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.

I guess I'm borrowing a page out of planetx, wolven, and wacko1138's books.

And It's primarily to them that these links are addressed (excepting one, but he knows what's going on.)

A move towards metascience.

A social network/email aggregator.

...because it'd be really bottom heavy.

Comment on this post. I'll choose seven interests from your profile and you'll explain what they mean and why you are interested in them.
Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along.


Jimi Hendrix
Um...yeah, so I didn't discover a lot of post-Beatles pop music until 1999, when I worked in a musical instrument store with one of the best guitarists I've ever heard, bar none. He introduced me to such luminaries as Santana, Steely Dan, and gave me a lot more depth of knowledge about "Mr. Hendrix." I now know "Voodoo chile" and "Little Wing" when I hear them. Gorgeous pieces.

A true musical genius, Mr. Hendrix, he brought guitar playing to astonishing new heights and didn't even play it the "right" way.

I still get chills when I listen to his "Star-Spangled Banner."

E. E. Cummings
I think the first Cummings I read was "anyone lived in a pretty how town," and I've enjoyed delving into his weird little poems ever since. It's a bit of a cultivated taste, and I don't really cultivate it much, but who am I to argue with my muse?

During summer of '06 I read "maggie and milly and molly and may" and it nagged on me for months until I finally took a break from what I should have been composing, and wrote a first draft of a setting of it. Then I emailed his publisher and got permission to set it and finished it up earlier this year. It's one of my better pieces, as far as I'm concerned.

Blondie
I first heard Blondie when I watched "Better than Chocolate" and saw the West End Girls do a cover of "Heart of Glass."

Found out it was Blondie, and I started listening to more. I still find myself launching into "Call me." Oh yeah, she also did "One way or another." Good stuff.

Mysticism
I consider myself Quaker, and they are often considered mystics. At one point I considered myself pantheistic, which is covered with mysticism. "Mystic" has been an appropriate adjective for myself for much longer than I even knew what it meant, so it only recently became a viable part of my vocabulary.

The Boondocks
I was looking through wolven's profile and saw this. I thought "hey, that's a great show" and plunked it down in my interests too.

You see, I didn't get a paper for the longest while, and I only read the comic strip when I got a paper. But I enjoyed it every time I read it, unlike "Garfield" for instance, which I haven't enjoyed since I was ten and didn't know any better.

I made a point of sitting down and watching the premiere of The Boondocks, and again, enjoyed every minute of it. I couldn't keep watching it for many reasons, but it is still one of the best shows on television. They even have a Peabody to help prove it.

Teaching
I enjoy teaching. I have since...I don't really remember when--just always have. I know that I only realized it after tutoring to first-graders before I started college, but the desire had already been simmering for a while.

Planet X
Aside from being the fictional planet where I set my sixth-grade fantasy saga, it is the online handle of the incredibly talented Jared Axelrod.

He is so talented that the stuff just drips off of him.

Plays, puppets, flash fiction, rayguns, art. What's not to love? Feel free to look him up on either his website, or on livejournal. Username...planetx.