Compendium Suspendium

A word on the title:

As this post is a compendium of information, I wanted to include the word compendium in its title. As for suspendium, I just thought it sounded good. So I Googled it to find out whether or not it's an actual word.

Apparently, it is. And a really nerdy one, at that.

Suspendium. It sounds great, doesn't it?

Anyway.

I promised you a compendium, so here it is:

Some Websites I Like and Will Share with You in Lieu of Actual Content

1. Various Cities in First Person View (on wimp.com)


Pretty self-explanatory. And totally neat. I want to know who is doing the filming. If it were me, I would almost definitely trip and fall at some point. Which would be hilarious. But also painful.

2. MapCrunch


Click "Go!" for random Google Street Views around the world. Awesome! You might find yourself wishing more countries/locations were represented, but beggars can't be choosers, right?

3. A Guide to Sleeping in Airports


Surprise: North American airports are the worst for sleeping. The best? Singapore's Changi Airport, winner of the site's 2010 "Golden Pillow." Why? Well, I'll copy and paste the list of the airport's amenities and you can judge for yourself:

Airport Services/Facilities:
WiFi, Internet Kiosks, Food-24 hours ($), Baggage Storage($), pay-in Lounges ($), Shower ($), Gym & Spa ($), Massage ($), Swimming Pool & Jacuzzi ($), Convenience Stores/Supermarkets ($), Prayer rooms, Business Centres ($), Singapore City Tour, Nature Trail (including a Butterfly Garden, Cactus Garden, Fern Garden, Koi Pond, Orchid Garden, Sunflower Garden, Fragrant Garden, Night Light Garden), airside Rest Areas with snooze chairs, Aviation Gallery, Children's Play Area, Entertainment Deck (including a Jam Studio, Lan Gaming, Music Area, MTV Booth, Movie Theatre, XBox and PlayStation consoles), The Slide @ T3 - 4 storey slide ($), Grand Prix Race Stimulators ($).

4. World's Largest Roadside Attractions


A horribly clunky website, but I can't help myself. I adore this kind of thing. (Some of you might remember my brief obsession with Indiana's own World's Largest Ball of Paint.)

5. Atlas Obscura


For my money, the best website on The Internet. Bold claim? You betcha! I love it. I love it, love it, love it. Click on "Take me to a random place" and lose a couple hours of your day.

So there you have it. Compendium. Suspendium.

Next week I'm going to indulge another of my obsessions: converted spaces.

Armchairs in Art: 'Tis the Cézanne!

Welcome to the third and final installment of Armchairs in Art.

Let's take a look at Monsieur Paul Cézanne, Armchair Artist extraordinaire. Cézanne was born in Aix-en-Provence in 1839. Ever been to Aix-en-Provence? I have. All I can really tell you is that it's small and has a tapestry museum. I mainly associate it with Coolio's magnum opus Pterodactyl. Which my friend and I watched in our hotel room. In its entirety. Dubbed in French. Ridiculous, but actually one of my favorite travel memories.

It's been said (by people on the Internet) that Cézanne paved the way for modern art. His exploration of geometric shapes and "fracturing of form" were concepts essential to the development of the Cubist movement. He also painted scary little men.

Achille Empéraire, 1868
Oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France

Strong start, right? Monsieur Empéraire was an interesting character. Think John Leguizamo in Moulin Rouge. Is it me, or does it look like he's wearing Chuck Taylor's? I'm going to be honest, this painting creeps me out. He looks like something out of Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre (see minute 2:44). Or better yet, this. Now I can't stop laughing. THIS BLOG IS A FREE-FOR-ALL.

Anyway. Here are some more of Cézanne's gems of armchair artistry. I'll let you pick your favorite. I'm partial to Madame Cézanne in the Conservatory. And not just because it sounds like something from Clue.

