Back at work today, business as usual. I have my annual performance appraisal sometime today but the salary review won't come for another few days.

When it comes to falling asleep, I can only doze off in certain positions. If I'm taking a nap, I generally fall asleep fastest while lying on my stomach but can occasionally fall asleep on my back. If I'm hitting the sack for the night, I can never fall asleep on my stomach, and must be on my back. However, if I wake up in the middle of the night, I can go back to sleep on my stomach with no problems. Booty has the same behaviour -- she can only fall asleep in her bed, or on any reasonably flat surface.

Knightly: (adj.) Noble, courageous, generous My Composition (0:28 MP3)

The first mental image that came to mind before looking up an actual definition was a double whammy -- Kiera Knightley starring as an anorexic waif of a damsel in distress, in one of those really bad period pieces from the 1980s. This fragment depicts a knight who is both courageous AND caring, and what it lacks in any real musical depth, it makes up for in the immediacy of "if I heard this song, I'd know what kind of movie I'm in for".

Happy Birthday Madeleine!

Journal Fragments

random excerpts from my first year of grad school

♣ September 3, 2001: Yesterday evening, I went to the department head's house for a music theory welcoming picnic but it's actually next week. Luckily no one was home so I didn't look completely dumb.

♣ October 14, 2001: Mark was drunk and telling Kathy his opinions of people in our Pedagogy class and labeled me as the "quietly competent" one. I've heard that before...

♣ December 1, 2001: In the afternoon, I went out to eat with Mark, Mike, and Beth, and then Mark, Mike, Jim, and some other composers went to Irish Pub with Dr. Wingate for happy hour. I split a whole pitcher of Heiniken with Mike. The outing ended up becoming a bitch session about the bureaucracy of the composition/theory department which was stupid.

♣ December 12, 2001: I hit part of a ladder on the road in South Carolina but survived, and then hit five miles of dense dense fog in southern VA. [...] Anna and I also went across the street to say hi to Philip and Kelley. Kelley wasn't home so we watched Philip play Abe's World on his X-box then went home.

♣ February 1, 2002: Today was a pretty good day, despite my MWF pedagogy class being horrible.

♣ February 23, 2002: I left Mike's around midnight when some of his louder friends showed up.

♣ March 25, 2002: Anna broke up briefly with Ben last week but it was over quickly and now they're back together.

♣ April 20, 2002: Just now, I was talking to Liz online and asked if there was any new gossip this semester. She replied, "____ has messed around with scott, shac, and kelley".

List Day: Things I Threw Away Last Weekend

• The complete series of "Quest for Clues" hint books for PC games from the 1980s. They were never a cost-effective purchase, since you never owned more than two of the games in the book.


• A three-inch binder filled with horrible grad student presentations from Music Theory Pedagogy II at FSU


• Three clarinet reeds


• A set of 100 magic markers from 1992


• Over 50 original jewel cases for CDs


• Three workbooks from various summer camps on effective Drum Major skills from 1996


• Two copies of my college-application musical compositions portfolio


• Nine empty binders which I saved to reuse but then never reused


• Back issues of Consumer Reports from 2004 to 2006


• Back issues of Nintendo Power from the late 1980s


• A four-port Ethernet hub


• Twenty-five feet of telephone land line


• Eight graphics card S-video adapters


• Three telephones


• Four power adapters that no longer go with anything


• The rest of the cilantro


• A litter container holding twenty pounds of bagged cat poop

Answers Day

the thrilling conclusion to Questions Day

"How often do you rearrange your living room, and is it just to get a new vantage of things and keep thing fresh or because you think the setup works better?" - Evil Mike

The living room actually hasn't been rearranged for about two years now, and has only been in two basic configurations since my 2004 Rearrange My Living Room contest. The main hurdle in my urge to rearrange is that as televisions get wider, the number of places where they can be in the room without blocking a window decreases. The alternate configuration, which puts the TV against the inner wall is nicer looking, but puts the couch so far away that you have to turn the volume all the way up to hear anything, and then it echoes like my parents' house when they're watching CNN in the morning.

