Saturday's Risk Blowout

Fools' Play was awesome as usual. But they didn't leave suggestion cards out, everything was done orally. I did have a pencil of mine confiscated, though; see, the audience wasn't allowed to poke the cavemen, even though one of them pretty well ate Cassie's scarf. Also, for any who're looking for a dangerous job, poetically and otherwise, there's the task of Donkey Scratcher.

A Donkey Scratcher must scratch his ass, at the mathematically unsound luck ratio of risking getting his own ass kicked. Else, the State of Rhode Island's police will haul the Donkey Scratcher off to jail. Pays well, though--farmers' benefits and all, including a sexual pig.

EEEEAAanyways, after the show Cassie, Damian, Leah and I centered around the Lord of the Risk board in Cassie's basement. Much like last time, yellow was quickly whittled down to a few small territories, I took over Rhûn and Mirkwood, and soon got my half of the world. I netted an average of 17 new battalions per turn through territory and color bonuses (boni?). Leah and Cassie were biting their nails (not literally) at the power I was gaining--soon, I would have to borrow another color's pieces. Which involved wiping Damian off the face of [Middle] Earth; a sacrifice at that point he would've been indifferent to make.

Then I lost a border and ended up in West Rohan with 1 batallion.

But the important part is that on my next turn, because Leah couldn't kill me, I traded in my cards and got 13 batallions. One of my cards was the Gap, but I lost it to Leah on her turn. There was only one thing to do in retrospect. Quoth the Cave Troll to Leah's Elf:

"The Gap, bitch." [Roll attack dice]

Needless to say, things melted down and Damian and I played pool. For the first ten consecutive shots, the only ball sunk was the cue ball--and that was just twice on Damian's part. Well, given the hour of 3:30 in the morning, that wasn't that bad.

__

All right, on a more balanced note, Cassie and Leah did the funnest thing in Risk that game--they formed an alliance. It wasn't too pleasing to be on the receiving end of that alliance, but I'm glad they did--negotiating power is a fun factor in Risk, much more so than watching one power-tripped demigod take over the globe slowly. Of course, should we have a go at Strip Risk, all negotiations should be off as we will all be hellbent on getting revenge and our clothes back. But that's for later...for further balancing, Cassie and/or Leah should be writing about how thoroughly they whooped me any time now.

To Do:

1.) At Fools' Play, use the line "Compassion is passion with com."

2.) After Fools' Play, dominate Lord of the Risk once again. First Rhûn, then The Wold!

More on these later.

Premières et Dernières

FIRSTS
First best friend: dear Katie Collins
First date: Catherine Anderson
First break-up: The same
First job: Stripping birch branches in 40° snot-crystal weather, with half-rubber gloves that did everything possible to AVOID trapping heat. Am still bitter.
First screen name: URnasshol (Actually, AlexJN, but UR's more noteworthy)
First self purchased album: Space Ghost's Musical Bar-B-Q
First funeral: My grandfather (dad's side), I think I was 5 and didn't know much about it except it involved standing in rain, which I didn't like at the time.
First pets: Alfie, a budgerigar
First piercing/tattoo: In the pure sense of "piercing," I stabbed my thumb in the third grade with a pencil while enacting a Slasher Flick moment. I still have the mark, as it was a damn deep stab.
First credit card: Comin' soon.
First enemy: Chris Hume. In kindergarten, he always got the red ball. I. Wanted. The red ball.
First big trip: Age 11, to Northern California. That was also the last time I've done major travelling with my family.
First play/musical/performance: Third grade, there was a class play. I remember Allison Moore brought sourdough bread as a prop and I made a face when I bit into it on stage.
First musician you remember hearing in your house: First composer was Beethoven. The first musician, though, was Neil Diamond. My dad has strange tastes...on the same disc as Neil Diamond, he has burned Deutschland Über Alles.

