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Monday: November 01, 2004 - Winning Attitude I know what you're thinking. It's November, so why are we still on the October page? I'll tell you. Because I'm too lazy to make a new page right now. It's not just making a new page, you see. It's a whole ordeal. Speaking of ordeals, I've got one at work. Well, let me start with a different story. There's this moron who works in HR. We were approved to get an hour of admin leave to vote. I voted early and wanted my retroactive leave so I put it as such on my time sheet. At 4:45 I get this reply saying my voting for in the October Primary is not approved. What the hell, you idiot? Where on earth have you been? The October Primary? Do they typically hold the primary a week before the election? Here's a thought, stop having babies and getting baby showers at work and READ THE NEWS. LISTEN TO THE NEWS. WATCH THE NEWS. Hell, watch your MTV while breast-feeding your brats. Do something you fool.

As you can see from my winning attitude, I'm the kind of person that commands respect. So much respect that I was called to my first real meeting today. I was offering fake smiles and pretending to write down notes while thinking about Chompy while the other five people were talking. Then--bam. The IT Director is looking at me, telling the boss-boss that I'm the project manager for this huge project. I can't say how huge it is because I was picturing Chompy buried at the beach while the project proportions were being discussed. I tried to play it cool even though I only knew about 10% of the acronyms and pretended that I had coordinated a dozen people before.

I always kind of wondered how teachers became teachers. Like, you go from being a student to a teacher in like, zero steps. Sure, education majors student-teach but that can't really prepare you. I found out the usual way is the way I was ordained--by just getting thrown completely under-prepared. Similarly, I wondered how the head of accounting became the head of accounting. I mean, how many ways can you make numbers work? Seriously. Managing records is easy--they don't fight back and on the whole don't even mind being shredded. People, though--they're crazy. And what influence do I have--it's not like I get to assign grades afterwards. Did I mention that I have no idea what exactly the project is? Looks like tomorrow is a sick day. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: November 02, 2004 - Bush Again So George Bush is the new president. Whoopie! Honestly, while I would have liked to have seen what Kerry would've done, it really doesn't matter. I feel Kerry's pain. When I was applying for that job at William and Mary, the waiting was the worst part. I had already picked out new portraits for the Lincoln Bedroom and was very comfortable replying to questions starting with, "Mr. President, could you?..". Granted, I didn't have to blow a ton of Jamie's money to be in the running, but still. It hurts.

I had a dream last night where Brian gave me this snake. He says, "It's an ASP! Hah!" and then disappears. Stupid ASP is all getting me down at work. I'm sure there's some sort of programming hierarchy, starting with some simple language like html and working your way through to the more challenging ones. I feel like I've skipped a large number of steps and am praying for a huge influx of public records requests at work to ensure I don't actually have to do any coding myself. I mean, would you trust me to do something like that? No, of course you wouldn't.

Finally, the moron HR girl finally realized she was an idiot and gave me my hour of administrative leave. The reply was something like, "Oh, I didn't realize you voted in the general election." Yeah, thanks. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: November 03, 2004 - Pink Slip An eyelash. That's right, I was about an eyelash away from receiving my first ever pink slip...

It's about 10:00am. I'm poking along on my ASP tutorials online when an email comes in. Like the dozens I get each day from lawyers, this one should not be coming to me. Like most of those dozens, the lawyer is aggravated he hasn't gotten his $60/hr fees yet and decides he's going to take it out on me. Being a mature, responsible employee I send him a polite email back saying that I'll make sure things get straightened out. I then send an email to one of the women in Compliance detailing the guy being a dolt and suggesting we should go out of our way to make sure he doesn't get paid until February...jump forward to 3:30pm. After Ricky gave me a huge head start on my project, I was feeling pretty good. I had just finished celebrating my second successful SQL-populating-ASP query when the woman (or girl) I emailed before calls me. She tells me to come over right now. So I do. At first I thought I had mis-sent the emails. Could I have really done that? I'm always so careful--especially when I've got nasty things to say. But no! I didn't do it. This girl-woman had accidentally replied to him with all of my text underneath hers and he had emailed her back spitting fire. Uh oh.

