Let me write something quick because I haven't and I can.  The apartment in San Francisco is great and I couldn't ask for something better.  Well, I guess I could, but that would include stone cupids and a ten-foot fountain -- which could get old fast anyway.  It overlooks the city and you can see the ocean.  It's nice to live on my own again.  I only did it for one year in Montreal and it was in the most grim of spaces, so this is a breath of fresh air.

Totally uninspired to write on the other site lately.  Something stifling about expectations.

The quartet here plays well and I'm excited about the possibilities.  I'm going to need to work on making more friends because my quartet is pretty much all I see these days.  The problem is that I have no classes (I never thought I'd consider that a problem) and so all I'm doing is performing and rehearsing with a close nucleus of players.  In my own attempt to branch out, I agreed to read Schubert's Cello Quintet with some other students at the school.   I was genuinely shocked and became immediately grateful of my present quartet members' level.

We're thinking of a name for the group.  Girlfriend always amazes:  She came up with The Embarcadero String Quartet -- which sounds better than, believe it or not, anything any of us in the quartet came up with.  Embarcadero is cool to us because that's the first place we played, busking on the street as a gig.  (Actually, we played at Castro Station first, but it's never struck me as creative to name yourself after a tyrant -- besides, Embarcadero was the first place we played after having rehearsed.)

Bringing this up with the quartet, they were very happy.  Nodding their heads.  But they wanted to know what it meant first, before we assumed the name.  None of us were Spanish, but I looked it up:

A pier, wharf, or landing place, especially on a river or inland waterway.

WHY NOT?!  That's like, great.  A landing place.  Not "squirrel testicles", or whatever our violist Dave thought it might be.  I think it's a go.  What do you think?