fajrdrako | Sunday retrospective on Saturday...

I made omelettes for breakfast for me and Jo this morning. She was reading my biographies of Sir Edward Pellew for information about the Battle of Algiers, which is coming into one of the novels she's writing. She wants to know if any British slaves were set free after the battle. Neither of us can find any mention of one - though there is a famous story about how a British sailor from a century earlier had been a slave in Algiers, and had escaped eventually to come back home.

Yesterday was fun:

A visit to the National Art Gallery of Canada to see the exhibit on Watteau, Fragonard, and Chardin again, this time with Jo. She pointed out that none of the women had wedding rings, though many were clearly married. We noticed that there is a Boucher painting in the regular collection at the gallery, of a Biblical subject (so not quite as foofy as his paintings later became) that he painted when he was seventeen. Seventeen! Okay, now I was really impressed. It wasn't as good as his later works but it was damn good for a seventeen-year-old, and not a simple subject either. Many figures, much motion.
Lunch was a special party for the Lyngarde Writer's Group, which Jo and I used to belong to. They're a critiquing group who specialize in science fiction. I stopped going when I started writing more fanfic and stopped writing science fiction (or fantasy) entirely. It was fun to see them again, with a few people who have joined since my time. As on Friday, we talked about TorCon, because several people there had attended. And we talked about books, and animals, and publication.
I eventually went to the fitness club and worked with weights again, trying to follow the advice Jacques had given me. It felt good.
Over dinner, chatted with Jo about writing and her upcoming (or do I mean outcoming?) books. The next one is Winter Fair. She told me how it came to be written, and her further thoughts about the Malloren family.
I went to Lisa's place for her birthday party. Lynne couldn't make it, but it was a lovely, friendly group of people. One of them works at the National Gallery, and we discussed the Watteau, Fragonard, Chardin exhibit - because two of the couples there had seen the exhibit that week. Apparently attendance was low on the whole - less than the Gallery expected or hoped. We discussed paintings, and which we'd like best.

We discussed movies, and weird movie experiences.

Then we played Trivial Pursuit. I was impression that Brian (husband of my long-time friend Doreen) remembered that the cook in Bonanza was Hop Sing - I had remembered only the "Hop" part, but I knew Cape Canaveral. The question that floored us was along the lines of "name four names held by two Presidents of the United States". Erk! Though there were several trained historians in our midst, and one professional, none of us had taken much American history. We muttered and mumbled and got three out of four right - but none of us knew Harrison.

My team won, anyway. There was much groaning at the easiness of our questions, like "Who wrote Das Kapital and What was the name of Beaver Cleaver's brother?