Portrait of Victor Choquet, 1877
Oil on canvas
Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH

Madame Cézanne in a Red Armchair, 1877
Oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

Portrait of Madame Cézanne, 1890
Oil on canvas
Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, France

Madame Cézanne in the Conservatory, 1891
Oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

Portrait of a Woman (in a Striped Dress), 1892-6
Oil on canvas
Barnes Foundation
Lincoln University, Philadelphia, PA

Portrait of a Woman in Green Hat (Mme Cézanne), 1894-95
Oil on canvas
Barnes Foundation
Lincoln University, Philadelphia, PA

Young Man with a Skull, 1896-98
Oil on canvas
Barnes Foundation
Lincoln University, Philadelphia, PA

And now, let's go crazy. Since we're wrapping up our whole "art" thing, I thought I'd better get in some shout-outs to my other favorite artists.

Lady in Yellow, 1888
Thomas Wilmer Dewing, American, (1851-1938)
Oil on wood
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA

This is beautiful. I want to be her. Also, she lives in one of my most favorite places, the Gardner Museum in Boston. If you have a weird fascination with art theft, like I do, it should definitely be on your radar.

And because I'm obsessed with anything that happened in Austria-Hungary around the turn of the century, we'll close with these guys:

Untitled
Alfons Mucha, Czech, (1860-1939)
Watercolor

Fritza Riedler, 1906
Gustav Klimt, Austrian, (1862-1918)
Oil on canvas
Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria

Edith Schiele, die Frau des Künstlers, sitzend, 1918
Egon Schiele, Austrian, (1890-1918)
Oil on canvas
Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria

So there it is. Armchairs in Art, The Complete Series. Hope you enjoyed it.

For more:

Egon Schiele
Gustav Klimt
Paul Cézanne
Alfons Mucha
Leopold Museum (Largest Schiele Collection)
Österreichische Galerie Belvedere (Austrian Gallery at the Belvedere Palace)
Coolio

Armchairs in Art: Van Gogh

Welcome to Part Two of Armchairs in Art!

Last week we discussed Señor Pablo Picasso, one of the lucky bastards who actually achieved international celebrity in his own lifetime. Today, we're traveling even further back in time to talk about a guy who wasn't nearly as lucky.

Poor old Vincent.

Off the top of my head, here's what I can say about Vincent van Gogh:

Dutch.
Brother named Theo.
Those ugly potato folks.
France.
Gauguin.
Don McLean.
And obviously, the ear thing.

Okay, I actually know a little more than that. Definitely more than I knew about Picasso. Thanks, in part, to our old friend Simon Schama, who devotes the sixth hour of Power of Art to Van Gogh. As my good friend Carl so perfectly put it, the actor Andy Serkis "blows minds" as Vincent. It's true. Whether or not he blows minds as Gollum, née Sméagol, I'll leave to you.

(FYI, Power of Art covers Picasso, too. But it's on the 3rd disc. Which I haven't yet gotten from Netflix. So. You know. I'll get back to you.)

Anyway, I also learned quite a bit about Van Gogh in Amsterdam at, you guessed it, the Van Gogh Museum. That was back in 2006, during the crazy two week period in my life when I traveled solo to Belgium and the Netherlands. And off we go on a tangent!


If you've never traveled alone, go do it. Sure, I got lost in the pouring rain a couple times. Which is exponentially worse on one's own. Also, being a poor defenseless girl, my after-dark options were slightly limited. (I spent one particularly sad evening watching the film adaptation of Starsky & Hutch alone in the hostel common room.) And, worst of all, there's nobody to back me up when I tell people the first thing I saw in Amsterdam was a live camel.

BUT.

Here's what I love about traveling alone. You have to talk to people. It becomes a necessity. I met people I never would have spoken to had I been with friends or family or a tour guide or an iPod. One night, in a hotel bar in Amsterdam, I spent four hours in deep conversation with a Mexican guy, an old British dude, and the cute Dutch bartender. All thanks to the necessary boldness that comes with traveling alone. You gotta be bold. I wonder what that bartender is up to.

