gotta dash

You Are a Dash

Your life is fast paced and varied. You are realistic, down to earth, and very honest. You’re often busy doing something interesting, and what you do changes quickly.You have many facets to your personality, and you connect them together well. You have a ton of interests. While some of them are a bit offbeat, they all tie together well. You friends rely on you to bring novelty and excitement to their lives. (And while you’re the most interesting person they know, they can’t help feeling like they don’t know you well.) You excel in: Anything to do with money You get along best with: the Exclamation Point

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

My friend Lara sent me the quiz (thanks, Lara!).  Because she’s a fellow geek herself (although more in the math/science arena) she knew how much the grammarian in me would totally geek out over it.  So yeah, I’m a dash, which makes a lot of sense because I really like to use dashes of all varieties.  (If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you probably already know that.)  Yes, there are different varieties of dashes — em dash, en dash, and hyphen.  See?  You learn something new every day.

Ok, now I really do have to dash — I’m packing up my office for The Big Move across campus.  Have I mentioned yet that my department has just undergone a huge reorganization?  Ah, the joys of a new vice president.  My workgroup, consisting of 6 people, is being moved from our lovely century-old home with fireplace, cathedral ceilings, enormous windows, and full kitchen to the main administration building (a.k.a. 60s cement-block prison) and another workgroup is being moved from there to our former space.  My new office is about 1/3 the size of my current office and I’ll be sharing it with another person.  And it has no windows.  Yikes.  But as we’re all fond of saying around here lately, “At least we still have jobs.”  True, true.

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flickr friday

I’ve been trying to write this post all day and…let’s just say I’m feeling somewhat less than articulate.  So now I’m giving myself permission to just mooooooove oooooon.  Hell, you probably don’t want to hear me blather on about nothing in place of a real, substantive post, anyway!  Let’s do each other a favor and just move on to the flickr friday eye candy, d’accord?  Oui!  Allons-y:

End of Olsons, Andrew Wyeth

The painting above is a tribute to Andrew Wyeth who passed away last Friday at the age of 91.  And here are some photos in his honor, as well:

goodbye old man

what he said

alvaro and christina

easterly

one’s art…

distant thunder

wind from the sea

Andrew Wyeth

And now, some others:

seven sins

emptiness

untitled

rising – Bread, NOT the Bruce Springsteen song.  Gah! I can’t stand Springsteen.  He’s just kind of a tool, isn’t he?

sorting dishes – Apparently I’m not the only one with enough dishes that they have to be sorted…

untitled

i’ve seen the paths that your eyes wander down.

Sheesh, that was a lot of pictures.

I want to be really excited about the weekend, but I have to work all day tomorrow, so it’s kind of bittersweet.  What about you — what are you doing this weekend?  Something warm, I hope!  It’s supposed to get super cold around here again, like subzero.  Bundle up, kids!  And have a great weekend — see you next week!

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sunset

the fire feels divine, september 2008

I can’t help but ask myself how much I let the fear take the wheel and steer.

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the art world has lost a legend.

I really was going to get back here and do a flickr friday post today, but I just heard some really sad news that merits some attention:

Painter Andrew Wyeth Dies at 91

First and foremost, my condolences to the Wyeth family.  We’re all mourning a talented painter and a remarkable man.  But they are mourning their husband (68 years), father, grandfather — my thoughts and prayers are with them today.

As you may or may not recall, Wyeth is my absolute favorite painter.  I’ve been lucky enough to see much of his work in person, both at the Farnsworth Art Museum here in Maine and at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.  And I’ve had the great fortune of attending several tours and one private lecture given by his granddaughter, Victoria Wyeth, who provides incredible insight into his work, his personality, his character.  In addition to creating stunningly gorgeous and evocative works of art, he’s a really fascinating person.  Here are some quotes that, I believe, shed a little light on who he is:

“Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art.  It is important to forget about what you are doing – then a work of art may happen. “

“I don’t really have studios. I wander around around people’s attics, out in fields, in cellars, anyplace I find that invites me. “

“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it…  Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show. “

“I’m a secretive bastard. I would never let anybody watch me painting… it would be like somebody watching you have sex – painting is that personal to me.“

“It’s a moment that I’m after, a fleeting moment, but not a frozen moment. “

“To be interested solely in technique would be a very superficial thing to me.“

“To have all your life’s work and to have them along the wall, it’s like walking in with no clothes on.  It’s terrible.”

“I get letters from people about my work.  The thing that pleases me most is that my work touches their feelings.  In fact, they don’t talk about the paintings.  They end up telling me the story of their life or how their father died.”

It’s a sad day for his family, for anyone who cares about art and creative expression, for America — we’ve truly lost a treasure.

More, if you’re interested:

• AskArt.com has an exhaustive biography of Andrew Wyeth.
• NYTimes.com has a great article about him.
• As does WashingtonPost.com.
• Just recently, I wrote about him here at Susie Songbird.
• And on flickr, I have a set of pictures dedicated to the Olson House, where he painted Christina’s World.
  

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greetings from oblivion

Yes, I’ve fallen off the face of earth and I’ve landed here:

Sorry to have disappeared on you for a while there.  If you’re here, you haven’t given up on me entirely and I truly appreciate that.  Thanks for sticking around.  I came back to work on Monday after 16 days off and, while my desk may not look like the one in the photo, my workload is certainly making me feel like it should look like the one in the photo.  It doesn’t help that the end of the tax year occurred while I was away and now I have to play catch up on that stuff while trying to perform my normal daily tasks.  Oh, the insanity.  Anyway, I’m digging myself out, slowly but surely.

Christmas really sneaked up on me this year — somehow I managed to be ready (in an admittedly low-key sort of way) despite the utter chaos in my home.  However, I usually do a ton of baking in advance of Christmas and I didn’t do any this year (that probably goes without saying).  That lightened the load quite a bit.  Anyway it was a lovely, quiet Christmas that included a nice visit to the in-laws’ house in New Hampshire followed by some quality time with my loved ones as well.  Visiting and gift giving and breakfasting, oh my!  It was wonderful.

And then there was the rest of my vacation.  I pretty much spent that time getting my hands (and my hair on one occasion!) all gummed up with various home renovation materials like caulk, wood filler, primer and paint.  Joel applied wood filler to all the holes/gashes in the trim.  I sanded the wood filler.  Matthew contributed a hefty amount of time helping me prime and paint the trim, and then showed up with his professional painter brother-in-law who proceeded to paint the ceiling and put two coats of paint on all the walls in one day!  (Thanks, guys!)

Because we had the floors refinished during the week before Christmas, the painting completed during the week after Christmas, and the granite counter tops installed on Tuesday of this week…it means…oh my, it makes me want to weep with relief just to say it out loud…it means the kitchen is basically done.  Done!  It’s done.  The kitchen is done!!  DONE!!!  Ok, now I’m blubbering, so I’ll stop.  But in case you missed it:

THE KITCHEN IS DONE!!

We moved the stove, refrigerator, microwave cabinet, and a shelving unit back in after the painting was done.  I’ve been gradually adding things back to it this week and hope to do a bunch more organizing and decorating in there this weekend.  People, I’m starting to get my house back and I can’t tell you how much more peaceful that makes me feel.  I just don’t think I could have dealt with the chaos and filth much longer.  It took us six months almost to the day (started 3 July, finished 6 January).  But now it’s done and it’s beautiful.

I know you’re jonesing for pictures (some of you have been along for this whole damn saga and are demanding pictures) — I will do my very best to get some posted as soon as I possibly can.  Again, thanks for your patience.

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