Paynes Prairie

This past weekend we drove down to Fort Myers, FL for our baby shower. On the drive home, we stopped at Paynes Prairie in Gainesville, to have lunch and take a walk, since I can't really handle long drives anymore, "in my condition." This is one of my favorite places to go ANYWHERE, and we haven't been in a few years... partly because we are rarely in Gainesville for more than a couple hours, and partly because the last time we tried to go, it was flooded from hurricane season. Now there's a new boardwalk that will help that issue when it rains really bad, but then there's still another mile of walking past the path.

This is at the La Chua trail and the Alachua Sink in Gainesville, Florida. Chris and I counted 120 different alligators on our 1.3 mile walk (one way; we only counted on our way back from the end), including 9 brand new baby gators. There are also bison and wild horses living in the prairie, but I've never seen the bison, just the horses. You see signs of them on the trail though, in the form of nice big droppings.

We took tons of photos for those of you who have never enjoyed the fun of walking along the trail watching alligators!

BABIES! There were 9 total, but I think only 7 in this shot. That's momma in front. We could see them so well because they were on our bank, so we had to be careful not to get too close and upset the momma gator.


This one was probably the closest to us of all the gators, actually being up on our bank. But gators don't really bother people unless they're bothered first. Like if we stepped on his head or waved a chicken in front of his face, then we'd be in trouble. Otherwise, no worries.


Large gators on the opposite bank.


Lots of gators lounging at the Alachua Sink. Warm water comes up from the springs below, which is why this is such a "hot spot" for alligators.


This is what most of the trail is like; we walk along the path, and to the right is the stream with all the gators, and to the left is basically nothing. This shot is taken from the overlook at the end of the trail. Walking back from here, we counted 120 gators between the end of the trail and the beginning.


Here's the new boardwalk, at the beginning of the trail.

The Skeene's Annual Tour de Florida

Well, the Skeenes have just completed their annual Tour de Florida, with a grand total of 7 cities over 13 days. This year's tour included stays in Jacksonville, Fort Myers, Lakeland, Fort Meade, Riverview, and Orlando/Lake Mary, with a cameo in Gainesville. Phew! It was great to see everyone and we had a good time everywhere we went... we're just a little exhausted. Next year we plan to do it again with Baby Zeke, but we're going to have to shorten it to a 3 city tour (with a cameo in Gainesville, of course).

Some highlights of the trip include:

1. The crazy seafood shack we ate at with my brother in Jacksonville - even if the waitress was evil and told me they don't accommodate food allergies - the dozens of taxidermied animals all over the place were still crazy cool.
2. Finally felting a bunch of my crochet projects, so I can get Chris to take pictures of those once we get home.
3. Cooking with my momma
4. The awesome seafood cookout in Fort Meade, where I ate my weight in shrimp and stone crab claws.

The low point? Realizing just how many allergies I have to deal with that are easy to deal with at home, but take a LOT of planning and special purchasing and whatnot away from home... kind of exhausting sometimes, but our hosts were all super-understanding and helpful about it.

Chris only thought to pull out his camera in Fort Meade, however, so other than the photos my dad took in Fort Myers, we only have some cool shots of the farm at Fort Meade. Chris will probably post some later, so I'll just leave you with a couple of my faves:

Walking off all those crab claws!


Emily and Duncan

SF Galleries

Last post for the night! I decided that the "arts and crafts" post for San Francisco needed to be separate from the other post.

One of the things Chris and I love about traveling is checking out museums and galleries. While we didn't do nearly as much of that in SF as we did in New York, we did see was lots of quality stuff. Of course the SFMOMA was great times, and we especially enjoyed their new exhibition of Martin Puryear's work. The ladder to the left is pretty much the only thing we could take a photo of, because it was in the lobby. No photos allowed in the actual exhibit, of course.

We also hit a couple of gallery shows, one at Gallery 1988, where I fell in love with the artwork of Yoskay Yamamoto (left), and Chris fell in love with the artwork of... just about everybody, so I'm sure he'll post about it eventually. For more info about the show, check out 1988's blog.

