Lots of things to catch up on.  Our wireless @ home has been acting up so I couldn’t do any of this stuff this weekend.  So, if you want to keep in touch with me, email is still the best way to do that.  I rarely check LJ and even rarer on Facebook.  We made the decision over the weekend to eliminate our land line so I and Zen_oven are only available through our cell phones now.  We’re looking at aspects of our budget that we can cut to save money.  One of our long-term goals is to consolidate all our media (music, periodicals, books, podcasts, movies) on one device so that we can eliminate clutter.  I heard that the Seattle Post Intelligencer is now online only with no print edition.  I’m looking to get a PDF version of the Houston Chronicle or maybe use Google News so I can hear news on the topics that interest me. We’re planning on getting a computer with a media center and hooking it up to a television with a digital receiver.  Then we can eliminate our cable and still record PBS shows to the hard drive.  The other shows we watch can be downloaded from the internet or Netflix. I’ve heard of a few companies that are planning on replacing game consoles with streaming web-based games, so I think business models that allow access to download streaming content from the web will be the future.

Some of you know that we’ve been having difficulty in our marriage.  We had a good argument this week and some discussion Zen_oven has had with her new friends that has helped us come to some understanding of issues that we have been stuck on for the past two years.  We’re both making changes to address each other’s needs and that has led to us feeling like we’re more willing to work together to try and make things work out. I heard an interesting podcast about the stories about how couples got together are often the stories that help them stay together.  The author of the story remarked that rarely do people ask about the times that couples struggle and how they managed to stay together.  Although I’ve been hearing useful advice from couples that have been together longer about how to resolve these differences.

I resubmitted my science paper about a week ago also and have been hearing some positive things about funding in general as well as for specific money in my lab.  This week I’m going to Testis Workshop in Philadelphia and then visiting my parents just before Easter. We’ll be heading to Baton Rouge the weekend after Easter for a repeat of the crawfish boil that we attended last year.  Afterwards, I have no significant plans for travel or meetings for a while.  I’ll be working on grants again this summer and may explore some teaching opportunities if my training grant doesn’t preclude them.

A week ago I went to Dallas to see the King Tut exhibit, the Nasher Sculpture Garden, and the Crow Collection.  The King Tut exhibit was okay but mostly oriented to the novice audience and very little of Tut’s burial artifacts were present.  I enjoyed the early Kingdom period show in D.C. that J and ymasen and I went to much better.  We had more opportunities to docent and the books at the Smithsonian were much better than this show.  I regret I was unable to be there on Tuesday when Zahi Hawass was arriving for a special lecture. 

I saw some very interesting scuptures using light at the Dallas Museum of Art.  In one room black lights were set up at intervals to make it impossible to see anything but black and white.  In the opposite hall all you could see was intense colors without any appreciation of depth.  The same artist had many pieces that incorporated the element of time.  I also went to my old house in Plano where I lived from ’82-85.  The whole place was unrecognizable.  It was all subdivisions and strip malls.  Aside from the art I found Dallas in general to be just one big sprawl area with inadequate signage downtown – I could really have used a Tom Tom.  I would have like to have had a little more time for exploring places like the Soda Shop www.thesodagallery.com. Then maybe I would have seen a different city.  I did have a great meal at Stephen Pyles downtown with some ceviche in guanabanana juice and four gazpacho shots including a tomatillo-honeydew one and a smoked beet one. 

Sunday I went to the Fort Worth Botanical Garden which is in full spring bloom and very beautiful.  Their Japanese garden was very large and filled with hidden curves and gifts from their Japanese sister city. I had a buffet lunch at the restaurant in park which was your typical buffet food, but well executed and moist despite being in a steamer tray. I had time for a quick driving tour of downtown (fairly unremarkable to me and not much dining or shopping options) and then toured the Kimball Art Museum.  I had seen it on Great Museums on PBS.  It has a small but rich collection installed in a specially designed building of curved concrete with narrow light slits that disperse the light over the ceiling and not onto the art itself. Downstairs I saw Aztec chocolate vessels and Nok sculptures – some of my favorite things.  They had a special exhibit on love in Renaissance Italy.  There were a lot of specific platewares and trays painted to mark the betrothal, the marriage, and the confinement after childbirth.  Bedroom chest lids were painted with erotic scenes to encourage children and some drawings that were the Kama Sutra of their day that were destroyed by the Catholic Church were also on display.  Across the street is the Modern, one of the largest modern art museums in the U.S. I didn’t have time to see it, but hopefully I will have a chance someday.  Fort Worth seemed more authentic than Dallas and has several museum about the cattle drives and cowboys to give it a more western feel.  It is home to the corporate headquarters of several companies like Pier 1.  Dallas is home to a lot of corporate dining chains and Blockbuster.

This weekend we ate at Blue Nile Ethiopian restaurant Friday night.  Saturday we had coffee and breakfast at Antidote Coffee on Studemont in the Heights.   I biked to the Bayou City Arts Festival and then  I joined J & LA for an event at Meridian in the evening while Zen_oven went to the Westheimer Block Party with her friend B from her work. I remember a photo of a set of bathroom doors marked “sit and wiggle” and “stand and shake” for the women’s and men’s bathrooms.

Some of the artists I enjoyed included:

Dave Rizzo (Ontario, CA) – trees www.daverizzostudios.com

Sheila Walters Beaverton, MI

Alexis Silk (Energy, IL) – women’s clothes suspended on hooks www.nogasilkartglass.com

Aidi Kansas (New Orleans) – pugs www.aidikansas.com

Gregory Arth – oil trees www.gregoryarth.com

Will Connor – landscape photos www.willconnor.com

Fred Conlon  (Salt Lake City, UT) – metalwork www.sugarpost.com

Lea Alboher – pug clocks

Sam Stark (Asheville) – glass art similar to Chihuly www.starkartglass.com

Audrey Heller (San Francisco) – photographs with little people figures www.audreyheller.com

Jay Long (Austin, TX) – surreal art www.jaylong.com

Sunday we joined greyanna and baalin for Watchmen at Marq*E, some furniture shopping (they bought a  new dining room table on sale), and dinner at Cadillac Bar on N Shepherd.  I had the meltingly soft roasted cabrito al pastor (enough for two or three) and some flan for dessert.

Tags: bayou city art festival, cadillac bar, dallas, fort worth botanical garden, kimball, king tut, marriage, stephen pyles

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