medium is not a compromise, but a loss by anyone's standards.

Oh hey.

Yesterday I mopped the Casey kitchen floor for fun, but I was disappointed as it was not fun at all. However, at work a few minutes ago, mopping the floor was fun.. This is because mopping the floor is the very last thing I do before locking up the kitchen, and so there is a real sense of accomplishment when the job is done. You see the same activities have different outcomes in different situations. For example, if I were to jump up on a pew in the middle of church and violently strum out pinball wizard by the Who; chances are that it would not go over too well. However, if I were to perform the same activity, minus the pew and plus the mirror in the hall when no one else was in the house, I would not feel quite as awkward... except... I just.. told you about it...

Well I was surfing around on the tubes a minute ago, and I came across a video of an old Italian talking about life in Hoboken NJ in the 50's and 60's. What was interesting was that he mentioned many neighborhood characters that I know about/know/knew. For example, my mother's uncle and owner of Leo's Gandevous, Leo DiTerlizzi. Also, the guy who wore squeaky shoes; the guy who's mother used to shout out the window not to forget his hairbrush and Stumpy; the guy with one leg shorter than the other who used to clean shellfish in the basement of Leo's. All interesting nostalgic stuff.

So I bought my first instrument from a newspaper.. A tenor banjo.. It is awesome. I drove over to Vermont to take a look, and a week later I went back and bought it. It is an Irish tenor banjo, but the previous owner had strung it up jazz style with light strings and a higher tuning. The difference between a tenor banjo and the American sort, is that a tenor only has 4 strings instead of the American 4, plus one drone string. The difference between a jazz banjo and an Irish banjo is that the Jazz version is meant to be strummed rhythmically, whereas the Irish model is for single note picking. It also has very heavy strings, and is tuned an octave below the mandolin.. It has a very low gritty sound, and is almost the equivalent of a distorted guitar of Irish traditional music.. I paid a very low price for a very good model in very good condition..

Well, my classes are going very well. At the start of the year I was worried that working 6 nights a week would get in the way of homework.. It turns out that I need not have worried, as a much better/more lucrative solution to this potential problem has presented itself; I simply do my HOMEwork at WORKwork. I have at least an hour every night where I do nothing but hang out and eat free food with my co workers, so why not put this time to good use? Well, I have been doing this exact thing for 2 weeks now, and it works wonderfully. I simply set up a small office behind my dish machine using some milk crates, and I am actually paid to do my homework.. AWESOME!! It is sort of like that Seinfeld episode where George sleeps under his desk, but better as I am earning college credits on the clock.. I can also say "Get out of my office!!!" If I am disturbed, which is awesome, because it makes me feel like I have an office........