Then we made our way to the Plush You show at DoublePunch, which was just plain crafty fun.

And I think Chris gets just as excited about street art as he does about anything in a gallery... the boy took a TON of photos on Haight street. Here are just a couple of them... of course he had to take a photo of the huge Shepard Fairey mural.

San Francisco!

Last weekend Chris and I had our "last hoorah," a vacation just for the sake of a vacation without any worries of childcare. We decided to take a trip to San Francisco - a city I love but haven't been to in 10 years, and Chris had never been. Chris was also always dismayed to say he'd never been to California, so we were able to mark that one off his "to do" list for a while.

Our friend Chip and his wife Bethy live right in downtown SF, and they were awesome hosts, letting us crash with them and actually taking the time to take us around town. We walked a LOT, rode lots of public transportation (subway, busses, trolleys, and cable cars) and had a very good time. Some of the highlights:

Lombard Street

Gotta love the sea lions

Does anyone know what this is? We couldn't figure it out, and we were standing on it.

The Bluebottle Cafe made this crazy "syphon coffee" that took forever but looked awesome. We just got normal coffee, because syphon coffee was too pricey. But we enjoyed watching them make it.

And the obligatory pics of me and Chris

atlanta update

So Atlanta life is going well. We're still not settled yet, of course. Won't be til mid-August. So I still don't think it's sunk in that we LIVE here. It feels like an extended vacation in some ways. Weird. But obviously it's not a vacation because you don't go to work every day on vacation. But even that has been fun, so no complaints. So here's the extended update of what we've been up to:

Work: I've got a "real" job for the State of Georgia, doing web design and development. Our main portal is georgia.gov, but we do lots of stuff. I work in downtown ATL, right by the capitol building. In a sea of cubicles. Right now I drive 30 minutes to a MARTA rail station, then ride MARTA for about 30 minutes, then walk for another 10 minutes to get to work. When we move, I'll walk 20 minutes to MARTA instead of driving. I'm strangely happy with any length of commute as long as it's not in a car though. So it's all good. And the governor is a big fan of teleworking (working from home) to cut down on commutes, so I get to be productive in my own home once a week or so, which is even better. I'm also still teaching online for Southeastern Tech, and I've got a few freelance projects happening, so I'm keeping busy.

Play:: so I think we actually have more friends in Atlanta than we did in Savannah, which is weird. Or at least we know more people who actually make time to hang out here. Some are friends from Gainesville (we've been psyched to get to hang out with Brooke a lot, and we finally caught up with Melody yesterday, and one of these days I'll get to hang out with my friend Beth who was in art school with me), and then we've also got some friends that we made at the Atlanta Film Festival that we've gotten to hang out with as well. They are also awesome. And on top of just normal hanging out type stuff, there's all sorts of fun random things that happen in Atlanta, such as special Harry Potter screenings (yes, I saw it before you), a Soap Box Derby, and The Decemberists playing with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (this Friday night). I think we might heart Atlanta.

And it should only get better after Sam & Nicole get back, and we move to our apartment, and it no longer takes 45 minutes to get to Atlanta. I'm really super excited about our apartment. And settling in. And then it won't be long before everyone starts coming to visit us... Emily has already claimed the first weekend of September, and my parents will probably come up before that. And lots of other people keep promising to come see us too. So I think one of our first orders of business will be to get our guest room in order. I love having guests! I figure we'll finally make it to the aquarium sometime when people come to visit.

Okay, that's the update. I think that's everything. Now I gotta get working on some of those work things I mentioned.

Portland rocks!

What I didn't mention before is that Chris and I are beating around moving to Portland. The other options we were thinking about doing with the next couple years of our life all fell through, so now we figure we can go anywhere we find jobs, and we've been really interested in the PDX. Especially after visiting and getting a sense of the area, it seems like a reasonable possibility, provided we can find jobs there. So... there will be lots of prayer in the next couple months, and nothing is for certain, but that's what we're thinking.