Within the hour, the big three bosses all knew. He called our Exec. Director and she rallied the big boys. Apparently he was threatening lawsuits against both me as well as the administration (on what grounds? Stupid lawyer). Although they were able to calm him down, he's still going to take it to the Circuit Judge. Whatever that means. Well, back to the point, it's now 5pm and the girl-woman has been crying for the past hour and a half and I've been anxiously pacing, hoping they'd come and tell me what happened. By 5:15 I decided to seek out my "supervisor", Larry, and he assured me it was all good but I needed to talk to the other two headish-honchos. Sharon shocked me by giving me the slightest slap on the wrist and assuring me she has wanted to send an email like that more times than she could count. Knowing I had 2/3's of the popular vote to keep my job I went to see Vicky. Although apparently I had brought great shame on our company, she too told me I had emailed this buttlick exactly what she had wanted to say as well on several occasions. Since Buttlick, J.D. had called her before she knew what happened she said she was shocked to hear that the offending party was me. (Get this!) She said out of the 100 people that worked there, she said I'd be 98th most likely person she would have thought of because I was so nice. A hahaha. Yeah, I'm so nice. It's true. She said this was all a blessing in disguise and now the whole office will undergo sensitivity training. I'm going to be real popular now. Vicky assured me that she was really pleased with all the work I'd done so far and that she was willing to forgive me.

And that's kind of too bad. Don't get me wrong--I kind of like my job and I like having a monthly pay check that doesn't come from a temp agency but the wanderlust was kicking in again and I was already picking out my log cabin as the new governor of Alaska when I was told "don't do it again". Maybe those quotation marks aren't appropriate it. I was advised not to do it again but was it my fault one of my coworkers wasn't as careful as I was? Not that I'm blaming her entirely since I did write it in the first place but come on now. Tomorrow they're going to determine if I have to write an apology email. I was trying to work one out this evening where there'd be a nasty pattern. It can't be too obvious, though. But then again, it can't be too subtle either. I mean, this guy repeatedly emailed me despite it saying explicitly: EMAIL THE GIRL-WOMAN FOR QUESTIONS. HERE IS THE GIRL-WOMAN'S PHONE NUMBER/EMAIL. DO NOT COMMUNICATE WITH NON-COMPLIANCE EMPLOYEES (me). Stupid lawyers.

Finally, it was brought to my attention my Halloween update was not up to par. Hence, here are my five favorite types of Halloween candy: Kit-Kat's, Supersized Kit-Kats, Mini-Kit-Kats, Bite-Sized-Kit-Kats and peanut-free M&M's. That is all. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: November 04, 2004 - Post-Fiasco Another day, another dollar. After the fiasco yesterday, I was relieved to find no one cared enough to talk about it today. Three of us received a new present today--a second monitor. Apparently I now do enough "programming" to get a second one. I've never used a dual-monitor set-up before and I'll most likely move back to having just one. Unless, of course, I learn to love it and am forced to buy two 21" LCD monitors for home.

I had Quinzo's Subs for the first time today. I'd eat it really frequently if I didn't have to work for 90 minutes to pay for a meal. Chris and Jamie joined me. Speaking of Chompy (where'd that come from?), she ate a corner off my down comforter while I was at dinner with Jamie's parents. When I got home it looked like it was snowing in my room with thousands of tiny down-puffs covering her in her cage and blizzarding around the room. I was pretty angry--it was really nice and now that I'm used to it, I don't think I can go back to not having one. The only thing stopping me is that the one she destroyed was $400 from Bed Bath and Beyond. I received it as a gift from the Flynn household a couple years ago because Jenny was allergic to down.

The new version of the site is almost done. Except for a couple mega-nested tables it's all done by hand, unlike this FrontPage monstrosity. I wish I had a reason to use my budding ASP skills but I don't. I'll be able to make working polls, though. Unlike this one: [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Friday: November 05, 2004 - FAMU Homecoming What do I hate more? FAMU's Homecoming? If I leave my house, I'll either get stuck somewhere while cars park dead in the road while the various pimps come out to discuss caps, ho's and rims. And this is assuming I don't get shot, of course. OR do I hate FSU's Homecoming more? I'll get stuck in traffic while cars park dead in the road while various rednecks come out to discuss George Bush, bird shot or the gastric effects of Bud Light. Since it was the last day to pay my rent and FSU's Homecoming Parade almost cost me a $25 late fee, I'll hate FSU's more for today. The parade blocked my car in the lot and I couldn't leave. Figuring the parade would last until 2pm I waited until then to take my lunch break. But oh no. Apparently the fatties that were occupying love-seat folding chairs sipping hooch wanted to see even more so the Greek floats went by again. Why the HELL would you close off downtown on a Friday afternoon? I don't even work near the campus. My new boss, Roy, was kind enough to let me go at 4pm so I screamed over to pay rent before getting together with Jamie to prepare ourselves for poker. We played two different games with my two co-workers, Ricky and Bob and Ricky won both games. Both times it came down to me and him head-to-head. I can't beat him. I don't know why, I just can't. [Comments: 1]· permalink · · ·

