Coffee Klatch

Well, I’m on my way! I’m heading back to school, working on another Master’s degree. This time in Music Composition (my Bachelor’s was in the same thing). I figured that since I’m getting free tuition I might as well put it to good use. I can take up to 6 credits per semester with full tuition remission. Pretty cool! Definitely one of the perks of working at a university.

The Master of Music degree here is 30 credits and I’m taking 6 this spring. Hopefully I’ll be walking in May 2010. Today I got registered for classes, took care of the paperwork, and bought my textbooks (for which I get an employee discount of 10%!). I’m taking a “Music of the Baroque Era” class and a “Seminar in Choral Literature” which is focusing on the Classical Period this semester (Haydn, Mozart, etc.). Plus I’m singing with the University Chorale, which will be fun. It’s been three years since I’ve sung with a university chorale and this time I’ll be doing it as a student again.

Some other classes I’ll be taking will be based on the requirements for degree (go figure!), including a couple of electronic music classes, composition lessons, Music research, and some other Music Theory electives, ensembles, lessons, etc. The “thesis” for a Composition degree is a score of an original work “of a major nature” along with a performance recording if possible. There’s also an oral defense of the thesis/score and a separate comprehensive oral exam that covers all the classes you took in the program.

I think it will be a fun couple of years, since everything I’ll have to do, take, learn, etc., is stuff I really enjoy. I’m still working full time and ringing with the Circle City Ringers (plus being president of the Board this year), so I’ll be keeping pretty busy, but at least it’s all enjoyable. That makes me more fortunate than many people who don’t like their jobs or find schoolwork unpleasant or difficult.

Current music: Soundtrack for Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl

Today was our annual Library Staff Holiday Party, which ended with the traditional Duck Drop. That’s where we go up to the third floor and take turns dropping rubber ducks into the fountain down on the main floor (which is about 15′ by 10′). If you get it in the fountain at all, it’s 1 point, 5 points if you get it into the birdbath-looking bowl in the fountain, and 10 points if you get it into the various target rings set to float around the main fountain. Oh, and 25 points if you hit the big rubber duck with a target on his head and red rings all around his body, but people never really try for that one.

Everyone who scores above the median goes on to the second round. Same for the third and fourth rounds. Each round, though, involves dropping the ducks from a different side of the atrium, getting farther from the easier targets.

This year I won again! For the second year in a row, successfully defending my title! Woo-hoo!! And this honor also allows me to keep the King Duck in my office for another year. I *had* been telling people how much he loved staying in my office, so it’s only right that he gets to stay where he feels comfortable.

He’s a Rubba brand duck that’s really hard to find any more. His official model name is P.King Duck. You can still find him at RubbaDucks, though, which is nice. I’ve included his picture in this post.

Here are some other good Rubber Duck links. Who’d have thought there were so many varieties??

Rubba Ducks (there are ALL KINDS of really WEIRD ones too!)
RubberDuckShop
Rubber Bath Ducks
Lara’s Duck Collection

Thanksgiving weekend (Wed. - Sun.) this year was a trip to New York. Many of my relatives still live in the area south of Buffalo and we haven’t been back to visit since 1997. We left early Wednesday and made the eight-hour drive with an extra stop at the Cuyahoga Valley National Park where we got some scenic drives in, saw a waterfall, heard a bald eagle, and then later saw one flying overhead.

Side note: We have National Park Passport Books, which we can get stamped at every National Park/Monument/Battlefield/Historic Site that we visit, thereby collecting the stamps and documenting our visits, so when we travel, I like to plan routes that allow us to hit some National Parks along the way and get stamps.

We got to New York about 4:30 pm and visited with my aunt, uncle, and cousin that night. Another aunt, uncle, and cousin came for Thanksgiving Dinner and my grandmother’s sister and her husband came to visit. I talked genealogy (among other things) and got some more names and dates for our family genealogy database. All these were on my father’s side of the family.

On Friday, we went to Niagara Falls and visited the Theodore Roosevelt Inauguration National Historic Site (another stamp for the Passport Book). In 1901, President William McKinley was assassinated while visiting the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo. Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in at that site on Sept. 14th.

Friday evening we went to another uncle’s house (on my mother’s side) and had some more uncles, cousins, and their families come over for the evening. Saturday we went to visit my grandmother who’s in a nursing home. She didn’t know we were coming and was quite surprised. She hadn’t seen us in 10 years, which means Blaise was only an infant and Camber wasn’t born yet. And Alaric had gone from 3 years old to a 6′1″ 13-year-old. More genealogy info from my mother’s side, too.

