Small clay statue.

Shortly after today's cherished morning ritual I was presented with a crude totem of yours truly, fashioned by young Philippe out of a substance he calls his "play dough," which itself seems to be a crudely disguised casualty of Onstad's grudge match with the concept of kneading fresh pasta. It consists of a green ball, meant to represent the greater portion of my corpus, with a brown ball atop it, which naturally I take to be the head. A few crude ears were stuck on top of the brown ball, and something like a paper clip or pencil tip was used to sketch a low relief of what I believe is my pince nez. On the whole it could be taken for a figurine of any old fellow who happened to have lines scratched on his face, but as I have it on good authority that this is in fact my doughy likeness I accept it as such. I assured the lad that he was on to great things with his technique, gave him a quarter, and bade him to study Michelangelo. One must be supportive of childrens' early endeavors no matter what the discipline, for a strong tongue (or simple honesty) all too often nips their evolving sense of ability in the bud.

In other news, I had the chance to tootle about with a saxophone for the first time in a great while. Ray had procured a rather fine specimen on a lark, and before long the fingertips were fluttering up and down the keys, here and there striking up hints of the old Desmond masterpieces I labored to imitate in my younger years. The tone and timbre of the instrument was eerily familiar to the original Take Five-era recordings, and at times I found myself briefly transported to the old cold studio where Brubeck and the fellows sat and hammered out their timeless odd time. I strongly expect that in the coming weeks I shall be paying the Smuckles residence more visits of the ulteriorly-motivated sort.