I am not the sort who often creates photoessays, but then again I am not the sort who often finds an abandoned piano on my walk to work. I knew I wanted to take pictures of it, its water-swollen keys and misaligned hammers. The cover for the keys is gone, as is the panel that usually covers the soundboard. And then it snowed.

( no more words )

I am doing pretty well with the whole hot summer thing, except on days when I get up early and go running. On these days I cannot convince my body to stop sweating until I get to my over-air-conditioned lab, which is sometimes 1.5-2 hours later. That is a lot of sweating, and it makes me cranky.

I got my jazz piano books, as well as a new book of Debussy. The jazz is fun but weird, since it's so against my training. It also doesn't help that I practically never learned music theory, I just play songs. The improv book is all, 'play the pentatonic scale in every key!', and I'm all, you can play it in different keys? And I'm bad at transposition and improv... I guess I play a lot by muscle memory. Well fine, to console myself I can play something from the Debussy book. Debussy is a composer that really resonates with me, and I find it much easier to know how his music should sound when I'm playing than with other composers. It has Jardins sous la pluie, La Cathédral Engloutie, and a lot of other pieces I've liked but haven't actually played (i.e., they aren't in my other Debussy book).

I urgently recommend the movie Amores Perros, which is like Pulp Fiction with characters you empathize with, sometimes funny but mostly brutal and tragic. It was so good, and really I spent the whole summer without Ben watching sad foreign movies. Strangely, I watched it in French despite its being a Mexican film, because the subtitles didn't work but I could change the audio language (from Spanish to French... no English). I watched Bande à Part and enjoyed it too, but in a very different way.

Franz pense à tout et à rien. Il ne sait pas si c'est le monde qui est en train de devenir rêve ou le rêve monde.

I'm designing parts and ordering materials for work! It's more mechanical engineering than stuff I've done before, which makes it interesting. I've also never designed such a complex mechanical system from scratch (the cold finger plus the mount for the AFM sample, which has to be thermally insulated). It is actually pretty fun, though I have no idea whether I'll do things right or not. I got to hear about how the machine shop's entire store of copper was stolen a few months back, potentially by a disgruntled machinist, so we have to buy our own now. OFHC copper is expensive!

The dinner group last night met at Eulogy, a Belgian tavern with an impressive beer list and glass-fronted coffins for tables. I ended up meeting a lot of cool math grad students and a law student who was really nice and loved fries; I really enjoy these dinners. It was also a nice walk there and back, maybe 40 minutes each way, and if it hadn't been so humid out it would have been just perfect. With Ben not here for the summer, it strikes me how I've made a lot of acquaintances but few friends, people I would call up to hang out. That is changing, though, and Ben not being here helps me get out more. I don't think I've got the balance of bringing a boyfriend along with friends who don't know him, since I did it so seldom in Berkeley.

Tonight I'm driving up to Providence, to serve as a jumping off point to go to Cape Cod with Steph. I'm really excited about it! I'm a little worried about the drive, since I haven't done any long drives alone out here yet, but it should hopefully be fine. I am going up to the Tappan Zee bridge to avoid NYC traffic; hopefully it will be enough. And I finally got my tickets for Erin and Josh's wedding; hooray for Southwest having random promotions out of Philadelphia that allow me to easily get free roundtrips, but boo for Southwest changing their award policy so that only so many awardees can fly on each flight. Those punks.

I finally gave up on finding my old metronome and ordered a replacement, and while I was at it I ordered some piano music. Some new Debussy, but also, well... jazz. My Los Alamos piano teacher was staunchly anti-jazz, so even though I love jazz piano I never learned anything about how to play it. I got one ragtime book, and she let me play one song out of it and then never spoke of it again. So from habit, I just only play classical... but I'm an adult now! I can play whatever I want! Maybe not well, but we'll see.

I'm in a good mood, after a weekend of reading and hiking, and an unexpected situation yesterday in which the post office did not lose my package. So I'm going to tell two London stories that never quite made it into my entries on that.

( unexpected song )

( small world )

Since I spent the previous two weekends either travelling or having a guest, and since the weather here has taken a decided turn for the hot and humid, I spent last weekend inside doing things for myself, including lots of chores I'd been meaning to do for awhile but never quite found time for, but also more enjoyable things.

I had summer plans for piano and sports, and those are actually going well. I'm practicing piano more than I did during the school year, at least, and what I really need to do is either magically find my metronome that I've searched several times for, or just buy another one. I'm working on some Mozart, and I think it's essential. It was inspiring to hear Martha, my Berkeley piano teacher, play Mozart. She did it with a brilliance and clarity that I felt were both impressive and entirely appropriate. I've also been running some, weightlifting some, swimming some, and doing yoga some. So at least thus far, I haven't lost anything I gained for my knee during physical therapy. I found it interesting, actually, that my therapist told me that even if I stopped exercising, I'd still be much better off knee-wise than I was before this round of physical therapy, because I've changed some ways of moving that were unstable.

