Week 23: March 2

Early this week I went out and grabbed a virtual on Ferry Plaza. The air was damp, the sky low and the water restless.

Ship in the distance (can you see it?)

Getting closer

Really close

Gull 1

Gull 2

I found this funny. Reminds me of Chinglish.

We are learning about the Middle Ages in Western Civ class, so this week Dr Hohmann brought a real sword to class and dubbed Nick a knight with it. This was doubly fitting because Maddy's name for Nick is already "Nickith" and now it is "Sir Nickith". The most entertaining class all semester, even though according to another professor, we are much too young to be learning about middle ages.....Do any of you readers between the ages of 40 and 65 live in a castle??

This week my quartet also played in the chamber masterclass. There are twelve teachers at this class, members of both the string and piano faculty, and they take turns working with the groups, although none of them have any qualms about jumping right in when they have something to say. Often they will get into discussions and debates with each other, and they all have wonderful stories to tell about their experiences playing these pieces. I love the energy that comes from two or three or four passionate musicians working with you at once. Everyone seemed to like our quartet - in fact, after we played, one of the viola teachers said, "I can't believe I've never heard this piece before! It's great!" I like playing little-known pieces. It's refreshing for the audience and you can take more liberties as performers.

I was killing time in the school library the other day and found myself browsing through all sorts of interesting things. Some of them were so funny I had to come back the next day with my camera.

Unfortunate name

Some of the periodicals crack me up. The Lute Society???

Do we have a Canadian Viola Society?

There is a whole magazine devoted to this.

That's a lot of medical problems

This is the auto detailing place across the street from school. See if you can find the misspelled word. If you find it, email me for a prize. Bonus points if you find 2 misspelled words.

I was out looking for a brand-new cache in SOMA yesterday and found a little streetside poem.

Also yesterday I played in a composition student's grad recital. I was subbing for a classmate who had to drop out at the last minute. So I picked up the music yesterday morning, put in some fingerings and made mistakes in the dress rehearsal but not in the concert. The piece was called "Silence" which I found ironic. If it's music, isn't that by definition not silent? There were six movements to the piece:

The Silence of the Stars
The Silence of Defeat
The Silence of the Sick
The Silence of Age
The Silence between Father and Son
The Silence of Death

Cheerful, eh?? We were playing in the pit and there were dancers on stage, but I couldn't see what they were doing because I was too busy counting. Luckily there were not that many notes so it was okay. For some reason at the reception afterwards there were cases and cases of "Kombucha" or "hippie juice" as the others called it. It has live bacteria cultures in it and is supposed to be very good for you. I tried it but it tasted like vinegar.

This evening I went to a geo-event at Yerba Buena Gardens. I met some local cachers, a couple from Austria and the event host who was from Slovakia. Geo-events are extremely revealing as to the nature of the sport, and of the people who do it. You can show up to an event by yourself, without knowing a single person there, and spend hours chatting with the other cachers as if you've been friends for years. I picked up a few hints for puzzles I've been working on, heard some urban lore about prolific SF cachers, and was told about the "Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District Challenge" which sounds like an absolutely fantastically glorious adventure.

Oh, how awesome the sky looks

The "Shaking Man" where we met

At this point I am not yet sure how many of these people are cachers

This one definitely is

So is this one

Shaking Man gone Geo

Geocachers tend to be down-to-earth, outdoor-loving, somewhat quirky, generally likable people with real appreciation for the little things in life. Being around them and talking about hikes and power trails and challenges reminds me of why I really do this. It's not just about getting on the train, finding a little container on a street corner, writing your name and going home; it's about adventure, it's about exploring wild spaces and trekking over hill and dale and getting into the Real World, the Interesting and Exciting and Amazing World.

There is something funny that I always see on the way to Yerba Buena Gardens and only now have I remembered to take a picture of it. There is a hamburger place just outside the gardens and their advertisement on the wall looks like this:

But since the word is painted over two doors, and that "G" is on the part of the wall that sticks out.....when you approach from the southwest (which is what I normally do) the advertisement looks like this:

BUT I DON'T WANNA GO TO THE BUGER JOINT!!!

Myself, I find this hysterically funny. Others may not find it so. My apologies.


Anyway, I wish I was already retired so that I could just go on awesome adventures and hikes and explorations and life-risking missions and glorious cache-finding sprees all the time.


- Antisocial Violinist