When we left our intrepid heroine...

I was about to crash asleep in my chair after hoofing all over Lower Manhattan.

Saturday morning, when I woke up, I mapped out my plan for the day, making one critical error (which you'll see in a bit). While at dinner on Friday, my sister had mentioned an exhibit she enjoyed a great deal at the Whitney Musuem - a show of Picasso and some of the American artists that he had influenced. I looked it up and found that it was still running. The lure of that show combined with my sister's warning that the Guggenheim is often crazy crowded on the weekend made me change my plans, and I am so glad that I did.

The show was amazing! Now, I don't know much about art in general, and I really don't know much about modern art, so I was coming to this from the vantage point of the mostly untutored. The show was eye opening. Unfamiliar with most of Picasso's work, I got to be astounded at the depth and breadth of his work. Seeing how his work evolved over time, and then seeing how that caused other artists to change and move into new areas gave me the first glimmerings of understanding how modern art came about. I kind of "got it" for the first time.

After the Picasso exhibit, I wandered around the Albers And Moholy-Nagy: From The Bauhaus To The New World exhibit for a while. That was neat, but not nearly as stunning as the Picasso.

Done with the museum, both because I was tired and because it was now also getting crowded. I walked a few blocks, found the bus to take me downtown, grabbed a quick (and sadly yucky) lunch, and found habu. What neat stuff they have there! It was very fun getting to touch and fondle what they had, but in the end, I didn't buy anything.

After that, I walked over toward School Products, found the building, and it was closed. Confused, I wandered around for a few minutes trying to figure out if I was in the right place. Finally decided that I was, and it WAS closed, and I groused a bit and walked back to the bus. Later on, I looked again at their web page to realize that they close at 3:30 on Saturdays. I'd gotten there at about 3:35. (There's the critical error.) Dammit. Next time, I'll know better.

After that, I was seriously footsore and beat, so I found the bus and headed back to my hotel. Stopped at a restaurant nearby, at a quick light dinner, grabbed a cab and headed for my train. I ended up so engrossed in my book that I didn't even knit at all on the train ride home. The book was The Best Thing I Ever Tasted by Sallie Tisdale, an if you've not read it, I would highly recommend it. Thoughtful, interesting, and in a few places, heartbreaking. There were more than a few places where it felt like she had climbed inside my head before saying what she had to say. An excellent choice for an impulse used bookstore purchase.

This week, I've just not been knitting. I'm at the uber-boredom point of a few projects, at the super tough stage of another, and nothing is lining itself up to be worked on at the moment. In a few minutes, though, I'm going to go watch the new Monk and Psych, and hopefully barrel through the tough project.

Of course, it also didn't help that I spent two days in Toledo. With a new and very eager co-worker, so there was not much time to myself on this particular trip. No matter, it was still a good trip, and the new co-worker did well, and (I hope) learned a whole lot. It was fun that he seemed very intrigued by my knitting (socks, especially, seem to intrigue non-knitters. It must be all the needles and the weird shaping.)

Tomorrow afternoon, Widget has a friend over for a playdate. I'm hoping that they'll play together and I'll get a bit of time to putter, even if it's time that's full of little girl loud.