A New Post--Finally!

Well, I'm back after a few months of a kind of cyber-hiatus. There were a variety of reasons for it, not the least of which being that the first few months of pregnancy are no picnic. During that time I lost all motivation for blogging, Facebooking, twittering, you name it. Unplugging for awhile actually proved to be restful, and I'm now ready to rejoin the 21st century (I think). Based on all of the inquiries I've received over the past months, it seems there are people who actually read my posts and have been especially anxious to hear how things are going now that Eric and I are parents-to-be.

So, friends and family, allow me to bring you up to speed. At the moment I am five months along. If you do the math, that means I am halfway through. Baby Wells' expected arrival is sometime around November 3rd. All things considered, everything has gone extremely well. The doctor says the baby is doing great and so am I. All indications are that we will be welcoming a healthy baby into the world come November. We'll know more in the next week when we have the more detailed "anatomical" ultrasound, at which point we also may be able to determine the sex of the baby. So, check back again next week--I may have some notable news to report.

Yesterday at Disneyland--five months and counting...

One Year Later

A year ago today I started this blog to help friends and family keep up with what's happening with me. I was a little wary of blogging at first, but I've come to enjoy being able to share my stories with all of you. I went through my blog archives and picked out some of the posts from the last year I particularly enjoyed writing.

Cyclops Takes a Stake to the Eye 2/25/08

Onion Rings? 3/10/08

A Flat Start 4/25/08

Tipped 4/12/08

The Golden One 4/10/08

Mummies in the Dark 4/7/08

Mrs. Wells Goes to the Opera 5/18/08

War Games 7/12/08

A Goddess On Her Knees 10/12/08

When Lion's Eyes Are Smiling 11/17/08

If there's a post you enjoyed, please leave a comment and let me know which one you liked. Remember, this is for fun--but it won't be any fun if no one responds!

Nagwan & LACMA

Last week I was asked to take one of the visiting Egyptian scholars from the Villa, Nagwan, to see LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). So, once more I found myself playing guide for another Egyptian visitor, just as I was a couple of years ago during the King Tut exhibit at LACMA. Nagwan is a curator for the Coptic Museum in Cairo (I think by now I've made friends with curators in cities from Alexandria to Luxor) and she was very nice. I amused her with my very bad Arabic, and she was enthralled with the medieval and Renaissance Christian art in LACMA's galleries. She’s a Copt (an Egyptian Christian), so she had fun going from painting to painting identifying saints. I asked her what it was like being a Copt in Egypt, and she just shook her head. Then she asked me if I had heard about the Muslim Brotherhood. (The Muslim Brotherhood is a political organization in Egypt that wants to make the government of Egypt an Islamic government rather than a secular one.) Egyptians can be melodramatic sometimes, but she seemed genuinely afraid that someday the Muslim Brotherhood—a party who openly says if it were in control it would hang the Christians of Egypt up “by their shoes,” as Nagwan put it—would gain power and get its wish. Also during our visit my former boss and Deputy Director of the museum, Nancy, even made a point of saying hello to us and gave Nagwan a book about the history of LACMA. Of course I also took her to the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum there, even though I knew she'd hate it. I was right--she hates contemporary art just as much as I do. We did have fun taking self-portraits in Jeff Koons's "Cracked Egg" exhibit, though (see picture). All in all it was a pretty fun and relaxing afternoon.

"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."

I'm not launching this blog because I feel a desperate need to add my voice to the cacophony of random thoughts, opinions, arguments, and musings found in countless blogs throughout cyberspace. I fully intend to float through cyberspace in obscurity, not marshal the masses to become my minions and take over the world. (Although I will keep this plot in mind for a rainy day...) My only goal in beginning this blog is to give long distance friends and family a place to stop by every once in awhile to see what I've been up to lately. I know I'm pretty inconsistent and sporadic when it comes to keeping up with email, so we'll see if this new medium will help me be a little more consistent. And hopefully those of you who stop by from time to time will in some way enjoy reading about my ho-hum life out here on the left coast.

Stay tuned.