last tuesday was a banner example of what happens when you try to do too much. for that day, i had the following goals:
- class
- interview with South African radio re: my paper
- lesson (for which i learned a whole Beethoven sonata)
- chamber music coaching
- rehearsal with fellow student for a recording (for which i tried to learn 4 pieces in roughly as many days)
- practice for all of these things

instead, it all went wrong from the beginning. in the morning, i discovered that the radio show time was not 1AM, as the producer wrote, but actually 1PM EST. since that would be in the middle of class, i waffled about whether to do it, and then skipped my practice time to correspond with my co-author (to see if we could get someone to sub in) and the producer in SA. as a result, i neither practiced nor did the interview (too last minute - the producer gave up on me).

a bit miffed by how the morning went down, i decided to at least attend the rest of the class that i would have skipped for the interview. i walk in ....  and then realize that something is wrong. a few people are staring at me funny, and the rest are quiet and hunched over white pieces of paper, diligently scribbling. i sit down, look at the guy next to me, and realize.... ....@*#&^!(!#$..... today, apparently, is the midterm.

i thought the test was thursday. in fact, i had explicitly planned to study on wednesday. as i sit in shock, the teacher hands me the test, and says, "we're on #5." he means, of the listening examples, in which he plays 10 seconds or so of a symphony and you have to identify the composer, symphony, and movement. not having listened to the 12 symphonies on the list, i guess at the composer: beethoven, mozart, haydn, schubert. i can't identify the symphony number. mozart wrote a million of the things. i mouth back to him, "i might fail", to which he gives an unsympathetic look and walks away. now it makes sense why people are looking at me funny. what kind of fool walks into class an hour late on the day of the midterm?? if only they knew that i had planned to skip class altogether.

it takes me less than half hour to finish the test because when you don't know something, no extra time is going to help. in fact, i could answer a lot of the questions (i pay attention in class), and i dont care too much about my grades. but at the same time, i was shaken by the magnitude of my mistake.

i've never done this before. i've heard of people oversleeping finals and missing them, but nobody forgetting about one. i can report that the sense of dread that hits your stomach when you realize what is transpiring is just like it is in the dream. (!)

thank God, my lease was up and i moved. the new place is bigger and cheaper (yay recession!) AND most importantly, it is on another street and on a higher floor. all good so far, except for a neighbor who likes to blast music in the wee hours of the night and scream at friends. but the first night, i threw on a sweatshirt, rang her doorbell till she heard it over the music, and told her very nicely that i was her new neighbor, that the walls were quite thin and would she mind turning it down? she looked at me suspiciously, but she did turn it down. i think it'll be ok. crossing fingers.

so here is an ode to the old apt,
to the trucks that used the street as a loading dock,

esp those with forklifts that beep,

to the construction workers who did ridiculous things, like smash aluminum tubes by jumping on them and whacking them with sledgehammers,

to the "emergency" repairs that had to be done in the middle of the night

and to the nightly garbage compacting (not pictured),

i say to you, GOODBYE SUCKAS!