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Classes start tomorrow. Giggidy. I've had surprisingly few dreams of walking into a final exam in my underwear and having not gone to any classes at all that semester- this used to happen at least once a semester to me, so maybe I've conquered my subconscious in my old age. Who knows.

I hung out w/ good ol' Daver Epstein the other night. We shared tales of just how giddy we are to have left our respective soul-sucking jobs* and crappety crap cities** (daver having quit a job at e*trade in DC to move to NYC to become a filmmaker, and me... aww, you know my story) and to have ended up in NYC pursuing what we think we want to do with our lives at this point in our lives until we realize that it's really pointless and we walk back to our old corporate jobs with tails between our legs... but it should be fun while it lasts. Anyhow, for some reason, Daver has always seemed to have a very vested (vested?) interest in my life and where i take it, so he offered me three pieces of advice that he thought I should follow. He listed them 'in order of increasing controversy' and I will repeat them here for your consideration / amusement:
1) I should only wear t-shirts. no more collars.
2) I should get a punk rock haircut. But not full-out punk rock. Maybe dignified punk-rock. Like that mohawk-like haircut that Maddox Jolie has. stupid lucky brad pitt.
3) I should get me some Ritalin / Adderall. I suspect the last one is equally for Daver, who would like to score some from me, as it is for me and my horrible textbook case of attention deficit disorder.

So contrary to my and many others' expectations, I am now most likely NOT going to be spending the next two years in my parents' house... Daver, Tom, and I will probably be getting a place in Brooklyn in October. Home has been treating me well, though... I think my father and I have developed a sort of mutualistic alcoholism... my mom can't drink, but my dad has a taste for expensive Chardonnay, so he will always ask me to join him in a very passive-aggressive way that I believe I've inherited from him... i.e. "I wouldn't mind it if you happened to open up another wine" or "were you thinking of having another glass?" But hey, who am I to complain about drinking wine that is a good $20 / bottle more expensive than what I usually treat myself to...

I have picked my classes. Thanks to the music theory course I took this summer (clue #214 to Raytheon that I was quitting, but nobody really seemed to catch on until I threw the shit directly into the fan) I placed out of basic musicianship in the horrible music theory and history exam I took last Monday, so I'm taking Music Theory I this semester. Maybe I'll get to re-meet the hot sophomore acting chick who I sat next to during the placement exam again. Hellooooo, rebound! (oh yeah, so I'm single now, too) (Winnie, you don't read this blog, right?) My other courses are pretty dorky- two are programming-related, one in Java and one in this music programming language / environment called MAX/MSP, which apparently is used very extensively by the performing community. So maybe I'll develop my electronica alter-ego this semester. I'm accepting all submissions for names. And I'm also taking the big survey course that all the students in the grad program (I think 35 each year maybe?) take that goes over all sorts of concepts of music, technology, and the intersection of the two. One of the grad students that has been advising me on course selection did his thesis on cochlear implants as a result of a paper he wrote for that class, so that sounds quite interesting. And my school week ends on Wednesday at 1:45 pm. Not too shabby.

And that's that. I still haven't put pictures of Matt & Vicki's beautiful wedding nor the afterparty ('shantytown 2005') with the jumping castle and dunk tank online, but I will soon. I also have some pictures and bootleg video clips from the awesomely outrageous Green Day / Jimmy Eat World concert that Sandy was so wonderfully kind enough to take me to last week. And did I mention I'm single for the first time in 4 years?

Take a number,
B


*sorry, my dear raytheon lovers
**sorry, my dear boston sympathizers