A few observations

1) Listening to classical music while working all day can be great, but when that music stops, and, say, I'm trying to go to sleep, I'll have classical music stuck in my head. Not actual, existing classical music, however, just sort of generic classical music that my head makes up. It usually features string instruments, it's usually baroque, and it's usually prestissimo. Try falling asleep to that.

2) Every time I hear helicopters now (which are common in LA), I think of fire. They were flying low around the foothills constantly last week during the fire (obviously). Helicopters are kind of like vultures - they're usually looking for sites of disaster, runaway criminals, tracking wildfires, etc., (they're much more helpful than the scavenging birds, of course).

3) Going to Claremont for the day means I can sneak away to not one but TWO dollar stores (of different chains, with, therefore, different merchandise) in the morning before starting work. Awesome healthy bread, vanilla soymilk, plain soymilk, large bags of whole wheat pasta (2 for a dollar!), V8, fat-free Colombo yogurt, some cool energy bars- 3 for a dollar (including some that I've seen at Whole Foods. So what if these are maybe a little old and got a tiny bit squashed?), and on, and on. I love the dollar store, I do, I do.

4) It does not feel like it's been a year since my senior art show. But apparently it has been, because the 2008 senior show opened last night. It was a pretty good show! The work was technically stunning- a lot of talent in that class. The gallery was also very full of work. Last year, each person had pretty much one piece to present, and they were all fairly small and self-contained. This year, each artist had a couple or several pieces. Conceptually, I don't know. The major disappointment was that the artists weren't standing next to their pieces, as we had been commanded to do last year. I knew only one of the girls in the show, and her work was pretty straight-forward, so tracking the artists down was pretty much impossible, too. One girl gave her audience pretty much nothing, not even a title. There seemed to be a lot going on in the work; and since I didn't get most of it on my own, it would have been nice to get some help from the experts. Argh. Now I'm really frustrated. Anyway, there were a few that were hard to follow. Several used text (there were two graphic novels and another piece was in the format of a single comic strip), but I often found myself confused, either with the sequence of events or the dialogue, or with the illustrations. If the artists had been standing with their work, I would have been able to get these things (and many more) figured out. But as it is, work that might be very strong to those who are familiar with all its various aspects, may now be viewed as weak by those who weren't allowed access to that same information. And it's not like we can look up the work online, either. Bummer. The next best thing would be to track down all their theses...Hmm...tempting. Sort of.

Well, I am now going to go rummage at a rummage sale down the street. Yippee!