LASTS:
Last big car ride: 2.5-hour drive to Willamette U., home of...well, Katie and WISH, most notably =)
Last kiss: Sherry, my little birdy. She kissed me back, three days ago. The scar on my lip should be gone in a couple days.
Last good cry: Freshman year. No comment.
Last movie seen: Star Trek: Nemesis. I will watch every future (or past) Star Trek movie with a tear in my left eye.
Last beverage drank: Orange juice
Last food consumed: Too much salmon
Last crush: Jennifer Clark; I'm quite lucky that she and I followed through on it.
Last phone call: Mary Jo Rydholm, which netted me a gig
Last tv show watched: That '70's Show, because Damian got back into having the TV on at dinner. I hate laugh tracks; the show's somewhat ok, though. I now know what an "Old-lady" burn is; you can tell its approach by the jingling of jewelry and the overpowering odor of Ben Gay.
Last shoes worn: Eccos, with sorta disintegrating heels. Comfy, though.
Last cd played: Cowboy Bebop .mp3 disc, of 8 full albums and one chunk of a couple.
Last item bought: Secret. =)
Last annoyance: Inability to start homework before eight o'clock the night before it's due, no matter how strong my willpower to.
Last soda drank: An Italian Soda, in December of 2000. Haven't touched carbonic acid since.
Last ice cream eaten: Orange-chocolate sherbert
Last time scolded: I didn't call home to let people know I was sleeping over at Leah's appartment with Cassie and Mirali. 06:45 wakeup calls aren't pretty.
Last shirt worn: Old, old Nike sweatshirt that has the sleeves slightly too short. Note to self: Do laundry
Last website visited:
http://nwn.bioware.com/downloads/viewer.html
--The last few, starting with the Dire Cat, are a bit anticlimactic. The creature descriptions are good 'til then, though. I think I'm gonna order HotU--I sense godly suckology at the hands of level-40 characters, but still, it'll be the Underdark--mmm, Pit Lords.

Zinger

I cut myself with a breadknife right before dinner. I didn't saw off my hand or anything, I only grazed the skin--at least, it was grazing the first time. Then the knife slipped again on some particularly hard crust, and I re-grazed my finger in the same spot. I now have seven paper cuts, lined up in a neat little row. Minor nuisance.

Someone said that it was supposed to snow five inches tomorrow, or by tomorrow. I can not say how happy it would make me to wake up and have my room be the same color it was this morning--the light reflected off all the snow on the ground and branches through my bedroom window, washing the room in a slight blue. I simply adore waking up in my room when it's colored like that.

But besides the first thing in the morning, I wanna enact some Calvin and Hobbes snowmen action. My goal is to make the cannonball. I wouldn't mind at all if Evergreen closed down tomorrow. I'm itchin' to get out there with my gloves and ream a circle through a snowman. Itchin'.

Mardi d'Amour

Damian's on the computer that has functioning Yahoo at the moment. So, since I can not see Jen online there, I shall just have to love-sonnet her here.

Laaa-l-l-l-leeeeeeeeeeeee...doo-ee-ee-doooohhhh...da DUAH da dooooo...daaa.

Next Tuesday's a special day (apparently not just for Jen and I). It'll be the first time I'll see my girlfriend ever. ....I mean, I've seen her, danced with her, piggy-backed her around various spots at SPSCC, loaned her a chunk or two of my music memory...but at the time, Damian couldn't have been there to chant "Alex hasa girl-friend, Alex hasa girl-friend."

Next Tuesday, though, I finally get to see her and give her a hug better than my goodbye to her the day before she left for WSU. It would've been Saturday, but cell phone convenience spoiled that plot. Curse technology and all of its evils...

Boy, I wish Damian would get off the computer so I can do some online chatting with Jen.

...uh, all its evils...e-...vils...ah, forget it, I curse nothing. I'm too happy and loving a man to curse anything. Make love, not war/damnation/anti-happy states. I'm in a lovey mood.

-Shock cut to five minutes later-

I just got a gig! Yay! I'm in a string quartet for a doctor. I'll get food and a tip--I'm lookin' forward to this. I was lovey a minute ago, and I still am, but now I have cash to look forward to. And I'm just getting degenerately random, so I'm off to start the Real Analysis homework. Ah, but first, I think someone asked me for a picture of Jen--or maybe it was just Kate wanting to chat, which I haven't done yet. (Sorry Kate!) Here's a picture--which may or may not have been requested--of Jen and I
in a dance class in March, last year. Inversion intended.

