push comes to shove, though, I'll plunk him in there. He is about six inches long, though and could probably put up enough of a fight to at least live. I have no clean clothes to teach in tomorrow and that's no good. I also did not study for my stupid bibliography quiz as I had planned. I guess I should do it before I go to sleep so I can give those German words a chance to sink in. If I was smart, though, I would just go to bed. Unfortunately, staying up until 4am got me an A on the Atonal quiz so the precedent is set. Tomorrow is too busy to actually do anything but on Wednesday I'll be selling a kidney to PetCo for some new supplies to keep my fish friends happy. I had a bunch of fun links but I can't remember any of them now. Think of some good jokes, fellow TAs, because your classes will love a good joke. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: Janauary 27, 2004 - Minesweeper For Your PDA This is probably getting somewhat redundant but I hate Tuesdays and Thursdays. This morning I discovered the two other silver dollars died. Aside from my $15 initial investment, they were getting huge and I was very sad to see them go after a year and a half. The tank was also a milky white color. Tomorrow I'm going to buy a new filter for the bedroom tank. My teaching went fine today on the whole despite the requisite computer problems. In my hour in between classes I did my Music Bibliography homework in the library while Amory bid on leather keyboard cases on eBay. After my second class, Jamie took me to Ruby Tuesday's. I fought to stay awake in Bibliography by playing the Palm OS version of Minesweeper and passing notes to Meg. Our quiz was postponed again until Thursday so I'll have another two days to not study for it. My Caribbean class was another snoozer today. I can't help falling asleep. I just can't. I thought sitting in the front would help so I sat in the second row right in the middle. Nope, snoozed away. AND I couldn't even bust out the PDA for some Minesweeper. After my revitalizing nap, I went to our small group rehearsal. Hey Ya(!) sounded pretty good but it could use a lot of improvements. Jamie and I had pizza for dinner and I cleaned my bedroom while she wrote some paper that I wasn't allowed to look at under any circumstance. Tomorrow should be a light day and I will hopefully get all my odds and ends cleaned up before having to endure another Thursday. My next arrangement/transcription will be dedicated to my dear friend Matt Flynn--it is Van Halen's Jump. Unlike the OutKast tune, though I already know all the parts in my head so I won't need to listen to the recording four billion times. I already laid out a nice framework for it with the general form and tomorrow afternoon I might possibly start adding the bass and keyboard parts (minus the crazy solo about 3/4 of the way through). Jamie and I ran into Ian on our way out after rehearsal. I miss being a composer and feeling that crunch to get pieces done. The crunch of doing a theory thesis is not at all exciting or appealing. In other news, Chompy saved the day again...

(as told to me by Jamie): Jamie took Chompy and The Ab to the park today since I was in class. Apparently, there was a large (90lbsish) golden retriever there with his 50-something owner. This dog took a particular liking to The Ab and followed her around, beating her up. Jamie followed the dog for a good 20 minutes pulling the retriever off Ab, while its owner did nothing. While this was going on, the retriever tried to bark in Chompy's face but was deterred by one of the "I'm going to f--'ing kill you, Ab" growls, complete with full teeth-baring. The beating of Ab continued and Jamie again pulled the retriever off little Ab. This time, though, the retriever reared up and jumped onto Jamie. It kept jumping on her and circling from all directions and then it starting biting. Sensing something was wrong, the much smaller Chompy (50lb) sprinted over, jumped into the air landing her teeth into the retriever's neck and pulled him off. Once Chompy had knocked him down, she tackled him onto his back and went for the neck before he ever had a chance to figure out what was going on. On his back, the dog had no protection from the angry pit bull and as Chompy was drawing blood from its neck, The Ab came over to bite at his tail. Of course the owner at this point had come over and yelled at Jamie over the fact Chompy had drawn blood. Jamie left. She was shaken but physically ok. It reminded me of the time I tripped at the park and a German Shepard jumped onto my back and was starting to bite at my leg when Chompy knocked it off me and did more than draw a little blood. The owner (in this case was a mid-30's woman), even though her next stop was going to be the vet for her dog to get stitches, could not say anything because everyone in the park knew her dog had attacked me first. I wish pit bulls didn't get such bad publicity--they're just protective and sometimes that's not such a terrible thing. Oh, don't break into my house. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: Janauary 28, 2004 - Love Fern Although I have not seen the movie (How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days), I heard the "love fern" line in a preview and I've been referencing it a lot. It's a pretty funny line. Little does Jamie know that she's getting a love fern for V-Day. I wish every day were Wednesday. I love the Atonal class. I wish I could substitute all my other classes for 11 hours of Atonal. I'm sure I'd get sick of it but at least I wouldn't sleep. On Friday I have to be a co-presenter for class. Unlike when Adam gave his presentation, I have no faith whatsoever in the full presenter which means I actually have to read the article and be prepared to talk about it. I got a lot done today. I went out to lunch with Beth, Marty, Emmy and Chris at The Loop. I hate The Loop. I used to like and EVERY TIME I order the chicken tenders and every time they suck. Suck suck suck. I took Chompy on various errands with me including: dropping off film, buying a new filter, getting a couple aquarium heaters and grocery shopping. I made some chicken kiev for dinner with couscous and Jamie baked some cookies while I did three loads of laundry. All the fish were moved back from the hospital tank back into the bedroom tank with no more casualties. Some fish got caught in the filter in the cichlid tank but the big, mean one yanking him out to eat him so I didn't have to do it. Thanks big guy! I feel like I got so much done today but thinking back, I guess I didn't. Dr. Olsen emailed me back about directing next semester. The email sounded positive and he forwarded it along to the rest of the faculty. The downside is that between the lines it sounded like they were still looking for a graduate student to teach it so they wouldn't have to spend the extra money, which I understand. At the same time, though, if they invested the money in me, I'd do some great things. At least very good things. Here are some fun links because today's entry was pretty boring:

Fun game. 1221.8 is my record. You get to hit a penguin with a baseball bat.

George Bush finally does something good. Finally, my concerto for Norwegian violists smeared in feces might get its premiere! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: Janauary 29, 2004 - I'm Richard Cohen I'm Richard Cohn and believe it or not, I write very intelligent yet completely understandable music theory articles. Why can't my colleagues take my cue?

I thought I'd spice things up tonight by using a =-=-= instead of my usual ===== heading in the date banner. I took the BEM test today to determine how masculine/feminine I am. I scored a 6.2 vs. a 2.7 M/F which apparently makes me a huge man. There were no questions about 'obsessing in the mirror (or 'giving yourself that 'you're so cute look'), bugs, flying bugs, shows that involve any sort of surgery, hearing joints crack or touching fish (live or dead), which is most likely why I scored so manly. The link doesn't calculate you results and Jamie took the answer sheet with her so you'll have to ask her if you want to know how engendered you are. Today was another error ridden day teaching in the lab. I have to go in at 8am tomorrow to install new software so the kids will stop bitching. I'm not sure if I'll be able to fix any of the other problems, though, so I can't guarantee their happiness. I already have a couple students on their 3rd absences. I admit, I skipped a LOT of classes in undergrad but man, not all in a row. Speaking of irresponsible students, I saw Student X today in the office, presumably to discuss his/her grade appeal with the dean. S/he didn't make any eye contact with me and I kept up my crazy conversation. I saw him/her in the library again later. Again, no eye contact. Music Bibliography was cancelled again today because of some recruitment thing we do here where a bunch of community college kids and other faculty from various Florida schools come to draft hot picks. Unlike the University of Minnesota and the University of Colorado football programs, though, I don't think we take them to strip clubs to recruit them. If this is the case, I should have accepted Northwestern's offer because I bet there are a lot more strip clubs there than here. I hung out with Meg afterwards and apparently called Kathy magically via the pocket cell phone. Speaking of people I dated, one of my college girlfriends, Laura and I talked for the first time in a couple years on Instant Messenger. I was somewhat saddened to hear that she's not off at med school but instead living with her mom outside of Chicago but I'm sure she'll make it into wherever she wants to go. My day ended with a yelling match in my last class against some Ethnomusicology undergrad. Apparently, he failed anatomy after mislabeling his ass as his mouth. Because he can tap on the desk with two pencils he considers himself a "percussionist". We were discussing clave patterns and other basic staples of Caribbean music and this snausage decided he could immediately detect any pattern in any song. Sadly, I think he failed theory because he apparently was completely unable to hear cadences, chord changes, phrases and even a basic beat. Rather than admitting he could not discern between a 2-3 clave and a 3-2 clave, he went for an unusual but somewhat interesting tactic seen frequently in theory circles. He start talking using the biggest words he could. In addition to adding roughly sixty words to the English language, he also managed to confuse a palito pattern with a cascara. I know he's out to prove that Mr. Wiggle has been taking its vitamins and I can't help myself but to call him on it. This massive stress he was under, or possibly that he was using a pen and a pencil instead of two matching "sticks" caused neither pattern to emerge from his experienced hands. What did come out, though, pleased all the now-dead composers of the 20th century on a poster behind him. His "pattern" could be likened to the musical version of someone with Tourette Syndrome giving a speech at the Lincoln Center. I think I might have lost points when all I could do was laugh. I hope my abrasiveness didn't cost my job consideration to teach the steel band in the fall but at least I proved I could at least notice when someone was being stupid and embarrass them. Isn't that what teaching is all about? In other news, Jamie made me dinner AND cleaned my kitchen today. Since I have no intention of returning the favor, I wrote her a little song that goes something like this: Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, thank you for cleaning my kitchen. Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie you are so bitchin'. Jamie, Jamie, Jamie you made me squeal because the potatoes were so so so so so so good and so was the veal. Hey now, they don't just give out MM's in Music Composition from FSU, you know. Oh, I'm getting a haircut tomorrow. Seriously. No, seriously. Seriously, seriously. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Friday: Janauary 30, 2004 - CMOS While today was not the worst day of my life, it will rank within the top 50. To start things off, I overslept and forgot that I was supposed to upgrade some of the computers in the lab this morning. I woke up at the time I was supposed to be there and only had half an hour to get things started. Things didn't run smoothly and, to top it all off, the ONE computer that NEEDED to have Office 2000 couldn't have it installed for reasons I didn't entirely understand. In Atonal, I was supposed to be a supplemental presenter. Well, the primary presenter used all of eight minutes for his "presentation" and then called on me to come up and speak. Using the last presentation as a model, I had prepared one example using material from the end of the article and was adequately prepared to answer questions. What I was not prepared for, though, was to present the article in its entirety. I did my best to explain things to the lost souls but in my anxiousness I wrote an example incorrectly on the board. I tried to ignore the fact that I was not using a C-Axis (which is really not that uncommon) but no one else really followed me. I answered some questions to the best of my ability and the other supplemental presenter did his best to nod in agreement with everything I said but it took Dr. Rogers' explanation to clear everything up. I felt like a total fool. A complete and total fool. Fortunately for me, the utter lack of preparation by the primary presenter hopefully left a much stronger negative imprint in people's minds.