So... some things we really loved about Portland... for one thing, people are nice. Friendly, helpful, polite, whatever... they were NICE. People working in stores, at restaurants, wherever. I found myself really surprised by that, and then I realized that I'm used to employees treating me like a nuisance they have to deal with so they can get back to doing nothing. I'm used to people mumbling at me so that I don't even understand what they're asking, or talking to their coworkers instead of helping me (except for the woman at World Market who is always super-excited about the sales, or the owner of Zunzi's who treats every customer like a rockstar). But I didn't experience that in Portland, which was pretty amazing.

Another great thing about Portlanders - they YEILD TO PEDESTRIANS! No kidding... if you're standing at a crosswalk, cards STOP for you. Rarely do they speed past, or slow down and wave at you to run across before they get there, they come to a complete stop. We even had cars stop for us at places that didn't even have a crosswalk. More than once a car would just stop, and we'd be confused about why they were stopping until they motioned to us to cross the street. We were SO CONFUSED. It was like being in a different COUNTRY or something. Pretty fantastic.

And of course there's all the yummy organic and vegetarian food options... all the organic local beers... all the flowers and happy plants, all the yarn stores and crazy hippie stores... so much FUN! And best of all, I didn't have pollen allergies while I was there, despite all the blooming stuff... but the second I got back to Savannah my eyes started watering.

AND along with being very bike-friendly and bus-friendly, Portland has cool things like car shares... which I think is just the greatest idea ever. Chris and I REALLY want to stop being so dependent on our vehicle for everything. For one thing, I would get a lot more exercise if I could bike or walk where I needed to go more often.

Granted, we didn't experience much of rainy Portland. It sprinkled a couple days we were there, but in general it was mild weather and clear skies, great for going to Japanese Gardens and the Columbia River Gorge. I'm not sure how I'd handle 3 months of rain and gray skies, but... at least it doesn't get super cold very often.

Well, this was more rambling than I expected, so I'll stop for now. Off to be productive again.

back from Portland!

Well, we're back in one piece, and gotta get back into normal life. I may write more rambling about fun in Portland later, but tonight I spent too much time uploading photos to my flickr account, so you can start there. I'm organizing things by tag, so you can see all things portland, or can break it up into more manageable bite-sized pieces, like the Columbia River Gorge, the Japanese Garden, or just general downtown stuff. We also took pictures of some we found around town, like some random public art, like toy horses tied to the side of the street, and the fuzzy poofs on some trees and powerline posts. There's some notable food items. Oh yeah, and flowers.

On an unrelated note, I've got a couple more crochet photos up of some newer projects. For the one or two of you who care.

It seems like some of my photos on flickr are losing their tags or disappearing, and I don't know how.

portland is awesome

so I thought I would be able to post some photos from some awesome places we went today, but we didn't bring the right cord for the camera. So... that will be a while. But I can link some things up and talk about how cool they are.

did I mention I love Portland? Lots of fun shops, places to eat and indy record stores and thrift shops and gardens and pretty trees (magnolias and dogwoods and red buds blooming all over!) And there's a Whole Foods market right in downtown... just lots of yumminess everywhere. I got a tasty organic microbrew at a pizza place (where the server was very excited about the prospect of fresh herbs on our pizza). Much coolness. It's beautiful here. Okay! On to the links!

Today we at at Hot Pot City, where you pick a soup broth flavor, and they bring it to you in a pot with a cooker under it, and then you get whatever meets and veggies and spices and noodles you want at the bar and dump 'em all in and watch it cook up. Pretty cool!

Then we went to the Japanese Garden, which is the most authentic outside of Japan. It was absolutely beautiful, and we took a whole bunch of photos, (which I guess I'll put on flickr when we get home).

Then we went to some shops, including a couple of cool yarn shops. I found some great stuff in Lint... I got a bunch of wool yarn... some to make a felted bag for me (since my first attempt turned out great), some to make Angela a felted bag with, and some that was on sale that I just had to get cuz it's awesome (usually $17 a skein, marked half off, so I got all 3), and I'll figure out what to make later. Let's just say I spent way too many $$ at Lint. But Chris told me I could get it as my anniversary present, so hooray (he got some used CDs at some indy record stores).

