Bloody nice portraits

My friend, classmate and fellow impending consultant Susan's old art history teacher once said that many artists spent months or even years doing a piece, so the least you can do is spend a full minute looking at it.  

After recently discovering we are both blessed with class-free Tuesdays, Susan and I are hitting up some of those "Bucket List" Yale attractions we really should have gone to by now. Our first: The Yale Center for British Art (usually referred to as the British Art Museum).

The permanent collection (pictured) featured mostly portraits and landscapes, which while not always too exciting in and of themselves, often had somewhat interesting back stories in the explanatory plaques. I was particularly impressed with how shiny and wet-looking these several-hundred-years-old paintings were. On the third floor we breezed through the current exhibit, a much more modern and abstract series of pieces by someone named Rebecca Salter, called "into the light of things."

Some of the other things Susan and I want to do are to see the Collection of Musical Instruments, the Beinecke, and the University Art Gallery. It's just a good idea, if you go to Yale or any school, to see these types of popular attractions. Somebody down the line is bound to ask whether I've ever been.

Tonight was the final formal installment of LDP, or the Leadership Development Program, a series of evening sessions for first-year students, for which I was a Second Year Advisor (more or less a TA). We ended on a good note, with a great discussion about goals and strengths. The program gets some heat for being somewhat misfocused; "teaching" leadership is hard to do. But I hope some of the students got something out of it. As for me, my favorite aspect was getting to meet with the first-years in half-hour one-on-one advisory sessions. I much preferred that aspect to having to try to help facilitate the class, and having to play disciplinarian. But, you know, it's a living. (Being facetious there, although we do get paid.)

Speaking of pay, I was pretty psyched to receive half my sign-on bonus from Deloitte today! I'll get the second half after I start work. I must be prudent about it, though, because it's money I'm going to put toward living expenses over the summer, as well as working on some music during that time. Still, though, I'd like to treat myself to a little something I've always wanted ...