A good weekend, by all accounts. Excepting, of course, people updating their blogs. Ahem. Guys, it's 2003; when you post, we know you're alive. Hello, Mr. Barzak, Ms. Kristin, and Quail (or is it Evening?). Hope you guys had fun holidays.

We got presents in the mail. Very good presents. The kind of presents that make you cackle. Yay! Pictures coming soon featuring a small, sort-of-reenactment of the Glove Monster Baby Dangling Debacle with some of the presents as soon as we can get organized enough to do it.

And finally, finally, finally, managed to pack up the very last of the presents we need to send to people, which I will go to post as soon as I finish writing this. Which means, the old holidays are finally finito.

Fell in love with a painting by George Rouault at the Speed Museum (just an exhibition, not permanent) yesterday afternoon. We'd gone with our friends Joe and Melendra to see an exhibit called "Millet to Matisse", with works on loan from Kelvingrove Gallery in Glasgow. Lots of beautiful art, and I found out I'm more drawn to the work of Ganguin, Bonnard, Rouault and the likes than most of the people who were doing impressionism with a straight face. I much prefer a work that communicates something of the artist, than what the day was like. That's not fair, but it's quick and dirty and I'm too tired to go into detail. It's not that I don't admire the work of the impressionists, and in many ways I see it as completely vital; many of the paintings I prefer are in direct reaction to impressionism. Anyway, they had the most wonderful George Rouault dream portrait called "Circus Girl." I've searched in vain trying to find an image of it online, which surprises me. (I guess it surprises me that there is anything you can't find online these days.) But it makes me happy to know that in not much time it will go back to Glasgow and I will know just where it is if I ever need to see it again.

That was nice.

I didn't see About Schmidt yet. Went to the theater and there were too many damn people there. Will try again soon.

Not really a Happy Accidents spoiler: Ted Chiang, way more alert than I am, noticed something very cool about the references to Blinovitch in this movie. It's a nod to the famous British TV series "Dr. Who," which included something called "Blinovitch's limitation effect" in its laws governing time travel. The curious can find an explanation of the "Dr. Who" reference here. It just makes me like the movie--and Brad Anderson--even more.

There's a female peacock inhabiting a certain space of the road I take to get to work. Coming home on Friday afternoon I almost hit it, and then this morning, it was perched on the opposite side's guardrail, preening like a Queen. I wonder what it's doing there. I wonder how many people have noticed. Surely, someone's missing this peacock. But I like getting to wonder if it'll be there (and exactly where and doing what) the next time I pass by.