Anyway, you know who else was bold? Vincent van Gogh. That was one bold dude. Usually when you see a picture of a chair you think, "Oh hey, that's a chair." One look at these paintings and you're all, "SHAZAM! Now that's a CHAIR!"

Ok, maybe not. But I bet you like these as much as I do.

Gauguin's Chair, 1888
Oil on Canvas
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

As you may or may not already know, Paul Gauguin was Van Gogh's roomie for a time. It didn't go that well. Maybe because Van Gogh was always painting the furniture. Dude probably just wanted to sit down. (Also, who smells a Jersey Shore parody? Vinny and Pauly G? Enh...?)

Van Gogh's Chair, 1888
Oil on Canvas
The National Gallery, London

Of course, Van Gogh painted his own chair, too. People make much of this pair of paintings, particularly the question of their symbolic meaning. Van Gogh said little on the subject himself, but there's a wealth of speculation to be found. Everything from the reasonable (Simplicity vs. Pretension) to the slightly more outrageous (Gauguin's Chair as a Phallus-Bearing Symbol of Van Gogh's Mother Issues).

Want more Van Gogh? How could you not! Check out these videos, courtesy of a way cool site I discovered today called Art Babble. If you still want more, watch the videos on the site proper where they provide a sort of Pop-Up Video type feature in the form of a scrolling bar to the right of the page that provides links to supplementary information. I really like the way they've set it up.

Read on...

Vincent van Gogh Gallery
Van Gogh Museum
The National Gallery, London
Art Babble. Click it. You won't regret it.
Google Art Project

(By the way, that camel thing is totally true.)

Armchairs in Art: Picasso

I like art. If I weren't a struggling musician, I would be a struggling art historian. Like Simon Schama. Except he's not struggling. And not exclusively an art historian. Also, he's a dude. And Jewish. And from the UK. So really, nothing like Simon Schama.

It's true, though- few things relax me more than a good documentary about art. Which probably means it's better that I'm not an art historian by trade. This way, I can watch Sister Wendy without having to question the quality of her scholarship. Not that I would even be watching Sister Wendy in this scenario. I'd probably be writing a really unoriginal paper about Monet in some awful library with fluorescent lighting. Here, I can sit back and appreciate art from the comfort of my metaphorical armchair.

Speaking of Simon Schama, my most recent Netflix delivery included the first 2 discs of his 2006 BBC series, "Power of Art." In each hour long segment, he focuses on a particular artist through the lens of a particular masterpiece. It has everything: sweet dramatizations, cool music, fun biographical and historical tidbits, and even the odd joke. I love it. So, I started thinking, what can The Armchair bring to the table when it comes to a discussion about art? Probably not much. But what if we narrow our focus down to something more specific? Say, art that... includes actual armchairs?

Whaaaaat?

Welcome to Part I in the series, Armchairs in Art. Each week, we'll explore a new artist and a new painting or paintings. Paintings... with armchairs in them.

Let's dive right in.

Pablo Picasso


Here's what I can say about Picasso without Googling or Wikipeding:

Spanish
20th Century
Guernica
Blue Period
Guitar

Here's what I can say about Picasso after having done a bit of research:

First of all, Spanish baptismal names are amazing. Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain in 1881 to a middle class family who encouraged his talent from an early age. Around the turn of the century, he moved to Paris and started hanging out with folks like Gertrude Stein and Guillaume Apollinaire.

Stein

Apollinaire

And later, Serge Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky.

Diaghilev

Stravinsky

You know, the down-to-earth set. He divided his time mainly between Spain and France, made art, and enjoyed the company of many women. (There's a nutshell for you.)

One such woman, Olga, was a dancer in Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and Picasso's first wife. She is the subject of our first armchair painting.

Portrait of Olga in the Armchair, 1917
Oil on Canvas
Musée Picasso, Paris

Not what first comes to mind when you think of Picasso. In terms of artistic periods, the years from 1912 to 1919 were marked mainly by a shift from "analytic" to "synthetic" Cubism. Even if you're not familiar with Cubism, you can probably guess that this painting has little to do with it. This can be partially explained. In the late teens, without abandoning Cubism, Picasso went through a brief phase of what is apparently referred to as "New Mediterraneanism." During this time, he was influenced by the works of earlier artists like Renoir and Ingres.

