BerthaBlog

Last spring, Wake Tech hosted a small exhibit by Bryant Holsenbeck. She came onto the campus and created a sculpture out of recycled items such as prescription bottles, bottle caps, and Altoids tins.

Bryant Holsenbeck’s exhibit at Wake Tech

I took the boys to see it, as it’s the kind of thing they’d like. My eldest likes to make art of this type himself, so he was very interested to see someone else’s work.

I took a few pictures, but they really don’t do it justice.

This is mostly bottle caps, can lids, and buttons.

I’ve been adding a little content to the sidebar on my blog page, just so it wouldn’t look so empty over there. Mostly links to other people’s blogs, and a countdown to the next Harry Potter book (one of these days I really should read The Half-Blood Prince). It’s still a bit drab—I need to whip up some graphics or something for it—but it’s a little nicer.

And of course Internet Explorer doesn’t display any of it correctly, so today I’ll have to go apply some hacks. Not than anyone other than my mom will see it. Still, considering that Microsoft helped develop the web standards, it sure would be nice if their software would actually support them. But I’ve seen IE do far worse things to my nicely-laid out styles; this should be relatively painless to fix.

It wrapped all the way around the base of the stairs.

Of course, what I should be doing is studying. But damn, that gets old after a while. For some reason I had the idea that I would have more free time over the summer, not less.

Attempted close-up of one of the features.

Fortunately, classes end the day before we leave on our cruise. Talk about good timing. I should be completely ready for a week of doing nothing by then. My mate will have the kids to drag off on tours with him, so I’ll be free to lounge on the deck of the ship getting fat and sunburned. I’m not a big fan of tours; I like to see places at my own pace, stop and dawdle over the things that catch my fancy, wander back and forth as it suits me. Tours are wasted on me—after the first five or ten minutes my buffer gets full and I don’t take in any more information anyway.

So they can go off and do the tour thing, and I’ll probably just wander around the ports looking at the touristy crap and attempting to talk to the people in bad Spanish.

Another piece set up in one of the windows.

I’m taking some online classes over the summer term. I have learned two things:

1. Online classes are actually more difficult than classroom ones.
2. Although summer term is shorter (10 weeks) than fall term (16 weeks), the courses still contain the same amount of material.

a + b = yikes!

I decided to drop the XML class. One of these days I’d like to learn XML, just because it’s really cool and interesting, but for the moment Managerial Accounting is kicking my ass and I need to devote more time to the courses that are actually required for my major.

Meanwhile, my eldest son is attending his favorite camp again. Last week we sat down together and looked at his summer schedule; he’s only got three weeks when he hasn’t got something planned. At one point my mom remarked how busy his summer is this year; he answered, “It will be even busier next year.”

“What’s next year?”

“Summer job.”

It’s amazing how kids can grow in completely unexpected ways. When they were small, we expected the eldest would prefer staying home in familiar surroundings—it’s just what you’d expect from the typical autist. Instead, he wants to go out every day, explore new places, try new things. His little brother, the social butterfly, is the one who’s just as happy to stay home and read a book or program on the computer. Go figure.