But what I've really spent a lot of my spare time on the last few weeks has been World of Warcraft and Harry Potter. I know, I know, but it's been really fun and I'm enjoying myself immensely. I got my first heroic key for my main in WoW, and finally some cool-looking gear. What I really need are the Pauldrons of Wild Magic, which look awesome and have lightning playing around them. And I've been rereading the HP books, in preparation for the last one, and... I forgot how wonderful they are. I love the stories and the detailed world so much, and I had also forgotten how difficult those books are to put down. This led to also rewatching the movies, and the result is that I'm now really excited for the fifth movie and just dying for the last book. I know, I'm imitating the summer activities of adolescents everywhere, but it's such fun.

I had a midterm yesterday! In quantum, and maybe the last midterm I'll ever have. It went pretty well... one problem I know I didn't do well on, two I did, and from talking to other people everybody screwed up something. So as always, I have to wait to see the curve, but there's hope at least. Afterwards I did something purgative, which was going to the Pottruck center and running for half an hour, then lifting weights, then swimming until I felt like I wasn't moving. Then I played piano! I have been consistently inconsistent about exercise and piano this semester. I set some goals at the beginning of the year, which I'm not even close to meeting, but at least I get something in each week. I'm hoping that when I'm working, I'll be less likely to have weeks where there's just too much work to do anything else.

Then there was a party in the zoo, with all the first-years and some other grad students too. Colossal amounts of beer present, and pizza and candy. Much fun! Ben and I left for a while to go to a Ukrainian food party that one of Ben's colleagues was having, which was fun and gave us some time to drink tea instead of beer. Good pierogis and chocolates. Then back to the zoo for my first ever drinking game, which was actually really funny. Then some guitar hero in Ben's office, then home!

I have a bad habit of making a to-do list and then saving the least pleasant tasks for last. The result is that I procrastinate on really important stuff, like getting back to professors who intimidate me or writing my talk for the SLAC seminar in April. This weekend will be different!

Like I said earlier, I am trying to get to the point that I can play many pieces I know off the top of my head. This also seems inherently rewarding, since I've played a lot of pieces I really liked which I no longer remember very well. This is a list of pieces I'm working with now (or ones I want to in the near-ish future).

Learning:

Chopin, Waltz in E, Op. Posth.

Mozart, Piano Sonata In D Major, K. 576: 1. Allegro

Brushing up for eventual off-the-cuff playing:

Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 8 In C Minor, Op. 13 'Pathetique'

Chopin, Nocturne No. 20 In C Sharp Minor, Op. Posth.

Debussy, Arabesque No. 1

Debussy, Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum

Debussy, Snow is Dancing

Should someday get around to relearning:

Bach, Italian Concerto

Chopin, Impromptu No. 1 In A Flat Major, Op. 29

Liszt, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2

Should someday learn:

Beethoven, Sonata No. 23 In F Minor, Op. 57 'Appassionata'

Chopin, Fantasy-Impromptu

Liszt, La Campanella

Hmm... looking at this list makes me feel I have a fairly restricted number of composers that I play. There are many, many more composers that I like... I just don't know their solo piano works very well.

You may recall that I play the piano, and you may be wondering, did I stop? I know I haven't posted about it for a while.

I took a break from piano, for practical and time-management reasons, that started when I hurt my knee. That break extended until I left Berkeley, mainly because my last couple months there were so hectic, and also because I knew that over the summer I'd have no choice but to take a break anyways. I was all over the place, and had access to a piano twice. I missed it, and I missed classical music in general, but I was having a ball, so it wasn't too bad.

But I swore that when I got settled in at Penn, I would start playing again. I love playing, and it makes me happy, and I saw music and exercise as two key things which might help to keep me sane in graduate school. So I figured out where there are practice rooms here, and I started going to them. It's always painful to restart playing after a break, because you think you sound terrible and you get very demotivated at first. But I've been trying to play at least once a week, generally more like thrice, since the semester started.

I can't really afford a teacher right now, and this is the first time I've seriously tried to learn new music, polish things, etc. without one. In some ways it's fine, because practicing and improving don't require supervision, just internal motivation, and I've tried to listen to my teachers and learn what to look for, how to find the lines in music, how to interpret dynamics, etc. So I think I can do pretty well on my own. On the other hand, it's hard to tell if I'm emphasizing something too much, or if my tempo changes and I don't notice... the sort of thing that teachers point out to you if you aren't noticing them. I think I need to bring my metronome, and I think I should record myself and listen, to try to disconnect how I sound from the experience of playing.

What I'm doing, though, is trying to polish my repertoire. I habitually stop playing pieces once I've performed them, let them fall into terrible disrepair, and then sigh over how I can't play them any more. And it makes it trying when I'm at someone's house and they ask me to play something, because I rarely have anything prepared. It would be really cool if I could have a small concert back in Los Alamos right before Christmas. I sort of doubt that will happen, though... I'd have to find a place to do it (I have a piano at my house, but it would be weird if I wanted my dad to come to my mom's, and not many of my friends have nice pianos), and I'd have to not freak out about it. I wish there were something here like the music club at Berkeley where students come and perform in a low-stress setting. Ah well.

