It’s been a little while since my last entry. In part that’s because I haven’t felt like I had anything to say and in part that’s because things have been soooooo busy. This weekend along has been pretty manic. To start of with I took the GRE. As you might have read or heard, I’m looking to go to grad school and the GRE is the Grad equivalent of the SAT. My test was administered at a testing center on computer. The thing took just under four hours (bleh!) in a room that was far too warm for me to be wearing a sweater. The good part is that I got my scores immediately back. I didn’t do to badly (1780) but I discovered I had forgotten some basic math and managed to bomb (in my opinion at least) the verbal section of the test. That really infuriated me. I tend to consider that my strongest area. But the $#@^ test managed to ask me questions about words that I had never heard of, let alone knew. I’m seriously considering reading a dictionary cover to cover to shore up my vocabulary.
Friday night, Don (my Exect Theatre Co coconspirator) and I took in a play at UofR called Closer. Great set. Nice Blocking. But as for the play and performances… well… Great set. Nice Blocking. I can’t recommend this piece. We couldn’t tell if it was just a bad play or a bad interpretation. Probably a little of both. I ended up going out and getting a drink to wash the taste of the play out of my mouth,
Saturday morning I was up by 6.30am and driving out to the middle of no where. Actually Bath New York to be exact,; about an hour and half drive from Rochester. There, in the middle of woods and farm country, I took part in a all day intensive Kali workshop. Kali is a Filipino weapons based martial art that I have been involved with for years. We were working sticks, knives and other nasty things from 8.30am to 5.30pm. My arms and hand today are a little sore. My right palm has a burst blister protected by a Sesame St Band-Aid on it (I sorta like the juxtaposition [see GRE people I can correctly use big words!] of it). I got a huge amount out of the day. The workshop was running for another day (they’re most likely out there doing material as I write this), but I had to get back to town.
As soon as I got back I was out the door again (after a hot shower and change of clothes) to take in my former professor and good friend Peter playing as part of a Jazz Quartet. They sounded great! As of late Peter had been feeling that he might been losing his chops on the Clarinet. But he, and the folks he was playing with were really on. I was a wonderful way to cap off the day: sipping a good (though expensive) red wine, listening to a live performance of Honeysuckle Rose. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have had the second glass of wine as I nearly feel asleep during the third set.
This morning I woke up to discover that my ailing computer is in worse shape then I thought. As such I’m going to take radical steps: format the hard drive and reinstall everything. So if you don’t hear anything from me for a few more days, it’s just because I’m trying to get the computer up and running.