Oh, and I forgot to mention that Powell's Books is pretty darn awesome and huge.

We dunno what else we'll do with our next couple of days. We have two days where we only have film festival events in the evening, and then Sat/Sun will be all day, all night film festival stuff. So we have two daytimes to fill with random fun. I guess we've got to figure out what else we want to do. We do know that we want to go to Imago Dei Community Church on Sunday morning. I listen to their podcasts every week, and I really like the pastor. It's a pretty huge church, but I think it is worth checking out.

So that's what we know so far. And now I'm gonna go rest before we head out for some dinner.

2006 : Reflections

While the hubby doesn't really understand my New Year's nostalgia, (he doesn't really get into celebrating New Year's Eve), I can't help but feel the urge to look back on my year and think about all that's happened in 2006. Since tonight is going to be a quiet one (I'm not feeling too great and Chris has to be at work tomorrow morning, so no celebrating for us), I figure now is a good time to do all that reflecting. For brevity's sake, I'll do it in the form of some lists.

The Big Stuff

→ I lost my grandfather (dad's dad) in March. Missed the funeral because the death was sudden and I was in New York City already.

→ I lost my other grandfather (mom's dad) in July. We knew it was going to happen, so I was able to get up to Indiana in time to say goodbye and be there for the funeral.

→ I was able to reconnect with my cousins in Indiana while I was there, which was a real blessing.

→ In November I gained a sister-in-law when my brother got hitched.

Number of weddings attended: 4 (Jean Clark's, Tiffany Crenshaw's, Nahum & Melissa's, and my brother's)

Number of funerals attended: 1

I went to Art Museums or Galleries in:

→ New York City (too many to count in too few days)

→ Philadelphia (Philadephia Museum and a couple galleries)

→ Washington, DC (Hirshorn and National Gallery, mainly)

→ Atlanta (The High Museum, twice)

→ Savannah (the new Telfair, 3 or 4 times)

→ Gainesville (The Harn)

I went to a concert in:

→ New York City (Camera Obscura)

→ Atlanta (Sufjan Stevens)

→ Jacksonville (mewithoutYou, Anathallo)

→ Gainesville (Less Than Jake)

Places I visited WITHOUT going to galleries or concerts:

→ Columbia, SC

→ Indiana

→ West Virginia

→ Lakeland, FL

→ Fort Myers, FL

I went to one film festival (Savannah Film Fest), and took too many road trips to count between movie-related trips, funerals, weddings, concerts, and our vacation in March. I don't even want to THINK about how many miles we put on the car.

2007 : Projections

As for what 2007 has in store, only God knows where we will be at the end of next year and what all will have taken place. So far we know to plan on one wedding in February, and one film festival in February. We are hoping for more film festivals to add to the list (only time will tell). As for travels, again only time will tell, but I'm hoping that 2007 will grant us the opportunity to at least visit the west coast, perhaps making it to Seattle, Portland, and/or San Franscisco. Guess I'll have to start living the year to find out!

Happy 2007 everyone!

An Amazing Trip

Chris and I took a few days off from normal life recently and went to see a couple of shows and visit friends in Gainesville, FL and Atlanta, GA. The Lord really blessed our time. We caught up with a BUNCH of old friends, some of whom we'd completely lost touch with, and others that we just don't see often enough. We had some amazing time of fellowship with so many old friends, and the Lord used many of them as an encouragement to us.

When we first talked about going down to Gainesville to see Less Than Jake and visit some friends, it was going to be about 2 or 3 days out of town, and I could justify that in my mind as something that we could do. But then when we talked about going from Gainesville up to Atlanta to see Sufjan Stevens as well, and visit friends there, I was torn between really wanting to do this (it was the week I had off from teaching, after all), and feeling guilty about the idea of playing when I have so many things to do, and when money has been tight lately. But in truth, there are always a million things to do, and money always feels a little tight. And there are times when we need to play. We need to fellowship. And the Lord really confirmed that in our trip. We really needed this, and there was nothing to "feel guilty" about.

