Well, I tried to keep up the pattern.

But failed. Emma and I started watching 40 Year Old Virgin on Friday night, but fell asleep in the middle of it due to the fact it was 3-something-am and we were tired after the Katies birthday party in the dorm and lots of life talking in everyone's favorite Irish Café Bar with the badass waitress. Well, at least we tried.

Last night there was not even an effort to watch a movie. I went to a concert at Mod instead with Ilana, Emma, Zach and Vanessa which was a lot of fun.... you wouldn't really expect it but the Russian hipster crowd is really into reggae-sounding bands that seem like they are from the No Doubt "Tragic Kingdom" era. And dreadlocks. I don't think I'd seen so many white kids with dreadlocks until I came to Russia. It was fun though.

And tonight we had an excursion to go see a play, "Дневники нечестного человек" (translated as: "The Diary of a Scoundrel") by Alexandr Ostrovsky at a small little artsy theatre called Ostrov near the Petrogradskaya metro station. As a dialogue-heavy play, I was generally, vaguely confused the whole time and understood about, oh 70% of it, especially as it is one of those plays with a bunch of main characters all connected to each other in some random subtle way, the kind of storyline I often have trouble following in English, let alone Russian, but the actors were all so good and engaging that I still found I was interested the whole time even if I didn't always get what was going on. Also, the parts that I did understand were really funny, so it was an enjoyable experience in the end.

So, yeah. Fucked up the pattern. Oh well. It was worth it.

Other exciting things from the past few days:

As Jonathan Platt's class is technically called "Bakhtin for Practicing Artists," the final project in the class is to present a piece of our own art and analyze it from a Bakhtinian perspective. So I was planning on showing some of my photo projects, the self portrait project in particular, and talking about the author/hero relationship, yadda yadda yadda whatever. But Jonathan chatted with his wife Emily, who was wanting me to have a show in the Open Studio Gallery space already, and suggested I install a small photo show there to present my art to everyone before my presentation in class on Friday the 19th. Basically, I'm using this class as an excuse to finalize a piece of my work and have a show. And I'm really excited about it. SO for all of you who are in the area who read this..... meaning Vanessa and Abman, though I think Abman will be in America at this point, which is sucky..... I'm installing the show on Wednesday night the 17th, and on Thursday night the 18th, circa 7:30pm or so, we're going to have a little opening reception (I'm going to buy cheap wine and cheese) and Aaron, the master student in the Bakhtin class, is going to do his piece of performance art and then you can admire 184 photographs of me taped to a wall. It'll be great. I hope. We'll see.

Speaking of art, I had printmaking for a really long time on Saturday, due to our lack of it last week because Friday was Yuri's 50th birthday and so he hungover and/or still drunk on Saturday and canceled class. We finished our metal engraving prints though, and it might be my favorite technique. I love how finely you can draw in the laquer with a needle and then the acid just burns it all away in just the right small spots. I also enjoyed adding tone to the print using resin and more acid. It's a really cool process and I'm a big fan. I might do my final project using that technique next semester....

And I only have two more weeks of classes and exams, which feels pretty good. I'm really looking forward to this break as it will be the longest I have gone without being in class since..... last January.... I've basically been in school for a full calendar year, with only two brief breaks in June and then in August. It's time.