Minimalist Three Weeks In Review

[kate_nepveu]

Yeah, it's been a while. In a nutshell:

Three weeks ago Wednesday, I got very unwelcome, not-entirely-unexpected news at work—the flip side of the very welcome, very unexpected news of the last Week in Review post. So I spent the next week and a half working like a madwoman. This last week has been merely quite busy at work, rather than insanely so. The coming week should be interesting; I'm moving offices Friday as part of our office renovations, and will have to pack and label everything. I will not complain about the move, because I'm fortunate enough to be moving directly into one of the renovated offices. But it will be interesting.

Two weekends ago, I went to Massachusetts for two baby showers, one for a friend and one for my cousin's wife. Got to tell the "Is there something you aren't telling me?" story several times (it's what Chad asked me, the night he came home to find two diaper disposal systems on the porch—presents for the showers, of course, but he hadn't made the connection), see my grandmother's new apartment, and catch up with friends and family, so that was good, though it was a long weekend. It was an oddly acquisitive—for lack of a better word—weekend: besides two new suits on sale from Macy's and belated extended-family Christmas presents, I was also gifted with china from one side of the family and silver from the other. Unexpected and a teeny bit disconcerting thereby, but lovely all the same. Guess we need to bump a china hutch up on the list after all.

Last weekend there was, of course, the Super Bowl. Other than that, we headed for a Saratoga-area used bookstore on Saturday, because it was sunny and we wanted to get out. We stopped over in Saratoga for lunch and ended up spending quite a bit of time there—a Christmas store having its post-season clearance, a kitchen gadgets store, a mystery bookstore, and various tchotchke stores that kept prompting me to say, "no, no, we don't need more stuff and we can't afford these anyway, get me out of here before I break down and buy anyway." Found one of Dunnett's mystery novels at the bookstore we'd set out for. Note to self: that's the store with the really friendly gray-and-white cat, the one that climbed up your back when you crouched down to look at the bottom shelves the first time you stopped in.

This weekend was quiet. Yesterday, I went museum-ing to recharge; the Albany Institute of History and Art has a Tiffany exhibit that ends next weekend, and though it was mostly lamps—nice, but not my primary interest—I thought it worth the trip. As a bonus, there was also an exhibit on Frederick Carder's art glass, which was beautiful, and some really cool engraved glass as part of an exhibit called "Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Royal House of Stuart, 1688-1788: Works of Art from the Drambuie Collection" (yes, Drambuie the liqueur). I really, really need to make it out to the Corning Museum of Glass, for all that it would take an overnight trip, because much of the Carder exhibit was drawn from its collection. Then I did some shopping, getting new casual boots for $17, some shirts to go under one of the Massachusetts suits, and a really cool brocade-tunic-thing with pants (discounted to within my usual price range for suits, but the cause of some agonizing nonetheless because it's not exactly a suit—I think I can wear it to work, though, and it's just cool). Rushed home for a paella night hosted by one of Chad's colleagues, which was very nice. Today I did a lot of laundry and played a lot of NetHack, and that was about it. Oh, and cooked a simple dinner. Yay, recharging.

(Oh, and I was cranky about Tolkien over on the booklog this weekend too.)

Link things:

• In football news: a chatter on the Washington Post's website aptly notes, "Was it just me, or was this the 'Manic-Depressive' Super Bowl?"
• In judicial news: I don't think I'd go quite as far as Jack Balkin on the recent Massachusetts gay marriage ruling (PDF link), but it was certainly a very odd path for the Supreme Judical Court to take.
• I had no idea that the Wimsey Papers were online. I haven't read them before, and will save them for the end of the Sayers re-read (vaguely in progress).
• On the second page of a fairly unremarkable story about movie-themed travel is this line about a UK tour (emphasis added):

  Participants also follow Harry [Potter]'s route on the North York Moors Railway from Pickering to Goathland and take a class in dragon-slaying with Britain's last licensed slayer of dragons.

   . . . you can't just leave it at that! Who is the last licensed slayer of dragons, who licensed him or her, what are their qualifications, have they slain any dragons? Geez. Journalistic standards really are slipping.

Comments

[schulman.livejournal.com]

Glass exhibits terrify me -- I'm always certain that I will accidentally knock something valuable into an early splintery death. And yet, I go to them anyway. On Friday night I watched a glassblowing demo at the Pittsburgh Glass Center (http://www.pittsburghglasscenter.org/); the glowing blobs gradually became a 3 foot high vase with a flared neck and handles and lots of drippy bits wrapped onto it. The molten glass and sparks and water going fwooooosh were very dramatic.

The most memorable pieces in the gallery, however, were glass yellow jacket wasps, very detailed, marching in a line.

[kate_nepveu]

All the glass exhibits I've ever been in have had the items in exhibit cases, so no fears there. I do get a bit twitchy going into stores, though.

I've never seen glassblowing in person and desperately want to.

Re:

[schulman.livejournal.com]

I once spent a very nervous hour or so at a crowded gallery opening, navigating among the exhibits, which were not in cases. Many of the price tags were four or five figures. When I finally worked my way into the back room, there were several people huddled there, dreading the fraught trip back to the door. The pieces were lovely, though.

I was told one of the participants in the glassblowing demo this weekend was on loan from the Corning museum. I had always envisioned glassblowing as a fairly small-scale operation: One guy blowing into a long tube, with clear glass expanding on the other end like a balloon. In the demo I saw, the glass looked like molten cotton candy, and one guy rolled the tube back and forth (to keep the glass from dripping, I assume) while another squatted down and blew through the free end of the tube, moving back and forth with the rolling. It really should have been set to music.

They would snip off bits of molten glass, letting it drop, and the falling glass cooled so rapidly that it would clink when it hit the floor.

Regarding the Wimsey papers, I'd never even heard of them -- thank you for the pointer! I did quite enjoy the first half of Thrones, Dominations; it's fairly obvious where DS stopped and JPW took over, and it's also fairly obvious who the murderer is, so it should be convenient to stop at the dividing line.

[desayunoencama.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the Wimsey papers link. I hadn't read them yet. They're the source material Jill Patton Walsh wrote for her posthumous Harriet Vane/Peter Wimsey novel A PRESUMPTION OF DEATH, which I enjoyed more than THRONES, DOMINATIONS which was a partial ms. left behind by Sayers which JPW finished.

[kate_nepveu]

And indeed, it was in a discussion of the Jill Patton Walsh sequels that I found the link. I can't remember where the discussion was, though.

I've no desire to read the JWP sequels, so these will do nicely for a "new" Wimsey/Vane fix.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

The Corning Museum of Glass is very high on my list -- I'm a glass freak. I thought I might make it this year as Jordin was talking about a business trip to Corning around Boskone time, but that didn't happen. The Seattle area is a great place for glass enthusiasts and we belong to the Glass Museum in Tacoma. I also highly recommend the glass room at the Victoria and Albert. Erik and Colette were very patient with me when we went. But I went back on my own the next time I was in London and spent even more time. It's just amazing.

MKK

[turnberryknkn.livejournal.com]

"Is there something you aren't telling me?"

LOL! Poor Chad.

Had the chance recently to read the Silmarillion, thanks to Steve "_constantine" G. Definately second the hair-raising comments.