Saturday: November 06, 2004 - Yahoo Poker It's the most important meal of the day. Ours consisted of just about every type of breakfast item, including the cinnamon roll. Two hours after assembling the materials, Chris, Michael, Jamie and I ate our hearts out before trotting over to the Homecoming game versus Duke. There were more people than I expected--who wants to see a third place team?--but still it was cleared out enough that we didn't have to squeeze in anywhere, a very nice change of pace. Chris and Jamie left at the 4th quarter but Michael and I stayed to yell. We met the Garnet And Gold Sparkle Guys as they were taking pictures by us and they were kind enough to answer all the questions we asked. As it turns out, they're part of the BCM, which we later deciphered to be the Baptist Campus Ministry. They not allowed to dance but they can certainly cover themselves in paint and glitter and do explicit poses with girls in the name of football. After the game we headed home and I took a nice nap before Jamie and I went to On The Border for dinner. After dinner Steve, Mark and Jamie took my Yahoo-Bucks in poker. Steve cashed in with our first-ever straight flush. Of course, I had a full house against it and was throwing money into the pot like an excited monkey with feces but once the cards were flipped it would have taken Steve a half-hour to collect all the chips if we had been playing in real life. I'm not sure why I'm so bad online, but I am. Terrible, in fact. Oh well, at least it wasn't for real money. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: November 07, 2004 - Desperate Housewives Is there a better show on TV than Desperate Housewives? As if she wasn't good enough as the crazed dermatologist on Seinfeild, Bree (Marcia Cross) is just amazing. I first saw Lynette (Felicity Huffman) on The West Wing and man, the show is good enough with these two alone but no, there are more! Ok, it can be cheesy and very soap opery but who cares? Not me, that's for sure. As someone who hates everything and doesn't watch much non-sports TV, I was shocked by how much I like this show. Since the sad demise of Family Guy, it's the only show I've made a concerted effort to watch. Tomorrow I'll post my Desperate Housewives Prediction List, which I made immediately following the first episode. A few of the are right on (dead kid, Rex is gay) and some are...well, really far off. Alas, you will have to wait until tomorrow. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: November 08, 2004 - Here's A Link Here's a lazy update. Not even an update, really. More like a stupid link.

The Best DUI In History [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: November 09, 2004 - Here's Another Link Here's another lazy update. Not even an update, really. More like another stupid link.

I'm sorry [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: November 10, 2004 - Chocolate Oreo Cheesecake So I bake this excellent Oreo Cheesecake for Bob's Veteran's Day party...except I forgot to add the chocolate. How stupid is that? Now I'm trying to decide if I should try to make a rush glaze, or just suck it up and leave it as it is. It still has an oreo crust with chopped oreos inside of it--so it's not just going to be cheesecakey. But still...I've never had it without the chocolate--what if it's gross? No one wants that. And I need to make a good baking-impression. [Comments: 1]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: November 11, 2004 - V-Day Where have all the good updates been? As I'm sure you've deduced, not here. There have been a couple reasons, the largest being that the new site that will be going up on the blog's one-year anniversary was a much larger project than I had initially anticipated. Sure, I could left all the old pages looking like this, with the hideously bright color scheme, but if I'm going to do something, I might as well do it right. Some of the new perks of the page are: easier on the eyes, much easier to navigate and more pictures of Chompy. I mean, who wouldn't want more pictures of Dr. Chomp? All the archived entries are going to have "highlighted" selections, so there should be quicker browsing. AND regardless of your monitor resolutions, everything should fit without tables overlapping or having pictures on top of pictures. While I wanted to do it without an editor, I gave in and used it for some of the absolute positioning draggings. C'mon, you can't blame me for that.

