Today has done its best to piss me off.

Got up early to take the car into the shop: I was informed that my car is too old to have its a/c recharged by the auto shop in my back yard. They didn't even look it over to double-check: they simply have a policy not to work on any cars older than 1995 models.

Now, I have a check-up scheduled for Friday.

The maintenance staff finally showed up to fix the leak in the bathroom ceiling. And though this is wonderful, I felt obligated to stay; I've always been a little weirded out by having people in my house when I'm not there, and there's no one else there I trust. It probably has something to do with all the break-ins we had when I was younger.

So with my self-imposed obligation to stick around, I got very little composing done. Especially since I spent at least half an hour searching for wonderful, magnificent, heart-wrenching, and slightly impossible movies.

Once the gentlemen finished up their job in the bathroom, I had to go in and clean up what mess was left. Having looked at what was involved beforehand, I'm quite happy that I had to do as little as I did. Now both our kitchen and bathroom floors are mopped!

I now have a not-quite brand-new red Palm Centro. I even got my phone service transferred over.

And work was . . . well, trying is a good word. Driving home coworkers who I can commiserate about work with is fabulous: I cannot put a price on the amount of good they're doing for my marriage.

Lastly, I need to get to bed; I have an audition tomorrow for a new church job in Newtown, PA.

This post was brought to you by the "colon" family of punctuation.

While on my latest research into Quakerism, I found a link to an online Nontheist Quaker Community.

This includes people who have the view that "God's" existence doesn't matter to their religious beliefs, as well as atheists who consider themselves Quakers. Or you could look to their own definition of what "nontheism" means.

Having first heard about this something less than a year ago, it's interesting to run across it again.

The lapis heavens
hung with one large pearl, turn to
diamond-studded jet.

I really don't remember my dreams usually. This is an odd spate for me.

Anyway, dreamed that I was visiting my folks, and when I arrived at their place, my mom and brother were watching an animated feature film of Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire. It was in the proper style, just very sleek and professional. Seems that it had gone straight to DVD but was doing quite well, sales-wise.

The sad part was waking up and realizing that it wasn't real.

List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you -- list the first 15 you can recall in 15 minutes. Don't take too long to think about it.

1) My Name is Asher Lev* by Chaim Potok
2) The Christian Bible
3) Hagakure by Yamamoto Tsunetomo
4) The Hobbit* by J.R.R. Tolkein
5) The Chronicles of Narnia* by C.S. Lewis
6) Damiano's Lute* by R.A. MacAvoy
7) The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
8) 2001* by Arthur C. Clarke
9) I, Robot* by Isaac Asimov
10) The Colour of Magic* by Terry Pratchett
11) Sandman* by Neil Gaiman
12) Redwall* by Brian Jacques
13) Musical Composition by Reginald Smith Brindle
14) Saint George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges and Trina Schart Hyman
15) Coyote* by Allen Steele

* This is either the first book or the series name.

Looking over this, I realize that I need to read more, and better quality books. A lot of these are things I read when I was much younger.

Dear kitties, (yes, all of you because I haven't caught which one of you three is actually doing it)

I understand that you're hungry in the morning, so am I on occasion, and I understand that you might wish to "get back at me" or some such. However, I'd rather you stuck to biting the toilet paper.

This new thing of playing with my head of the electric toothbrush; yeah, I'm sure it's fun to bat around and see it spin in the dust and dirt and various feline and human hairs that are on the floor. But for goodness sake, stop it.

Love you, mean it,
David

P.S. Herbie, please don't bite my ankle when I'm under the influence of general anesthesia. I'm not trying to ignore you so much as I am trying to find my oxycodone to stop the OMGPAIN in my face. Biting me to get my attention doesn't help.

I got my wisdom teeth extracted today.

Currently recuperating with an all-white cat on my lap, savoring the results of my liquid diet.

Also, my wife is absolutely amazing. I keep falling for her every day.

This could have been longer, but I'm tired, and I doubt that people really want to hear the details of me undergoing sedation, or about how wonderful my naps throughout the day were.

At around 12:05 my rss feed in Google reader tells me that xkcd has updated. I read it, google Paul Erdős, find the wikipedia page, and by the time I've gotten to the bottom, the xkcd comic is linked.

I will offer more later. In the meantime have this:

Checking email and generally surfing the web, Bun-bun jumped up on my lap and made himself at home. For his own reasons, he leapt up and went over to the desk. Not even a second later Lily was standing on my lap.

I feel there should be some sort of "conservation of kittylap" law or theorem here. Alas, my math skills aren't up to it.