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
Portrait of Madame Leblanc, 1823
Oil on Canvas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

That's pretty easy to see. Allow me to offer another, purely speculative explanation. Pablo and Olga weren't married until 1918. My guess? This painting (and maybe the whole of the "New Mediterraneanism" thing) was part of the courtship. You know, less to do with aesthetic principles and more to do with "sleep with me." I read in at least one place that Olga initially resisted Picasso's advances and fiercely protected her virginity even after the marriage (at least for a while). You definitely get a feeling of coldness from her portrait. Who knows? (I mean, other than all the people who have written papers and books about it. They probably know.) One thing is clear- she was certainly more the posh socialite than the Montmartre/Montparnasse Bohemian. I imagine the portrait would have pleased her. I like it, too.

Then again, I also like this:

Large Nude in a Red Armchair, 1929
Oil on Canvas
Musée Picasso, Paris

Yowza! Here's Olga again...looking a little different. I'm kind of obsessed with looking from one painting to the other in rapid succession. Look at the bright red of the armchair. Fantastic. And the body! Olga may or may not have been a little ticked upon viewing this. I don't think it's too surprising that they soon split. (His real "muse" at this time was a teenager named Marie-Thérèse Walter, brief companion and mother to his elder daughter, Maya. Sadly, Marie-Thérèse hanged herself four years after his death in 1973. She wasn't alone among Picasso's women in taking her own life, either. His second wife, Jacqueline Roque, shot herself in 1986.)

So there you have it. Armchairs. Picasso. These aren't his only "armchair" works, but it's a good place to start. Want to know more stuff? Here are some links.

Official Website
Bio at Biography.com (Great!)
Excellent Timeline
Matisse & Picasso
Musée Picasso (Paris)
Museu Picasso (Barcelona)

Vision of Love

At 17, I had a pretty good idea of what my love life would look like at 25. After having spent my early 20s dating and casting aside a litany of handsome and variously successful men, I would, by 25, have met my Super Awesome Live-In Boyfriend. We would have a sweet apartment in the city, fulfilling and well-paying jobs, and a host of extremely good-looking friends. Our dog would have an ironic name like Snoop or P. Doggy and when we would take him for walks in the local park, neighbors would smile and wave enthusiastically. We would spend most evenings cooking sexy meals together during which we'd engage in a lot of sensual vegetable chopping and hysterical laughing over minor culinary mishaps.

Every couple of months we would take epic trips to places like Machu Picchu where we would befriend the natives and take pictures of each other doing hilarious and awesome things. Later, we'd show these pictures to our really good-looking friends who would remind us that we are, in fact, the coolest couple in the world and they wish they had taken a llama ride through the jungle with a Peruvian drug cartel. At 30, after 5 years of continuous adventure, we would be married on a Grecian Isle and divide our time as newlyweds between our sweet apartment in the city and our renovated Highland Castle. Our children would frolic in the heather and grow up to do something about all the problems.

It hasn't yet come true and is, I guess, a bit unrealistic. But the general gist of my vision of love hasn't changed much. And, despite all evidence to the contrary, I'm confident a large percentage of it is in my future. How could I possibly be that optimistic? I don't know. Probably because I'm kind of an idiot when it comes to love. Yes, love makes fools of us all at one time or another, but truly, I suspect I'm in at least the 80th percentile for romantic idiocy. I'm not complaining, though. I've achieved a nice balance. For example, I've been kissed in the Piazza San Marco on a summer night. Totally awesome. But I've also been rejected at not one but two of my own Christmas parties. Ouch. The point is, I've come out about even.

