That crisp autumn light

Both at the house and at the Waltham Watch Factory, where Fred Lawrence, Brandeis President, lives and held a reception for School of Creative Arts faculty and staff.

Le soleil

It was looking like a pretty dull foliage year. This morning's bright sunshine made it clear that I had that impression mostly because it was cloudy for a week. Duh. Pretty nifty from the back porch in the morning light. There's a blacktop driveway there somewhere.

Desperately needs to be regifted

Why do I have this? (The categories: Teacher, Pro, Chef, Big Mama, Lion, Maestro)

Where I work

A Welcome to Arms

Just arrived! New Carhartt shirts, purchased from amazon. They have that rare quality of fitting me, and arms that are not too short. At least until I wash them.

The things in life you do because you can

1) Scan a bunch of sketches.

We got a big format Brother printer/scanner for really not very much money (<$200), since we were interested in making color double-sided 11x17 copies at home. It turned out it scans at that size, and has an auto-feeder, too.

So, I've been scanning a bunch of my sketches. I write on 11x17 paper, so scanning has been impossible until recently. What use will the scan files have? I dunno, I'm not the engineer.

But if you were curious as to what the sketch of the first movement of my piano concerto looked like, you'd be able to look at it — or the first movement of Cantina, for that matter.

By the way. The first movement of Cantina is available from Peters separately as Etruscan March. The line of bands that want to perform it should be snaking around the block. Well? It makes a great second half opener, presuming you've begun the first half with High Wire.

First world problems

No, don't like it much when y'all leave the supermarket and leave your cart right in that great space where I really wanted to park. For the record, it took me nine seconds to wheel your cart into the carrel that was three car lengths away and return to my car. As we all know, nine seconds is all the extra time you need to cure cancer.

I'll bet your favorite Simpsons episode is the one where Homer runs for mayor on the slogan Can't Somebody Else Do It?

Also, I've never typed the word "carrel" before.

Backyard panorama

... from the porch, on this crapfest of a rainy day. Remember that we pay people to take away those leaves.

Things purchased from amazon lately

(Last six months)

• Egg cookers
• Shirts
• Pizza stone
• Skillets
• Candy
• Shoes
• Cat treats
• Snapea Crisps
• Books
• Pickles
• Olives
• French toothpaste
• Potato chips
• Yoga accoutrements
• Shot glasses
• Ink cartridges
• Printer/scanner
• Apple keyboard
• Video adapter cable
• iPhone/Pad charger
• Yoga DVDs
• Bluetooth speakers
• Grapefruit spoons
• Ramen noodle bowls
• Asian soup spoons
• Salad dressing mix
• Hot sauces
• Dissertation
• Tivoli speakers
• Yoga balance ball
• Dover scores
• Ebow
• Backup hard drive
• Magic mouse

Packing popcorn

The new pizza stone was packed in this much packing popcorn. Don't you wish the packing popcorn manufacturers would do the right thing and all go out of business?

Shiny new pizza stone

The Harley walk!

This is our end-of-the-day easy walk, no matter what time of year. We call it that because one of the houses used to repair Harley Davidsons, until the occupants were evicted and the house completely rebuilt. Now we know it's .89 miles.

Autumn hammock