For V-Day, we went over to Bob's for a BBQ session. Even though we only knew a handful of people, it was a nice change of pace and Bob did an excellent job on the grill. The cheesecake went over really well despite my incident with the chocolate. After the BBQ I took a nap and woke up right before the FSU/NC State game. It was a terrible game for both offenses but my boy Wyatt pulled it out in the end. Well, the end being the 3rd quarter. It was sad to see that our total offense after the first quarter was two yards and that the second quarter was almost over before we had more yards-gained than plays-executed. Bobby Bowden decided to spare NC State the humiliation of a last-second TD and we just downed the ball for the last minute and a half. That didn't stop NC State from trying to jump across quickly and pound our guys before the ball was downed. That's not cool, we were trying to spare them some embarassment but they just went ahead and looked like terrible sports on national TV. Good job, morons. Not that I'm surprised--if they had any brains they would have gone to NC in the first place. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Friday: November 12, 2004 - Weekend Ah, the triple update. I've been doing a terrible job keeping up with the current entries because, quite honestly, by the time I finish adjusting all the old entries to the new format the last thing I want to do is right new one. Some of the weekend highlights: hanging with Chris while Jamie, Jara and Michael clubbed it up with the drag queens (Sat.), Jamie making the best dinner ever (Sun.) and...uh, playing cards online? I know you have to have three things for a list so I guess that's the third.

I'm trying to decide now if I should put a javascript option to revert the color scheme on the new page back to this one, just in case people loved the garnet and gold scheme. I personally no longer care for it, so I won't be clicking it but still. The only problem is that it goes against my simplified design. Oh well. It's going up next Sunday, so I'm just warning you that the updates will be pretty dull until then. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: November 15, 2004 - Bearded Kryptonite What did you do today? Contrary to my job description I spent my morning plunging toilets. No seriously. Even the ones that weren't stopped up. At least I didn't have to clean them. After ensuring clean flushes, I was sent to the in-house law library to prepare it for new carpet. That meant packing up hundreds of heavy books while being aggravated every ten seconds by some teenage girl who insisted she knew "the plan". You idiot, the plan is "put the books in boxes". Granted, I do not have a masters degree in box-filing but I think it goes something like this: take a book off the shelf, put it in the box, repeat. Go back to working at Taco Bell you moron. The afternoon was spent cataloging every book in the upstairs law-library. Gag. Is it really necessary to know which books are there? Do I really need to keep track of EVERY ARTICLE in EVERY MAGAZINE? Hell no. From the amount of dust, no one has opened Real Estate Law For The Elderly 1961 since, well, 1961. We need to pitch that stuff. But oh no, no one listens to me.

Ricky kicked my ass AGAIN. We fought for our 8-high hands in Texas Hold 'Em, moved to equally terrible hands in Five Card Draw and finally settled in to the classic Hi-Lo. If you've never played Hi-Lo, it works something like this. Each player gets a card and then bets according to if he thinks his card is higher than his opponent's. It was grueling and he wore me down, much like he does in poker. Ricky, you're like my living, bearded kryptonite. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: November 17, 2004 - My Parents on the Tonight Show So I get a call from my parents, who are in LA--they're on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I don't really watch much non-Desperate Housewives (what's the big deal about the commercial with Terrell Owens?) but I might make an exception to see if I can pick them out of the audience.

Today was the Thanksgiving/Tailgate Feast at work. I spent my morning running around assembling tables and picking up food. It was all pretty gross. When did "adults" stop learning how to cook? My mom can cook just fine, but somewhere between her generation and mine people forgot how to cook. Most of the things were purchased from Wal-Mart or Publix and when people did attempt to make things dry heaving abounded.

Yesterday was spent mostly walking around the building. Seriously, all I did was walk around because that's what I was told to do. Sort of. Only four more days until the new blog appears and the updates go back to being daily and not-totally-sucking.

I also spent last night making a JavaScript hi-lo game. It may or may not be ready for the anniversary. Oh well. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Friday: November 19, 2004 - My Job Sucks My job sucks and I can't wait to leave. Enjoy the new page, it took me a while to make so if you find anything wrong let me know so I can fix it. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Saturday: November 20, 2004 - Blogiversary! Happy Anniversary, you blog! It's no secret that when it comes to sticking with things, I am not one of the best. But I did, I made it a year. Good for me. In celebration of my being so responsible, we'll have a couple of links back to my favorite entries. Please feel free to send me suggestions because God knows there are some things that I missed.

We lost to hated Florida tonight. It was crowded and not very much fun. There were a lot of fights too. And not just UF vs. FSU fights--lots of FSU vs. FSU fights, especially between girls and these old, drunk men. UF outplayed us and they deserved to win. I realize this is blasphemy in these parts but it's true. Sorry. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: November 21, 2004 - Jewel Cichlid One year ago today, my precious Jewel Cichlid was swimming happily in the new tank. Two days ago, without much fanfare, she died. Just like a year ago, as Jamie pointed out, I will talk about my fish.