Toodles.

My First Proof; Antisociality

The saddest part of professional mathematics has got to be the on-the-job interaction.

When proving mathematical theorems, you usually have to go into some really obscure field to make any proofs of novelty. This means that not only do you have to go into a field that few people, if any, have researched, but you have to create some new fangled idea in that field to lay your claim to fame. Only, who do you brag to?

In order to explain your proof to anybody, from dorm buddy to tenure-holding university professor in pure mathematics, that person must understand everything you understood to read your proof. Which means that person must be trained in your field. See method of novelty.

This means that most of what mathematicians do is, socially, useless. Sure, Non-Euclidean Geometry was a hard-to-understand field that eventually became the keystone to Einstein's Relativity Theory, which was a hugely useful field, but that took about two hundred years to go into effect. Any math that professional mathematicians derive is, for most practical purposes, bunk that nobody understands except for the individual that wrote the proof to begin with.

Pure mathematicians pride themselves on being useless. In World War I, the chemists reigned over the battlefields with gases. In World War II, the physicists shocked the world with the atomic bomb. Some fear World War III: The potential Mathematicans' War; and that means more than cryptology in communications. For now, pure mathematicians work to prove things of such little utility that no weapon could come from them--a fine example of this is the discovery of an isomorphism that equated multiplying numbers, a third grade operation, to summating trigonometric identities, a waste of time.

I felt I've contributed to uselessness tonight, though it's so useless that it's probably been proven umpteen times over. What is it? It's a little note in group theory, on the order of a cyclic subgroup generated by an order pair.

And here's the antisocial point, another problem with professional pure mathematicians: Merely mentioning a proof or an outline of the proof is potentially condescending. Mathematicians aren't too big in the P.R. section.

Pool Hoppin', Middle-Earth Stompin' Mayhem

OK, I won't write about lording over all of Middle Earth from the east-leftward. It was weird enough blowing bejesus out of Cassie while Middle Earth came under Zombie attack (more on that in Jim's blog). I was more expecting Jim to follow through on a threat he made earlier in the game:

"Y'know, when Alex wins, I'm just gonna go [voice += 2 octaves] W'POW, BITCH' [/voice] and wipe him out of existence!"

I did await that eagerly, but alas, that did not happen, for something else of dire danger-osity happened. (More on that in Jim's blog.)

But enough on the game that Nick the Stick beat me at a couple months ago at 1:00 in the morning...on to another game that I am quite adept at losing at. Pool!

I shall describe my most perfect shot of perfection: In a single, straight line, were the cue ball, and three of my balls, with the corner pocket at the end. There was an even interval of mere inches between each ball, about a foot total distance from cue to hole. I could've had the [chorus: angel chord] combo shot [/angels].

In my mind, I fired off the cue ball, where it smacked into one ball, into the next, into the next, into the last which did plummet into it's home.

On the real table, I fired off the cue ball, where it jumped over the first ball, and the next, and the next, and the next, where it did plummet past the hole.

I

Rule

.

I was paralyzed with laughter for a good minute...as was the whole room. Perhaps I was destined to be a destroyer of all human mobility? Perhaps.

Exquisite Philosophers

Fridays don't seem too terribly efficient in Math Systems. Today for seminar, my group wrote a story exquisite-cadaver style about math philosophers.

In Formalism, there are no Platonic objects like numbers, circles, or whatnot--everything's just reduced to axioms, which are given arbitrarily. Thus nothing exists in mathematics. Hilbert was a diehard formalist, and I ended our story with him.

'Twas a Sunday, and Hilbert locked himself into his closet, left the light off, and screamed and ranted and raved about how nothing at all exists. Sunday was Philosophy Day, where mathematicians stopped doing real work and just delved into their own private beliefs about real numbers and all that stuff. At 12:01 am on Monday morning, someone opened the door to Hilbert's closet and let him out. "All right, your sins are forgiven; time to get back to work." And Hilbert went to his desk and continued on studying...whatever the heck it was he studied.

