Other things: Happy Friday

Posted on by
Reply

gray2

Last night I went to my first-ever grown up “opening” at a gallery for an artist I KNOW PERSONALLY. (Gray, he’s in the middle of the photo). It was pretty fancy (it was in Beverly Hills.) I wore a fancy dress and fancy shoes and had a twist in my hair with a Bobby and carried around a dainty clutch. I was all set to go in with my handsome boyfriend and gorgeous friends, and as we walked in I realized something was sticky on my shoe. And what was it? …gum. I mean, it could have been some famous gum, chewed by someone I would probably take ABC gum from, but that was not the point. I politely excused myself and walked out to a poll behind a bush in front of the Pilates studio next door, and scraped it off the best I could.

It was all very civil, the gum (which was green, so probably wintergreen, by the way) scraped off well, and I went back in, where my handsome boyfriend got me a drink, like we were part of a civilized crowd, and then we proceeded to stare at the art and comment thoughtfully.

This begs the question, though: am I ready for openings in Beverly Hills? Maybe not…but hopefully we fit right in.

gray

And that’s Gray’s boyfriend, Jeff. 🙂

Excuse me, I believe I've left my Pandora running…

Posted on by
Reply

pandora_over

I’m not sure when Pandora started enforcing a 40 hour listening limit, but they have. And I’ve reached my limit, which seems obvious because I use it the whole time at work.

I’ll only have to pay $0.99 to keep listening for the rest of the month, but I think I am going to take a break now and listen to the music I’ve added to my computer via iTunes (thank you, HSM and Matt Nathanson) and might listen to some radio online before I pay. It’s not that I don’t love Pandora (I do) or that I don’t understand why they have to charge (and in their ways to conserve listening time mention me almost by name–the person who walks away and forgets to turn Pandora off) because I understand that, too. It’s expensive to give things away for free. I get it.

But there is Public Radio out there, radio stations on the web, and lots of Podcasts I could learn something from. I’ll let you know how my new listening endeavors go.

Book List 2009: Updated

Posted on by
Reply

I have 5 more books to add to my list, and you’ll be happy to know only 2 of them are book club books. The rest are all my own. That’s five books since I last wrote, which was in May, so that’s roughly 8 weeks. Not bad. But I have to get cracking.

6.  The Red Tent by Anita Diamant (book club, I’ve already written about this.)

7. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

This one was OK. I appreciated the cultural of it, but I found it hard to follow the characters, and I wished it had focused on less.

8. Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingslover

Excellent read. Highly recommend it. So long, but so good.

9. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

A good solid war book. Satirical, entertaining.

10. Thirteen Days by Robert F. Kennedy

A thrilling memoir about the Thirteen Days of the Cuban Missile Crisis as told from Robert Kennedy’s involvement.