I cleaned the two downstairs tanks. When I think about having three tanks in the house, I feel like some crazy fish guy when in reality I don't even like fish that much. I've gone fishing all of once in my life and didn't much care for it. I also don't like touching fish. I've had to touch one all of once in my life and I had to dedicate an entire entry to it. Some man, eh?

I realized today that I had accidentally deleted my Desperate Housewives Prediction list in the move to the new site layout. Ergo, here is a new one with only the ones predicted from the first episode and the ones and tonight's episode. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: November 22, 2004 - Ugly Update You'd think after all the work I spent fixing this damn site I would have gotten the day of the week right yesterday, but no. I also found I put damming instead of damning in my Desperate Housewives Predications page. I'll even leave it there so you can have a good laugh at my expense.

I think I got ripped off at the gas station today. I think they somehow screwed up and I didn't get the gas I paid for. It was only $10 worth but still, that's an hour of working in the bowels of hell.

Chompy got really angry at something lurking in the shadows outside of my backyard tonight. I went down there to see something rustle in the bushes. I have no idea what it was but thank god for Chompy scaring them away. She was standing up against the window with her fur up and her teeth out, so I can understand why someone might not want to break in. Granted, it could have been a cat or some other animal she just wanted to kill.

I noticed that Google picked a very inopportune time to cache my site. It must have gotten it midway through the update, leaving a garish color scheme. Well, it's this background with the yellow and red font from before. Gag. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: November 23, 2004 - Ecolab Sucks Rather than spending another entry complaining about my job, I figured I'd burn this entry by sharing at least one story about a former job. Bear in mind, I had just turned 17 so some of the details might be kind of hazy (read: made-up).

The summer of 1997 I worked for an EcoLab in Illinois. It was through Manpower and it was my second temp job, my first one doing data entry for a day or two for the Plainfield Sun. They told me I'd be doing administrative things since I had such stellar computer skills. When I got there I found my new boss was a minor league pitcher for the Oakland Athletics. He had pictures of himself playing ball all over his office and I was determined to impress him. He told him that I was going to be an "efficiency expert". I had no idea what that meant but I figured since "expert" was part of the title it couldn't be all bad. Oh, but it was. He brought me down to the main plant before explaining what I was to do. My eyes watered in the chemical-laden air as he informed me I was to follow around various employees with a clipboard and digital stopwatch, timing them every time they did anything other than crank out Lime-Away. He then introduced me to the first woman I was to monitor, this puffy Hispanic woman named Carmella. Carmella was about 40 and clad in a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and white jeans. Even now I get a good laugh when I see a shirt with Disney characters popping out of the breast pockets but this was different. It wasn't a "aren't I cute white trash" look but a "my God, my life can't get any worse" look. After our introduction the pitcher left and I stood there with Carmella looking at me. She stared me down for a while until I innocently asked if I should be writing down this time as "non-work".

After a few days of doing this and her receiving what seemed to be a motivational speech by our Cy Young daily she decided she was going to make my life a living hell. She took to making it a point to walk over to me every time she had to do anything--cough, sneeze, scratch herself, whatever and say, "Hey skinny, you get that one?" or after stretching her arms as she yawned, "Hey tiny, I only stretch for 20 seconds and you write 30 seconds". Her English was not great but my broken Spanish was able to translate enough to know I should just stop coming to work. Within a week of working there she had ensured no one would talk to me and I gave in and just stopped writing down anything at all.

Since obviously I was the most hated member of the 300 person staff I sat by myself every day at lunch. While no one spat on me, the only time anyone talked to me in three months was when I was sipping my Barq's Root Beer and some mix operator walked over to me, slapped his hands down on the table across from me, put his face about an inch from mine and said quietly, "straws are for p*ssies" before walking away.

