Asides

I took the train into Manhattan yesterday and spent as fine a day as I’ve had in NYC in a long, long time.

It began inauspiciously, though, with the called-for rain starting almost immediately as my companion and I set out up Lexington Avenue. I’d brought along a $2 umbrella from a previous soaked visit to Brooklyn, but it wasn’t cutting it for the two of us, so I’m now the owner of two cheap disposable umbrellas. (::shrugs::) We meandered over and to and through Central Park and wound up at SummerStage in time for a set by Apollo Heights, who — for all the Cocteau Twins Mos Def TV on the Radio hype and indie music journalism love — completely sucked live. I mean, I get what they’re trying to do, and think it’s cool — wall of guitars meets soul-style vocal harmonies, or what some folks are calling shoegaze-derived Afrogaze — but the way they did it in performance was crappy piercing painful feedback for feedback’s sake and sounded nothing like their studio singles. In terms of musical genre, they’re loose cousins to TV on the Radio, who I like a lot, but with less polished vocals, and a guitar sound that can probably trace its lineage back through (very) early Catherine Wheel and Jesus and Mary Chain to the live portion of Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma. But still: when there’s no music happening between songs and you, Danny Chavis, are working to maintain that sustained painful nothing-but-feedback squeal for the umpteenth time and a substantial portion of your tiny audience is facing you with their fingers in their ears, it might be time to take the hint: dude, you’re just being a dick. They’re critical darlings, but their live chops and production are far from up to their studio sound — and that’s why they opened.

Fortunately, they opened for a far, far better band:

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I put the flag out this morning, and watched the parade this afternoon. Apparently, Highland Falls has a brass marching band of big guys in black and yellow bowling shirts who do a great ragtime version of “Oh, Susannah,” and the village fire department has a dress uniform (white gloves, brass buttons, brimmed pillbox caps) and a bagpipe player. Who knew?

The neighborhood kids have been having fun with their rockets and mortars (no, not those neighborhood kids) this afternoon, and I’m getting ready to take Zeugma up on the roof with me to watch the village fireworks. (Tink doesn’t like the noise, and will likely open the kitchen cabinet and hide in the large saucepan.) Tomorrow — well, tomorrow promises to be interesting. I’m heading into the city with a friend, and am excited about the trip’s prospects. More soon.

The summer has begun, and I’m reading and writing and hoping to get a few things done. Graduation day felt like kind of the cusp, the transition from class time into this other less structured time, but one thing I failed to mention about graduation — one of the nicest things, or, well, the nicest, was being invited by a cadet to his commissioning ceremony, and then being (somewhat surprisedly) asked to say a few words at the ceremony. I don’t know what the word is for the combination between being flummoxed and honored, but that was me, and I hope I did OK. I couldn’t have had anything other than the best things to say about the former cadet and now lieutenant, who’s going to do well and go far, and who I would’ve been grateful to have had as a platoon leader in my days as an NCO: good luck and godspeed, 2LT M.; it was a pleasure and a privilege to work with you, and I hope — know — you’ll stay in touch.

So, after the cusp: with considerable pruning, the grape vine is flourishing beautifully on the pergola — the advice I found about trimming it back by more than half each year was right on the mark — but the birds are already in and picking the tiny berries away. The creepy carnival is back in town this weekend, but they’ve repainted the funhouse with a penguins theme, though the penguins’ lopsided eyes and beakéd lipless grins bring to mind nothing more than a Steve Buscemi psychopath. Tink is favoring her luxating patella again, and I wonder if the pain in that bad knee is connected to the incoming thunderstorms that mark June’s transition to ninety-degree weather, but she’s also my queen of feline neurosis; the girl who runs and hides when she hears childrens’ voices outside.

And this blog is five years old. Much more about the cats and the house and such than it was when I started; much less about scholarship and investigating ideas. Much more about the quotidian and the certain; much less about the abstract and the questions.

That feels like a bit of a loss.

I’ve never been a big fan of the CCCC Friday night rock ‘n’ roll dance: for me, there’s almost always been an better time to be had elsewhere, with other similar-minded composition folks.