Saturday afternoon we visited the Kazoo Factory in Eden, NY (I used to live in Eden my first few years of life). This was the original maker of metal kazoos (the only remaining one in the U.S.) and is 100 years old this year. We got to tour the factory and the kids got to make their own kazoos using genuine parts and a cool metal press that assembles the pieces, crimps the metal, and all that.

After the Kazoo Company on Saturday, we went to church with my uncle for the very first time and headed back toward Indiana. I had a critical handbell rehearsal to make today here in Indy at NOON, so we got a few hours of driving in last night, stayed in a hotel near Cleveland long enough to get about 6 hours of sleep, and then back on the road at 6am this morning. We had about five hours of driving left, so that got me home in time to quickly unpack and get ready for a three-hour rehearsal.

Now that THAT’S done, I can relax the rest of the evening and sleep in tomorrow since I’m now working Monday evenings at the Reference Desk instead of Tuesdays. Sigh……

(and that’s why there haven’t been any posts in the last few days)

Back in February I wrote about some highway construction that, while necessary, was going to put on hitch in my workday commute. Well, it’s OVER! FINALLY!! It was SO COOL to get on the highway a half-mile from my house and take a four-lane highway to work instead of 10 miles of city streets and stoopid drivers.

Granted, there’s still a bit more to do that will take the workers a couple of months to finish, but that’s mostly cosmetic like landscaping, etc. The best part is that the ON-ramps are open now, as are all the traffic lanes. For a few months now the exit ramps have been open, so I could take the highway home and fight the restricted lanes, but now I can get on near home as well.

What a relief!

Current music: Sacred Treasures from Russia III

Due to a desire to reduce technology’s time demands, simplify life a little, and consolidate the venues to which I regularly contribute, I made the following announcement on my Pfitz’s Pfunnies mailing list today:

After over 8 years and 2,500 posts, Pfitz’s Pfunnies is going off the air. But don’t worry, humor lovers, there are still resources available, both past and future. And a wider range of media as well.

All of the posts that have been made to Pfitz’s Pfunnies are accessible at the following two links:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pfunnies/ (for March 2000 - June 2006)
http://groups.google.com/group/pfunnies/ (for June 2006 - November 2007)
This will include all Pfitz’s Pfunnies posted since I migrated from a personal email list to a Yahoo! group.

Future humor a la Pfitz’s Pfunnies can be found on my personal blog, http://coffeeklatch.pfitzinger.net

The RSS feed for just the “Humor” posts is http://coffeeklatch.pfitzinger.net/?cat=10&feed=rss2

Not only will you be able to find future jokes here just like you would get in Pfitz’s Pfunnies, but you’ll also find past and future posts that have videos, cartoons, and other forms of humor. They won’t be every day, so if you find yourself needing a laugh fix, feel free to browse the archives.

I wish you all well and thank you for motivating me to share humor with the world over the last several years. Laughter is truly a gift from God which can ease tensions, improve health, and build relationships. Keep finding humor wherever you can, and if you come across something worth me posting on my blog, go ahead and send it my way.

Thanks.
Scott Pfitzinger (aka “Pfitz”)

The change on this blog, then, is that I’ll be posting more humor here than I used to, since I used to save the “jokes” for my mailing list. Those will start showing up here from time to time as I find good ones.

So I’m considering heading back to grad school. Academic librarians are typically expected to have two Master’s degrees–one in Library Science and one in an area of specialization. Some fields like Science or Music practically require it since quite a bit of specialized knowledge is needed.

Since I work at a university, I get free tuition for taking a class or two per semester. When I think about taking classes for an actual degree, I have to look at what graduate degrees Butler offers and what interests me. Along with what I’d be qualified to take. Can’t exactly jump into a Master’s in Biology without a B.S. in the discipline.

So I’m looking at a Master of Music degree. I’m thinking either in Music History or in Composition, and I’m leaning toward Composition. We have three great Composition professors at Butler and, since my B.Mus. was in Theory/Composition and I’m still composing and arranging music today, it seems like a logical choice and one I would enjoy. Plus, the Jordan College of Fine Arts at Butler University has an excellent reputation.

We’re talking 30 credit hours, including a thesis. For composition, this means a score and recorded performance of “an original work in a larger form.” Plus an oral defense, of course. Taking 1 or 2 classes a year (and maybe something in the summers), that will probably mean 2-5 years. That’s not so bad for pursuing a Master’s degree while working full time.

(Yes, I did go through all the coursework and Comprehensive Exams for my PhD in Education, but it’s been a few years now and I’m out of the program, ABD (all but dissertation). Chalk that up to experience. At least I’m still able to use all that I learned since I’m still working at a university.)

