That is all.

Okay, it's not really all. It's just a good strong statement and an apt way to open up this ramble. Mercury is retrograding right over my moon, which is wreaking bloody havoc with just about every aspect of my life. It's frustrating. Not insurmountable, but definitely challenging.

However, Mercury goes direct Friday, and things should start clearing up then.

True to form, though, I have spent much of this retrograde period reflecting and going back over things - re-assessing my plans for the next few months, and really digging into this whole rededication of my life to me. It's not easy - for a very long time, most of my time and energy has been focused on community-oriented stuff, and shaping my priorities to *my* personal priorities is trickier than I expected. I've spent so long having no time for myself, and the pattern I created was to spend my downtime doing not much - sleeping, reading, vegging out - that I'm having to reprogram myself to actually do stuff with my time. It's hard, but good.

I'm making some progress - baby steps - but I have so much on the list, and I'm not being wanting to be very patient with myself. Ugh. What I wouldn't give for a little bippity-boppity-boo right now!!

Seen on a t-shirt: "Sex, drugs, and nuclear physics!"

Sunday, early in the morning, me and my girls hit the fabulous Field Museum of Natural History to check out the famed "Tutankhamun: something-or-other mystery or treasures or blah blah blah" exhibit, on loan from the Cairo Museum. You'd think that at 7:30 on a Sunday morning, it would be a pretty sparse crowd, right? Totally wrong. Everyone and their brother (or more annoyingly, their six poorly behaved children) was at the museum waiting to get in. We got in for the 10 a.m. tour, and were herded like cattle into a chute to start off the exhibit, and then spent just over an hour dodging kids, ignoring cell phones (despite the museum intro asking specifically that they be turned to silent mode or off), trying to break out of the line of people that seemed to move from one artifact to the next....as if it were unthinkable to step out of line and view the exhibits out of order! Oy.

Since most of the "good" stuff from Tut's tomb (the mummy, the sarcophagi, the nested shrines, most of the flashy grave goods, etc.) never leaves Egypt (appropriately, I think), there was limited flash-and-dazzle and more to appreciate if you were already sort of familiar with his history and legacy. The exhibit spent a little too much time (in my opinion) talking about Tut's predecessors (about half, maybe more, of the overall exhibit was composed of artifacts from tombs other than Tut's), not to mention really setting up this sort of adversarial thing between Tut and Akhenaten - it almost felt a little political, the way it was slanted. It felt like they were hammering home this vision of Tut as the savior of Egypt's "old ways," as if he single-handedly restored the multi-theistic state religion himself, saving Egypt from the cult of the One True Aten.

I'm not sure what message was in there....and I'm not sure who sets that kind of overall tone, considering this exhibit is broadly arranged by the Egyptian Department of Antiquities....but it was interesting to notice.

The "best" pieces in the exhibit included the flashy (one of the canopic sarcophagi - beautiful external inlay in gold, lapis, crystal, carnelian with amazing internal engraved spellwork featuring a gorgeous Isis; one of his working crowns; several beautiful ceremonial collars; a dagger and sheath with really impressive metalwork) and the not-so-flashy (a ceremonial wooden chair and footstool from Tut's childhood; a wooden canopic chest with some delicate woodwork that amazes me in its survival; a really beautiful alabaster lotus cup). They did have a nice comparison of all the mummy investigations that have been done - the original autopsy, both sets of x-rays, and last year's CAT scan....that was a nice twist and very interesting to see all aggregated like that.

Overall, good exhibit, but over-hyped, over-crowded, and maybe a little too spoon-fed. Of course, I'm of the opinion that artifacts should speak for themselves, and if people have the time to go see them, they have the time to educate themselves about what they're seeing. But I'm a judgmental geek, and that's what I do.

Today's rocking playlist:

"Only Heart" - John Mayer
"Jesus Walks" - Kanye West
"Flowers in the Window" - Travis
"A Little Less Conversation" - Elvis
"U + Ur Hand" - P!nk
"Black Tornado" - Dan Bern
"Don't Cha" - Pussycat Dolls
"We Need a Filthy War" - DJ Earworm
"It's My Life" - Bon Jovi
"Gold Digger" - Kanye West
"Ride" - The Vines
"Stacy's Mom" - Fountains of Wayne
"Sing" - Travis
"Walkie Talkie Man" - Steriogram
"Wicked Lil' Grrls" - Espero
"Try!" - John Mayer Trio
"God is a DJ" - P!nk
"Legend of a Cowgirl" - Imani Coppola
"Real Slim Shady" - Eminem
"Tell the Girl" - Cowboy Mouth


Recent entries...
27 December 2007: 2007: Finis.
17 December 2007: A ruse, a rant, and a poem. It's short.
11 December 2007: Music & falling....story of my life.
08 December 2007: Briefly...ish.
29 November 2007: A poem, a rant, a lesson.