DJ'ing always involves a tension between what the DJ wants to play and what the dancers wants to hear.  It's a healthy interplay that can allow both the DJ and dancers to grow. 

It wasn't until I moved from downtown Madison to this near East Side neighborhood a year ago that I realized how much darker it is on Madison's streets than in Chicago. I and two other Chicago transplants were the first to move into this co-op house after it had been vacated by its previous tenants, and we were taken aback by how dark it got in the house at night.

I first encountered these energy beverages in 2004, a time when I was driving frequently between Chicago and Madison.  My return trips were sometimes kind of late at night--10:30, 11:30 p.m. and there were many instances when I came close to falling asleep at the wheel. At such times, even coffee was insufficient to keep me safely awake.

Today it rained most of the day in Madison.  It was one of those steady, ever-present rains. It kind of reminded me of the  rainy day that forms the backdrop of the scene described in the Suzanne Vega song "Tom's Diner."  Given that we are in the last days of winter, it was a welcome sight.  I'll take rainy-day drabness over winter bleakness, and in early March, it is especially welcome.

I have sort of a funny relationship with music.

I walked into the kitchen and sure enough, on the whiteboard was written in big letters "CAVE DAY!" and underneath, it said,  "Temperature 87 degrees, humidity 67%."  Yes, the alert had been officially sounded. 

Ah yes, the first weekend in May.  Once again, it is time for the Mifflin Street Block Party,  In this time-honored outdoor neighborhood event, undergraduate students celebrate the approaching end of the semester by partaking of spirits, and spreading, er, good cheer amongst themselves and their neighbors.

I usually pray for heavy thunderstorms.

I think a lot of us like to fool ourselves to thinking that our scribbles of idle fancy and self-important treatises will somehow make a difference in the world and in other people’s lives.  And the most bizarre thing is that this is sometimes quite true…

Tomorrow marks my five-year anniversary as a full-fledged resident of Madison, Wisconsin. I’ve been meaning for a long time to tell the story about how I ended up here.

In any case, I felt a sense of calm as I looked out at the fresh coat of snow, covering up the grey and grime.  I began to think that maybe I'd like winter more if I lived in the country instead of the city.