Corner of Bourbon & Division

Today was spent in the company of fearsclave who was in town in order to put his lovely wife on a plane. I am sad I didn't get to see her, but the timing for that was off.

We spent the better part of the morning and afternoon together, starting with a quick stop by Sail, which is a sporting goods store I'd never heard of until today. It was very reminiscent of the Mountain Equipment Coop, and I had to fight all my outdoorsy sporting goods urges that suddenly all sprang to life again. It might be the promise of spring around the corner, but suddenly all I wanted to do was go for a really long hike in the woods and pull out my fishing gear and declare what fearsclave likes to call "jihad against the fish."

We dropped by a tobacconist's shop, because fearsclave has become a pipe-smoking redneck hipster. It was a neat little shop, though the name escapes me currently. The woman running the shop was the founder's granddaughter, which was very cool. Definitely a family business, and right in the heart of downtown Ottawa. We had a nice chat, and then it was time for lunch.

fearsclave had earlier suggested a restaurant called Coconut Lagoon, which serves Southern Indian food. It was absolutely delicious, though lunch time means we didn't get the full menu but rather a buffet-style self-serve. Like I said, absolutely delicious, and I will definitely have to go back one of these days.

The afternoon was reserved for the National Gallery, to which I had never been. Our goal was the Group of Seven, and we happily ogled the Tom Thomsons and the Arthur Lizmers for quite a while. It's a beautiful museum, and if my brain was more lyrically inclined right now I'd probably wax poetic about the architecture and the tranquil atrium with trees and flowers where you can sit and collect yourself if you're so inclined. I could feel the tension draining from me just by standing there for even a few minutes. I do love going to museums, greeting the paintings I know as old friends and discovering new ones as well. The last time I'd been to a museum was in 2011 when I visited Rome, which is pretty sad. I'm going to have to look up the free or at least half-price museum days so I can go a bit more often.

The temporary exhibit was super cool. It was an installation in the chapel by Janet Cardiff, called the Forty Part Motet. It's a musical piece--a reworking of Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis, a 16th-century English composer. She recorded each voice part as an individual track, then set up each with it's own speaker in the chapel. That way you can stand either dead centre or next to each speaker and hear each individual voice, or "climb in the music" as she puts it. It blew me away. If you have a chance to see it, I can't recommend it enough.

We continued on with our museum tour, though we didn't get to see all the exhibits. In the Canadian works section there was one painting in particular that caught our eye. It had been commissioned by a company that mined and produced refined nickel, and I'm pretty sure that the giant-ass painting done in the style of Soviet realism was not what they had in mind. (I don't remember the name of the artist. If someone knows it, please tell me!) It was huge and featured a rather aggressive looking worker holding the tools of his trade in a way that was more reminiscent of a machine gun than anything else. There was another man bent over a microscope next to a set of beakers and test tubes, while a WWII-style bomber flew over a high-speed train. On the left factory chimneys belched smoke into the sky, while on the far right molten nickel was poured into a container not featured in the painting. Above the molten nickel skyscrapers reached toward the indifferent sky. So, naturally, fearsclave and I had the following exchange:

Me: "Science!"

fearsclave: "Industry!"

In Unison: "PROGRESS!"

It was a good moment. I think we giggled over it for about 10 minutes after that.

Alas, the day came to an end far too quickly, since I'm working tonight (and here I am!). But it was a nice change of pace from work-sleep-work-home-chores-sleep-back to work. Tonight I just have to work through being tired and the headache I developed about half an hour before coming here, and everything should be fine.

I seem to be doomed to work in offices that are either much too hot or much too cold. Right now I am exceedingly chilly (or "tilly," as Bean would say, not to be confused with "silly," which he also pronounces "tilly" with only the slightest nuance). I should have worn a hoodie to work tonight, but foolishly I opted for a lighter cotton shirt, and now I regret that decision intensely. Given that it's not yet 2am and this is only going to get worse, I may put my winter coat back on in order to keep warm.

My life, she is exciting, yes?

In other news, I have begun Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. It's a heck of a challenge, especially given how little concentration and focus I have these days. I have managed to do the first three exercises, but my brain refused to try again for the fourth exercise tonight. I've been taking very bad photographs of my progress with my phone, mostly because it amuses me, but also because that way I'm sort of keeping myself accountable on Twitter, where those photos have been going.

Part of my problem is that I am not by nature a patient person. In fact, I am incredibly impatient, especially with myself. I never acquired the skill of applying myself to a task for long periods of time as a child, mostly because I was lucky enough that most of the things I did came quite easily to me. Playing the recorder and the flute, swimming, writing, all of that. Sure, I had to work to improve, but I started out with a pretty good initial aptitude. Art? Not so much. So rather than work at it, I told myself that I simply wasn't good at it and never did it again. Ah, thirteen-year-old logic.

So now, at 35 and with some really interesting brain fog/concentration issues, it's a lot harder to make myself be patient and put in the amount of time and effort this project really takes. Mostly I'm finding it hard to sit and concentrate for the required amount of time. Either my mind wanders, or I get interrupted by something perfectly legitimate, or something else happens and I have to put the art away. It took me two days to finish one exercise which had me copying a line drawing upside down. I tried starting a fourth exercise today, as I mentioned, but my brain just went "NOPE," and that was the end of that. I couldn't focus on the original drawing, let alone try to reproduce the lines therein. So I have to contend with that as well as the dissatisfied voice at the back of my mind that keeps wondering why I haven't turned into Tamara de Lempicka yet. :P

I'm looking forward to the coming weekend. I get to see some old friends who are stopping by for a short visit on Saturday morning, and this time I don't have to cut my Sunday short to go to work, which is always nice. If the weather permits, I might even try playing outside with Bean again on Sunday when pdaughter goes to her cake decorating class. This week is the big week in which she has to bake an entire cake to be decorated, and I believe they are learning to do basket weave (if memory serves). So there will likely be cake this weekend, which is awesome.

Time is simply flying by, the way it always does. It doesn't feel like February should be more than half over, and yet it is. There are any number of explanations for this by way of cognitive psychology, of course. Apparently we form more detailed and longer-lasting memories of first experiences, and that repetitive experiences tend to lose their impact over time, thus lending themselves less well to being readily identifiable at one juncture in time. Sorry, I am rather tired, no idea if that sentence makes sense other than in my head. Time will tell.

Long story short, it feels like it was the New Year just yesterday, and I'm not sure where the time has gone. I should try to come up with a more interesting subject for an LJ post soon. I think I've gone through all the requests, but I'll go back and check just to make sure. In the meantime, I'm going to go put on my coat, because it's freezing in here.

:::ETA:::

I just remembered I have a thermos of warm coffee that I can drink. Tilly me!