"If you could be shrunk down to the size of a cell and injected into someone like that guy in the movie Innerspace, who would you want to be injected into?" - Steven

It would have to be someone who exercises regularly enough to not have clogged arteries, because I sit in enough traffic in the real world. They should also have done a wide variety of recreational drugs, so all of the bizarre mutations floating around in there would look cool in my tourist snapshots.

"If you had to rank them what would be your top 5 loved/favorite video games?" - Evil Mike

In no particular order:

• World of Warcraft
• Ultima VI
• Doom II
• Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge
• Sam & Max Hit the Road

"What is the source of your avatar 'Cattlebruiser': (1) an anagram of 'Battlecruiser', (2) a play on 'Bulls-hitter', or (3) something even worse?" - Mom

I came up with this Starcraft handle one evening in 1998, when everyone was sitting around in a chat channel instead of playing the game (This has since become the recommended way to succeed at ANY online game). The origin is a reversal of the first letters on the game unit, Battle Cruiser. Since my online handle at the time was ~Squiggy~, it was not hard to convince myself to upgrade to a better one.

"If you didn't have to work (or really report to anyone other than maybe your wife), where would you live and what would you do with (to?) yourself to occupy your days?" - Doobie

I would live in a place with direct access to a beach, pool, and Internet. I would spend the first two months doing nothing but playing video games until I got sick of them and got it out of my system. After that, I would probably be just as productive as I am today, perhaps with slightly more composing and slightly less coding. I might even get around to finishing my replacement for MacGamut and Practica Musica.

"When will Mike (of Mike and Chompy) update his website again with tales of adventure?" - Evil Mike

Mike is so busy failing his students or dating his coworkers (both of which are allowed -- it's the reverse that is frowned upon) that he'll probably never update redzeppelin.org ever again. He would probably have to clone himself, but that can't happen anytime soon since he doesn't understand how the body works at a cellular level.

"If you undergo gene therapy how many genes do you have to change in order to get the end result? All of them? One of them? I honestly do not understand how this works." - Chompy (the dog)

Unfortunately, we're out of time today, but this question will be given its own Day sometime next week, on a very special update of the URI! Zone.

Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

1:42 AM: Returning home from a party at Carolyn's in Arlington, to a cat in need of warm feet.		8:19 AM: Framing a shot worthy of a beginning perspective lesson in Art class.
8:22 AM: The rest of the house thinks I am up too early.		8:34 AM: Bagel for breakfast.
9:22 AM: Working on open source software.		11:30 AM: Going across the street to help the neighbours load up a truck for their imminent move. Anyone need a house with us as neighbours?
2:00 PM: Heading west on Route 7.		3:59 PM: Emily is in town!
4:30 PM: Assorted dogs worn out by assorted children.		5:15 PM: Aforementioned assorted children.
5:29 PM: Grilled chicken breasts and corn for dinner.		7:37 PM: Heading home to pick up Rebecca's parents from their China trip.

Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

5:14 AM: Arisen in the Bathroom of Right Angles.

5:43 AM: Reston at or near sunrise.

7:59 AM: Working on migrating code from one Subversion repository to another.

1:26 PM: Home after a brief Safeway run for Rebecca's meadow bread (breadow).

1:35 PM: Leftover chicken for lunch, which appears to be levitating through a trick of the flash.

1:44 PM: Leftover lasagna for second lunch, since the chicken was insufficiently filling.

2:00 PM: Back to work for a couple more hours.

3:56 PM: Still enjoying Diablo.

4:25 PM: Running two miles on the treadmill while watching West Wing.

7:00 PM: Incoming thunderstorm.

7:16 PM: Preparations for Taco Night.

8:48 PM: Taco Night!

Memory Day: Snapshots

The picture on the left was taken ten years ago, in May 2005, just after Anna had let a giant moth into the house. The picture on the right was taken just this morning. The changes over the past ten years are clear, like night and day:

• Fewer apple prints, more orange hues


• One less fat grey cat


• One less original kitchen chair


• Chandelier is less 1977 dining room and more 2009 Chili's


• More stuff on the walls (.com)


• An actual change from night to day

Data Day: Gassing Up My Car

Here are some mildly interesting statistics about gasoline, drawn from the 90 times I've filled up my gas tank since I purchased my car in May 2012.