Is that my point? I'll be honest, I'm not even sure what this post is about yet. It definitely doesn't have anything to to with armchair travel. I was originally intending to tie it in with some kind of variation on a theme of either "traditions of love around the world" or "showing your love by giving to charity this Valentines Day." Best laid plans. In lieu of that, I'll provide you with this link I found when I Googled "Fun Facts About Love." Clearly, a lot of work goes into this blog.

Anyway, my favorites are numbers 11 and 20.


Special shout-out to Molly, Peyman, Mark, and Suna for being excellent Valentines.

Return of The Armchair: Salute to Churches

Churches are everywhere. Big ones, small ones. New ones, old ones. Ones with gargoyles and flying buttresses and ones with digital billboards and frank and bean suppers. Cathedrals, chapels, minsters, meeting houses...the list goes on. And for someone who isn't particularly religiously inclined, I feel like I've seen a lot of them.

...Which is not to say that I’ve never gone to church for church’s sake. My first memory of participating in organized religion, like most of my vivid memories, is 1) embarrassing and 2) involves a boy.

It was probably 1992. The boy in question was my very first real crush. We’ll call him “Scot,” because that is his actual name and I can't think of a good reason to give him a fake one. Anyway, when I was young, my family went sporadically to the local Congregational church attended regularly by Scot and his family. The part of the service I dreaded most was the rounding up of the children for Sunday School. I was having none of it. My parents, probably because they felt just as out of place and uncomfortable as I did, indulged me. I would crouch low in the pew until all the little kiddies had filed out and I knew I was safe. But once, just once, my plan was dramatically foiled. Shouting across the sanctuary with the fervor of a true zealot, Scot said, “Julia! Julia! Aren’t you coming?”

Yeah, okay, it's really not that mortifying viewed through the lens of adulthood. But it was mortifying back then. Incidentally, Scot would go on to feature prominently in a number of my more humiliating moments over the years, including getting stuck in a bathroom stall at summer camp, losing a toenail in his hot tub, and (my favorite) on my 19^th birthday, after confessing to years of (not so) secret admiration, falling spectacularly to the floor when the chair on which I was sitting inexplicably snapped in two.

Anyway, I could go on for ages about humiliating missteps and the crushes that caused them, (a likely autobiography title, so don’t steal it) but we’re here to talk about churches. I don't really know why. Just an idea I had. And I happen to have taken a lot of pictures of churches over the years. So why not.

This is St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Foley, Alabama, the only church featured in our Salute that has palm trees.

Westminster Abbey. Old. Gothic. Expensive to get inside. In short, a classic.

This is somewhere in the vicinity of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. I absolutely love this church, mostly because I know nothing about it except that it's creepy, isolated, and has two recent gravestones. I wish I wrote short stories.

Bratislava, Slovakia. Another church I knew little to nothing about. I just remember that I really liked the way it was lit. Anyway, I've since done some Google research and discovered that it is St. Martin's Cathedral. A couple of interesting facts (for nerds): This was the place to have your coronation if you were an Austro-Hungarian emperor. Maria Theresa was crowned here! AND it was the site of the first performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. Although, I think it was officially premiered in its complete form in St. Petersburg. But still...neat.

This is a wee wooden church in the Österreichisches Freilichtmuseum (Austrian Open-Air Museum) in Stübing, Austria. It's exactly what it sounds like- a huge sneeze. No, just kidding. It's an open air museum filled with replicas of traditional Austrian homes/farms/etc. Pretty neat. It's near Graz. Check it out.

Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco. St. Mark's. Venice. The Doge's Palace. Monteverdi. Pigeons. You know the deal. It's really shiny inside. Chiesa d'Oro. Church of Gold. All that.

This is the one of a kind Mariazell Basilica in Mariazell, Austria. It's part pink! It's also called the Basilica Mariä Geburt or the Basilica of the Birth of the Virgin Mary. Big pilgrimage site, mostly to do with the presence of a particularly powerful wooden image of the Virgin Mary. Also the site of the orientation session for my study abroad program. Whole different thing.