That was the ending I offered to the group writing the story; we started an Exquisite Cadaver round to try to write the story. It didn't work too well; a Platonic, Self-Conscious cow derived things by Greek Antiquity (straightedge and compass), until Sunday rolled around and a port hole (not portal) opened in his side and Adam, Eve, and some philosopher popped out in the Bermuda Triangle, where a super-duper secret meeting of a Formalist, Foundationist and Constructivist were together, plotting to overthrow Euclid and his Elements.

Nobody else in the class got it either. Even fewer people understood the 17-yr-old girl working at Cinnabon's.

The next type of Exquisite Cadavers was much more efficient...or smart-looking, anyway. Raphael's group took the idea of Formalism, where all truths are derived from axioms through rigorous proof, and turned it into an Exquisite Cadaver game. Everybody writes one line of a proof, gives some reason, folds it over and passes the paper in a circle.

It ended up proving that Alice (de la Wonderland) approached infinity, creating an infinitely-ranging set. Of course, since there's little continuity in the proof, we just plastered it onto the door for passerbys to observe and think "Wow, they must be smart." Quod Erat Demonstradum.

To Leah, on Da Moon

The last time the moon hit my eye, like a big pizza pie, wasn't love-romance-related. I don't really get the expression, but one night the moon did strike me quite clearly. Cassie and Aaron were driving me home, and as Cassie was pulling up close to my driveway, I had phased out of any conversation we were having:

My street has street lights and trees running along both sides, with the occasional house, side road, or even elementary school. On some rare nights, at just the right hour, the moon is directly above the line given by my street: The trees just work to frame it.

Cassie pulled up to my driveway, but didn't turn into it because my driveway's a notorious pain in the ass to turn around in and danger to back out of. Aaron almost hopped out of the truck to let me out of the bucket seats when I paused him--

"You guys wanna know my favorite moon angle ever?" Their eyes both traced the street's path, and found the full moon, in all of its golden glory, directly above the street.

Cassie was breathtaken. "Let's take a drive," she said without moving her eyes from the lunar spectacle. The greatest part of the road was the hill after the elementary school; the visual angle climbing up the hill was the most "pizza pie" the three of us got all night.

I'm sure you had a different romance in mind when you made the comment, Leah. But that summer eve, my romance was there for everyone around me. (I, uh, mean that in as non-slutty a manner as possible.)

That's Amoré

I just got my haircut and saw the E-Bay commercial with That's Amoré. I miss that song. On a half-related note:

One week and one hour ago, there did come a couple, known in a really abbreviated matter as A.J., unto these 'Blogs. Jennifer and I started dating at 4:57 and 24 seconds.

That may seem creepily exact to many of you--myself included. Thanks to Jim we realized that we had mutual feelings since spring, and via Yahoo we started together. Thank you, Jen; for saying anything, everything more than I did.

(I acknowledge that I just accidentally referenced a movie from Film Lit. I can't for the life of me remember the bloody name of the star of tha--JOHN CUSACK. Got it. I'm good.)

May she put up with my gnat's attention span and not run off to date an actual gnat...

And It's So Easy when You're E-Vil...

Remember that little bit of "On-Stage Rivalry" that Mr. Welsh and I developed between each other? When Mr. Welsh turned a shoulder to the audience for a second and asserted "I'm going to tell the audience the story, Alex," loudly and before his von Weber story?

It's moving into print.

At the executive board meeting tonight, Mr. Welsh started it off with a bit of discussion about the Franck, and the concert, la, dee, "I don't like the Franck," dah.

What was that?

"I don't like the Franck." --John Welsh

That's like how Glenn Gould, a man who could play any piano piece after listening to it once, was a master of the piano, but didn't actually like the piano. Only, we can all poke fun at Mr. Welsh.

Brian had an idea for a new Segue article..."Welsh Doesn't Like Franck." Taylor, Brian and Andrew immediately thought I would make it a gas.

I plan to mention how he kissed Kyla on the cheek at last year's spring concert [during the applause and hand-shaking ceremony], but then passed up my better-offered cheek and went to shake hands with the cellist. I'm gonna turn that into how he hates me, along with the rivalry stuff in the concert last week.