. . . you magnificent town, you. But whatever should I do?

I'm going to be in Philadelphia for the next three days and I know that there are several people here who would know a thing or two to do. Any suggestions for stuff to keep me and company occupied? Bear in mind that the company are my in-laws, so nothing too racy.

Lap kitties aren't so hot during the summer . . .
or rather, they are hot, but during the summer that's not cool . . .
um.
Yeah.

David Carradine hanged himself.

In the middle of a film shoot no less.

Crap.

So I've been composing for the last couple of weeks. Classes are out (I made mostly "A"s with a B thrown in for good measure), but I still have make-up composition lessons.

My teacher told me that I'm "too cerebral. You need to stop thinking so much about writing music and just write music."

So last week I labored on a solo cello piece. Now I need to finish it up somewhat and work on a woodwind trio piece.

In one of my attempts at loafing, I discovered an online version of Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov's instrumentation treatise.

It's a little bit dated, but the editor has made an effort to update it to today's instruments.

So I'm taking a short break from writing music to post this and listen to Steve Reich's "New York Counterpoint" for clarinet(s).*

See y'all later. Gotta get back to my desk.

* The piece can be played by one clarinet player with two or three different clarinets called for and pre-recorded while playing one line live, or eight clarinet players live. The version I'm listening to features only one performer.

I found this via gallo_de_pelea. I guess it's going around.

The problem with LiveJournal...we all think we are so close, but really, we know nothing about each other.

So, I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me.
Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about.
(or just anything at all you wanted to know! :D)

Ask away. Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don't know about you!

I'll put in one caveat: this is not friends-locked, so if there's something too uncomfortable for me to answer, I will plead the fifth. Of course, I'll let you know that I'm doing so.

Why is it that once the semester is "over" I am suddenly more busy than I was during finals week?

I've needed to compose all week long, and between work and school, I can barely find the time to eat my meals, much less compose.

Well, can you?

I've been writing a cantus firmus for my counterpoint final. Actually, more specifically, I'm writing a "kyrie eleison" based on a paraphrase cantus firmus.

A little bit of history/ explanation.

Back in the good old days of music, when notation was finally introduced, the first things that were notated were the "proper" music of the church. Originally this was "plain chant," later, Gregorian chant. No matter the name of the chant, it was exactly that: one unaccompanied melodic line of text.

Many years later, polyphony (Greek for "many sounds") was invented in the church, when people started saying "we can do better than doubling the same melody at the octave or the fifth, let's really cut loose!"

A simplified history to be sure, but whatever. Anyway, people took these chants and started writing countermelodies against them, and constructed a whole series of rules on how to write these countermelodies, calling the collected rules "counterpoint."

I'm studying counterpoint because this is where Western music got its start, and it's a great tool to have in my toolbox. If I had to make a direct comparison, it's about as useful to have as a hammer, screwdriver, and a saw, combined.

Getting back to counterpoint for a moment though, after a while, people started getting tired of hearing the same old chants with different countermelodies. Due to the rules of counterpoint, all countermelodies are based off of the chosen melody, and the same ones get boring. These melodies, when used as the basis of a contrapuntal composition are called, singularly "cantus firmus" (Latin for "fixed melody." If you squint your eyes just right, you can see how the word "chant" and "cantus" are related to each other.), and pluraly "cantus firmi."

Because people were getting tired of these cantus firmi, composers started writing new ones, or finding popular songs and turning the melody of the song into a cantus firmus. The tune "Westron Winde" got a lot of settings in England; apparently it was quite popular.

In this grand tradition, I've turned Britney Spears "If You Seek Amy" into a cantus firmus and am using it as the basis for a Kyrie.

It's due Friday, and I don't have much yet. Counterpoint is not easy.

On the way to work, I realized that I had my phone turned off, and had thus missed Annie's calls to bring her dinner.

As I worked to rectify this, the bottom fell out, dumping much rain and a little sleet all over the New Brunswick area.

Returning to my car, I drove through the pounding rain and sleet, with the sun setting on my left in a cloud-strewn blue sky, facing a rosé-mixed-with-champagne colored sky. About halfway to work, I saw the double rainbow.

Now, many hours later, I am happy and tipsy. I do like a good Port. Mmmmmmmm . . . .

For once, I have been on top of my day. On time to all of my classes, prepared for them (all two that actually required prep). I got something approximating a decent night's sleep, and I finally received my E-Z Pass that I ordered a couple weeks ago.

I doubt tomorrow will be this good, simply because I have yet to do most of what's due, but that's why I got a full night's sleep last night, right?