Ah, Amsterdam. This is the Oude Kerk, or Old Church. The fun thing about this church is that it's in the Red Light District. That, and about 10,000 people are buried underneath it. People with awesome Dutch names like Jacob van Heemskerck and Cornelis Hooft and Frans Banning Cocq. (Apart from having a sweet name, that last guy is the main dude in Rembrandt's The Night Watch.)

York Minster. The Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of St. Peter. It's in York. That's in England. The UK. THE UNIVERSE. Anyway, here's another classically awesome cathedral. The second largest Medieval Gothic cathedral in the world, in fact. The biggest is Chartres. In France. Also, Dame Judi Dench is from York. Now you know.

Tintern Abbey. No jokes to be made here. It's too beautiful and poetic. Ok, one joke. Did you know there was a psychedelic 60s rock band called Tintern Abbey?...and that their hit song was called "Vacuum Cleaner?" Vacuum Cleaner?? Somebody go find it on YouTube and tell me what it's all about.

Back to London and back to St. Martin. This is St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Very Anglican. Very English. Very... Sir Neville Marriner.

Paris. Montmartre. Basilique du Sacré Coeur. Basilica of the Sacred Heart. It stays white because of the special kind of stone they used to build it. Interesting.

So there you have it. The Armchair's Salute to Churches. It's good to be back. Fair warning: I have enough material for a Salute to Churches II. See you next time?

Spring Break Foley, Alabama

You know that song "Gary, Indiana" from The Music Man? It's okay if you don't. I only ask because it's been stuck in my head for the last few weeks- with one important textual difference. Instead of the words "Gary, Indiana," I've been singing the words "Foley, Alabama." I know, I'm a wordsmith. Will the real Julia Snowden please stand up?



While you're at it, watch this. It has nothing to do with anything apart from the fact that we're sort of talking about American musical theater. One of the most beautiful songs ever written.

Anyway, the city of Foley is in southern Alabama, just a short drive from the lovely beaches of the Gulf Shore. You know the little nubbin thing at the bottom of the state on the left hand side? That's where it is.


View Larger Map

It was founded in the early 20th century by a Chicago businessman named John Burton Foley. Apparently, before he became a fancy land developer he was manufacturing something called "Foley's Pine Tar and Honey Cough Remedy." Nothing says early 1900s like a good "remedy," am I right? You know, dudes in striped suits twirling canes and saying things like, "Pardon me, Cornelius, but I must go to the druggist for Beckham's Essence of Wheat Germ." "Ah yes, Reginald, I do believe I'll join you. My wife asked that I buy her a vial of Whitmore's Licorice Vapors." Then they would die of Tuberculosis.

Back in this century, you'll find a sleepy and refreshingly unpretentious downtown Foley. There are gift shops and antiques galore. I'd like to recommend the adorable old-fashioned soda shop(pe) but for some reason it smelled unbelievably disgusting inside. It was weird. There were all these smiling kids and grandparents sitting at cute wrought-iron tables with ice cream sundaes as though it smelled like rainbows and gumdrops and not the most vile of Gary's sewers. Hopefully it was just a fluke.

South of downtown is the ubiquitous strip of mainstream stores and restaurants. This is where I visited my first Piggly Wiggly. My grandmother on my father's side was born and raised in Alabama and my Dad, as a result, likes to wax poetic on all things Southern. I'm fairly confident he once said, "You've never been to a Piggly Wiggly? Oh, Piggly Wiggly is the best! They don't have stores like that up here." Actually, Dad, Piggly Wiggly is horrible. Sorry. You're right about Wegman's, though. Now that's an excellent grocery store.

Continuing south, after you pass the snazzy outlet mall and just before you cross the bridge that takes you to the beach, (and the ritzy city of Gulf Shores, Alabama) you'll pass a wee amusement park with three go-kart courses, miniature golf, and an elaborate arcade. I recommend the wooden go-kart track. It had three levels. Just don't do what I did and get distracted trying to keep your skirt from flying up. You may get in a small accident and suffer minor whiplash. Yes, I live on the edge.

