spare oom

Grace has been here for the past few days before she jets off to India for a month. Here she is being ineffably cool.

We went to the Denver Art Museum for about four hours on Friday and had the best time. She's definitely my favorite person to visit museums with. When we play the game of "Which painting/sculpture/whatever would you rather own?", we always have the same answers.

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I got a really lovely and thoughtful present from Kandyce yesterday: a real, live basil plant! I can't wait to put in the backyard garden. It smells wonderful.

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Other than that, I don't have much to report. I'm trying not to wish my days away. It's so hard being patient sometimes, though. And sometimes I get lonely. But having Grace here for a few days has certainly staved off some of those feelings. And I think I might be going hiking tomorrow with Sonya, an intern from the Denver Business Journal. There are always bright spots.

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Yesterday, we went to a church picnic at Wash Park and played Frisbee, got burnt and ate snap peas. The park was nearly bursting with people being outdoorsy--playing soccer, volleyball, Frisbee, running with their dogs, biking, even rollerblading (I don't think I've seen someone rollerblade in North Carolina since I was in middle school). Everyone seemed so ALIVE.

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At the picnic, we were befriended by a local artist, David Shingler, who later took us to his gallery downtown. Very inventive and labor-intensive work! Check it out. His drawing machines were fascinating; I really wanted to see the one with the live finches in action.

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I am reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma" now, which Angela gave me as a going-away present. Thanks to her, I may never eat beef again. It's absolutely terrifying, what industrial agriculture does to food. And corn! I am also viscerally afraid of corn.

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"Empty, empty, empty; silent, silent, silent. The room was a shell, singing of what was before time was; a vase stood in the heart of the house, alabaster, smooth, cold, holding the still, distilled essence of emptiness, silence."--Between the Acts. How Woolf loves bare rooms!