King Tut @ the AGO

Tomorrow morning I have a ticket to get in bright and early and see the King Tut exhibit at the AGO! I've decided to start up an art blog so my first post will be impressions and discussions of the exhibit. Things that are running through my mind already: the ethics of a "funerary exhibit" how do we get around essentially pillaging someone's burial tomb for our enjoyment. This, coupled with the fact that these people whom we are viewing are now esssentially enjoying "immortality".

So- things to think about, plus there will be a bit of background about Tutankahmen (who really wasn't the most interesting of Pharoh's) and what I thought of the layout of the exhibit and my experience as a shmoe walking through it.

I won't be going whole hog and getting the audio tour, I'm too impatient for all that stuff, plus I've studied this so much that a lot will come back with just reading the descriptions.

This will be my 3rd major Egyptian Exhibit in the past few years. The first was the British Museum's Exhibit at the Royal BC Museum. That was a great exhibit because I had just finished a course in Egyptian Art where our main text was the British Museum's Collection, many of the things I had studied all semester/summer were on display for me.

When Dad was here, he and I went and saw the Book of the Dead at the ROM along with the accompanying exhibit. That was great!

And tomorrow King Tut! This is the first time the exhibit has been back in Canada in over 30 years and it's only Canadian Stop so I'm really excited that I'll be able to participate.

Once I have my blog post up I'll link to the new site.

TFIF!!!

Insomnia

It is almost 3.30am, and I am awake. This week I've actually been waking up at 3.30am most nights, tonight I changed it up a little and woke up at 2.30. There isn't any rhyme or reason to it, Monday night I went to bed at 9pm, so that could have been part of it, but the other nights it's been a somewhat "normal" bedtime for me.

Which got me thinking about bed and sleeping, I love sleeping. Getting under the covers is probably the highlight of my day these days. I feel like I'm just killing time until I can get back into bed. This might not be a positive? But it feels pretty good to me. These days I go to bed on the early side, I'm usually in bed and asleep before 11pm. And except on gym days I rarely get out of bed before 8/8.30. I'm trying to put a finger on when this shift occurred and I all of a sudden needed over 9 hours of sleep to feel ok with life.

It could have been after quitting the second job, as I was so deprived of sleeping for over a year that maybe 1.5 years on I'm still playing catch up?

What I'd like is to be able to bounce out of bed in the morning and have time to do things before I have to begin daily drudgery at "job". Although I guess b/c "job" is pretty heinous right now I'm avoiding getting out of bed? The only thing that really EVER makes me bounce out of bed is travel. Which is why I need to be constantly planning a trip somewhere and have that tantalizing brass ring getting me out of bed.

In fact I haven't actually spent a day IN bed lately. Could it be this Sunday is a "duvet day"? I'm pretty sure I don't have anything planned and I know I'll be east end for dinner on Sat. night. This almost always means I have to take the "vomit comet" home to my side of the city. (the subways stop at about 1am on Saturday and those unlucky enough to not make it are subjected to riding the allnight bus that runs across town (in my case) on Bloor St West.) It takes a LONG time, but it's always an entertaining ride.

So, perhaps I will take Sunday and stay in bed and read. The problem with my nook is that there is no window-so I usually take to the couch and read. But this leads to me tidying up.

Anyway- I'm still awake and we are approaching the 4 hour. FUN. Such a weird time to wake up, not late enough in the morning to just get up and go to the gym or something, and not early enough to be up for a bit without feeling like crap the next day.

Sigh.

Falling

Lately things have been happening out here in the greatest city in the worllllld!

It's fall, the leaves changed about a billion different colours and now they are all falling to the ground. I heard tell that it might snow this weekend.

I'm pretty excited about that. I love snow. I think it is just the cat's pyjamas that here! where I live! there are four discernible seasons. FOUR- count em! With all the traits of a traditional season! Not just- warmish and rainy (spring/fall or summer) and coolish and rainy(spring/fall/winter). I'm pulling out my winter gear, haven't pulled out the heavy winter jacket yet, but it's coming soon! I can feel it.

This season hot boots are in style. I'm getting pretty envious of all the awesome bootedness that I see before me. But last week I went out and bought the Ipod Touch in a fit of emotional spending. And let me tell you- nothing feels better than emotional spending. NOTHING.

The touch is pretty amazing, I was deliberating earlier on in the fall as to whether I should get an iphone, since all the kids are getting them and I'm a complete lemming. But I also needed internet in my house so getting that plus the data plan for the iphone (or any fancy pants phone) was too much for me.

And the iTouch fills the gaps, it allows me to connect to any wireless network it can steal so I can now tweet and let the world know on my new and up to the minute goings on. It has a larger capacity for toonage! And there are other nifty applications that are increasing the value in my life immensely. Let's discuss shall we?

Sex Facts: because you just can't ever know enough...
White Noise: becoming increasingly addicted to listening to the ocean while falling asleep
Alarm Clock: (note I actually paid for this app- the rest I download for free) allows me to wake up to a specific song on my ipod. ME LIKEY
Urban Spoon: triangulates your position in the world and then you shake it and it tells you food nearby. Ummm awesome?! Hungover brunches just got easier!
Maps: I could quite possibly never be lost again.
Keyboard: I can practise the piano, well at least one hand of the piano...

So that's that. I mean there is SO MUCH MORE- but that's it for right now. Evenings have been spent playing on the Pod. And I'm really enjoying iTunes "Genius Mixes" I suggest you check it out if you can wait for the download (I have 13 GB of music and it took about 15 minutes) but it's really letting me listen to my music by mood/genre and hearing a great range of what I have.

Since we're entering the wintery time, there will be more time spent indoors and I need some new hobbies- so I put this out there to you people! What should my hobbies be? The only restrictions are that they should be relatively cheap. What do you like to do in your spare time?

Ideally I'd like a variety of hobbies that are both social and not-social. I also don't have cable, which is good- in that I have a lot of time that I don't spend watching TV, but also things like knitting are effing boring if you aren't watching TV.

OH- and I've just recently gotten married- FYI, it was pretty easy and uncomplicated!! I'm not quite sure WHO I'm married to, I suspect my friend Jennie, since her hubby already has a wife. And everyone needs a wife! Or maybe I just married Stu's band (Vedette- check em out on myspace- vedettecanada- they RAWK). But I'm officially a "band-wife" yay me! Pretty sure we celebrated with shots of Jagermeister (seriously, my dream wedding...)

That is all- for now. I'm sure once we have the first snow fall I'll be updating with EXCITMENT and awesomeness.