We also managed to squeeze in a side trip to Pensacola, Florida where we had some really incredible seafood at a place called The Fish House. I'd love to go back in the summer. You might be surprised to learn that Pensacola has been around since 1559. Well, kind of. There was, in fact, a settlement created in 1559 but it was almost immediately destroyed by a hurricane and nobody really came back until 1696. But still.

To close, a sampling of my very average photography:

Downtown Foley

One Horse Town

Orange Beach

I don't care if it makes me less of a New Englander- there are a lot of things I love about the American South.

(This isn't one of them.)

Until next time...

In Like A Lion, Out Like A Lamb

I've always had a complicated relationship with March. Where I grew up, we had a break in February and a break in April. March was the interminable month from hell. I think I'll always associate it with melted snow revealing garbage on the sides of Route 128. Under a gray sky. On the way to the dentist.

Of course, March has had its highlights over the years. For example, the birth of my brother in 1988. And the...okay, actually that's all I've got. And let's be honest, at the time, I was pissed. Today my brother is my best friend and I'm quite glad he was born. That day, I was so angry that I climbed into my mother's hospital bed and bit her in the breast. True story.


And Spring Break. Ah, Spring Break. I can't help feeling like I've missed out. I've been doing the higher education thing for almost 7 years and I've never been to Fort Lauderdale with my girlfriends or done a keg-stand in my bikini or thrown up in a sombrero. Witness the wildest moments of my Spring Break career:

Montreal, 2004
Here I am in my mother's minivan somewhere in Vermont. I think I felt I had to wear the aviators with irony because I was too lame to admit I actually liked them.

Massachusetts, 2005
Yup, at my parent's house. That's Seth on recorder. He'll love that this is on the Internet. This may actually have been Christmas.

Michigan, 2006
I'm not in this picture. We went up for a voice competition. Doesn't get much cooler than that. I tied for 3rd in my category, in case you were wondering.

Chicago, 2007
Hancock Observatory. Pretty much speaks for itself.

Nashville, 2007
Okay, so on Spring Break 2007 I was actually in Chicago and Nashville. I went to Vanderbilt to see a good friend whose name also happens to be Julia. This is her. She was around for a lot of my actual wild moments when we were in Europe circa 2006. If you ever meet her, ask her what I did in Florence. She knows details that I will never tell you. The significance of this picture, though, is that I seem to be wearing aviators with irony again. Groan.

Chicago, 2008
Oh man, somebody get that girl under control.

Los Angeles, 2009
You'll notice that my shirt is halfway (!) off. Where were the Girls Gone Wild cameras??

More Los Angeles, 2009
I finally wear aviators without irony.

Anyway, Spring Break lameness aside, I'd really like to get over my hatred of this month. I don't want to be miserable for a 12th of my life. So what can you offer me, March?

Well, if I were in the UK right now, I could see an illuminated Hadrian's Wall. It's exactly what it sounds like: 250 points of light along the length of the wall. Coast to coast. One night only. It reminds me of what would be my favorite part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy...if I were into that kind of thing.

Alternatively, you could go to the Pasifika Festival in New Zealand, a large celebration of island culture. (You already know what a fan I am of the Pacific Islands.) Of course, it's already tomorrow in New Zealand so technically we've missed it.

Now here's a cool one: Falles in Valencia, Spain. All you really need to know is that it's 5 days of people blowing stuff up. Really elaborate stuff. That they spent a lot of time making. Don't confuse it with the other insane festival where everyone fights each other with tomatoes. That's in August. Anyway, you can see some fun pictures here and here.

Also:
Savannah Music Festival
Ostrich Festival (No, really.)
Calle Ocho (Where the world record was set for "longest conga line.")

And Of Course:
The London International Antique and Artist Dolls, Toys, Miniatures, Teddy Bears, and Vintage Fashion Fairs

Just a sampling for you. I'm off on my own wee Spring Break Adventure tomorrow morning. Stay tuned.