Paintings I Love, Part II

Today deserves a post. Do you know why? Because (a) I have mostly cleaned up the entire apartment after the mess it was in last night, (b) I have finished shopping for the week and planned the menu with extremely low stress, and (c) the smell of chocolate shortbread wafts through the air and inspires me to write. In fact, after this I think I might keep working on the poem I started Sunday. That's how awesome this day is.

By way of paintings, here's a great one for you. It's an unfinished sketch by da Vinci, presumably meant to be turned into a painting, but never prepped or transferred for it. It was stored away and by what anyone can tell basically preserved itself. Thank heavens! It's one of my favorites--one I would love to have hanging in my house somewhere. It's entitled The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and the Infant St. John the Baptist.

For those of you who don't know who St. Anne is, you used to be in excellent company, but no longer since I looked it up. :) We don't know much about her except from apocryphal books. Anne was barren, as any good woman in the Bible is, and prayed to God to bless her to conceive. An angel appeared to her and told her God had heard her prayers and that she would conceive a child who would be known throughout the world. Anne vowed that whether the child was son or daughter, she would raise it unto the Lord. The child Anne bore was Mary, the mother of Jesus. (This makes her the great-aunt of John, just in case you missed that.)

I love the pose of the figures. They all strike me as being real and divine at the same time. But perhaps more than Mary and Jesus, I am drawn to Anne and John. They show devotion, concern, and love for Mary and Jesus that is palpable. I can almost hear Anne teaching her daughter as she gestures toward Heaven. Their faces are both beautiful, but Anne's is animated and engaged. John also, leans in toward his younger cousin with an expression that says, "Send me, I'll go." I love it. I just love it. 

I hope that wasn't too cheesy for anyone. I'm not really a sappy person, but this one really gets me.

Declarations and Reviews

I know it's a little late, but I'm reviewing/declaring my new year's resolutions. I meant to run a review of my resolutions from last January before this year, but with going to Maine and all for Christmas, well, things just got muddled.

As for last years, let's have a look:
~I have learned some ballroom dance moves with Mike. We've looked some up online--waltz and Argentine tango (oh yes, my friends...). Mike even planned a date in November to take a beginning lesson at a local dance company where we learned a lot of basic moves. It was so fun!

~I have written some short stories, but never really finished them--lame, I know. They need some serious polishing and thinking over. I was all ready to send one in to the San Francisco Writers' Convention's  Indie Publishing Contest, but I procrastinated and realized when I got back from Maine I had let the due date pass.

~Cooking healthier...hmmmmmmm...this is kind of hard to tell. I've learned to be more creative in my cooking, and have even come up with recipes entirely on my own! (View them here.) But I don't know that I could call a pistachio cheesecake healthier per se. Let's just say, I've expanded my culinary horizon and I'm all the better for it.

I've thought a lot about my resolutions for this year. Some of them are modifications of last year's or are things I've thought a lot about doing in the past but never committed to.

~I'm kicking one of my worst habits: cracking my knuckles. (Cue applause from Karen and Grandma Clark.) FOR THE RECORD: I stand by my claims that cracking my knuckles does in fact make them feel better, not worse. It is not painful, and I don't find it horribly disgusting. However, I don't want to have Madie cracking hers by the time she's three, so I'm kicking the habit. Starting today.

~I'm going to write every day, even if it's just in this blog. No more of this letting-due-dates-slip-past thing. That really angered me, and yet it's entirely my fault. So, every day I'm writing something. I'm also looking currently for somewhere else to submit that short story and I'll be submitting at least one other piece somewhere else.

~I am going to read all the books on my 2011 To-Read List, which is open before me on my desktop. If I read more, great, but I'm at least going to read these. I was just saying on my cousin's blog that I'm tired of not getting to so many books I want to because I don't know what to read next. Not any more. (I'll post that list next time--maybe it'll be my writing for tomorrow!)

~Last, but not least (in fact, it'll probably--hopefully--be the first accomplished), I am going to get this blog background WORKING!!!!!!! UGH! This is driving me NUTS! I have looked at all sorts of html code and none of it is helping. It doesn't budge anything most of the time! **deep breathing** But I will have it looking the way I want it. I WILL!

Happy New Year!

A Work in Progress

I am trying to work out the kinks in this new template/background/css I have going. I've done very basic, basic, basic, kindergartener css before (or maybe preschool, I don't know anymore). What I'm working on now is much more involved, obviously, since my posts are way out in left field--literally. So, bear with me. I know you probably can't read half the stuff on there right now, but don't despair! I made the header entirely on my own! So it makes sense that I should be able to do the body...of course so far I've failed to budge them pixel, so perhaps you should despair. For now though, let's keep our chins up.

...and offer useful advice.

