The first of December

Today's the first day of December. It's the last month of the year. Hard to believe, isn't it? The year's gone by so fast.

Last night my aunt took my sister and me downtown, where we checked out art galleries and had sushi at this hip, semi-fancy place called Dragonfly. The sushi was delicious, and that stuff is filling. I wasn't totally full, because there's only so much food you can buy at that kind of place. I'd have to say I was pleasantly full, though.

The art galleries were hit or miss. There were some where the artists were presenting their work in their studios. There were nice. Their works were of typical subjects like landscapes, still lifes, and nudes. (If you did nothing but look at art all day, you'd probably get the impression that women like to strip naked and lie around the house with thoughtful looks on their faces. It isn't so.) Other places had artsy-looking people looking at odd sculptures.

But my favorite artists were the two who were spray-painting on a street corner. One had canvases, and the other was working on paper, but they could turn out an otherworldly landscape (each in his own style) in about 10 minutes. My aunt was looking at a large canvas that had some mountains and interesting Chinese-looking characters. She had a conversation with the artist about tai chi and ended up taking the painting home. The smell of spray paint filled the car, but it was worth it. It's just one of those paintings you can spend hours looking at.

Today I finished the first draft of my research paper for America in the Fifties. It took me many weeks of procrastination and a few weeks of on-and-off work. I finished it after a marathon writing session that lasted all afternoon and into the evening.

Anyway, it's about teenage drug abuse in the 1950s. It's called, "The Teenage Drug Abuse Epidemic of the 1950s: Menace or Myth?" I added the alliterative rhetorical question (always a favorite of people who title things) after I found that my sources conflicted about whether or not there was a drug menace at all. I make the point that it was more on the menace side. The draft is 17 pages with 79 citations from 20 sources. I hold here in my hands (while I'm not typing) the draft, and it's pretty fat. It's definitely the longest paper I've ever written, and after I revise it, it'll probably be longer. Hopefully it won't ramble, though.

I have to present it tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow, Sunday. That's what happens when your class runs out of time to present papers. I have to deliver a presentation based on the paper to whoever feels like showing up to our meeting that is technically optional. Then a classmate whom I've sent my draft to will present a critique. After everyone else has presented, we'll have lunch and do some additional research, I think. It should be pretty cool, but I'm not keen on having to meet at 10:30 in the morning.

I hope the professor thinks my paper is okay. I probably should have written on a topic he knows nothing about. One girl in the class has an advantage there because she's writing about cars. But the prof is a historian, so he can find a way to make the psychology of the 1950s American car-buyer tie into other contemporary attitudes. You know how it is.

For those of you looking forward to Christmas, isitchristmas.com will tell you whether it's Christmas. There's also an RSS feed so you can keep track.

Looking for photos you can use? Try flikrCC, which searches for Creative Commons-licensed images on Flickr.

Here are 15 examples of manipulated photographs.