Brilliant, Melancholy, and Inscrutable

If I were a Dead Russian Composer, I would be Sergei Rakhmaninov. I lived in the early Twentieth Century and was well known for my compositional, conducting, and piano skills, yet I am melancholy despite this talent. My famous works include my nearly-impossible piano concerti. Who would you be? Dead Russian Composer Personality Test

A Crate of Papaya

My family is very fond of the "idea gift." For example, I was given an electric keyboard two christmases ago which I still don't have, a recorder for my 16th birthday which took three years to get, and the Elph from my 20th birthday which I finally picked up this Thanksgiving. In a certain sense, the idea gift is the the purest form of gifting, not to mention effecient: the present reflects the giver's knowlege of the receiver rather than his current liquidity, and there is no need to go through the lengthy proccess of returns if the gift is disliked. Moreover, since my immediate family pools its resources communally, the irony is not lost on us when we purchase gifts. For example, today I signed the cheque on the DVD Arielle bought me.

Partially as a result of this, it took me until two years ago to realize that my family is wealthy. I always thought we were middle class, but it turns out we're just bohemian and so picky that we refuse to buy most things on the market today.

This was never brought home to me [in a somewhat literal sense] more clearly than when The Parents began remodeling their house. Heating conduits under the floor tiles, a conservatory, a billiard room, negotiations for a dumbwaiter and an elevator, stained glass windows (courtesy of my mother), and hand-worked Mission-style carpentry. My father has taken to watching "This Old House" so that he can mock the proprietors for solutions less elegant than his own.

It's all quite disorienting and throws things into a different perspective. If I wanted to, I could buy my clothes at Neiman Marcus instead of Salvation Army.

How silly.