Hi Intrepid Readers!

I know y’all, it is 2011 (what) I haven’t posted since BEFORE DRAGON*CON which is totally tragic, but I’ve been in a bit of a “funk” regarding life and that whole not being able to find a museum job thing.*  However I realize that moping around about the nonexistent state of my career isn’t accomplishing anything, so I’m attempting to be more proactive in other areas of my life.  I have accomplished this in one aspect by getting back to the gym five-six times a week for the past few weeks.  I have found this class that I love/that kicks my flabby ass.  It is called BODY COMBAT which is basically a fancy name for “cardio kickbox” but without the Legally Blonde associations of cardio kickboxing and with more focus on martial arts terms and techniques.  Also, the instructor has a penchant for playing a techno version of the Braveheart theme and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.  Nothing whatsoever.

So since I am flexing my muscles by getting back to the gym I figured I should flex my mind by getting back to the blogging.  I’m looking for themes again, because I like themes, but for the time being you might see a mish-mosh of food and culture and my general musings.  I’m thinking of starting a spin-off culture blog with an awesome name but that is for the future.  We’ll see.

So today I continued on my quest to be more of a person by finally getting myself down to the North Carolina Museum of Art to see the Norman Rockwell exhibit.  I’ll be honest: Rockwell’s not really my cup of tea.  His work is quaint and has its place in history and Americana and kitsch but it just doesn’t do it for me.  And because the museum was a zoo (the exhibit closes in a week and I suppose everyone is realizing that now because ALL OF THE TRIANGLE WAS THERE) and parking was a disaster and there were lines for tickets and lines to get into the exhibit and the exhibit was a crowd of people, well…crowded museums aren’t really my thing either, people.  I could tell that the curators of the exhibit were having a bit of trouble balancing their need to present a larger message with the sheer simplicity and kitschy-ness of the works.  Yes, Rockwell is an amazing draftsman and painter and his work is technically interesting and clearly he has a sense of a humor and, as we see later on in the exhibition, a sense of social purpose and a need for social justice (in his job as illustrator of covers for The Saturday Evening Post he was not allowed to present African Americans in any role except for a servile one–something he railed against in his later, personal depictions of injustice toward African Americans and the Civil Rights movement), but I just can’t sustain a lot of interest for him.  The exhibit was really too crowded for me to get a sense of the layout or the theme or how well it was done/not done, so I can’t really speak for that either.  I mean, I would have felt guilty not going, but still, not my favorite.

I did, however, get some great photo opportunities with the Thanksgiving turkey:

Anyways, the moral of this story is that I am going to endeavor to post a bit more often nowadays.  So, expect more food blogs and more cultural commentary and more me etc.

*I mean, that’s enough to fill another blog, y’all.