A Week in Pictures

The Sunset last Friday at Pacific Beach in San Diego, CA

Madame Hessel in the Boudoir, Rue de Naples, ca. 1935 by Edouard Vuillard--one of my favorite artists--at the San Diego Museum of Art

The view from the Ocean Beach Pier in San Diego

Where the Keebler elves live. (A tree in Balboa Park)

Mirrors on the wall of my aunt and uncle's living room in San Diego

Young Girl in Front of a Window, 1930. By Suzanne Valadon. At the San Diego Museum of Art.

Flowers at Disney Land

This man rollerblades while dancing to music up and down the sidewalk at Pacific Beach.

Nom nom nom--a panda at the San Diego Zoo

Wenches for sale in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney Land

A pillow at the Disney Land Hotel. Really.

San Diego Zoo

My uncle's lamp collection in the spare bedroom

I returned yesterday from a weeklong visit to San Diego, CA to see my aunt and uncle. We also went to Disney Land and California Adventure, and January must be the time to go. There weren't many crowds, and most of the lines were only five minutes long. My dad and I rode 18 rides, and my mom and my aunt rode 17. (They wouldn't ride California Screamin', the roller coaster that goes upside down.) That's a new personal best for us :) The weather was--for the most part--sunny and perfect, and now I am back to chilly weather and piles of snow. Bookish posts coming soon.

Happy Friday,

What 83 pages look like:

This grainy web-cam photo is of me and my senior English portfolio, which is a tree-killing total of 83 pages long. And I needed five copies. Also, I've done a lot of hole-punching.

I hope this photo explains the lack of Musical Monday posts and book reviews on Bookduck, and why I've been reading, but not taking the time to comment on, other blogs.

Happy Monday,







Oh, P.S. Here is a song. Just because.

 

Eight Things on a Tuesday

1. The National Book Awards. I was super excited to hear that Franny Billingsley's Chime is included in the nominations. But I was less than thrilled to hear about the colossal faux pas that followed the botched nomination announcement. If you haven't already heard, Lauren Myracle's Shine was accidentally named a nominee. Libba Bray wrote a wonderful (and very swear-y) post on the rest of the story:

However, the NBA stated afterward that, based on its merits as a work of excellent literature for young adults, SHINE would remain on the finalists list. Crisis averted. Or so it seemed.
 
What happened after that is worthy of a soap opera called “As the Incompetence Turns.” Over the next few days, a back-and-forth of “we’re keeping it,” “no, we’re not keeping it,” “it’s worthy,” “no, it’s not worthy” was played out in the media and over the Internet in a very public, very hurtful way that did not seem to take into account that at the center of all this was a real live human being, an excellent writer, whose work and reputation were being dragged through the mud as if it were no big thang while the ruffled feathers of injured egos were patted down in a backroom somewhere.

Lauren Myracle was asked to withdraw from the award proceedings.

I haven't read Shine yet, but I interviewed a high school librarian last week for a grad school application essay who said that one can feel light shining through this book. "It's one of those books where the sun just rises," she said.

There's a good round-up of more reactions at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy.

2. RainyMood.com. The website that does nothing but make it sound like it's raining outside. I visited the website last week, and for a few minutes, I forgot that it wasn't really raining. (via Stephanie Perkins)

3. Books. I'm in the middle of Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and I have Stephanie Perkins's Lola and the Boy Next Door waiting on my bookshelf . . . but I cannot pick them up again until I finish my English colloquium revisions and the books I'm supposed to be reading right now. Sigh.

4. Cat pictures. They make life better. My kitty turned eighteen last week. Here are some pictures my mom took of her last fall:

Kitty yawn! There has to be a hilarious caption for this photo, but my brain is too fried to come up with one right now. Suggestions?

5. Pumpkins. We have a happy one in our living room:

6. Veggie pizza. Last Friday, my friend Kirstie and I went to the grocery store and picked out some random ingredients. We give you yellow squash, yellow pepper, and potato pizza with basil:

And FYI, putting potatoes on a pizza turned out to be a surprisingly good idea. (And if you try it, you should know that we fried the veggies in some olive oil on the stove before putting them on the pizza, because otherwise they would have spent only 10 minutes in the oven, and they would have been very, very crunchy...)

7. My Judy Moody doodle was still alive on Sunday. The kids at the library left the whiteboard alone for TWO WHOLE WEEKS. Unbelievable.

