Well, There It Is.

I hope everyone had a great Passover, whether you celebrated the holiday or not. I had two seders, one at my father’s friend Anna’s house, the other at Gwen‘s house. Both meals were great. I wish I had regular meals more often. I’m such a fan of food and I feel I’m not getting as much out of my life as I want because I don’t eat well.

I escaped from the perils of Connecticut early. Attendance at the conference was light, so we decided to pack up and head home, instead of waste money on another night at the hotel. So, I’m home, at least for tonight. Maybe it will give me some time to think. I don’t want to look for an apartment. I don’t want to move to north Jersey. I don’t like north Jersey; I don’t want to live somewhere that I don’t like.

Tomorrow morning, I’m leaving for the Connecticut Music Educators Association conference, and I won’t be back until Saturday. But I’m not sticking around long–Saturday evening I’m going to Anna’s house for Passover dinner. After that, I’m heading out to Lancaster for a second Seder on Sunday. Then of course, right back to work Monday morning. So if you’re still complaining about my webcam picture, you’ll have to deal with it for a while.

The weather was pretty nice outside. For some reason, I was cold. I was shivering all day, even with my little space-heater on in my office.

I got an estimate today on the damage to my car from the other night. What I thought were pretty minor scratches totalled $227.90 in damages. Some people tell me that it’s not worth it, I should just paint over it myself. Some people said that if I went to sell the car at some point, I should take care of it the right way. I decided I would get at least one more estimate from somewhere else, even if I thought the price they would quote would be around the same. So I called up Karen (the girl who hit me) to tell her what I’ve found, expecting her to not take the news so lightly. After all, it is a lot of money — at least for me. She seemed pretty nonchalant about the whole thing, and she made it sound like the price wasn’t such a big deal. She wanted me to just tell her what it comes out to and she will send a check.

This NorthPoint crisis is going to drive me insanse. I have the whole office sharing a 56K dial-up connection. Our internet service provider doesn’t have any clue when they’ll have a contract with a new DSL network, if ever. The earliest we can be sure we’ll have new DSL is April 19th. We cannot get email in or out of the office, so all the mail is coming into one POP mailbox, and I set up forwarding rules to hopefully distribute the email to the rightful owner. Is anybody else dealing with this?

Last night I saw the band 3 Song Circus at The Point in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. The band is made up of Andy Stochansky, Erin McKeown and Jian Ghomeshi (from Moxy Früvous). They played almost all “new” songs, which they are trying to get used to playing so they can record them on their own future albums. First of all, Andy was very weird. I’m not sure if he’s like that all the time, or if it was just because he was drunk.

At one point in the show, Erin left the stage, so he and Jian told a story about when they were in Brooklyn taking ecstasy. Andy, after taking the drug, was not prone to its “feel-good” effects, and was not impressed with watching everyone else at the party “hug each other.” (Jian commented something like, “If you think that we were hugging, that’s where the problem is in the first place.”) So he departed to a room somewhere. Jian later found him in the room, naked in the fetal position, writing “lyrics” down. Andy explained that he had the unrepressable urge to write down lyrics in Ukrainian. Upon inspecting the lyrics, Jian came to the conclusion that they were not in fact written in Ukrainian, they were just chicken-scratch.

Well, the concert was lots of fun, and the performers might have been a little tipsy, but they were having a good time. For their encore, they played With Or Without You, by U2, with their own interpretations. In the end, I’m looking forward to Jian’s new solo album. I may go out and get Erin’s albums. I’m not so sure about Andy. Again, maybe he was just drunk.

“The Bible says that if you spare the rod you’re going to spoil the child,” [the pastor says]. “I have the Scriptures that give me the right to do it.”

“I’m not saying you can’t whip your children, I’m just saying you can’t leave marks like this on them,” [the judge ruled].

[The parents] said no child is permanently injured and the bruises go away.

Read the article if you think you can. This link was beaten out of David Gagne, but it’s okay, because his bruises aren’t permanent.

So I talked the woman who hit my car, and I decided to just get an estimate and she said she would write me a check. Sounds easy enough. This way we don’t have to involve insurance companies. Fine with me.

At work, our DSL company (Northpoint — check out their press release) decided to sell its assets and disappear. So now we’re stuck with a 56k dial-up connection until our service company secures a deal with a new DSL company. And at the moment, we won’t be able to get any work email to our server. That’s a big problem. It’s 7:00, I’m at work, and on hold with our internet service company right now.

Driving home from work today, my car was hit by someone else’s. The owner of the silver Audi (or at least, the driver) and I pulled over to the side to swap information. She was in a rush. She was late for something important. She had no idea where she was going. She wasn’t paying attention. She attempted to change into my lane as I was right there. She was kind of cute. She asked me if I knew where such-and-such road is. As we know, it’s somewhat difficult for two particles, let alone two cars, to occupy the same spot at the same time. Hence, collision. Hence, the front driver’s side corner of my car is scratched up. I guess now I’ll actually have to start paying my insurance bills.