never could get the hang of Mondays...

My coffee was weak as water this morning. It took a few swallows to figure out that I'd forgotten to refill the grounds and had generated a pot using yesterdays dregs(!) New pot now done, but it shouldn't have taken me that long to figure out what was wrong :P

Eye candy: Whilst slinking around LJ this morning I found a link to My Lady's Wardrobe, pictures and dress diaries from a Kentwell re-enactor - I'm told they have very high standards, and as far as I can tell these costumes certainly meet them!

weekend: no time toulouse

D. and I went to the Toulouse-Lautrec and Monmartre exhibit on Saturday.

Conclusions - very good and comprehensive, and seeing the "famous" originals of paintings I recognize from books was a thrill as always - is it possible to be a fangirl for a piece of art? D. was not as enthused as I was but enjoyed the lithographs, particularly Tournee du Chat Noir.

I was surprised at all of the non- T-L paintings in the exhibit, including several by Van Gogh before he went to Arles and developed his familiar orange/yellow/blue palette. His were still recognizable even in paler colors because the proportions are all slightly slanted or askew. Another surprise was that Toulouse-Lautrec did a lot of his "finished" works on plain cardboard - and here I was thinking all this time that he just used a lot of brown :P

The characters of Monmartre are always fascinating to me because you see them in different paintings and start to recognize individuals. My favorite is Yvette Guilbert, the cabaret singer with the trademark long black gloves. This painting (not part of the exhibit) is my favorite; the way T-L painted her as all angles and points and long skinny arms she looks quite like an alien to me - what would an alien keep in those gloves?

Maybe I'll write a sci-fi brothel-circus story sometime, populated entirely with green-faced creatures based on Toulouse-Lautrec's art....

Saturday: in a fit of home improvement, D. had maintenance out to fix the kitchen faucet, which had calcium (or something) buildup and was losing pressure and leaking all over the counter. It is now replaced by one of those inverted "U" shaped spigots that stays nicely above the volume of the sink, so we can stack dirty dishes and still have room to fill the Brita water pitcher :P

Continuing the home improvement I went to target to replace the shower curtain - while furtively looking for dark chocolate M&Ms. Alas! The plain ones were sold out and I don't care for the peanut butter ones. Luckily, they DID have new dark chocolate Hershey's Kisses! My favorite poison in a perfectly sized dose ;)

Sunday: rapier fencing. Got my ass handed to me because... well, I'm new at this :P Also, I was practicing with a borrowed weapon made for someone far taller than me, and I lack the strength to keep holding a 49" weapon aloft for 15 minutes at a time. I need to start working out the muscles right next to my pectorals - the front of the shoulder where the arm meets the torso, whatever those are called (anyone?).

General: I'm now in constant low-key "Hermoine-mode" in preparation for my class. I'm going to try and read as much of the main textbook as possible before the class starts on 5/31 - I may not understand all of it, but at least I'll know what's coming :P