Anyways, the short recap of what we did... we played with the Geary's in Gainesville, and even went to Paynes Prairie to see some alligatorss (big ones- yippee!). 3 year old Cyris made us laugh a lot, and Baby Izzy is learning to walk. We stopped by the Christian Study Center and caught up with Dr. Horner and Nora Wickam. Later that day we got a call from our friend Amy who was in town from Orlando, and found out from Nora that we were in town. So we go together with her and Heather for dinner. That night we went to see Less Than Jake, had a good time, and got some sleep.

The next day we went up to Atlanta. Got there in time to spend a couple hours at the High Museum before they closed for the day... they had a bunch of photography that Chris wanted to see. Found a hotel, took a nap, then got together with my old art-school friend Beth for dinner. She took us to a most amazing restuarant called R. Thomas, with yummy organic food, and took us to her apartment to see her paintings. We had a great time with her, then went to a most awesome teahouse (11:11 Teahouse) to chill and check some email in their herb garden. I got some great tea, and we were harassed by random cats (real fuzzy cats, not hip slang for people). While we were there, our friend Stefan called... he, too, was in Atlanta! (he lives in Charlotte) HE was hanging out at a restaurant waiting for Brooke's shift to end. He gave us directions to here (including directions like "when you get to the end of this road, men in red coats will take your car away"). We got lost a couple times, but eventually made our way. We had drinks with Stefan and Brooke there until they kicked us out, then Brooke took us to another place where we hung out until THEY kicked us out. Then we went home to sleep.

The next day we met up with Brooke and Stefan again, and we ran around Atlanta all day, went to the Flying Biscuit for lunch, wandered into shops, learned that hanging a bag of water with a penny in it in your doorway wards off flies, and had an encounter with The Granite Curbs of Atlanta, which, we learned, pop tires if you get too close. That evening we got together for dinner with a bunch of friends who were going to the Sufjan concert, including 3 more Savannah people, 2 people who drove in from Gainesville, and a friend from Chattanooga. It was fun to see this concert that brought all of us together from all over the place.

I could also go on and on about how amazing the concert was, and how great Sufjan's music is, and how honest and joyous and beautiful it is, but I'll stop now.

Anyways, now we're back to life and getting work done and it turns out although I have a lot to do, it's manageable. And being out of town for a few days didn't mess anything up. And... it was awesome. The End.

Why Organic?

God's really put the idea of fair trade it on my heart a lot recently... I know I've blogged about it a couple times in the past, but right now I'm praying about what more I can do locally to spread awareness, specifically within our church and/or local churches in general, to let people know how their dollars can make a real difference in human lives. If you would pray for me in that respect, it would mean a lot.

So today I was looking at the website for a Fair Trade organization that my pastor told me about (he just bought coffee from them for the church the other day) and I ran into something that just amazed me.

This farmer was talking about why he only grows organic coffee.

"There are two main reasons that I now run a completely organic farm. The first has to do with my Dad. I grew up on a coffee farm. My father was a farm hand on a large farm and he used to spray the herbicides. The owners made him wear the tank on his back when it was filled with harmful chemicals. One day they spilled the chemical liquid all over my father’s back. Fifteen days later his skin completely peeled off and he became so sick he could never go back to work again. He has recovered some, but at the age of 65 he still can’t walk properly as a result of the accident.

Fourteen years ago when my son Luis Gonzalo was one year old, I sprayed herbicide on some of my crops. My young son had a cut on the bottom of his foot and he walked barefoot onto the place where I had just sprayed. He started to turn purple. We rushed him to the hospital and he went into a coma for three months. He was sick for seven years and is still somewhat affected by the incident. After that event, I was convinced that I would only grow crops organically."

I've started to be able to pinpoint that a lot of my health problems are related to pesticides, growth hormones, and preservatives in a lot of the food I eat. When I started cutting those things out of my diet by only buying organic and preservative-free foods, I felt a lot better. So I know that it makes a difference. But these stories just floored me. How can farmers even think about putting these things on our food? Why does the FDA approve of this stuff that can hurt us? (but really, don't get me started on the FDA and whether or not they are concerned about our health) ... I really just don't understand. Really, when it comes down to it, you're asking people "If I give you money, will you feed poison to all these people?" and a lot of people say Yes. They say "If I don't have to see them or think about the effects, and if it means I have a more comfortable life, the sure." And that's where we get the majority of our wealthy. And that just breaks my heart to think about.

