Nausea?

Nausea can be a symptom of FEMALE heart attack or EBOLA. Luckily, I rarely experience this symptom.

All the light we cannot see (audio book), by Anthony Doerr. Cried near the end, not sure why. Very moving the way the author brings together the stories of the young German soldier and the blind girl from Paris and St. Malo. Quite long and involved, detailing the flight of a young girl with her father from Paris at the start of the war. Always surprising to learn the trail of events in various countries during the war. A mystery of a missing diamond and its three copies. Almost wanted it to be over before it was over, but after that was when I cried.

Went to Philadelphia yesterday. Lured by a lecture called "Paris awakens". Was dismayed when I realized that I have been a member of the Philadelphia Museum of art for 10 months without going once. Now I am in the mood. There is a lot to see...sculpture garden, trolleys to the Perelman Center and the Rodin museum and who knows where else. If I go once a week for the next two months, maybe I will get my money's worth? I liked the feeling of being a member. Spending money to save money on parking, food and gifts. My favorite discovery was Charles Demuth...gentle watercolors. Part of a show of Steiglitz and his associates. That section included works by Steiglitz, O'Keefe, Demuth and Dove.

The goldfinch

Remembered a little bird I saw in a museum so I tried to find it online. I believe it IS what gave the idea for the book The Goldfinch. It is in the Frick Gallery in New York City. I started the book and only got 1/3 of the way through it before it became overdue. Then started all over again with the 26 CD audiobook. It is quite compelling!

Finished Then again, by Diane Keaton. I love reading autobiographies and finding out who knew whom and such like that. I am eager to read her new book as I enjoyed this one on my Nook. She never married (I like THOSE role models) and adopted two children. She also went through a lot with the decline of her mother.

Someone has been in my yard and it gives me the creeps. Came home and found one of the wooden pieces broken off on my gate. Then we found a SWEATER and a CELL PHONE under the steps. Just what I need, a careless, vandalizing trespasser. I have enough dislike of my neighbors without them invading my space. Called the policeman and he was very polite and took the cell phone although he thought it was broken and useless.

Remembrance of things past

My weekly laptop picture is of Proust in his bed writing his most famous book, A la recherche du temps perdu.  I saw his actual bed at the Carnavalet museum in Paris. 

http://carnavalet.paris.fr/en/museum-carnavalet

This museum is HUGE and free and lots of cool stuff including old store signs and fragments of stained glass windows from churches.

Not many people can say that they have read all of this multi-volume work.  I have tried but ended up skipping some.  Very dense, he can go on for pages about the sensations evoked when he bites into a madeleine.  I love the fact that he wrote such an evocative book IN BED.



Starbucks is really incommodious today.  I came here because my exercise class ends at 9 and the libraries don't open until 10.  Here is what I don't like about Starbucks:
- only one table big enough for me and it is continually occupied
- small round table barely big enough for my laptop and mouse.
- table is sticky
- chair is hard

On the plus side:
- they have a plug
- they have newspapers for sale

Exercise for arthritis class was strange this AM.  I ran over there for 8 AM since my excursion for today was cancelled due to extreme weather which is nowhere in sight.  Teacher was not there.  Another attendee was there with an audio cassette of our teacher.  So the two of us did the class looking at an audio cassette player instead of the teacher.  It worked!