The burning hair smell is gone from my hand, I'm pretty sure. I acquired it last night while lighting the stove (the pilot light is broken) in order to heat up some leftover pizza. Apparently too much gas had built up before the spark from the lighter gun did its job, causing a frightening ball of flame to jump out at me with a low woof sound and engulf my hand and arm for a split second. The damage was minimal at best, but i jumped up and down like a cartoon character anyway. My first thought was "for crying out loud, this had better be the best left-over pizza ever!" sadly, it wasn't.

food and drink! chris nelson (who is, among other things, the best songwriter i know of), invited me out to dinner tonight for the occasion of his five year anniversary of being employed at the architecture firm. we dined at the striphouse, a steak place on 12th street. it was by far the best strip of beef i've ever consumed. we managed to go ten dollars over the supposed limit, making it also the most expensive dinner i've had while living in new york, and perhaps ever. my debts to chris are piling up like firewood in october.

stayed inside despite the nice (43 degrees) weather to finish the mixing and mastering of gp17, the title of which is still up in the air. my only excursion outside was to the lic mini mart to buy milk, orange juice, and beer. it was eight o'clock and dark but i sensed a small warmth in the breeze nonetheless. there is something really nice about taking deep breaths of night air and walking down a quiet street. may the coldest days of winter be behind us.

lots of music lately; lungfish last night. muhal richard abrams just now, thanks to laurence. what i'd like to remember about today, though, is what happened on the morning commute. the train was coming into the station as i was getting close to the stairs. i didn't think i'd be able to make it, but i ran anyway. up the stairs, around the corner, through the turnstile, up more stairs to the platform just in time to see the doors closing. i connected w/ some blank stares from inside the car, knowing that these people would disappear forever in a second or two. it was cold and rainy and i didn't feel like waiting around for the next train. and then, miraculously, the doors opened again and i hopped on. thank you to the kind conductor who must have re-opened the doors.

saw steve lacy and danilo perez play tonight at carnegie hall. rather at zankel hall which is in the basement of carnegie hall. they played 'flakes,' 'blinks,' 'esteem,' 'deadline,' one whose name i can't recall, and a nice 2-in-1 by danilo whose second half was 'love in five.' i hear that lacy's health is not 100%, but his playing is still confident, clear, and way above my head. well worth the thirty five dollars. before the show i was at the ticket window standing right next to someone i would have liked to talk to, but was unsure how to approach the possibility of conversation. were this a real diary i might go into the details of this story. my goal here, however, is just to record one thing that happened today in as straightforward a manner as possible.

there was a brown spider on the cd pricing table today. i presume that it crawled out of a cd that had been in an old looking box that had been brought down from upstairs. it walked to the edge of the table and seemed to be looking at me as i sat on the top of the radiator. i put a cd lid just under the table edge and it came right down onto it. then i put the lid above the wastebasket and the spider gently let itself in the garbage on a strand of web. several hours later jason noisily compressed the garbage (mostly broken plastic cd parts)with his shoe (which got stuck). i imagine the spider found its way out by then, and survived.