Thanksgiving & Museums

[shannon_a]

Yesterday, we had a pretty typical Appelcline Thanksgiving. We picked up food at Andronico's (turkey breast, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, green beans, various rolls) and then cooked them in the late afternoon. In the meantime we marathoned a TV show, in this case the first episodes of Friday Night Lights. (Though in our middle age, "marathon" means we watched a whole three episodes of it.) The food was good, though not as good as it has been, as Andronico's has been on a downward slope for years. Friday Night Lights proved interesting in its view of as strange and obsessive culture. Very nice characterization too.

There was also game playing, reading, and reading aloud. A kicked-back and relaxed day.

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Today was our second annual Museum Day. We went out to the Palace of the Legion of Honor to see "Pissarro's People", an exhibit containing the art of impressionist Camille Pissarro.

I've grown increasingly fond of impressionists over our exhibits from the last year, but at the same time I was expecting this to be less impressive because of its focus on people. And, that was to some extent true. In particularly there was half-a-room dedicated to peoples in markets which all looked like chaotic mishmashes.

However, many of the Pissarro's were nice. I quite like many pictures he drew of his wife and children. Some were pencil drawings, some charcoal, and many were fully painted. A picture of one of his sons working in his studio was my favorite for the name, partially due to its composition, partially due to its uniqueness. There were also a number of great paintings of people working in gardens and fields, which showed off Pissarro's strengths as a landscape artist.

It was nice to get to see some more impressionism.

While at the Palace we also looked at a smaller exhibit showing artwork of San Francisco. This included paintings, drawings, and photographs. It had quite a number of attractive pieces, including some somewhat abstract pictures of the city, and some neat paintings and drawings taken of bridges in various forms of construction.

And then we looked at a small exhibit of illustrated books which was dull.

But overall, a successful day at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, and now we've got memberships again to see some stuff over the next year. There's something going on at the De Young that Kimberly wants to see, and we'll probably doing that over my Christmas break. (I love having bigger outings be when I have more time.)

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We got off our bus back from the Palace near Union Square and saw police all over, as well as Occupy protestors (one of which had an Occupy Oakland poster, apparently because he took a wrong turn at Albuquerque). It was a mess, but we were able to push through crowds to make it down to BART and (eventually) home.

Tired, and I'm probably done gallivanting for the (long) weekend, though I'm still considering some board gaming at Endgame tomorrow.