She's Alive!

The November/December time crunch is on, but I had to update you all:

• I have been accepted into UNT's PhD program in Higher Education!! Horray! (And eeek!)
• Appropriate gifts to commemorate the occasion include these sassy t-shirts.
• No, this has no bearing on when/if we're having kids, and furthermore, that's none of your business. Um, not that I'm sensitive about the subject...
  
• Thanksgiving with 18 of our family members was great fun.
  
• My hair has been re-dyed and is now slightly less fire-engine red. Very, very slightly.
• Alex and I are flying to Las Vegas for a real--gasp--vacation on Christmas Day, for 4 days/3 nights.
• I'm flying on four different trips during December, evenly divided between work and pleasure. Yikes.

And that concludes the news portion of this program. Thank you, and good night.

Rolling My Eyes

Did you hear about the latest "Da Vinci Code?" No, it's not another book/movie controversy--some musician/computer guy claims to have found a hidden musical composition in Da Vinci's Last Supper.

Oh. Come. On.

Even if I didn't have that master's in art history giggling at that one, just my general sense of logic would have scoffed at this one. "Pala first saw that by drawing the five lines of a musical staff across the painting, the loaves of bread on the table as well as the hands of Jesus and the Apostles could each represent a musical note." Riiight. Because hands and bread loaves so closely resemble musical notes. Oh look, is that a knight of Templar over there in the corner?!

Yeesh. You think you get away from the kookier interpretations by sticking to old paintings in naturalistic, non-abstract styles... but there will always be some bizarre theory that makes your whole discipline look foolish. Maybe that's why I wrote my thesis about liturgical objects instead of paintings. When an object is used for a particular function in the church, and it bears a particular image, it's a pretty safe bet that that image is obviously tied to the function of the object. It's not too far a leap, there.

Then again, maybe there were hidden musical notes in St. Veronica's robes on one of those altarpieces I studied... wonder what that means, hmmm?

Meandering Tuesday Thoughts

So I keep composing blog posts in my head... doesn't get them published, unfortunately. As soon as I get that T-1 to my brain, we'll be set.

Anyway, I thought I'd give the "general life update" on things, for the curious. Last weekend, I worked on Saturday but took Alex with me, and on the way home he treated us to dinner at Prairie House, which I've been longing to eat at for years. It was tasty--not only did we enjoy three scrumptious kinds of BBQ meat, but we also indulged in a fried cheesecake. Yes--cheesecake... fried... in cinnamon and sugar... with vanilla ice cream. Sunday, we did a few errands and then celebrated my father-in-law's birthday. Alex and I came home to watch Spiderman 3... meh.

I mean, it's not terrible. It's at least evenly blah--whereas Spiderman 1, I loved the first half, but once Macy Gray starts singing it goes downhill fast. But 3 is not a movie I need to own. I saw it, and that's that--leave the franchise at 2 with its glorious peak, thank you.

Alex said Fantastic Four 2 was better, and I believe him, although I chose to only watch the last fifteen minutes (I also bypassed the first one, because the trailer indicated a high cheese factor). At least FF2 had the Silver Surfer to redeem it. I didn't even like Peter Parker or MJ in S3--the only moment I really *liked* was when Spidey smashed Topher Grace's camera. But that's more because I like Topher's reactions.

We've been watching movies here and there, but nothing is standing out in my mind. We did finally buy Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, which makes me quite happy as I've been longing to re-watch it. Alex is similarly thrilled that we bought The Librarian 2, which will be a good addition to our "adventure" genre that we watch so much of. It's nice that there's been a huge increase in fantasy movies in the past five years, but could studios start making more adventure movies now? Those are effects-heavy, too, people. Sahara and National Treasure were steps in the right direction, but I could do with a few more.

I'm not even going to talk about Indy 4 here.... too frightened, yet hopeful.

Oh, we did rent Transformers--hey, it wasn't half as bad as I was fearing. It was quite a lot of fun and not so painfully cheesy as it could have been, and it made up for any cheese factor with its gorgeousness. And, um--have you seen the HD-DVD trailer for Transformers? If you're not drooling, it's obviously because you haven't seen it yet. Go watch it at Best Buy and then see if that doesn't convince you to make a semi-sudden impulse buy of awesomeness.

Other than that... it's been a week and a half of long work-nights for both of us, so little to add. Tihleigh got us hooked on "How I Met Your Mother," and sad to say that we have watched 3 DVR-ed episodes of this, but as of yet none of this season of Heroes. They're right there, on the DVR... but we watch SGA instead, or, much as I hate to admit it, the uber-cheesy Flash Gordon. The only excuse for that being that it has the jerk boyfriend from Smallville in a fun role, and they also show BSG shorts during it.

The previous weekend, we took a day trip to Austin for our nephew's fourth birthday party--and it was a lot of fun! Because it was at a park, the little kids running around were fun and cute, rather than weary-making as it can get indoors. I've now got so many pictures on my SD cards to edit, put on my hard drive, and selectively upload to Flickr that it doesn't bear thinking of.

Sunday, Alex bought GH3 for the Wii, which he's been waiting many, many, many months for, and I finished some homework. Then we watched the Red Sox joyfully tromp on the Rockies (sorry, I do like the Rockies, but... man, it's the Sox, c'mon!). And thus, sadly, ends our baseball for the year. Always depresses me.

I did get some free coffee at Jazzman's (UNT's Starbucks knock-off) this afternoon, which was much happy-making. And now, on to more things... like graphic design and such.

Remember, Remember the 5th of November

My apologies to those who read both of my blogs. Just in general, really--but also because this is re-posted from the Geeky Artist Librarian.

So, this is another illustration that you should befriend your IT people. Besides the obvious necessity for keeping those that run all our technology happy, and thus getting some bang-up fast/awesome service, there are things like this.

