First of all, that's a lie. I'm not listening to the new Copeland record yet, but only because I forgot it came out today. Er, yesterday. Whatever. It's really good, and there's some clips you can listen to on their website. I would say the new stuff sounds more ... 80's: slicker and almost "Hall and Oates"-ish. Probably not the best way to describe it. Good stuff, anyway.

I don't know how I did it, but I did. One piece for symphonic band under my belt. The college band read it today and I had to conduct. It was not pretty. They were very nice about everything. Rachel (the other grad comp student) wrote a piece that was supposed to be the band rehearsing a march. It turned out good even though she refused to conduct it.

After that fiasco - which I spent most of last night preparing for - I was so burned; I went home and zoned out. I may not be consistently busy, but when I put myself to a task, things get done. Gears get kicked into.

I'm trying to practice an economy of words in my writing (song and otherwise). Although I'm not the biggest Hemingway fan, I admire his methods. HST was also a big fan of weeding out extraneous words. So here I am, trying to cut down on the stupid adjectives I like to use. Mostly the exaggerations: "really", "just", "anyway", etc. I remember John Lennon said some things about "throwaway words" in songwriting and that "just" was one of them.

Where am I going with this? I'll tell you: I'm going to get some Thai on Thursday. It will be delicious.