but, but, but. okay. Wednesday - it probably doesn't need emboldening for a day removed. I was up early to check e-mail again again - but no help still from Stef, Zab, Sarah K., instead, I thought to check Nori's schedule and see that they share Math 9 mornings, so a quick e-mail exchange to her gave me all the info i needed. After French, I took an ambush spot in a darkened, deserted classroom in Dupont, across the hall from theirs, so that I could listen to Steve Maurer's comfortingly familiar speech cadence, and for most of the hour, so I got some Rizzi reading done - well, ten pages, which is nothing to scoff at. The actual kill was stupidly anticlimactic - i just came out and got her; no need to scuffle or chase, and she was so completely nonplussed as to barely even acknowledge me. And, man, that's frustrating because it just follows suit for her, and I'm frankly getting sick of it. I followed her home and to the Registrar's for a pin, and we planned to have dinner later.

Three-egg spinach/feta omelet (messy but yummy) and then piano lesson - he called my scales (at 132) the best he'd ever heard, and my arpeggios even surprised me, given that I hadn't focused on them that week. Bach and Bartók are inching towards the finish line - I'm really going to try to have them beyond comfortable when jury time comes (though it's close) - and I still can't play the parts of the Chopin that I haven't tried. Something happened between three and five to sap my energy, take away my desire to cook, or do anything. Part of it maybe that Brigid called and called dinner off. So I went to African without having eaten, but I wasn't too hungry. Class was good - we had two alumni visitors (male; Kemal's vintage, not former students) who were really good - with another challenging atf sequence and patakato at the end. Kemal actually said "good dancing, ross" to me at the end; a step up from Monday, when he'd said "you're hanging in there." Stefanie came home with me after class, to talk about the game the game, but also Brigid and summer and life in general - it's been too long for us, and we agreed, cuddly, to spend more time together. In the meantime Matt and Aaron were over (the latter, especially, is so infectiously exuberant about this band, it's really great) to talk - we put together a five or six song list for the D-Plan show, and tried to figure out which of our fourteen or so "finished" tunes to work up for Worthstock. It's really just a matter of how much we can get done in rehearsal, and I have faith that we can do a lot. This stuff really is exciting. Rock and roll is here to stay. And if I want it to, it can matter more than people.

This was Joel's birthday, 20 years old on the 24th, and we celebrated with a trip to Tom Jones: Matt, Michelle, Rebecca, Nori in one car; Rae, Joel, me, and Alyssa in the other. Nori had made a pot of Mac+cheese spirals right before we left, and I partook of half, even though I'd been planning to sate my hungry at TJs (she hadn't realized we could do dinner there as well as dessert.) Wait, there's more, I'll write about it later. Oh, this song was on in the car (along with Sexy MF and some Folk Implosion):

this bed is on fire with passionate love
the neighbors complain about the noise from above