Break Week 1
We’re just about halfway through December already. My how time flies.
As it is the school break, the format of these posts is changing. Now they’re just paragraphs in random order. Thankfully that won’t last long, as the break is so short.
Anyway, in the news this week… hmmm…. not much, actually.
I did get one grade from last term, and it was in … drum roll… cultural theory. Rather astoundingly, I got an A. My last academic course (possibly — probably! — ever) and thus my last final exam. Happy to be done with it.
The other grades have not shown up yet, but they will. Instructors process these things at different rates, and it takes time.
Vancouver has been rainy for most of the week. And cold (or at least coldish by American, Midwestern standards): 5°–10° C for the high, and just above 0° for the low. Tinkerbelle is done with the rain. She hates it because she is stuck in the house. When she goes out, it’s either to come right back in (if it’s raining) or to stay out as long as possible (if it’s not) by ignoring whatever her humans are telling her to do.
Said humans have been mostly boring this past week, sadly, and even when they were doing something interesting, it didn’t involve her.
One such interesting thing was a visit to the Vancouver Art Gallery, precipitated by an exhibit of Cindy Sherman photographs. Sherman is a famous American photographer (I thought she was Canadian; it seems I was wrong), who is noted for creating self portraits in many styles and types. Here’s a link to Google’s images of her work:
If you click on that and scroll around, I suspect you will find a couple you recognize. I certainly do, and that would have been true before my art history classes.
Also on that visit to the VAG I learned a bit about a new (to me) Canadian artist: Beatrice Lennie. I took a few poor photos of her work to share:
As you can see from those images, her work covered a lot of stylistic territory. I found them fascinating, particularly the sculpture in the upper left. I suspect she created a wax original — probably with an armature in it, and then went through a mold making process to get to a final, plaster sculpture that she painted that pewter colour. It’s lovely.
The lower right one introduced me to something else as well. It’s carved from Haddington Island Stone, and the quarry was reopened in 2004. As far as I can tell it’s still open, and it’s a famous source of a specifically Canadian stone that I might have to learn more about should I have a place to carve at some point.
The only other thing of possible artistic interest this past week is that I have done a bit more painting myself. Those who recall last summer’s posts saw a painting come through that I was kind of OK with at the time, but which I have later come to believe has a number of fatal flaws. I am trying again, working in a similar style, but attempting to be a bit more careful with colours and what not. It’s not quite done yet — I think there are some touch ups still to do — but here it is as a work in progress:
I know, I know: lousy photo, terrible glare. But it’s not done, and I only spent a moment to capture that with my phone. I’m not even sure what orientation the final work should go in at this point.
If I like the end result, I will take a better photo and share it here in the coming weeks. (That will have to happen before Jan 6, or it won’t happen until late April, so expect it relatively soon. I hope.)
The only other thing that happened this week is that I took one long walk when the weather allowed (covering 17 km, or about 10.5 miles) and I really enjoyed it. Doing so confirmed for me just how tiny the metro Vancouver area is. North Vancouver to the southern edge of Richmond is only about 15 km as the crow flies. Even with walking on streets and paths, I contend it would be possible to walk from north to south through the entire thing in a single day. I cannot imagine doing such a thing in the San Francisco Bay area, which is the closest reference I have in my head.
Maybe there will be more walks in the coming week. The current weather forecast looks somewhat promising, though any weather prediction for more than 36 hours out in the future might as well involve throwing darts at a board labelled “rain” and “sun” at various points. Vancouver weather forecasts are very, very poor.
Anyway, that really is all the important news from this past week. I hope I haven’t bored you too much.
And In Conclusion…
I had to share this. Yes, it’s very geeky, but I love this stuff. If you’re new to xkcd, remember to hold your mouse over the cartoon to read the image text. It’s always a laugh.
Oh, perhaps some of you are reading this on a phone? If so, here’s the link for you:
Instead of holding your mouse over the image (which, understandably, is a bit hard to do on a phone) there is an alt-text link at the bottom that you can click on.
Typo Status
Yes, I am still tracking this. Report those typos!