29 I 2002 - 22:09 - vita21

Midway through the week (and none of the way through my homework):

Dear lovely underpaid, overworked staff at the Presidio Public Library:

Please change your hours to sane ones. While you're at it, learn to put the book drop cart in so that the slot doesn't jam when there's plenty of space left in the card. When you push it in too far, the books can't fill the cart properly, and so only about a quarter of the cart is filled before the books begin to jam the slot. Inconsiderate people then toss books in willy-nilly, which makes the spines bend and pages crease because the book slot is made of metal and, well, the books are not - and anal-retentive people like me who don't want to see books treated in this way get to spend ten minutes pulling books out of the slot and then stacking them up neatly.

There is a solution to this. You are not idiots. I believe you have it in you to figure this out and to pull the book cart just a little further back.

And if you don't, you're idiot sons of pigeon-toed mutts descended from slime molds in need of some help.

As, apparently, are my insults.

Yours truly,

Oddcellist.

I went to talk to my music teacher today about the duet I'm writing with mwarren; he said that he didn't think I'd plagiarized the theme, which is sort of a relief. I then spent the rest of the time sitting in the library, avoiding PE and pretending to read about how one converts radians to degrees. Note the use of "pretending"; I actually was complaining about how teenage boys should not be allowed to stick their butts in my face. Especially if they have nice ones, because then that's just all bad.

After that fun with a couple of friends, I came home and found out that my cello teacher was running late. This gave me more time to pretend to read about radians and degrees. I fell asleep and then went into my lesson. Which took three hours tonight. Three hours! My teacher now has gut strings on his cello, which is sort of neat - they're harder to finger, but they speak really well. I don't think I'd ever want gut strings on my cello, though; it's bright enough as it is.

Tests have been going pretty well. I don't really want my Latin test back, as I didn't feel good about it and managed to forget half of the vocabulary I should have known from first year Latin (granted, I didn't take that class, but you get the idea - this is pretty basic material I'm forgetting). Speaking of Latin vocabulary, I'm going to have to start up the bottom notes again. Maybe some other time... and then today, I had a test on hyperbolas, ellipses, and parabolas in math. It went oddly well; I walked out of there twenty minutes early. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop: I must have skipped a page, or something. Ever have that feeling where you think you don't know anything, but from somewhere you didn't know existed, it all comes out? Yeah. That's what I had today. It was sort of neat, in a way. Also: I found out that my halting recitation of Laocoon's warning did count, even though my teacher walked in halfway, and that I don't have go through that again. Whew.

Primus ibi ante omnis magna comitante caterva
Laocoon, ardens, summa decurrit ab arce
et procul "O miseri, quae tanta insania, cives?
Aut hoc inclusi ligno occultantur Achivi
aut haec in nostros fabricata est machina muros,
inspectura domos venturaque desuper urbi,
aut aliquis latet error; equo ne credite, Teucri.
Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentis."
Sic fatus, et validis ingentem viribus hastam
in latus inque feri curvam compagibus alvum
contorsit. Stetit illa tremens, uteroque recusso
insonuere cavae gemitumque dedere cavernae.
Et, si fata deum, si mens non laeva fuisset,
impulerat ferro Argolicas foedare latebras,
Troiaque nunc staret, Priamique arx alta maneres.

Well, that was fun, but I've got to go and do my homework (more pretending to read, but this time about Neoclassical architecture) and perhaps get to bed before 1 AM tonight. I demand an explanation from Adam for the close of his latest entry, unless he doesn't want to give an explanation, and then that's all right. As you can see, Al, I've updated. So nyah.

(My God, did I ever pretend this could be elevated? What a joke. And: I'm thinking about the weekly challenge, Alcheralites. Oh yes I am. Whether anything will actually get done: now that's another question.)

Status of sonata project: first theme, transition, second theme completed. However: transition needs to be reworked, as it stands more firmly in A major than it does in B major - not a good state to leave things in.