The American Heritage dictionary, arbiter of objective truth and language, defines “post-recital” as “the period of time following a recital”. Wow, that’s pretty profound. I’m going to need you to just ponder that for a few seconds.

Good pondering. So after Abstract Algebra on Tuesday I walked home and sobbed into a bowl of orange sherbet. Two things are notable here: First, the walking home. You might not know it, but that kind of thing isn’t actually very rare. In fact, many people walk home every day. But for me, that walk home meant that I didn’t go to the music center to spend time with the fabulous instrument in Practice Room 203. We’re… not really seeing each other anymore. Things have been a bit awkward between us since Saturday. I’d really rather not talk about it. A glorious wave of apathy has set in after the musical culmination of my four years at this school. For example: I could be revising my music history paper, but why do anything when I could do nothing? (By the way, a couple of weeks ago I wrote a 9-page paper about a single repeat sign in a single Chopin sonata to add my voice to the echo chamber of white men arguing about proper interpretation of 200-year-old piano music. Yeah, I feel pretty guilty about it.)

Second notable thing: The sherbet. I know you’re probably wondering: Who buys orange sherbet? Answer: My parents. Sentence fragment followed by colon: Other sentence fragment. The food items left over from my recital and subsequent parental shopping spree are as follows: ½ of a cake, a container of orange sherbet, 2 boxes of cereal, one ⅔-gallon tub of peanut butter, 3 bell peppers, a tray of gross meat cubes, a box of Portobello mushrooms, a refrigerated pizza, 1.5 gallons of homemade granola, a cracker box full of Hershey kisses, a bag of incredibly salty almonds, 4 heads of broccoli, and a bag of onions. Actually, this gives me a grand idea: If anyone wants to eat some cake-sherbet-cereal-peanutbutter-pepper-meat-mushroom-pizza-granola-chocolate-almond-broccoli-onion stew, I’ll be cooking it on Saturday morning at 2:00 AM in the probably-empty dumpster behind Save-A-Lot (R.I.P.). Because… I don’t have any pots that are big enough. After we partake of the swill, we will hold a brief séance to communicate with the spirit of the abomination and bring it to life. Bring your own bowls, candles, and Ouija boards. It’s gonna get real.