8. Pan Am. I got mostly caught up on the TV show this weekend, and am enamored with the clothes and all the spoken French. Also, I can't get over how the ladies carry their purses. I'm not sure I could do this all day:

Happy Tuesday,

Fall Wreath

The instructions for this project can be found at The Spotted Fox. I saw it last year, bought a wreath form in January, and finally had time to make it this August, just before moving into my on-campus apartment for this school year.

I sure wouldn't have time to make one right now, which is unfortunate, because our living room is still undecorated and rather sad. This wreath hangs in the tiny entrance hallway.

Happy (non-Musical, because--once again--I do not have time to track down a video) Monday,

 

Revising a painting

I'm trying to start and finish a couple paintings before the school year begins, but I feel like I can't move on until I fix this one that I did for a class in June:

It was my last painting for the class, and I finished it just an hour before final critique. Consequently, I didn't get a lot of time to look at it and let it talk to me. I knew it didn't want the top of the figure the way it was, but I didn't have time to figure out what it wanted instead. This painting stumped me all through July and into August, until I remembered a painting I'd seen and photographed at the Art Institute of Chicago in July:

Portrait of Constance Pipelet by Jean-Baptiste-Francois Desoria, 1797, oil on canvas.

I like the figure's pose and attitude, so I decided to appropriate bits of it. I don't know if my figure will hold a book, and I know she won't have the same hair, clothing, etc. (The high heels stay!) But seeing this painting again got me out of my rut. Artists borrow from art history all the time.

In any case, here's a picture (it's a little awkward-looking because I took it with the camera on my laptop, which was not easy) of my progress so far. I accidentally made this great pink color that I added in a few places, started some apples on the right, and sketched some of the figure in with charcoal. (The lines you see now will probably all be rubbed off; they're just placeholders.)



So now I'll keep looking at it, adding lines and pushing and pulling them back. It's like editing a paper. Almost.

"I go here now."

Playing hide-and-go-seek with my oldest cousin's daughter while camping last weekend. She just turned four, and in her version of hide-and-seek it's impolite not to say where one is hiding. She makes me smile :)

Happy Tuesday,

I wish my desk lit up, too.

Behold the marvelous children's circulation desk at the public library in Champaign, Illinois. It lights up and changes colors:

Taking pictures in libraries is awkward, what with all the people studying and browsing. But this awkwardness didn't stop me.

Too pretty to leave un-photographed, no?

I took these pictures on a road trip with my friend Amber last week. Our mission? To check out some graduate programs in library science. Naturally, we also spied on the public library systems near the grad programs.

And Champaign's public library is a win.

Signs don't get much more awesome than this.

Other things that make Champaign fun, besides the Jane Addams Book Shop*:

The artwork taking shape on this fence downtown.

Pekara Bakery and Bistro, which makes great sandwiches, cookies, and crepes. We know this because we went there twice in one day. Amber took this picture after we finished a delicious, berry-filled crepe.

Colorful tabletop at one of the gajillion Espresso Royale coffeeshops in Champaign.

The Sousa Archives at the state university in Illinois. I'm a trumpet player, and I've never enjoyed playing his marches, so yes, I took pictures of period shoes instead of his sheet music.

The Art Theater, a lovely 98-year-old theater.

It was very hot inside, though. One of the owners of the Art Theater came in before the film we saw to explain that the old building isn't set up for air conditioning, and the unit they do have is too noisy to run during a movie. So they shut it off, and we roasted. But it was worth it. If you get a chance, I recommend seeing Beginners.** It made me laugh, cry, and wish my pet came with subtitles, too. Here's the trailer:

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*The Jane Addams Book Shop might be America's coolest used bookstore. Remember?
**Beginners is rated R for a reason, though, and is probably not suitable for an all-ages family movie night--which is too bad, because that subtitled dog is so cute.

America's coolest used bookstore might be in Champaign, Illinois.

I went on a roadtrip with my friend Amber last week to check out a couple grad school programs for library science, and we spent last Friday afternoon in Champaign, where we discovered the Jane Addams Book Shop. Here are some of the pictures we took:

Shag carpeting . . .

. . . to go with the retro furniture.

Matching book-and-chair.

The Jane Addams Book Shop is three stories tall, and reminds me of Shakespeare and Company in Paris, France.

So, what do you think? Have you encountered a similar used bookstore? An even cooler one, perhaps?