Sorry about the lack

of posting. It's finals and our lives at the moment consist of little else. Mike has three finals out of the way. Which is really nice. He still has a one more final, a presentation and a debate next week, but for the most part it's all out of the way. I've got ALL my finals left. Stupid teachers - holding everything over 'til the last week. I'm not too worried about most of them though. I've got a final of four essay questions for American Lit. I think that's going to take up the most time, mainly because one of the questions involved a book I only read the first two parts of and there are four, so I have to get caught up on that. (Here I smile sheepishly and you all forgive me.) Then I've got three final tests, only one of which is kind of comprehensive, thank heavens! The other two are actually just like other unit tests. My teachers don't believe in comprehensive testing, and neither do I! (For the most part, I mean, there are times when it's necessary, but overall, I think it's ridiculous. You forget half the stuff later anyway. You just need to know where to find it.) Other than that it's a presentation, fairly short, and LOTS of eating! Oh, finals parties. There's very few things like them.

We are getting ready to eat and head off to Conference. It's too hard for us to watch/listen to Conference at home. Too many distractions. That's how it's always been for me. I remember begging my parents to let us go to the chapel and watch it with people who didn't own a computer or satellite or cable. It just made it easier to pay attention.

Well, waffles are calling - oh no, that's Mike. Whatever, one in the same right now.

Climbing Out of the Classics Crisis

Great Books by Authors Who Aren't Dead Yet, I think, should catch some attention. It's written by a professor of mine here at BYU-I--he teaches my American Literature class. And don't worry, he's not so egotistical as to tell me about it himself, I actually found out from a friend who is in another class of his. Apparently, he has a competition going between him and his students in that class (individually) to get the most followers. I told him I had found out about his blog, but I had promised my friend not to officially follow his blog until after the semester since he is already winning the race.

So, not all good books were written by dead authors? Fascinating! Who knew!

I was recently in a debate with my boss, who has a number of degrees, one of which is a doctorate in classics - which means he studied lots of Latin, Greek, old literature, and ancient politics and humanities. I told him I had tortuously forced my way through The Iliad but thought it was one of the most boring books I have ever read, and aside from that, poorly written. He was astonished at my feelings.

"How could you possibly think that?! The Iliad is a masterpiece!"
"The Iliad is pointless. But if you insist on liking it, I wont hold it against you."

After a little of this back and forth, we finally broke into formal debate. He argued that The Iliad had proven itself over millennia, which is evident in the literal plethora of readers who have "enjoyed" it over that time.

I gave him the "Are you kidding me?" face and asked, "So, because a lot of people - most of whom are dead - love it, it's great writing?"
"Well, you can't argue with them, can you?"
"Yeah, I can. A, they're dead. B, they have been told to like it and for centuries the teacher was always right. C, who says half those people even know what "good" writing is, if, indeed, it is definable?" (I believe it is definable, but I tend to avoid the argument because it is nearly impossible to prove due to the varying values people hold.)

Eventually he did acknowledge that basing the quality of a book on its age or by the number of people who have read it was inaccurate and unfair, but he stuck to his opinion that the book was phenomenal.

I'm not saying if you like The Iliad you obviously have no sense of what good literature is, I'm only saying that we can't allow ourselves to be wrapped up in the world of classics when there is great literature being written right under our noses! Let's broaden our horizons!

So true.

"The Hotness Menace" - a very good point. You should check it out. The last paragraph is the best. I love it! "Hotness is stuck idling in the 'what.'" Enjoy!

A New Look

So, looking at other peoples' blogs, Mike and I noticed time and again that there were many just within the realms of our families and friends who shared the same great taste in backgrounds as we did. So, after checking out the link on Tiff's blog to thecutestblogontheblock.com we decided to try making our own background. We downloaded a photoshop-esque demo program and set to work. I like the program well enough, but it's just difficult coming up with all the right elements to create a very unique background in the amount of time I wanted it done (i.e. the slim amount of patience God granted my spirit wore unbearably thin and I opted out of continuing; maybe there'll be a next time).

So, I went back to the site and just downloaded a really cute background and adjusted my color scheme to how I wanted it. It's a really cute site, and is a whole lot easier than creating your own from scratch. But if you do want to go that route it gives instructions on how to go about it.

We've been meaning to upload pictures from Boston on here, and Utah, and Arizona while we were still here in San Diego, but the connection here at the hotel is SO SLOW! So, we're just going to have to wait until we get back up to Idaho, which, since we leave tomorrow morning for Utah, and then Friday morning for home, should be about Friday afternoon. We'll see you then! (Or, I guess more accurately, you'll see us.)

Okay, every time we post pictures, more than one anyway, the rough draft looks fine and then the published post is pushed all over the place. Can anyone give us a hand here. I haven't had this much trouble with my old blog, so I don't know what to do here.