Lagging Behind

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That tiny little bird on the far right? That's me.

I need to catch up on posts!!!!

I thought for sure I'd write more than one with this being a long weekend (and even longer for me, as I took Friday off), but no can do.

Oh well, if this is the worst problem I have at this moment, I'll take it.

As I said, I took Friday off, as did John. For a few months, I'd been saying that I wanted to see a special exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston -- John Singer Sargent's watercolors.

I LOVE Singer Sargent's portraits (which he's known for). I can't remember if I first saw them in D.C. at the National Gallery or at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

This is my fave:

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This is entitled, "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit." It's a rather dark picture, but I love the youthfulness of it.

When I heard that Singer Sargent had done watercolors, I was pretty surprised. His portraits tend to be dark, like the one above, while as watercolors are generally much lighter.

I bought tickets online and on Friday morning, John and I drove into Boston to check out the exhibit.

We had to wait in line for maybe 20 minutes and it was VERY crowded.

This is the design that was on the elevator bank:

We made it to the lower level!

Once we finally got into the exhibit, the crowd didn't thin out at all. At first we stood "in line" and followed the crowd around the walls. At some point, I couldn't take it anymore and broke free. I realized that I didn't need to be front and center, but could admire the paintings from afar.

Here are some of my favorites (excuse the not so good pics, but not being front & center does have its drawbacks):

All in all, it was a real nice exhibit. I wasn't fond of the quarry series he did, I otherwise like the rest. Interestingly, there weren't as many watercolors as I thought there'd be and there were oils mixed in AND there were paintings from Edward Darley Boit mixed in. Huh.

What else has been going on?

My Mom was here for about five days. I had some time off with her before I got sick (ugh) and we had a nice visit. We shopped, we ate, we shopped, we watched HGTV, we shopped. OK...like mother, like daughter.

I've been engrossed in cookbooks that I've gotten from the library. I bookmark the recipes I like and try to find them online and Pin them. If I can't, I go the old fashioned route and photocopy. Here are the latest I've been plowing through:

Let's talk British TV, shall we?

As you probably know, Season 4 of Downton Abbey has started.

This is me and my reaction so far:

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It's sad, really. The first episode had promise, but since then it's all gone to crap. Grrr. (Of course, I'll still watch in case it makes a miraculous turnaround.)

On the other side of the spectrum, I started watching another British TV series (from the very beginning) and wasn't so sure about it, but by the end of the first episode of the first season, I'm sold!

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It's on Netflix, so check it out!

I have to do my 2013 "Year in Books" post -- I read some good ones. (The one I started 2014 with was a dud and I stopped reading it, which I almost NEVER do.)

Got about 100 pages in and couldn't take the arduous details anymore (it's close to 600 pages in total). My Mom loved it, but I just couldn't see wasting my time on it. If you read it and like it, let me know.

I was looking into taking a beginning sewing class, but....

you have to bring your own machine.

WTF? Some people I've told that to thought it made sense and others, not so much.

Needless to say, I won't be buying a sewing machine to take one class to find out I suck at it or hate it.

Phew.

I think that catches us up.

I'd promise that I'll write another post soon, but it might be a lie.