(Aaron, any other dirt we could use for Mr. Welsh and this article--or does my outline have your hearty seal of approval?)

Incoming.

Strip [Insert Activities Here]

Well, it was one o'clock, and a half-dozen strong group of the WISH crowd finished a joyful round of Scategories. That was dandy. Someone noticed that it was raining outside, and the six of us headed outside. I don't know if our brains were overheated from the late-night use of our vocabularies in odd areas, but we decided that rain pelting on our skins would be entertaining.

Off came the pants and shirts of:
David
Sean
Me
Elena--though, she just took off her shirt, still had a bra on.

The four of us charged around some loop on campus, barefoot--my god, that was exhilirating--and all as well until Kevin, our kind and beneficial clothesrack (by volunteering) headed back into WISH and locked us out.

Katie had a key. Silly boy. Ass-kicking did not ensue--but the nakey activities gave us another idea.

The time: ~1:30, to ~3:00.
The game: Poker. No money--just ...articles.
The place: Elena's dorm, where her roommate had vacated to return at some unknown hour of the night.

It started out quite in my favor: I collected one article of clothing from everybody, and had quite the pile of cloth growing behind me. Elena and David quickly fell to their undies, and formed the "Unfortunate" side of the room. Meanwhile, the other four of us kept our pants, et cetera...though I was cleaning house. Then, things took a turn.

When Kevin lost his pants to Katie, things had gone rather sour for the non-David male population of the room. I was down to my boxers, Kevin in his tighty-whities (there's a good reason he didn't run with us, and that's it), and Sean was in his boxers. Luckily, since we had no table, we allowed all players to cover themselves with conquered clothes. David had none; more on that later.

I had a nice pile behind me, including three of Katie's things. I lost a magnificent hand to magnificent+1 hand. So, I had the option of the "Truth, no dare" route, or I had the option of losing the boxers. When I stood up, everyone got skiddish.

I pulled on Katie's skirts and dropped the boxers down--I was the only man in the room to have no male articles of clothing remaining upon the entire body. David should have been, according to any betting man, the first one to become buck nekkid since all he had were his boxers and a hat--a hat which he valued with no less than his life. [Picture from Katie pending.]

Well, I was the first one to have no male clothes, but the skirts were both full length and left me more covered than when I had underwear. Ironic, no? David, unfortunately, had NOTHING for a pile--the cards just weren't with him tonight. So, when he stood up, everyone buried their faces into their laps/pillows/whatever they had to shield their eyes. A few seconds and some careful positioning moves later, David's boxers ended up near the card pile and all that was left was him sitting cross-legged, high-kneed, with naught but his Magic Cap to cover his other head + neighbors.

David got the coolness award for the night, as he had the least amount of surface area covered. Elena came in a close second...but she had a pillow. For a game of strip-poker, there was amazingly no showing of privates. Without a table, though, I guess that's ok.

The game would've gone to another Truth and-no-dare stage, but...well, remember Kaori--the up-'til-a-point vanished roommate? We heard a key turn in the door right before I lost a full house to four kings...and there was much scurrying.

"Whither my pants?!" quoth a few, in spirit, in action, and in wide-eyed facial expressions. Elena didn't kid when she told Kaori through the door that she was changing going on--though I suspect Kaori suspected that we suspected bad juju would come from going to nearly nakey to fully clothed (in everyone's original clothing).

The evening ended when Kaori was finally allowed in, and four barefoot people left the room. Many giggles ensued in our silent march through the halls.

Weekend at Katie's

On this road trip, I have forgotten:

-Tooth paste
-Dance shoes
-Pillow

Katie can supply me with the former and latter...as for dance shoes, we may go the duct-tape route. If we go dancing tonight; prospect looking good.

Aaron, Katie currently has an Ace Bandage around her right ankle. Another notch for the belt, eh, eh?

So far the only picture taken was of me and David, a guy who is the Group Weirdo like me...I like him. The picture wasn't with my camera though. That'll come later--and you'll see a few other similarities. Heights, odd things with heads, et cetera.