The average gas mileage for my 2012 Honda Accord is 21.71 MPG. The worst was 15.87 (during the winter) and the best was 30.1 (on a trip to Blacksburg for the MV Practice Field opening). Honda advertises 20 city / 30 highway for this model so I'm normal.

The price of gas has ranged from $1.80/gallon to $3.87/gallon with the average at $3.11.

I generally go 285 miles or 16 days between fill-ups. Once, I made it 39 whole days without filling up, but that's because we were in Canada and then we drove Rebecca's car to the beach for another week with the Smiths.

The most I've ever spent on gas in a single fill-up was $65.40. The most gas I've ever purchased at once was 17.0 gallons.

Data is fun!

Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

12 pictures of your day on the 12th of every month

6:56 AM: Bagel for breakfast.

7:32 AM: Early morning Grim Dawn before the house awakens.

8:58 AM: Showered and ready for the day.

9:32 AM: Good morning!

10:41 AM: A soggy day at the lake, made exciting by holding the umbrella (and a wooden pig).

11:19 AM: Helping me mix'n'match a six-pack. "Daddy drinks burr!"

12:42 PM: Learning about the Solar System while helping us with a planets puzzle (cross-functional training).

1:18 PM: Helping Maia build towers.

2:33 PM: Running on the treadmill while starting the TV version of 12 Monkeys.

6:44 PM: Enjoyed the rocks outside of Mellow Mushroom more than the food.

7:16 PM: Bathtime!

7:35 PM: Ready for PJs.

Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

12 pictures of your day on the 12th of every month

6:06 AM: Showered and ready for Day 61 of Self-Quarantine.

6:14 AM: Eggos for breakfast.

6:36 AM: Arriving at work.

9:03 AM: Good morning!

10:16 AM: Putting candles in the birthday cake in front of the Berenstain Bear's treehouse which is mysteriously filled with eggs right now.

11:27 AM: Working lunch.

1:18 PM: Exercising on the treadmill and watching Expanse, Season Two.

2:57 PM: Playing Elder Scrolls Online while Maia reads nursery rhymes during her quiet time.

5:30 PM: Hey, let's draw more bunnies.

5:45 PM: Games requiring us to lie on the bed are the best kinds of games.

6:17 PM: Broiled shrimp, tater tots, and broccoli for dinner.

7:17 PM: Post-bath, excited for her new book.

Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

12 pictures of your day on the 12th of every month

6:10 AM: Showered and ready for work.

6:21 AM: Bagel for breakfast.

7:05 AM: Fifth time I've been to the Herndon office since we moved here in April 2020.

8:37 AM: Wearing one of my six dress shirts.

10:15 AM: Welcomed home.

10:38 AM: Day Two of this Eagle Scout Project: Saving this stretch of the sidewalk from encroaching soil, trash, and poison ivy. Got up to that car yesterday (16 sidewalk tiles).

12:54 PM: Calling it a day after 13 additional sidewalk tiles, 1 bag of trash (including a 6-pack of Corona and 1 Heineken), and 12 square feet of ivy and vine removal.

1:29 PM: Stretching EVERYTHING while watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

4:10 PM: Gaming during everyone's naps.

5:08 PM: Biking in the sunny rain ("It's like a rainforest here!").

5:26 PM: Pizza for dinner while our fourth continues to have his second nap.

6:02 PM: Belated dinner for Ian.

Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

12 pictures of your day on the 12th of every month

7:02 AM: Running on the treadmill while finishing up Ripley.

7:35 AM: Showered and ready for the day.

7:46 AM: Bagel for breakfast.

8:44 AM: Working on various website graphics and ads.

11:52 AM: Leftover fried chicken for lunch.

2:35 PM: Ian comes home, happy from his first weekend with the grandparents.

3:43 PM: Matching some tractors.

4:41 PM: The line to get to Dulles Airport.

4:58 PM: Picking up Rebecca and Maia from their trip to Minneapolis.

5:13 PM: Everyone's home again.

5:49 PM: Garlic scallops and angelhair alfredo for dinner.

7:20 PM: Ready for bed.