Yeah, it's been a while. In a nutshell:
Three weeks ago Wednesday, I got very unwelcome, not-entirely-unexpected news at work—the flip side of the very welcome, very unexpected news of the last Week in Review post. So I spent the next week and a half working like a madwoman. This last week has been merely quite busy at work, rather than insanely so. The coming week should be interesting; I'm moving offices Friday as part of our office renovations, and will have to pack and label everything. I will not complain about the move, because I'm fortunate enough to be moving directly into one of the renovated offices. But it will be interesting.
Two weekends ago, I went to Massachusetts for two baby showers, one for a friend and one for my cousin's wife. Got to tell the "Is there something you aren't telling me?" story several times (it's what Chad asked me, the night he came home to find two diaper disposal systems on the porch—presents for the showers, of course, but he hadn't made the connection), see my grandmother's new apartment, and catch up with friends and family, so that was good, though it was a long weekend. It was an oddly acquisitive—for lack of a better word—weekend: besides two new suits on sale from Macy's and belated extended-family Christmas presents, I was also gifted with china from one side of the family and silver from the other. Unexpected and a teeny bit disconcerting thereby, but lovely all the same. Guess we need to bump a china hutch up on the list after all.
Last weekend there was, of course, the Super Bowl. Other than that, we headed for a Saratoga-area used bookstore on Saturday, because it was sunny and we wanted to get out. We stopped over in Saratoga for lunch and ended up spending quite a bit of time there—a Christmas store having its post-season clearance, a kitchen gadgets store, a mystery bookstore, and various tchotchke stores that kept prompting me to say, "no, no, we don't need more stuff and we can't afford these anyway, get me out of here before I break down and buy anyway." Found one of Dunnett's mystery novels at the bookstore we'd set out for. Note to self: that's the store with the really friendly gray-and-white cat, the one that climbed up your back when you crouched down to look at the bottom shelves the first time you stopped in.
This weekend was quiet. Yesterday, I went museum-ing to recharge; the Albany Institute of History and Art has a Tiffany exhibit that ends next weekend, and though it was mostly lamps—nice, but not my primary interest—I thought it worth the trip. As a bonus, there was also an exhibit on Frederick Carder's art glass, which was beautiful, and some really cool engraved glass as part of an exhibit called "Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Royal House of Stuart, 1688-1788: Works of Art from the Drambuie Collection" (yes, Drambuie the liqueur). I really, really need to make it out to the Corning Museum of Glass, for all that it would take an overnight trip, because much of the Carder exhibit was drawn from its collection. Then I did some shopping, getting new casual boots for $17, some shirts to go under one of the Massachusetts suits, and a really cool brocade-tunic-thing with pants (discounted to within my usual price range for suits, but the cause of some agonizing nonetheless because it's not exactly a suit—I think I can wear it to work, though, and it's just cool). Rushed home for a paella night hosted by one of Chad's colleagues, which was very nice. Today I did a lot of laundry and played a lot of NetHack, and that was about it. Oh, and cooked a simple dinner. Yay, recharging.
(Oh, and I was cranky about Tolkien over on the booklog this weekend too.)
Link things:
- In football news: a chatter on the Washington Post's website aptly notes, "Was it just me, or was this the 'Manic-Depressive' Super Bowl?"
- In judicial news: I don't think I'd go quite as far as Jack Balkin on the recent Massachusetts gay marriage ruling (PDF link), but it was certainly a very odd path for the Supreme Judical Court to take.
- I had no idea that the Wimsey Papers were online. I haven't read them before, and will save them for the end of the Sayers re-read (vaguely in progress).
- On the second page of a fairly unremarkable
story about movie-themed travel is this line about a UK tour
(emphasis added):
Participants also follow Harry [Potter]'s route on the North York Moors Railway from Pickering to Goathland and take a class in dragon-slaying with Britain's last licensed slayer of dragons.
. . . you can't just leave it at that! Who is the last licensed slayer of dragons, who licensed him or her, what are their qualifications, have they slain any dragons? Geez. Journalistic standards really are slipping.