And now we're off to comfort someone who's baking pumpkin pie. She has little better to do:

To all dorm inhabitants/future dorm inhabitants:

You may not need me to tell you this after a week or so of living in a dormitory. But when you hear a door slam, followed by a wale of pain, suffering, and great loss in "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" That means someone just locked themselves out of the room, and they had BETTER have their laptop with them, or they are due for one boring, boring afternoon.

--Alex, recent witness

HallowSwing '03

I e-mailed Dave all of the good pictures I took, and they're up on LindyBomb now, under HallowSwing '03. For those of you who were wondering who Nick the Stick is, he's making a pirate impression in the pic entitled "BLLAAARGH." Rick and Julie made an awfully cute couple. In fact, they made the awfully cute couple--they won the couple's costume by default. Their wigs sorta changed heads during the night, though.

That was an awesome night. The costume contest kicked booh-tay, though there were quite a few devils, cats, and floppers (I may have gotten that last word wrong...'20s swing girls is what I mean). I'm surprised that I didn't make it to the finals, though: I made sure to announce my character well.

When my turn to announce myself and my costume came in the lineup, most, if not all, of the people before me just said "I'm [Bob], and I'm a [pirate]" (with appropriate interchangeabilities). I had to work in a crowd-pleasing moment since I think a whole three people actually knew that the big F! on my chest didn't stand for "France!" Enter the basso-voce projection:
"I'm Alex, and once again, it's time for Frenching with Freakazoid!"

I got an awful lot of applause. But I didn't make it to the finals, which was picked by applause. I was sad, until I saw one of the late entries, who rightfully won the contest:

An Asian guy, Andrew I believe, came dressed as Luigi. Green shirt, overalls, a hat WITH THE "L" AND OVAL, and those Goomba-clobbering shoes. Holy crap, the guy was awesome. Though, I didn't get a picture of him...

I didn't get a picture of Dave, either. He dressed up as Run DMC, in a blue jumpsuit, low-brimmed black hat and Tiana's gold chain-belt around his neck. A few of the regulars said "I wonder why Dave didn't dress up for Halloween." I admit, he didn't seem to change his character much =)

My Favorite Patch of Skin

I'll let you all worry about what that title could possibly mean for three more seconds...

...andgo.

I'm in dire need of a haircut. My right eye was tired after Sunday's concert because my hair fell half-over my left, meaning the right ball had a lot more work to do. While my hair may seem to only get in the way at the moment, I've found my favorite few square inches of my surface area thanks to it.

Behind my left ear, I often tuck some hair to keep it out of the way. There, it's pressed between my ear and bare skin, since hair doesn't grow directly behind the ear. When I flip the hair out, it envelops almost all of the earlobe and my cheek, and it's quite warm. I love that spot on my head.

...What? What few square inches of skin did you think I was going to go on about?

...Don't answer that.

The Bed of my Bud

I said a while back that I'd throw up a picture of Rosebud Broadbottom's case. Here it is, with a candid shot of her under her blanky. [The link is to the ginormous source photo.]

I fear that it seems a wee bit narcissistic, since I am not in two of those photos...I think at the same time it shows I interact with people, while at the same time showing too much of me. Oh well. At least I managed to work in my horse from Showdown at Noon o'Clock, and doing not one, but two odd things to a certain Princess.

Rosebud's sleeping right now. I probably should too.

The Time: 19:07

Olympia High School's PAC was about half full, for unknown reasons. The concert started after a two-minute awkward silence--the Conservatory got on stage and just sat there. No warming up, no pre-concert wall of noise, no random chaos as thirty bows travel in two directions at thirty speeds--they just sat. Why? I don't know -why- they weren't warming up, but Maestro Welsh was nowhere to be found, and we simply couldn't proceed without him. He ducked off somewhere to put his jacket on or something...he finally ended up backstage again, at about two minutes after the last conservatory member sat down.

There were two empty seats in the viola section: One missing head belonged to Gentry. She got pretty sick, which meant no concert for her...consequently, Damian got a stand partner. Upon my chair, though, sat Rosebud Broadbottom--I was nowhere to be seen.

