Katie ended her blog with "....but I will leave you all now to allow him to expound upon his teaching, gigs, food choices and baseball obsession." So you should scroll down and read hers first before reading mine.
....
Back already? Good. Now, as far as teaching, I am on a quasi-spring break. While I am still teaching at Mannes, I do not have to teach at Hunter and Hofstra. Katie, too, is on break. Which is how she found the time to write a blog post. Because the three places I teach never lined up for spring break, I joke that I don't really get so much a "break" as a "bend." But it was a nice bend, and Alan DID get to see me teach at Mannes during his trip here. My classes were all very interested in meeting him and tried to get him to dish gossip on their teacher. Classes at all three places wrap up within the next month, so I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Gig-wise, I just wrapped up a busy Easter weekend (Alan hadn't heard me play for over 10 years) and am now busy playing a run of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Yeoman of the Guard." I will play a run of Carmen in May with an opera company up in the Bronx, and have several other small concerts and things coming up as well. The best news is that my woodwind quintet is being flown up to Halifax, Nova Scotia for a two-week music festival at the beginning of June. (A woodwind quintet is composed of a flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn...the horn is technically a brass instrument, but it blends so well with the other winds, it is traditionally included in the quintet.) We'll play some concerts, coach some high-school chamber music groups, and play young composers' new pieces. It should be fun. I'll blog more on this later.
I don't think I have time or space to write about food now. As many of you know, I have become more and more interested in food lately; I can actually have long talks about it, without realizing I my interlocutor is bored to tears. So, for now, I'll spare you all.
And yes, my baseball obsession is back. I've been waiting for the season to begin for some time. It's not only the national pastime, but also the harbinger of the balmy spring months and the lazy days of summer (or, at least for me, the less busy days...not so much teaching). Alan and I went to a Yankees game on Good Friday, and they lost to Baltimore 6-4. It was still pretty exciting, and we were among the first 18,000 fans (out of some 50,000 that came that night) so we got a free Yankees baseball cap. I am also watching the Mariners' box scores and can sometimes follow them in real-time on the Internet. They may have a good season (they started off well) and I am looking forward to seeing some games when I visit the Pacific Northwest in July.
Monday, April 09, 2007
Sunday, April 08, 2007
I Like White People!
Life continues to throw us around like rag dolls out here in NYC. We have been busy with school and work and a continuous stream of visitors, beginning with my sister’s surprise visit about a month ago. Her second visit to NY since our move, she seemed to be a bit more relaxed about the neighborhood and we had a lot of fun and many mango margaritas (minus the one Dan sloshed across the dinner table and then attempted to hoover clean with his mouth).
About a week after my sister was here, Dan's Uncle Rob came to Long Island for a quick business trip. It was snowing/sleeting/freezing raining all day, but the trains were working, so we were able to get out there and meet him for a Friday night dinner. We spent quite a while in pleasant conversation, mediated by good wine and lots of seafood. By the time we were finished, there were about 5 inches of snow. Yikes! But the roads were plowed okay and he gave us a ride to the train station. From this nice reprieve we went back to Brooklyn, with its work and school obligations.
School for me is a lot like prison: we are in the same, windowless room for 8 hours of lecture a day, trying with all our might not to let the other 30 people in the room get on our nerves while attempting to commit an entire textbook of medicine to memory. I have one more semester of academics to conquer this summer, after which we start our clinical rotations. Hopefully this will lend itself to a more regular, somewhat enjoyable kind of existence. It's not all so serious: some of my friends from school and I did take one night early this week to do some extracurricular activities at a certain bar in NYC; this was a much needed reprieve and we were only slightly hazy the next morning.
Quick subway story: riding home the other day there was a little black girl, maybe six years old who I was playing hide-and-seek with…very cute. As she was getting off she waved to me, I waved back and she proclaimed very loudly to her mother: “Mommy, I like white people!” Score one for the white people!
In other news, we are considering the installation of a revolving door to accommodate the visitor traffic we are experiencing. Rachel was here again for one night. We went out to a new place in the city that only serves mac n’ cheese. Also making an appearance were our bird friends Ben and Jara. They were here this week while I was on spring break and Dan’s brother, Alan, has finally made an appearance after many close calls in the past. They all overlapped for one night making the overnight total in our apartment five…we set a record! Next week we expect Tom and Ellen, followed by Ragan and finally Dan’s sister Gayle. At this point we will put up the “No Vacancy” sign and I leave mid-May to flip the tables and become a houseguest myself in Portland for about 10 days. Dan has a lot of stuff going on, too, but I will leave you all now to allow him to expound upon his teaching, gigs, food choices and baseball obsession.
About a week after my sister was here, Dan's Uncle Rob came to Long Island for a quick business trip. It was snowing/sleeting/freezing raining all day, but the trains were working, so we were able to get out there and meet him for a Friday night dinner. We spent quite a while in pleasant conversation, mediated by good wine and lots of seafood. By the time we were finished, there were about 5 inches of snow. Yikes! But the roads were plowed okay and he gave us a ride to the train station. From this nice reprieve we went back to Brooklyn, with its work and school obligations.
School for me is a lot like prison: we are in the same, windowless room for 8 hours of lecture a day, trying with all our might not to let the other 30 people in the room get on our nerves while attempting to commit an entire textbook of medicine to memory. I have one more semester of academics to conquer this summer, after which we start our clinical rotations. Hopefully this will lend itself to a more regular, somewhat enjoyable kind of existence. It's not all so serious: some of my friends from school and I did take one night early this week to do some extracurricular activities at a certain bar in NYC; this was a much needed reprieve and we were only slightly hazy the next morning.
Quick subway story: riding home the other day there was a little black girl, maybe six years old who I was playing hide-and-seek with…very cute. As she was getting off she waved to me, I waved back and she proclaimed very loudly to her mother: “Mommy, I like white people!” Score one for the white people!
In other news, we are considering the installation of a revolving door to accommodate the visitor traffic we are experiencing. Rachel was here again for one night. We went out to a new place in the city that only serves mac n’ cheese. Also making an appearance were our bird friends Ben and Jara. They were here this week while I was on spring break and Dan’s brother, Alan, has finally made an appearance after many close calls in the past. They all overlapped for one night making the overnight total in our apartment five…we set a record! Next week we expect Tom and Ellen, followed by Ragan and finally Dan’s sister Gayle. At this point we will put up the “No Vacancy” sign and I leave mid-May to flip the tables and become a houseguest myself in Portland for about 10 days. Dan has a lot of stuff going on, too, but I will leave you all now to allow him to expound upon his teaching, gigs, food choices and baseball obsession.
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