This year, for those of us with geeky inclinations (of whom I am admittedly one), there is an additional significant and compelling reason to find oneself elsewhere at 10 PM on April 4.

So the question would then seem to be: OK, who’s got the spacious suite with the big TV?

I wake up to the 0600 NPR weather forecast, and sleepily mishear the announcer’s “four to eight inches” into “forty-eight inches.” Holy shit, I think, blearily, shaving, showering. It’s the blizzard of the new millennium. Student conferences at 0745, and I need to buy fruit juice and cat food before the deluge.

A cup of coffee and a post-shower second forecast listen help. It’s not the apocalypse. It’s four to eight inches. Student conferences go as well as they can, and I have to give a lunchtime presentation, and I’m maintaining the whole day through with aspirin and antitussives and decongestants, with as bad a case of the creeping crud as I’ve had in a long time; a case that my conferees tell me is sweeping through the corps, as well. Chest and throat cough; loss of voice; body aches like I’ve been stuffed in a bag and beaten with a stick. We get good things done, me and the cadets: they figure out smart things to do with their essays, and I do my best not to breathe on them. Regular application of hand sanitizer.

I come home and lie down on the couch. Coat’s a blanket, and that’s about all I have energy for. Church bells ring at 1800, and Tink and Zeugma know that means it’s time for dinner. They get fed, and I go back to bed, until I hear odd cat vocalizations. Tink and Zeugma, up on their hind legs, looking out one of the front windows at the snow coming down on the porch and front yard and sidewalk.

OK, I figure. I’ll indulge them. The front porch has only two exits — steps down to the front yard, and door back into the house — and I can easily herd my two indoor kitties back inside should they get too ambitious in their engagement with the big white snowy world.

I let them out onto the porch, and Tink is well-behaved, sniffing the bounds, examining the perimeters, making sure everything’s safe.

And Zeugma takes a blind leaping header out into the snow, four feet below.

She gambols and frolics up the side yard, intent on the bush where the birds she watches from the kitchen window rest, and it’s all I can do to eventually herd her back up in the front door, and that’ll be the last of her outdoor activities. The girl is far too bold for out of doors.

Upgrades for the new year: WordPress 2.3.2, Mac OS 10.5.1, Adium 1.2.1, GraphicConverter 6.0.2, Transmit 3.6.3.

Curtains 1.2.

Living room ceiling fan 2.0, with substantial advisory help from Dad, chisel work on the joist, and wire nuts by flashlight.

As a relatively new homeowner, I’m always relieved and surprised when I do something to my house that doesn’t result in catastrophe. (And, frankly, always terrified by how bad things always are in their current state, said state being the one in which the last owner left them.) But I’m starting to see why people want to build their own homes: the chance to do it right, from the first time, the ground up.

188 cadet final exams graded. 65 student evaluations written and final grades assigned. One interview completed. Three webtexts edited.

I’m tired and done and in D.C. for the holidays right now, looking forward to spending time with family and the first Christmas with my brother in a long time.

And after that? Two syllabi to write. And with one early draft (with all citations intact) of a certain field manual received this very morning, I’ve also got an article on plagiarism to write.

In the meantime, though, happy holidays to you and yours. I’m in charge of the mashed potatoes and the Christmas pudding this year, and Dad’s doing geese.

If there’s an EA-6B Prowler circling your campus on a Friday afternoon…

…there’s a chance Charm City may see your students dressed in gray tomorrow.

It’s been a busy week: on Tuesday, there were pairs of Apaches, Black Hawks, and Chinooks landing on the Plain at lunchtime, with appropriate pyro. Talk about a lot of JP8 for a pep rally. I won’t make it to the Army-Navy game at Ravens stadium, but my brother lives and works in Baltimore, and I hope he’ll be nice to the Army cadets he runs into.

I’ve got to admit, though: to this point, the squids have the West Point cadets beat with their spirit videos. What’s up with that, discipuli? Are you going to let that spirit video go unchallenged?

Beat Navy!