With Mr. Welsh in place offstage, the conservatory finally made their first peep--A440 from an oboe. Tuning, tuning, tuning, done [except for Rosebud; she ended up with a flat G as I didn't have a chance to tune her]. Denise Williams, SOGO board president, came onstage and gave her bulletted announcement speech--little reminders for the audience, like the Quilt Raffle and schtuff. Then she introduced Alec Nelson, a conservatory member. Then she introduced Alex Nelson, a student board representative--one of them involved types.

She exited; stage right. I entered; stage leftward to center; I played with the microphone until I could get it up to my height.

"Good evening.

"I'm Alex Nelson, a violist in the conservatory. For the last eight weeks I, and the other 44 conservatory musicians have been working on the Overture to Der Freischütz and SOGO's greatest musical project to date: The full romantic symphony of Cesar Franck. It sounds pretty impressive, in words and in notes, and here's a little note from the musician's side: There is nothing quite like being handed twenty pages of music, some pages with more black on them then white, and being told [accent: throaty ee-vil] "The concert's in two months." [Slightly evil laugh; nothing too non-Greg-Allison-y.] [/accent] And that was just the Franck. The Weber didn't seem to be anywhere near as scary, because, well, [accent: Eastern-European, some language without the letter "s."] it vush only foar pages.[/accent]

"We performed well-sized snippets of the music last Monday for elementary schools in Aberdeen for SOGO's annual Student Tour. Besides putting on an entertaining show for the children, we even let them get involved with the instruments in our Petting Zoo. They got to play strings and some brass, and plenty of them got involved with the Mexican Hat Dance in the percussion section. In fact, one of the 'children'…who was coincidentally dressed in a tuxedo, [pause speech; turn to look at Ben; turn back] and looked suspiciously like our concertmaster, came up to me with a bright, cheery look on his face. 'Can I try the viola, mister?' I suspected it wasn't his first time with a set of strings when the first thing he did with the viola was tune it. Clever boy.

"After the petting zoo, our concert started. Among the several pieces' introductions, Maestro Welsh told the kids about how the music of Der Freischütz described mysterious woods, hunting calls, and, strangely, magic. We didn't get to hear about magic. Maybe he thought we were all too old to believe in the stuff. [cheese: non-humorous, soul-baring] Well, I still have a few things I would almost call magic--the English Horn solo of the Franck is moving in one of the greatest ways music has to offer, and the third movement's theme brings you face to face with joy itself.[/cheese; wipe tear out of eye, not literally] Maestro Welsh has a knack for these greatest moments of music--we had another one in the Brahms last year. I personally await the other great moments he has tucked up his sleeve--but, one thing at a time, now. Please, enjoy the magic we offer you in the Franck."

Mr. Welsh came on stage after the applause; The first thing he said was something like "Well, I was going to tell you a bit about the Franck, but Alex has stolen most of my material." In my defense, he wasn't even planning to talk until he saw one of the programs before the concert started. He and I seem to have a bit of a rivalry going on onstage now: Before he introduced the Weber later, he said "I'M going to tell the story, Alex." Direct dude.

So far, everybody who's talked with me about the speech has said I'd done it fairly well. Eye contact, vocal presence, that sorta thing--and apparently nobody saw my tremors. Which was great. While Mr. Welsh was introducing the Franck, I had to pack my printed speech behind some of the music on the stand--my hand was trembling so much, I couldn't slide the printout behind the music with anything less than a sixty-degree angle with vertical.

Note 1 of the Franck: D3. My left hand settled down as Mr. Welsh gave beat one, and my middle finger rested on my C string. Down a half step to C#, for a third of the duration of the D; up to F--holding the note. The first movement: D minor. Ready. Set. Go.

SOGO Concert plug

[Tech. note: I've been faithful about keeping my sidebar updated on concerts. So faithful, in fact, I'm on my longest streak! ...Which is 2. But thar be me concerti.]

Tomorrow is SOGO's first full-fledged concert of the year. Hooray!

I'm giving the speech before the concert. Hooray!

I hope people will come. Hooray.