anotheranon | (no subject)

shemhazai comes to town like a hurricane - always lots of seeing and doing when she's here!

Yesterday was the Big Day, scheduled carefully to get everything in: first: the Italian women artists of the Renaissance and Baroque exhibit downtown. I had not know that this was on, which is a damn shame as I live here and feel like I ought to be more "plugged in" than I am.

This exhibit is well worth attending for the lush colors and breathtaking detail, as well as simply learning about the societal place of women artists in that time and place and how they plied their trade. The paintings featured seemed to include a lot of strong women (a favorite theme was Judith beheading Holofernes so lots of women with knives and swords). I'd expected to enjoy the detailed portraits of the rich/famous and did for the costume detail, but what really blew me away were the delicate tempera on vellum botanical paintings by Giovanna Garzoni, so soft and ripe that the fruits look as though they'd pop out of the paper!

Speaking of Botanical Gardens, we met up with G. to go to the newly renovated/reopened Botanical Gardens. I know very little about plants or herbs, but it was interesting to see all the different kinds of plants (curry plant, Grommit! [happy cheese gesture]), particularly the roses. I don't think I'd ever seen peach or orange roses before. I think it would be fun to go again when we had more time.

Then off to dinner and fun at

vree's, who has a cozy new space across town. Phenomenal cooking and "That's a hell of a thing" :P After viewing juicy paintings of cherries all morning, I even ate some fruit.

Morning saw us awake early for a good reason, brunch at a local-to-

vree Asian-American diner that serves organic fresh squeezed juices and fluffy pancakes in the morning and Asian fare at night (how very Firefly!). Banana pancakes = good, will have to get up to go again some time.

Got home and chilled/did chores, etc., ate too much pizza for dinner. Now am enjoying new computer with sound (!) and insane speed, catching up on email and LJ (and finding that my daemon is now a spider - what the hell must that mean!)

Brain is full now. Downloading....

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If you go to the Botanical Gardens again, please let me know. I would like to go again sometime.

You even ate some fruit? Hrmm... sorry to obsess on a little detail, but that just struck me as strange. Do you not eat fruit? If not, then why? Curiouser and curiouser....

Not often, no - I don't like most fruits, less for the flavor and more for the texture.

I know it's good for me, I know that I'm usually exposed to big, bland, chock-full-o'-pesticides fruit instead of the good stuff.

But yeah, I've never liked fruit much, so it's noteworthy when I eat it. It's also a testament to the influence of Garzoni's paintings and

vree's mad food skillz :P

Interesting!!!!

So very interesting? Surely it's not that unusual to have food preferences and aversions?

I think it's pretty usual to have preferences, but when a preference turnes into an aversion, that's when it gets interesting. To not like all fruit, for example, is rather unusual. I would think it would be more common to prefer, say, oranges over apples. Or citrus fruit (oranges, grapefruit, nectarines) over non-citrus fruit (apples, pears, peaches). But to dislike fruit completely -- the complete food group -- could be compared to the rarity of people who are complete vegans -- no meat products, no dairy, no cheese, nothing from an animal. There's a lot of variety in fruit, and so to avoid the entire food group is unusual. I could see you disliking apples, or pears, or preferring berries, but the whole entire food group -- do you see what I mean? It's the whole foodgroup aversion that makes you unusual.