Well, There It Is.

I’m now home from my second consecutive night at Lincoln Center. This time it was to see the New York Philharmonic play some Mozart. I’d also just like to mention that I think this is going to be a good month. I seem to be in a good mood in general. Well that’s all for now.

While I was at work earlier today, I got a message from Stacey asking if I wanted to go see Jazz at the Lincoln Center, since she was able to get her hands on two free tickets. How could I pass up an opportunity like that? So we went, and Benny Golson, a prolific Jazz composer, was the featured artist. The first set was with a quartet, then a quintet, then later his “jazztet.” The second set contained a big band for most of the tunes, and their encore even had a string quartet joining the band for Blues March. Though I don’t remember hearing about him before, Benny composed some well-known jazz standards like Killer Joe and I Remember Clifford, which have been recorded by all the “jazz greats,” and later he composted television show themes such as those from M*A*S*H and The Cosby Show.

Tomorrow night I get to go back into New York to see the Philharmonic play Mozart. I guess I’m lucky to be working so close to the city… and I’m luck I have a friend like Stacey who can get me tickets once in a while.

I currently live in Lawrenceville, NJ, 73 miles from my office [DELETED]. My lease on the apartment is up at the end of April, so I have to make some sort of decision soon. Becky, my current roommate, would like to live with her boyfriend in the apartment once I leave, but I do have the option of staying if I want. Becky would continue living here, I guess until however long we extend the least for. I don’t want to put her in that position, so I’m looking for other options.

I can’t afford to live anywhere by myself unless a part of a house is rented to me. In that case, I would need to pay for storage for my possessions. Whether I like it or not, I’m also hardly ever home, so it doesn’t make sense to pay too much for a place to live. It would make sense for me to live closer to work, except that it is more expensive to live up here, and it would be more unlikely that I’d see my friends, who all still generally live in the same area.

If I do end up moving closer to work, there is a slight chance that the office might move from Bergenfield to Asbury Park as early as December this year, and an ever slighter change that we might move in August. It would not make me happy to move all the way up here and sign a lease, only to find out I will have to commute to Asbury Park from Bergenfield every day. In this case, I can forget about ever seeing andybody I know ever again.

Let’s make this a great month. I’ll be striving to improve my financial situation (seems we’re all having a hard time) and my outlook on life in general. I have a birthday coming up and I am determined to enjoy myself. After all, I will have been alive for a quarter of a century, and that has to be some sort of accomplishment in itself. Here’s my horoscope for today, from a different source since I wasn’t fond of Yahoo‘s:

Everyone seems to be having a good time these days. Pisces is adept, efficient and highly social. The cosmic forces conspire to get your work done in the tastiest, most artful way possible.

At least 3 injured in Washington quake. This is what happen when you move to Seattle, friends. I’m hoping that Bryan is alright. I’m figuring he’s at work right now, and I don’t know his number there. I considered calling information and asking for the number for the Starbucks in Seattle, but I decided against it.

I’m contemplating challenging myself to learn a new language. I’d really like to be multilingual, but here are the problems as I see it:

• I’d have to find time to study.
• Once ready, I’d like to visit an area of the world where the language is spoken to be immersed within it.
• I would probably need to practice with people I know, and all I know are English speakers.

Once getting past these issues, the next step would be to actually choose a language. Should I go with something practical like Spanish, or head the other direction with a language like Ancient Greek? I’ve begun learning German and Hebrew throughout my life but I’d like to try something different.

I don’t like owing friends money, though lately, it seems I’ve gotten pretty good at it.

This Friday night, as long as Stacey and I can get tickets, I’m going to see the New York Philharmonic. It is an all Mozart concert, including the 25th and 36th Symphonies, as well as the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, with Stanley Drucker on solo. I wonder if he’ll play the piece on a Bb or A clarinet. I highly doubt he’ll be playing the piece on the instrument it was written for — a bassett clarinet. You don’t see those too often anymore.

So far, I’m only seeing one downside to using Greymatter instead of Blogger… I’m getting much fewer visitors than normal. I think Blogger contributed to half of my traffic. Greymatter doesn’t have the same kind of “Recently Updated” list on their website, not that regular Greymatter users need to go to the software’s website for anything, unlike Blogger.

You can still view all of my previous entries through the archives link on the bottom of this page. Just look for Previous Blogger Entries. I switched to Greymatter because: Blogger has been somewhat unreliable; the easiest option for discussions, Blogvoices, has been unbearable; and Greymatter sits on my own server, so there is no lag when loading the website. It took a while to get my layout to mimic what I had with Blogger, which might have been time wasted since I’ll be moving over to a new layout at some point.