How can a chick be bigger than a chicken?

Magnet #1283 - Faberge rooster

Yeah, remember how I said VMFA's Faberge Revealed visitors were sparse yesterday? They were, but there were a few kids running around the exhibit halls, too.

Kids don't really bother me at all...unless they're unruly, or loud, or just spoiled. These kids weren't bad. But apparently, one was just talkative. Or maybe just inquisitive?

I didn't hear her, but they drove Save the World Couple insane with the rat-tat-tat questioning of "How can a chick be bigger than a chicken? How can a chick be bigger than a chicken?" Which is what she asked when she saw this chicken (rooster?) in the display case...because apparently, there was a chick that was...all together now, bigger than the chicken (really, it's a rooster).

Hahaha. Yep. Part of the charm of museums, you never know who you'll meet there.

Anyway, it's Save the World Sister's birthday today, so yay, happy fun trip to Richmond in a hurricane for a milestone birthday. Yay!

Fancy eggs in a hurricane

Magnet #1282 - Imperial Tsesarevich Easter Egg

We all made it to Richmond!

We all got to see the Faberge exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts!

Annnnnd, that's about all we got to do today.

The Irene rain hit Richmond pretty hard, starting late Friday and continuing on through today. When I say rain, I mean sheets. Going horizontally. But, we holed up in our comfy aloft hotel with our HDMI cord and laptop, some silly movies, and managed to make the best of it.

The endgame for me in Richmond was seeing VMFA's Faberge Revealed exhibit, showing off the largest collection of Faberge in the States. If you've read this blog at all, you know one of my many fascinations are Faberge eggs. This exhibit did not let me down.

First, because it was the middle of a hurricane, visitors were sparse. You could actually breathe, extend both arms and not hit anyone, and best of all, you could take your time. So. Terrific.

Second, hello. It was a really well-done exhibit. And, they had five of the 13 eggs here in the States on view. And, a great audioguide to accompany me through the exhibit. One had me sniffling, I swear the guard was chuckling at me.

Third, dear me, the VMFA must have been paying attention in the year since I've been there, because my goodness the amount of magnets was staggering. I spent way too much in their shop, buying every single magnet, plus a gorgeous Fauberge egg necklace (made by a "real-live Russian!" *eyeroll*) Still, it was A. Maz. ING.

This egg was particularly cool because it houses a Russian double-headed Imperial eagle frame with a double-sided mini-portrait of Tsesarevich Alexei, the son of Nicholas and Alexandra. He was a hemophiliac, something he inherited from his grandmother, Queen Victoria of England, and so was a sickly child. He had a couple of close calls and Faberge made this egg for Alexandra as a tribute to her beloved son.

VMFA, you are truly one of my favorite museums, thank you for staying open and braving Hurricane Irene!

Tempting fate...or, Come On, Irene

Magnet #1281 - Accidents will occur

This magnet made me laugh this morning, because as I type, I'm sitting in a rather nice but kind of ridiculous Delta gate at LGA, waiting for my noon flight. To North Carolina. In the midst of a hurricane.

Note: This silliness is only outdumb'd by me thinking I might actually make it home to NYC on Sunday night.

I'm headed to Raleigh, so that Save the World Couple and I can drive up to Richmond and meet up with DCSis for a weekend in Richmond. You know, the town that was superclose to this week's earthquake epicenter and that's now also relatively close to the Irene's path, too?

The airport's pretty calm right now, so I should be totally fine getting down to NC, but I suspect that it'll be DCSis' bus trip from DC down to Richmond that will be plagued with troubles, if not cancellation.

I'll totally admit here that I'm sad to be missing NYC in a hurricane, but at this point, nothing will stop us from heading into a hurricane to celebrate the baby sister's 30th birthday.

Ya'll stay safe out there, Eastern Seaboard!

"British Culture with an American Accent"

Magnet #1200 - Agecroft Hall

BBC-America's @anglophenia, one of my favorite blogs, did a great series of US/UK culture comparison posts last week that had me giggling in more or less agreement:

• Five Great American Things the British Ruined
• Five Great American Things the British Improved
• Five Great British Things the Americans Ruined
• Five Great British Things the Americans Improved

Loved this series, because it's one of those fun debates that are never-ending, depending on who you're talking to.

What's that have to do with today's magnet from my sisters and BIL, you ask?

Well, Agecroft Hall is a Tudor manor sitting on the James River riverbank in Richmond, Virginia. But we're not talking architecturally-speaking Tudor, like that house in Salisbury, NC, that my sister loves that was built in the last 50 years.

No, it's an authentic Tudor-era manor built in the 1400s, that some wealthy American dude from Virginia bought at auction in the 1920s.

And then had it shipped over from its original foundation in Lancashire, England.

I mean, it's common practice for folks to go abroad and have stuff shipped back. It happens all the time, right? A statue or ceiling frieze here, a mantelpiece or a chapel there. And, while I understand it's not the entire estate, it's still a vast majority of the original estate that was purchased and moved.

We're talking someone had to dismantle it, crate it up, ship it across the Atlantic, uncrate it and rebuild a whole manor house. Jeepers.

I can't tell if this is another Great British Thing an American Ruined. Ultimately, I'm torn.

There's a part of me that's glad someone saved it from disrepair, and stopped it from becoming just another set of ruins in England. A part of me that's glad more generations are able to enjoy and learn about the Tudor era, and not have to travel to England to do it, if they can't get there.