After class, I tried to finish "fixing" the computers but I didn't know enough about CMOS to really do any good. Ultimately, though, the four computers that I attempted to fix were all working when I left. I came home and had a bizarre dream during my two hour nap. In the dream I was a character in this Final Fantasy 3 game. I can't really recall any of the details right now but it was weird. Jamie came over just as I was waking up and we trekked out to the mall for the dreaded haircut. I requested my last meal be at Ruby Tuesdays and Theory-Chris was our server. He did a nice job of keeping my lemonade glass full and I drank six of them. On the recommendation of (Steel-Drum) Chris, I went to his barber. She gave me two choices: put twists in my hair which would eventually become dreadlocks or cut it all to about 2". Not pleased with either option I tried to negotiate with her. She insisted I was too bald for anything I wanted to do. As if I didn't realize that my hair was falling out already, her kind reminders (no less than 30 times) really reaffirmed that I am beautiful. She also made sure that I understood that I could not shave or buzz my (remaining hair) because "I was not big enough". On top of all this, she handed me a pamphlet on baldness. Of the four she could have handed me, she elected for the "Advanced balding 4/4" and recommended a topical cream. Sure, I could have handed her a book on braces and personal hygiene but I didn't because I'm a damn good person. After she messed up my hair sufficiently to make sure I wouldn't walk out and be seen in public, she again voiced my two choices. In an unusual move made by skinny young white boys, I stood up, grabbed my coat and walked out. Apparently I didn't realize her grabbing and pulling on my near-golden locks had made it look like I had been the model for Sideshow Bob even more than usual. Additionally, she had pulled everything back, giving rock-climbing enthusiasts the opportunity to come up and ask me if they could climb my forehead this weekend. I called Jamie about forty-four times but she didn't pick up, leaving me to wonder around the mall like some sort of escaped rare zoo animal. Naturally, she was in Express and naturally it was crowded full of beautiful people, all of whom got a good laugh. This one particularly ugly guy in nice clothes was standing by the door. I was just pulling my hand out of my pocket to knock his nose back into alignment when Jamie hustled me out the door. We then hauled ass to the Tallahassee Mall where Jamie had a suit waiting to be picked up. I guess they held the wrong one for her and she was PISSED. We then stopped at Petland in the hopes of saving some sad fish but the saddest looking one cost $24. After leaving the mall, we went back to her house, grabbed the Ab and came back here to watch some TV. I don't know what I'm going to do about this haircut. Why can't a barber just humor me and thin out these poofs on the side and leave everything else alone? At least let me quasi-enjoy my last year of not being completely bald. I'm really, really cranky and just want to go to sleep but my nap earlier did me in. Now I'll fall back into the dreaded bed-at-3am-up-at-7am-nap-from-2pm-to-8pm cycle. Oh, I got my picture back from Frame Of Mine today (Glord forbid THEY call ME...) and it looks ok. I don't know if it was worth $250...well, it was not worth that much, so if you need something framed, go somewhere else. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Saturday: Janauary 31, 2004 - No Haircut Day two of no haircut. If my mom lived nearby I'd let her do it. I returned some clothes today and bought a few new ties. Jamie and I went to the Banana Republic but the line was too long for me to wait there just to buy a $40 shirt (and it was on 95% off on clearance). We had dinner with her parents tonight and I ate the world's greatest cheesecake. I got a lot cleaning done and tomorrow I plan to get up early to do some research for my damn thesis. I don't know if that'll happen since we have rehearsal at 1pm and the Superbowl tomorrow night. Tonight I am on pup duty while Jamie is at a party. The dogs finally stopped fighting and are now both sleeping. By the way, MS Office thinks "Superbowl" is not a word--it suggests "superb owl" as what I "meant" to type. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·