I'll probably ramble more about this kind of topic as I learn more about it.

Last NYC post - yummy food

So I think this is the last thing I promised to rave about from our trip to New York... the food. I think I will just have to say that I don't think I can ever enjoy Olive Garden again after eating Italian in Little Italy. I honestly didn't know that olive oil could taste so amazing... and their pasta tasted homemade (another thing I'd never had)... it was just so fresh and amazing, I couldn't believe it. And we found a great sushi place in the East Village that had 50% off all their sushi all the time, so we got to get fancier sushi than usual and still pay less than we would have getting boring sushi back home. Yum! We had a crazy experience at a chinese restaurant in Chinatown (no one spoke english, even our table-mates, and they gave us forks because we're white). And we had most fantastic Thai food in Soho. OOh! And bagels! The only place to get bagels in Savannah are Atlanta Bread Company and Panera... and they're $1 for a plain bagel... so we were excited to be able to walk a block or so in any direction and get bagels every morning... real bagels, not Sam's Club or Atlanta Bread bagels.

Really, pretty much every meal was yummy and fun and all we had to do any time we were hungry was pick a random part of town, ride a subway if necessary, then walk a couple blocks looking at all the available options until we picked one that looked yummy and affordable. The only time this failed us is when we were in Tribeca later at night and our only option was a mexican restaurant that served hamburgers and didn't speak english and closed at 9pm... we just barely got there in time.

So we're kind of sad to be back in Savannah where there's no such thing as good bread or good bagels. But we do have cheap japanese and good pizza within walking distance of our house, to at least we have that to console us. (I actually decided that I preferred pizza-by-the-slice at Vinnie Van Go-Gos in Savannah over the Official New York Pizza at Ray's Pizza and Bagels in the East Village... that surprised me). And we can get reasonably priced Thai downtown, too. And burgers. But I will forever miss the italian and the bagels, which are pointless to look for in Savannah (unless Angela is cooking for us... she makes some killer italian food. it's in her blood).

Vacation Photo

So after going through the 500 pictures Chris took over out vacation, I realized that we're not really good at taking "vacation photos" ... not a whole lot of touristy pictures of places we go, and no pictures of the two of us anywhere... except for this one Chris took of us looking at a Robert Smithson sculpture at the MOMA. Aaaand... that's about it.

Click for the rest of the picture.

NYC - Hooray for Subways!

So one of my favorite things about New York City (other than the museums and galleries which, as you know, I burned myself out on despite my love for them all) is the public transportation. I really love to walk, and that's the whole reason we live where we do in Savannah, is that we can walk to a good number of places in Downtown. Our favorite coffee, restaurants, health food store, and Chris's classes are all in walking distances from our home. But when we need something from a big store or real groceries, or if we have jobs outside of downtown, the public transportation in this town is ridiculous at best, so we have to get in the car and drive. Especially with gas prices what they are, and the fact that our economy eats up oil like we're not fighting a war over it, I would really prefer not to have to rely on gas as much as I do. Not to mention cars just feed into our ability to lose ourselves in our own little worlds and pretend that no one else really exists and that nothing is as important as ourselves. (and that car that just cut me off isn't another human being with his own issues and things on his mind, it's this big machine that just upped my blood pressure unreasonably). So I love subways and buses (when they actually go places at reasonable times) because not only do I get some exercise walking to and from the subway, but I'm actually interacting with society. Sure, I don't really feel like talking to random people on the subway, but at least I have to acknowledge them... and it's kind of fun to watch people on subways, anyhow. Not to mention it's not wasting extra fuel.

The only thing I haven't figured out is how people buy lots of groceries if you're riding on subways. My guess is either 1) You don't get much at a time, or 2) you order it and have it delivered. Maybe there's another magical way this works, but that's all I've figured out.