Current music: Halloween, by Mannheim Steamroller

Tonight we had a full five octaves of handbells at our rehearsal for the first time ever! It was AWESOME! Not only did we have 13 regular ringers there (with no subs!), but we played some Christmas music that was written for 5-6 octaves. Not 4 octaves, but 5 minimum. The way that tends to work is the harmony goes down to the C4 (in the handbell world, that’s the C in the middle of the bass clef, one octave below middle C) and the octave below that has a bass line, so if you only have 4 octaves and go down to the G3, you’ve got part of a bass line.

Well, tonight was the first night where we’ve had five octaves and people to play them. Ideally we’d have one more person to distribute the bass notes with (we have just two for the full octave, C3-B4), but it was still much better than me doing it all alone. We added an extra table and foam pad, so there was room for all the bells, and it was GREAT!

Tonight we worked long and hard on two songs: “The Twelve Days of Christmas” by Kevin McChesney and “Up on the Housetop” by Arnold Sherman. Two great level-5 Christmas pieces that are fun and challenging, while still being great music. They’re two of our harder pieces that we’re working on for our Christmas season. We’re also going to be doing Sleigh Ride by Robert Ivey and Blue Christmas by Hart Morris. That’s what we’ll be working next week (after we run through the two we did tonight to refresh).

It’s exciting to see how far the Circle City Ringers have come in so short a time. That’s a primary reason why I joined the group, because there was a vision to excel and become a premiere ensemble in the Midwest. We’ve been “organized” for less than two years (we were initially formed less than three years ago) and we’re already playing stuff like Up on the Housetop and Blue Christmas and doing them well. Or will be in a couple weeks. It was impressive to see how far those songs came in one good rehearsal.

Makes you glad to be a part of such a group!

Well, I finally did it. I broke down and went to the dentist. I haven’t actually been to the dentist since I lived in Bloomington, which was in 1994! Can you believe it? THIRTEEN YEARS!

And after 13 years I had a bit of tartar buildup, but nothing too extreme, and, best of all, NO CAVITIES!!

That ROCKS! I got full mouth x-rays (which involved about a dozen or so different shots) and they said my teeth look “strong and healthy.” They DID recommend, of course, that I keep up a regular regimen of professional dental cleaning rather than waiting another ten years to go back.

Oh, and part of the reason I finally went, besides having good coverage with Delta Dental, was that I had a spot by a back molar where the gums were really sore. I just started a few days ago, but was getting worse rather than better. In the process of cleaning, they found a popcorn hull that my flossing had missed. Within minutes it was already starting to feel better. Now I’ve just got the general gum soreness from getting a thorough teeth-cleaning for the first time in years.

Almost exactly one year ago I blogged about shaving my head. I’d actually been doing it for a couple of months before that, but didn’t blog about it right away. Recently I received a comment on one of the posts I’ve made in the last year about this topic. The commenter recommended the HeadBlade above all other razors, including the MachIII and Fusion razors. I, too, have preferred the MachIII and have used that almost exclusively for the last year.

I decided to give the HeadBlade a try after visiting their website and looking around a bit. Last week I received my very own HeadBlade and, after a few days of getting used to it, I have to agree that it’s the best. And also that it’s RADICALLY DIFFERENT from other blades! Here are some of differences:

• It’s built totally different, kinda like a snowmobile with a hook on top for your middle finger. The front end has its own suspension and pivots well.
• You use long, smooth strokes instead of multiple short strokes.
• You don’t apply ANY pressure.
• The blades LEAD the razor, rather than follow, so it’s like you’re pushing it rather than pulling it.

If you’re one of those fortunate, handsome guys that has opted to shave his head for whatever reason, I encourage you to try the HeadBlade. It’s a bit cheaper than standard blades, takes Atra blade refills (although I recommend you get the triple-blade kits directly from HeadBlade online), and gets your head smoother more quickly and easily. Although it takes 2-3 uses to adjust to the different way of shaving, the results are great.

They also sell various other headcare products, like some excellent moisturizing lotion (both in original High Gloss and new Matte) and an oil-free HeadShade sunscreen.

Oh, and according to their website, you can buy HeadBlades not only online, but at Walgreens, CVS, RiteAid, WalMart, Meijer, and other places.

And if you’re curious or have some questions about HeadBlade, they’ve got some great HeadBlade 101 videos! (about using the HeadBlade and also about shaving your head in general–GREAT stuff!)

Yes, the Coffee Klatch blog is in the process of being uploaded and imported to this new site. Hopefully it won’t be long before it has the exact same look and feel and archives as the old one. Stay tuned and please come back to check.