Contrapunctus 14

I want to take a moment to express excitement over a few selections we'll be performing at the FSO this season:

Brahms Variations on a Theme by Haydn
Larsson Concerto for Trombone and Strings (a freakin' trombone concerto! how fun!)
Elgar Enigma Variations
Verdi Overture to Nabucco
Brahms Symphony No. 2
Copland Appalachian Spring Suite

Yay!

Dear Xxxxx,

I just wanted to write to express how excited I am about the upcoming season at the FSO: the Enigma Variations is a longtime favorite and I'm very happy to have an opportunity to learn another Brahms symphony.

I'm especially thrilled that we'll be performing Appalachian Spring, a piece I'd wanted to play for years and years. I actually performed the original 13-player version this summer at a chamber music workshop, so it will be especially interesting to turn around and do the full orchestral version with the FSO.

I hope your summer is going well and look forward to returning to rehearsals soon.

Best,
Alyssa

Nowadays watching the sky lighten before the sun comes up just makes me sad. I'm fortunate it doesn't happen nearly as often now as it once did.

Dawn and dusk are so completely different from one another, in many ways. It is striking to me every time.

I shut down my computer and turned out the lights downstairs last night around 12, after Tonya had already gone to bed and fallen asleep. As I was walking up the stairs I heard a knock, either at the back door (which you have to open a gate to get to, so, more invasive) or the back window on the side of the house. I kept walking because I wasn't sure whom it was and figured if it was our neighbor Bob, he would say something to identify himself.

I got to the top of the stairs and froze, a bit freaked out, trying to think of what to do if it wasn't Bob, knowing whomever it was had seen me shutting off the kitchen light, hoping not to attract any more attention by moving around or turning off any more. A few seconds later I heard a voice that I definitely didn't recognize say, "Hey!" Then, "Tammy!" Great.

Tammy is one of the "girls" living in the House of Ill Repute two doors down from ours—its status as such was confirmed by Bob several months ago, matching up with suspicions we'd held about it practically since moving in. By "girls" I mean she's in her 40s at least and looks to be almost 60. She may or may not be a toothless wonder, but the name certainly matches her overall presentation.

Needless to say I was then not only creeped out by this guy but also utterly disgusted. I had no idea whether this man was drunk, high, altered in any way or just looking for a blowjob, so I wasn't sure how—or whether even—to confront him by telling him to get the fuck off my property.

He walked up the passage between the houses towards the street and I followed, standing out of sight (I hoped) before the guest bedroom window to get a look at him. I caught only a glimpse of his face and he didn't look crazed or anything, so I figured I might not need to do or say anything, assuming he'd lose interest and leave. That took another trip towards the back door and a few more "Tammy!"s. Once Bob and Helen's motion-sensing security light—which I'm even more grateful for now than I had been—had turned off, I figured he was gone. Walking downstairs to check all the windows and doors and make sure he wasn't camped out on our back porch was terrifying in and of itself, and I'll admit I wish I had a gun with me... or a bat, a shovel, anything. As Tonya discovered this morning, the gate had been left open, so he had knocked on the back door after all. I feel so violated!

I found myself thinking last night, hadn't we been done with strange and unwelcome visitors when we left our apartment downtown? This was the last thing I was expecting to deal with, though I guess it's not outside the realm of possibility. If I'd called the cops and they'd arived to pick this guy up, could we have somehow gotten the HOIR exposed for what it is and shut down? Probably not. We'll just have to wait until next time.

Ugh.

I worked from 9am Tuesday morning essentially until 4:30am Wednesday, for our end-of-quarter reporting. Much of that time was spent waiting for a PowerPoint presentation and press release to be finished/finalized/approved; fighting to stay awake with so little going on is hard. I took a much-needed break around 9:30 to check into the hotel across the courtyard and go for a swim.

These end-of-quarter report press releases include a chunk (understatement) of tabular data, the code for which is supplied by a third-party firm. The code they give us is God awful, and something about it this time around wasn't playing nicely with the CMS file for the press release. Sweet Jesus, I wrangled with that thing for almost four hours, trying to pinpoint what was breaking the tables. It turned out to be two inline style tags peppered throughout the "borrowed" code, no more than thirty unique characters. By the time I had gotten it fixed and published, it was nearly dawn.

I know there are concerns about me being on hand to get these things done in case anything happens. This time I really think all of it would have gone just as smoothly, if not more, if I had been home the whole time. Like I said, though, the hotel was nice. They put me on the top floor with a comfortable King-sized bed, lots of pillows. I went swimming Tuesday night, got up at 8:30 Wednesday morning and swam some more before heading back to my room to switch out a new version of the presentation and get ready for work.

Why I didn't leave work until after 4:30 yesterday is still a mystery to me. Why I stayed awake last night until after midnight, even more so. Embarrassing, too.

How does May end up being so insanely busy year after year after year?! My eyes are quaking in their sockets looking at my calendar... or maybe that's the sleep deprivation.

The exterminators are coming next Wednesday to do away with birdies in the attic. I can't let myself think about this too much or it makes me very upset.

That evening, I'm performing with the same choral group from the concert last weekend in a high school chorus concert twenty miles from Frederick. This Saturday is the May orchestra concert. We see a Cake show on the 11th in Baltimore and will be staying overnight there. The following weekend I perform in Church—and somehow I need to find time to rehearse with Maggie before then. The weekend after that, my whole family is coming to stay over in Frederick. When the hell are we going to clean the house?!

Oh, and yesterday afternoon I agreed to do another $3,000 freelance web project. I must remind myself that it is for the enjoyment and creative release that I do this, and that it is not worth stress or worry. Launch date: June 8th. Sure, I can handle that.

If all goes well, by next Monday I will be kicking back my feet at a desk twice the size of my original in a window-filled office with roof deck access. It might not make up for everything, but it certainly will help.

"If the population of the Earth were to continue to increase at the present rate indefinitely, by 3530 A.D., the total mass of human flesh and blood would equal the mass of the Earth. By 6826 A.D., the total mass of human flash and blood would equal the mass of the known universe."

I saw this for the first time in Isaac Asimov's book, Would You Believe. And that was in 1984; I've no doubt that rate might be even higher at this point.

I have a new job with my own office in which I could potentially be sitting with no clothing on below my navel... and nobody would ever know.