So now I'm all about wanting to live somewhere with subways. And walking. Lots of subways and walking (or biking, but that's not really a possibility in Manhattan if you're not a fan of being run down by psycho drivers).

That's all I have to say about this.

Back from vacation - thoughts on Art.

Well, Chris has been doing a fantastic job of talking about our trip on his side of this website. He was a lot more diligent about taking time to do things online, whereas I barely got on the computer the whole trip... I was usually too tired once I had the opportunity, and was much more concerned with showering and sleeping.

So what I will add to Chris's accounts are a lot of extra little tidbits. Like my pedometer tells me that we walked, on average, 10 miles a day. I typically (if I'm lucky) manage to walk about 3 miles a day, and the recommended is 5 miles a day. So this was a lot more walking than we were used to... my feet and legs were killing me all the time, but we never wanted to stop because there was so much we wanted to see each day. We went to every museum we wanted to go to, plus PS1 (a division of the MOMA, which was awesome) and the Philadelphia Museum of Art that weren't on our planned list. We also went to every gallery we knew we wanted to see, plus a bunch that we just wandered into that had some awesome stuff (like a Nan Goldin exhibit, and one with some Matthew Barney prints). And we saw so much artwork that I started to get sick of artwork.

Really, I enjoyed everywhere we went. But I am more interested in modern art than I am in the older stuff... basically, I care most about anything from Dada onward than from anything before, and I have the most knowledge of art from Dada onward. And I love Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art... really, I LOVE this stuff... but I got really tired of art museums that seem to think that people stopped creating art after Pop Art. It got to the point that by the 4th or 5th museum, when I rounded a corner and saw another room full of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko and Barnet Newman, I would inwardly groan. I really got tired of seeing the same stuff... I wanted something newer! Give me some Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, or George Segal! I know you own some of their stuff! So where is it? And those are three artists we never saw work from... very disappointing. We did see a few things from Joseph Beuys, Rachel Whiteread, and Chuck Close. But overall, the post-pop-art representation was scarce. Very disappointing to me.

I ended up enjoying the small galleries more than the large museums in a lot of ways, because it was newer work, even though most the time it was people I'd never heard of and would probably never hear of again.

I must say that I was very pleased with the amount of Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Marcel Duchamp work that we saw, though. Their work never gets tiring to me... the Rauchenberg Combines show at The Met was amazing... and I was well pleased with the Jasper Johns room at the Philly Museum, not to mention the Duchamp room there.

Our RUF pastor has said on multiple occasions that he things beauty, and therefore art, is objective, and that Marcel Duchamp's work is not beautiful and is therefore not art. I will have to disagree with that until the day I die, because I think the work he's done is conceptually beautiful and meaningful in ways that a lot of other "beautiful" art cannot be.

Although I will say that the more I run into Monet's work, the more it grows on me.

Anyways, this has turned into a long rambling art post... I'll talk more about the trip later... next episode will most likely be raving about the food in NYC... and there's a lot to rave about!

Kids' Thanksgiving

Today we had "The Kids' Thanksgiving" down in Jax. My brother and his fiancee hosted thanksgiving for me, Chris, and Chris's brother Sam. Our friend Paul came and had thanksgiving with us, too. Matt & Sara made the turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli casserole, stuffing, and candied yams. I made the corn casserole, green bean casserole, deviled eggs, and Chris made "pink stuff." We also brought pumpkin pie. So we had a LOT of food. It was yummy. There were leftovers to bring home. That made me happy. I really love thanksgiving. I think it's my favorite holiday. The whole point of the holiday is to eat lots of yummy food and hang out. And sleep, although I didn't get my traditional nap this year. Really, you can't beat it.

And we were pretty happy with our ability to hold our own with a full thanksgiving dinner cooked without the help of our parents, who until now were always in charge of thanksgiving preparations. I think we did a pretty good job of handling things. Our only mishaps were turkey that had to be put back in the oven to cook longer, and hard-boiled eggs that I had to nuke a bit longer because I didn't cook them all the way through. We live and learn.