One of our IT guys, who is an English grad student with a penchant for comics (thus our friendship--he loaned me the rest of Planetary over the summer) just dropped this by my office:



He made them for friends around campus to wear today. How cool is that? (And if you're totally wondering what this is about--it's Guy Fawkes Day. Go read/watch V for Vendetta, and you'll get it.) Remember, remember, the fifth of November...

A case of Mountain Dew and some friendly words go a long, long way, people.

Where Am I? (aka Dazed and Confused)

I'll give myself three guesses.

1. San Antonio? ...Nope.
2. Washington, DC? ...Nope.
3. Abilene? ...Nope.

Oh... this is home. Which is apparently in McKinney. This seems oddly familiar.

Vacation Means Not Thinking of Titles

So, the San Antonio trip/presentations is done, the DC trip and presentation is done, we picked up Bryce, and now we're in Abilene. It's been a packed two weeks! And for once, I've been mostly off-grid--which is both disturbing, and nice. I've been rediscovering the use of the phone for things like checking museum hours, and enjoying the silence of a hotel room with nothing but a comic book in hand (the internet connection having gone bad, and me having not the energy to complain). But a break from email, even for just three days, was a great way to relieve some stress (momentarily, however, as there will be four times as much to deal with when I log in tomorrow).

The DC trip was fantastic--I had a great three days of vacation with Alex and all four of our parents, seeing many thing I didn't have time to see before. And then the FDLP conference was really great--it's nice knowing so many people now. Plus, my presentation went so well and was so packed (upwards of 100 people!) that I was asked to give it again in KC in the spring--w00t! And since Alex's parents stayed while I was in conference, Alex had people to go out and have fun with, which left me feeling at ease about attending meetings I needed to. And even gave me a few hours after my presentation to decompress with that comic book mentioned (Jack of Fables vol. 1, which was as great as I expected). Then I watched part of two of my favorite movies, Star Trek: First Contact, and Stargate (not as great as the series, IMHO, but still awesome, particularly the beginning).

Bryce was waiting at the airport when we got there last night, which was awesome, if surreal, and we spent this morning laundry-ing, re-packing, and catching up on Stargate Atlantis episodes. I think the series will truly be great, now that Sam's on it and they've got the potential for a nice Locutus-esque storyline with Dr. Weir. Oh, and I also re-read Y: The Last Man vol. 1 so that I could then read vol. 2--and man, that series is not overrated. I can't really place my finger on what I like about it so much (unlike Fables), but it's just a heck-ton of fun and fast-paced beyond belief.

Now we're all at the Grand Admiral's place (i.e. Jared) in Abilene, playing Wii and doing a large amount of giggling. I had to take a break to do some work and re-connect to the internet, but I think next I'll read some of my "for-fun" blogs and then sign off. I'd like to take that "vacation = relax" philosophy seriously for another day, considering that tomorrow I need to do some serious homework catchup, type up my conference notes, etc. Sigh.

Geekery

I... want... this.

"...thanks to the ingenious ThinkGeek robot monkeys you can display the current wi-fi signal strength to yourself and everyone around you with this stylish Wi-Fi Detector Shirt. The glowing bars on the front of the shirt dynamically change as the surrounding wi-fi signal strength fluctuates."

That is all.

Ick, I'm Sick

So, who called that this was going to happen? I spend a week with a couple of 14+-hour days at work, complete a major project, welcome my husband safely home from a foreign country, and dodging about ten coworkers with various instances of colds and bronchitis... so, yeah, my body decided Sunday night it had had about enough of that.

Well, that and then already being tired and achy on Sunday, I nevertheless pushed myself through the paces on DDR Hottest Party for our Wii. My humiliatingly, husband-laughing-gut-bustingly bad paces. Probably didn't really help the whole energy level... but gosh darn it, they have "Hot Stuff" on the soundtrack. You know I can't resist a disco siren call like that. (Fair warning to DDR n00bs like me: turn off the hand motions until you've got some semblance of skill. Trust me.)

So yesterday I spent the day... sleeping. Wow. Imagine that!

Here are the pros of being sick:

• Getting sleep.
• Discovering that Burt's Bees Hand Salve is also effective on a chapped-from-too-much-Kleenex nose.
• Reading a new book from one of my favorite authors. (I might mention that this favorite author is, to my relief, still alive, unlike Madeleine L'Engle, Robert Jordan, or well I guess I had no hope with C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkein. Still, it's rough when most of your favorite authors will never produce something new. Good thing I've got Jasper Fforde to add to my list.)
• Getting work done. (Er, ooops--but really, I needed one uninterrupted day of solid work to get a lot of updates done on the ALA GODORT website. Sad thing is, I'm still not done--I blame the crummy CMS and my lackluster internet connection.)
• Being so rested that I write most of three presentations without really trying, because I suddenly have the energy to be excited about my topic again. And it not feeling like "work."
  

Here are the cons of getting sick:

• The chapped nose. And the fact that before I tried the hand salve on it, for some reason I tried peppermint lotion... owwwwww!
• Feeling more thirsty after drinking something. Which makes me want to drink less, which of course is not the best of ideas when sick.
• Realizing that I have three major tasks to complete before Friday... not counting finalizing three presentations for next Monday. And trying to relax and get better and not freak out about it all, considering that similar circumstances are what got me sick in the first place. Riiiiight.
• Having cable and realizing that most of the time, TV still sucks. (Although that does make me feel better about spending my days at work instead of vegging out on the couch.)
• Forgetting to call my mom on her birthday, because I slept through most of it. (Luckily, she's a forgiving mom, and didn't realize I didn't call her, until I called her today to apologize.)
• Oh, did I mention being sick? That's a huge con, right there.