Rochester! I am Coming for You!

Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes!

The next three weeks will be spent in durance ecstatic at the medical center in Rochester, New York, working in a primate neurophysiology lab with Ben Hayden and his lab which has generously agreed to host me during my stay. Which is a good thing, because if they didn't host me, I would likely spend all of my time gorging myself on ribs at Dinosaur Bar-B-Que in a vain attempt to forget all of my sorrows. Like my daddy always said: You won't find the answer at the bottom of a basket of ribs. Unless, of course, the question is about the basket.

In any case, I look forward to working with them, bouncing around some ideas, working with the monkeys, attending Eastman School oratorios, noshing at Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, hosting an FMRI workshop, hitting the famous Rochester roads every morning and taking a swipe at that elusive 100-mile week, finishing Absalom, Absalom!, listening to Bill Evans CDs, and avoiding the herpes B virus. Pray for me.

In case any of you reading this will be in the Bloomington area, I recommend checking out the Weiss-Kaplan-Newman trio at 8pm this Tuesday (July 16th). They will be playing, among other works, Shostakovich's horrifying piano trio no. 2 in e minor - a piece which never fails to set my vile blood on fire.