I don’t know how I’m going to schedule my day, since the piano competition is on a break today, but I guess I’d better get used to it, since the rest of the competition, other than Saturday, is going to be at night and then it will be over. I’ll have to find some other thing to keep me at the keyboard (the computer one, not the piano one). I was happy that my favorites made it to the final round, and for Friday night’s concerto event, we’ve got two Rachmaninoff pieces (though not my absolute favorite).
I did learn that I really can’t work while listening to Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto. I can’t help but stop to listen. I’ve used some of his other music as background music for writing, but that one piece just gets me. I can’t even read while listening to it. I think there’s a story that this needs to be my soundtrack for, but I haven’t found it yet. It starts all strident and angry, then there’s this swooningly romantic interlude, and the final movement is passionate and fiery. It’s basically a romantic story — they meet and there’s conflict. Maybe they’re even enemies. But then they fall in love and have a tender moment together, and after that the two of them are fighting together, the two of them against the world, putting everything on the line for love. I guess that’s why this piece is so popular with pairs figure skaters. There’s a big, dramatic start, then a quieter, more graceful moment, and then a big, passionate finish. Except to get within the time limit, they chop it up brutally.
This morning seems to have been electronic failure time. At the very same time, my atomic clock went out and my cable box must have been trying to update and froze midway through the reboot. The clock was a matter of batteries, but then I had to find a way to get it to reset and find the signal. I tried contacting the cable company via online chat when the box was frozen midway through what looked like a reboot, stuck at the same level for an hour, but their chat window froze. I finally resorted to the old unplug it and plug it back in trick, and that seems to have worked. Not that I was watching TV at the time, but it just bugged me to see that “L-8” on the readout instead of the time, especially when I was having to manually set the time on the atomic clock before it found the signal, and my other source for accurate time wasn’t working. The cable thing must have been a system issue because it affected both of my boxes.
This is making me glad I backed up my computer last night. Maybe I should stay away from my cell phone.
2 comments:
If you turn on GPS, your cell phone IS an accurate time source, for "normal" meanings of accurate time source. Not directly NIST traceable or anything, but within a second.
Well, yes, I am well aware of the timekeeping properties of a cell phone, but when you're holding a clock and trying to set it and you glance at what should be the nearest clock and it's saying "L-8" instead of the time, it's annoying to then have to go dig out the cell phone and check the time.
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