My lesson today was at 11:30. I was able to get up at a little after nine, do some cleaning and be dressed and ready when Mrs. Hagenah arrived at 11:27. She's never late.

My lesson was a healing experience. First we went over the relaxing exercise that she has me doing, first just by relaxing my body and arms sitting at the piano and then doing the relaxing exercise (playing a passage slowly while dropping my wrists) with certain passages. Then we played the Bach as a duet. This time I played the left hand. A lot of time was spent on the Bach. She has books about Bach and talked about his life, his jobs, his persecutors, his family life, etc. It was very interesting. Probably need to get something out of the library. Then she asked me to play the Beethoven - 1st Movement of the Waldstein. It's actually a difficult peice for me to get the right mood at the beginning. but on the whole I think I played it better than ever, even though there are still technical difficulties and tempo fluctuations. I finally told her I was no longer at my job and what had happened. Of course she was happy that I no longer have to deal with the harassment and that I will have more time for my music.

Igloo has been very good - for him - about not jumping on the piano and ducking inside the keys at every moment. But somehow I feel the Bach inspired him - when we were playing the duet - and he couldn't help himself. I grabbed him when he was only halfway inside but he grabs the strings, so I had to stop and take off the quilted cover. Thankfully I had cleaned most of the stuff off so it was a very quick process and once I opened the piano he jumped out.

After Mrs. Hagenah left I spent quite a bit of time dealing with ANTS. Last year around this time I started seeing ants all over the living room and in the kitchen. Well they were back again. I had sprayed last night but I needed to spray more. There were some under a box so I took the box outside and emptied it but there were no ants anywhere.

I did end up having an altercation. Outside. Apparently there is a new person handling the sweeping and the garbage. I'd never seen him before. He was working in the front of the next building and I came out and put garbage in the cans. Then he came over to my building and dumped his sweeper in one of the cans. And he also removed my garbage, at first tearing the bag which I objected to, and then putting it in another can. By way of motions he let me know that the can I had put my garbage in was for recycling. Which meant that there were only 3 cans now for garbage. And even that's not enough when everyone puts their garbage out. I tried to question him but he wouldn't answer any of my questions. He mainly mumbled something about Management. Then he walked off as I was still trying to talk to him, went back to the building next door and shut the door in my face. I think a lot of "illegal aliens" pretend they don't speak english when in fact they realy do. This guy was just rude and ..................... I'm one of those people who is definitely in favor of closing the borders. It's probably not politically correct but I don't care.

Bob was coming to pick me up at 5PM and I decided to go get a new pair of jeans. I didn't have a lot of time (it was 3:30) but I new exactly where I was going and I figured I could be home in an hour. I took the bus down to 66th and Columbus. Got out the back door at 66th and walked up 67th. Made a right on Broadway but the GAP was there. Realized I needed to be back a block and walked back to 66th. And what do I see but the store I was looking for but it now has Banana Republic pictures and store opening information in the windows. My store, Eddie Bauer, is gone. They had really nice stuff and had clothes in my size. Now I really do have to lose weight, not that I have money to be shopping.

And Ed, if you're reading this. Eddie Bauer's prices were a lot more reasonable than Banana Republic. Plus they were'nt so chi-chi
(she-she) - I don't know you you spell it.

I intended to treat myself to a Henning Mankell mystery - his (new one - so I went into B&N. Only I couldn't find the one I wanted and then after buying 2 books that I really don't need, I found out that my discount has expired. I must say I handled all those disappointing things quite well. Except I did make an unnecessary purchase (a mystery by a black guy, the Blackbird Papers by Ian Smith; and Writers on Writing, Essays from The New York Times),
and then I went to Balducci's for food. Crab cakes and orzo and cauliflower.

I ate the orzo on the way home in a cab and got home with fifteen minutes to prepare.

I don't date and I don't feel comfortable with myself at my present size so I was not feeling in tip-top shape about going out with Bob, even tho (i) this wasn't a date; (ii) I don't have to impress Bob; and (iii) he's getting a divorce. I just had to kind of suck it up and forget about perfection and be me. Long story short, I had a very relaxing time, except for our food order mishap which just turned out to be funny and caused us to get a free dessert, which of course I didn't eat. The place was not crowded, the music was low and gentle and once the right food came it was vegetarian and delicious.

Bob showed me photos (on his computer) of his son, shots near the GW Bridge, the Blues Cruise he was on with Taj Mahal and Bad Gestad in Austria.

Two of his musician friends have just been diagnosed with cancer. That kind of puts things in perspective and helps me to count my blessings instead of wanting to kill certain people and/or rant and rave about the injustice of how they've treated me, which I'm not doing anyway. But you get my drift.

Tomorrow I have to get back out in the Park for my walk and I've got to work on my screenplay - A LOT.

Rita called me this morning from Las Vegas. She hadn't seen my email to her so I ended up telling her the whole story - about my no longer being at work and how everhting went down. It was good to talk to her and I hope we see each other from time to time.

Well today is good friday and despite how it began at 9am I thought it would be a good day. It's 8:26pm. The day is just about over and I was violated by those assholes at my job and I need to let it go and do some of my own work. The thing is despite the weather and the phone call this morning there were some very nice moments and I wanted to write about them elaborating.

So after my supervisor's first kick in the teeth, which was to tell me that I needn't have bothered giving them 2 weeks notice but since I did I could leave today - make today my last day and they would mail me any papers I needed to sign. After that I finally made some sort of expense list for my taxes. Things and amounts to use. I had no receipts in front of me so I was guessing at everything except the price of what I paid for my piano. I got upset with myself for not being able to keep orderly records. I've kept every receipt but I'd have to look through the receipt box and/or receipt bags. Not good. And I also couldn't find the envelope that I'd seen with some interest amounts I'd paid when I had the house. And I didn't even know now what I had paid for the house. Great. Oddly enough I found my 2001 and 2002 W-2 from Thacher.

I was determined to be on time tho. And I was. Took the C local down to 23rd Street. Was reading and almost missed my stop. So I was 20 minutes early. When it was time to go into my accountant's office, whoa. He was in a really bad mood, it being April 14th. And he wasn't pleased that I gave him a figure of $250 that I'd made from my CD and also gave him over $10,000 expenses. And he was too tired to explain. I felt like an idiot. Why didn't I know more about taxes. He worked it so I got a small sum back. Disappointing but at least I didn't have to give money that I don't have to the fucking government, who takes my money anyway.

Before going to the building where Kerner is - that's his name, I stopped in a local deli. It was actually crowded. This is 8th Avenue and 27th Street. There were lots of potted orchids on display and I remembered I had bought one from the same deli last year. Mt first orchid. It didn't last very long. There was a man who ordered before me but told me to go first to pay because all I was getting was coffee. That was nice.

After leaving Kerner's I was going to 86th and First Avenue to return to dvds to Blockbuster. I tried returning them yesterday to the blockbuster on 10th and 70th Street. Each Blockbuster is totally independent of the other one. First what happened is that the E train came and I let it go by - unfortunately. One of the men sweeping, that I tried to stay away from because I didn't want him sweeping at my feet, ended up having the correct information. There were no Uptown C trains running on the Local track - because of track work.