I'm joining a student-run club swim team here. The practice times are kind of weird, apparently because the university decides who can use the pool when. It seems nice--laid-back--and there are actually meets at times, which is something I miss. I also checked out the practice rooms here, for piano. I was surprised to find that the music department actually doesn't maintain any practice rooms. The easiest ones to use are run by the student union, and are hidden under Irvine Auditorium, which is like Zellerbach at Berkeley. There aren't very many, only about ten, but they're open the whole time the student union is open, which is 6 AM to 1 AM. Awesome.

Apparently the two most popular places to hike around here are Valley Forge and Wissahickon Park, or more generally Fairmount Park. We really need to get out and see those places one of these weekends. I also want to visit the Morris Arboretum sometime. And go to Independence National Historic Park, though it sounds like we'll save that for when Joao and Gersende visit.

Every day to get to campus I walk over the South Street bridge, from which one has a beautiful view of downtown Philadelphia. It's especially wonderful at night, on crisp nights like last night. I am anxiously awaiting fall and the colors changing. :)

I tell you the truth, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for an orchestral adaptation of a piano piece to sound anywhere near as good as the original.

Getting a chance to play piano makes me happy.

Getting really useful advice from Joao makes me happy, especially when I see almost immediately how useful it is.

Giving people gifts makes me happy. I love it so much.

Playing Star Wars: Battlefront with Ron makes me happy, as does playing with his music toys.

Talking to Chih until late makes me happy, as does my impending visit to her in early January.

Ben makes me happy. Ben always, always makes me happy.

I joined swimming at what was probably the perfect time of year to join swimming: right at the summer solstice. I would get up, see that it was fairly light out, and get ready for swimming. I'd walk there, and as I did my laps, the sun would break over the Berkeley hills and fall in gleaming shafts into the water, illuminating the swimmers, the bubbles from someone's over-splashy kick. And when I showered and left to start my day, it was beautiful out. And I'm realizing now that as we amble into autumn, it will only get less pleasant. It's nearly completely dark when I get up, and while you could still consider my walk to work as being some sort of early-morning twilight, pretty soon it will just get dark. Soon it will matter that the lights in the Strawberry Canyon pool are broken, because soon we won't be able to see where we're swimming without them. And it doesn't help that Berkeley is experiencing weather reminiscent of November: cold, cloudy, gray. I also don't want to imagine how it will be walking that half-hour walk in the rain.

On the plus side, I've never swum laps under the stars. Maybe I'll get to.

The swimming itself is increasingly fun. I'm trying to work my way up to every day; this week I should hit four days. For some reason, getting up so early isn't as hard now. My weak points are improving, though I wish I could use the RSF to lift weights and increase my upper body strength. See, at this point, I'm a somewhat slow puller relative to others (which is an improvement from the beginning of the summer), and a very fast kicker. Which means my freestyle is somewhere in the middle. It's very good to have a fast kick, for sure, but you can get much more speed out of a fast pull. My backstroke still dominates, which is very nice.

And I had my first piano lesson since May today, with Martha. I really love her as a piano teacher, and also as a good person. I'm still working on that Liszt, which I sweat I will finish this semester. But I wanted something else to work on, not immensely difficult but not really easy, so I brought in some Chopin from the music library and asked her to help me find something. Almost immediately she turned me towards Chopin's Impromptu No. 1, which I may have heard before, but not played live. It's an extremely interesting and beautiful piece, so that'll be something else to work on. I was also really gratified when I was sight-reading and she said that my instinct for musicality was really impressive, and that I'd improved a lot in how well I read weird accidentals and strange melodies, which is definitely a result of having worked on the Liszt. That really made me feel good, mainly because I sometimes have the feeling that I'm going nowhere with the Liszt, simply because it's such a difficult and long piece, really technically challenging, and it takes time to work on. So it's good to think that I'm getting things from it, and I really do think I can finish this semester, if I keep making time for it.

I also had a cool experience listening to something new: the third symphony of Henryk Gorecki. I just want to say that if any of you ever get the chance to hear it or pick up a copy, do. It's fantastic and very moving.

My day today was really good... I wish it were representative of how my days in general were, on average.

6:20-6:40 Get up, have breakfast
6:40-7:10 Walk to swimming
7:10-8:10 Butterfly workout (I wouldn't want that every day, though)
8:10-8:30 Shower, get dressed
8:30-8:40 Walk to Morrison
8:40-9:30 Play piano
9:30-11:00 Quantum mechanics lecture
11:00-11:30 Walk home, hang up swimming stuff and change
11:30-6:30 Work!
6:30-10:00 Make chicken stock, call mom, watch 24, study quantum for test on Thursday

Ugh, midterm. And just when KOTOR was picking up!