By the end of month two, I had taken to not writing anything down at all except bathroom trips. This seemed to cease people handing plastic bottles of mysterious colored liquids with small holes in the bottom to me. One of the last people I was to watch was a batch mixer named (no really) Charles. Charles had a disfigured left hand and loved the band Styx. Never having listened to popular music growing up, I agreed that Styx was indeed the greatest band ever. Being as squeamish as I am now, I could never really look directly at The Hand but from the quick glimpses I took, it kind of looked like a gnarled branch. Charles was nice enough until he asked me what my favorite Styx song was. Apparently my answer of..."gee, they're all so good" was only good enough until he decided we were going to sing a song together while the mixture settled. He asked me what song I wanted to sing. I informed him that as a drummer I'd be better of backing him on drum set while he sang. He agreed on the condition that I'd sing back-up. He elected for us to perform "Lady" for all the other batch mixers. Foolishly, I started right in with a drum beat. I don't think he even got a word out before he stopped me and asked what the hell I was doing. I'm sure I blushed knowing the inevitable question was coming: Name ANY Styx song. With his mangled nub in my face like a zombie-microphone I figured I'd try a guess. I can't remember what exactly I guessed but apparently was it not only NOT a Styx song it was similar enough to the title of some .38 Special that he stopped talking to me all together.

What's sad, is that I'd rather be doing that again than working where am I now. I didn't appreciate how nice it was to have no one talk to you at work. [Comments: 23]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: November 24, 2004 - Happy Birthday Mary! I feel like I had to drive errands to the ends of the earth today even though I only had about six. Any time I'm not in the office, my happiness quotient goes up considerably, even if it means driving through horrible storms. Today was one of the worst days I've ever had to drive in my life. I had to pull over a number of times on the small, well-known roads because I literally could not see a single thing. This, of course, didn't stop the other drivers from going at their normal speeds. Bastards.

After work I picked up some crazy swimming trunks with what seems to be either orange ravens or tyrannosaurus rex patterns on a light blue background. They're pretty loud and my newly-grown gut seems to hang over the edge. Ah, the sacrifices you have to make to go on a beach vacation. Jamie dropped off The Ab to the kennel and I prepared my home for my weekend house/dogsitter.

Jamie and I ran into Mary and her friends (and former students) at Bennigan's tonight. It was her 21st birthday and they made her go through all the usual chair-standing trauma. I need to stop ordering chicken fingers from there because they're never as good as they are in my mind.

See all y'all on Monday. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Weekend: November 28, 2004 - On Vacation On Vacation [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: November 29, 2004 - Lappy 486 Welp, that's about all I did. Had I not spent the past eight hours fixing a computer problem I'd be more inclined to share the fun details of my trip. I need a Lappy 486. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: November 30, 2004 - Mas N' Steel Concert It's too bad I'm so tired because I have so many things to write about that I could make today's entry about forty pages long. I guess I'll start with today's events. Work sucked. Moving on, I went to the Fall 2004 Mas N' Steel concert tonight. I guess I should start with the good points. First, Gamelan was incredible. Just amazing. I admit that in the past they were pretty tedious but tonight, they just had "it". As for Mas, well, the way I've been describing it has been something like this. Let's say you're dating this hot girl who is really cool. After a while you decide to break up. A year later you see her and she's really let herself go AND she's dating some buttlick. You remember all the good times you had but you could never go back. To see Matt Flynn going through the motions of dancing was one of the saddest things I've ever seen. Now he's a guy who loves music. Really loves it and his energy is so contagious that you can't help but get into it with him. So when I saw him kind of faking it it really made me sad. Jeff talked for way too long and I knew it was going to suck when he footnoted that most of the group was new and still learning. His solo was pretty lousy. Technically it was showy. He can play a lot faster than I can and mostly likely more accurately. The difference I guess is that my ears are awesome. And even if they weren't awesome, I could at least tell if I was on the right chord. When he tried to play melodically it literally caused my stomach to tighten. How can you finish a MM and go on to a Ph. D and be that oblivious to how music works? I digress--Samuel Barber most likely rolled over in his grave with the arrangement of Adagio for Strings (Pan). The lower pans' rolls were very smooth, VERY smooth and that impressed me as well as the conducting debut by undergrad David Jackson. The leads, though, were atrocious. Jeff stuck out really badly and the smoothness of the piece was completely ruined. Astrud was fine, saved by a flute solo and (gasp) a very nice melodic solo by Chris but the two generic soca pieces were snoozers with the energy of a sleeping Chompy. I guess that was my biggest complaint. There was no energy at all. Either as a consequence of that or the cause was that there was no groove. Nothing synched up at all--ever. I wish I had been given the chance to direct them this year. Things certainly would have been different.

After the concert I hung out with Matt (and briefly) Michael. We rehashed the good times and drank some beers. Tomorrow I'll start with the backlog of entries from my vacation. Here's a nice quote to whet your appetite: "Hey Big Tex, I poked 'em all." [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·