"Repeat, repeat the sounding joy." That line from a familiar (?) Christmas tune has been running through my mind, appropriately enough, for days...it's been a very weird Christmas in Durandland, and I guess my subconscious is trying to tell me to focus on the positives, or something. I'll tell the story of the last week through some random linkage...and of course there's plenty to catch up on in the realm of internet curiosities. Let's just hope the last 2.5 days of 2003 are less eventful than the first 362.

First of all, though my sweetie has beaten me to the post, you must check out the El Greco retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC -- only two weeks left to see it in person, but it will last forever on the internet, aaahhhh. Going to the Met during Christmas week is practically a requirement, and though it was crowded the paintings jumped right off the walls, they are so proto-modern and trippy. Nat admired this landscape, I got to visit my favorite portrait of the Grand Inquisitor, but one of his most famous works was missing, The Burial of Count Orgaz. The Met is teeming with tourists at this time of the year, but people seemed to really enjoy these paintings. It's an especially nice way to spend an unusually warm December afternoon in New York, wandering around the Temple of Dendur with your favorite person in the world -- I recommend it.