Amelia

Friday I made a quick trip to see the Turner show at the National Gallery. If you're in town before early January I would recommend seeing it, it's pretty spectacular. Turner is great if you want to see an artist's work shift from clear, descriptive scenes, to an expression of atmosphere and light so thick the canvases look almost completely abstract. (For those of you who came on last week's art tour, Rothko has some Turner echoes.) I also stopped by the NGA offices to deliver thank-you cupcakes to G. and M. who ran a comps dry run for me.

Saturday afrikate and I went out in the U street corridor. It was fun, afrikate danced with a very enthusiastic older man. We found a place with good music although quickly realized we were not in the going out uniform. (It's evolved since we were in college.) By the second place our mission had become an anthropological study of the young 'uns and their fashion choices.

The rest of my weekend was spent grading papers, trying to finally shake this headcold, and hanging out with D. who's having a worse time with the same cold.

Wonderful weekend in New York! I took the Vamoose bus up Friday morning, met my advisor and Q. (a Northern Baroque specialist in our dept. who works in visual resources) at the NYPL. We viewed my advisor's awesome exhibition there. It's on E. European modern journals a major potential dissertation topic for me. Then Q. and I went to the Met to see the Rembrandt show. It was phenomenal if oddly arranged. Also busy, but it could have been busier. I practiced talking about the paintings in preparation for my exam and we had a really good time.

After about 3 hours we were museum-ed out. Q. had to leave to catch his bus home. I decided to take a long walk, from the Met down to Soho where I met my adviser and his wife at their apartment. We had a lovely dinner in which I tried not to drink too much wine. :)

grumph and toran I went to explore the bars in grumph's new neighborhood. We found a place with good sangria's and enjoyed a mojito-flavored one. Then I headed back to crash on grumph's beautiful, new, comfy couch.

Saturday I walked across the park to the Met to see the very end of the Rembrandt show and the african collection. I especially enjoyed a small exhibition on Papa New Guinea co-curated by the Hood Museum. Then toran called so I met him and T. for a delicious brunch (blackberry and cherry pancakes! we even tried the gingerbread pancakes with apple butter, delicious). Toran and T. introduced me to the Venture brothers (so much fun) and I took an impromptu nap on their futon.

We went to E.'s medieval-themed birthday party. I didn't have a costume but someone lent me a tiara. The party was fun, I met some nice people and charades at the end of the evening were especially amusing. I drank enough that when someone accidently spilt beer all down on side I didn't really mind.

Sunday I slept in. grumph and I had brunch and I headed home to D. :)