By last Thursday, I had completed the third CS project, my first exam of the semester, and all the homework for the week. This left me with a rare, homework-free weekend containing the best Saturday I have had in a long time. With a bit of culture, a touch of adventure, and some suspense at the end, it was the kind of Saturday that would make a Hollywood writer proud.
I had driven home Friday after my midday history class. It felt like the first real autumn day of the year: cool and the trees with just a touch of color. Saturday began around 11 when I set off to pick up Laura. We were going to lunch at a wonderful Italian restaurant downtown and then to the .
While no sports events were scheduled downtown that afternoon, there did seem to be a parade, block party, barbecue, and religious revival instead. Traffic was crazy. We fought our way through with minimal random lane changes and strange looks. "Don't mind us," we tried to indicate, "We just look like we're tourists." To our mutual amazement, we found a parking spot less than a block away from the restaurant.
It has been weeks since I have eaten good, non-dorm food and months since I have had food as good as the restaurant where we ate. The dorms have nothing on its plush, wood-paneled ambiance, either. We sat in a replica train car raised on a platform a few feet above the rest of the tables. It sounds strange, but it was actually quite nice. It was as if we had a private room all to ourselves.
After a leisurely meal (unlike the one before Stomp), we drove a few streets up and a few over to the art museum. It was heavily under construction, but we managed to find a parking spot and the entrance with little trouble. The museum itself is centered around a small central hall modeled, it seemed, after the inside of a medieval cathedral. Pillars bordered the walls, and behind them several galleries branched off in all directions. We chose one which led us through several rooms of classical renaissance (I am probably using that term incorrectly) paintings grouped by nationality. Many caught our attention. Laura especially liked those which told a story, and I, the detailed architectural pieces. The latter rooms progressed chronologically from what I would (probably incorrectly) call classical realism, through impressionist, and ending at pointillism. The other wings off of the main hall contained older, almost medieval artwork. There was also a section on pigments and how early artists trained under a master artist. Very interesting stuff. Unfortunately, the museum closed before we had time to thoroughly explore the upper floors or additional wings. Maybe next time.
Several things surprised me about the museum. First, I was amazed how many pieces it had from artists I recognized. Rembrandt, Seraut, Gaugin, and even a Van Gogh. The museum was also promoting which we came across in the impressionist room. Not bad for Indiana. Second, I was utterly blown away at how old some of the paintings were. The earliest I found was from 1310. That's almost seven hundred years ago. That is older than any man-made item I have ever come across, and yet there it was, still full of color, right in front of me. Amazing. Finally, many of the paintings brought home how incredibly influential religion was over the course of history. It seemed every other painting illustrated a story from the Bible or contained obviously religious elements. It's hard for me, living in a (we can hope) secular, scientific society to imagine a world in which religion governs nearly every aspect of life.
A burly staff member had to all but kick us out once the museum closed. Luckily the gardens surrounding the museum remained open, so Laura and I wandered for another hour or so. Through the woods, up through the formal gardens, around a disused fountain, and back again. With fall rapidly approaching, the plants were beginning to fade, but I, always with my camera, was able to capture some of the remaining beauty.
Eventually we worked our way back to the car and from there made our way back home. We were both parched from a long afternoon of walking, so stopped for drinks at one point.
"You know what would be good?" I asked as we exited the convenience store, juice drinks in hand, "Smoothies."
"Yeah!" Laura replied.
I was shocked when five minutes down the road we passed a smoothie shop. Of course we had to stop. Not long after that we stopped again for a quick dinner.
When we got back to Laura's house, we found her mom collapsed on the living room couch. She couldn't talk, couldn't focus, and was hallucinating that the dogs were getting out of their pen and running away. Laura, panicked, explained that her mom is diabetic and must have forgotten to eat, causing her blood sugar to fall catastrophically. While Laura fed her mom some orange soda, I called the paramedics who arrived a few minutes later. The six of them gathered around the couch and ran a bunch of tests. Mrs. S's blood sugar was 25, lower than Laura had ever seen. The paramedics then started an IV and pumped Mrs. S. full of glucose. She recovered rapidly and was soon sitting up and talking normally. Both Laura and I are incredibly grateful that we came back when we did.
"We must do this again." I said with a smile as I left.
"Definitely. Except for... well... the obvious," Laura replied.