But there's another part of me (the part of me that wishes the Met's Temple of Dendur were in its original setting, rather than sitting in a glass-enclosed atrium on the Upper East Side of New York City, and thinks that the Elgin marbles should go back to Greece) that thinks it's such a shame that some American stunted 500 years of history, and replanted it elsewhere.

A friend said something the other week about loving standing on well-worn marble steps. It's true. I'm always saying, one of my favorite things to do is to step where history happened, to walk where so many other feet have walked.

So it begs the question, does it physically matter where on Earth those stairs are, or just that they still exist 500 years later for more people to walk upon?

Annnd the world got a little smaller...

Magnet #1093 - Richmond, Virginia

Remember how I spent a week in Richmond, and then failed to actually pick up a magnet for the collection? Voila!

Picked it because I recently watched Tim McGraw trace his paternal family tree all the way back through Virginia, Washington, D.C., New York and then Germany, where his eight-times-removed grandfather came across on a ship via England with some of Elvis' relatives. Pretty cool.

I've only seen two episodes (David Tennant's [natch] and McGraw's), but whomever came up with the show Who Do You Think You Are? is a freakin' genius. Originally a UK show, it follows celebs as they trace their bloodlines as far as they can go.

The cool thing is that the bulk of the work gets done for them, either by Ancestry.com (great placement, by the way) or various libraries or genealogy experts, leaving us to tag along with the celebs as they discover where their people came from. I mean, ole Tim had me sniffling with just his opening scene!

In seventh grade, I traced the family tree back a generation or two through oral records and hearsay, but I didn't really have anything official. My parents came from the Philippines through LAX to O'Hare a year before I was born, so I'd have to travel a world away to trace my heritage beyond my grandparents.

Which is what one of my Twitterpals did, as it turns out.

She and I have Twitterbonded over TV shows and cuteboys over the last few months, but never really knew anything personal about each other. When I Tweeted that I was watching Tim McGraw's story, she mentioned loving the show, and how she went to go find her own grandfather's roots.

And I said exactly what I said above, I'd love to do the same, but I'd have to travel to the Philippines, and Lord knows how their records were, after a certain point.

That's when I learned of her journey to do exactly that - taking a five-hour bus-ride north of Manila to her grandfather's village, and finally managing to track down a first cousin of her grandfather's. (I wish I could link to the LJ story, but best not to without permission.)

Still. An amazing, and quite inspiring story. If she could track down her roots in a remote village, finding mine in Cebu City should be a piece of cake! Food for thought on our next trip to the homeland.

Hearing her story also makes me wish that they'd do a regular folk Who Do You Think You Are? series. The journeys would be just as cool, methinks.

Of course, I do find it extremely funny (and fitting!), that in all the world, through an online friend that I met on a completely separate messageboard, I somehow managed to end up Twitterpals with a chick who is part-Kababayan.

Stone's throw from Boston

Magnet #914 - Maymont

Yep, my second Maymont magnet. I've magnetblogged about that house before, so I'm using this one for today's visit to yet another obscure historical house.

This time it was Robert Treat Paine's Stonehurst, in Waltham, Massachusetts, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, with a little landscaping help from his friend, Frederick Law Olmstead.

Some consider Richardson to be one of the greatest American architects - born in Louisiana, most of his work is scattered in New England, and the Midwest, from Trinity Church in Boston to the original Marshall Field store in Chicago, to having a hand in the NY State Capitol. And of course, everyone knows Olmstead for his work in Central Park and Chapel Hill and myriad other places.

Stonehurst was pretty bare, but man, was it gorgeous! Wood paneling, stone facade, giant hall, several parlors, fantastic. And of course, we were the only ones inside, and while we only did the self-guided tour, we ended up bombarding the poor lady with question after question after question.

Eh. It's what we do. It's who we are.

Oh. And we knocked on some wood, too.

300

Magnet #879 - Romanov Tercentenary Faberge Egg

This Faberge egg for the Romanov Tercentenary, was gifted by Nicholas II to his wife Alexandra, in honor of 300 years of Romanov rule, which started started in 1613 with Michael, and ended with the execution of the Romanov family in 1918. Very sad.

But the egg itself is gorgeous (aren't they all), and made from gold and silver, diamonds and more diamonds, turquoise and enamel. It's dotted with 18 little watercolor portraits of the Romanov line, which included the likes of Catherine the Great.

But the pretty prize inside is a little blue enamel and gold globe that rotates (!!!!) and shows the territories they ruled in 1613 on one side, and what they ruled in 1913.

The fact that the globe rotates (!!!!) seriously just makes me want to touch it. Like, I just want to play with these eggs. It also makes me wonder if the Romanov kids were allowed to mess around the eggs just sitting on the shelves at home. Cuz, hi, that would be superawesome. Go long, Tsarevich Alexei, go long!!!

Anyway, I picked this egg today, because of two reasons. First, because last night's Lie to Me, had a Faberge-like egg that was part of a robbery, and people were getting beat up for it, and to my knowledge, even to the end, never even acknowledged what the egg was.

And, second, because I wanted to report back about the happiest place inside the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Faberge room, which was kind of like a Faberge egg itself - small in size, but with absolute treasures inside.

It was a pretty small and unassuming room, off to the side. But as you step in, you see there are several display windows just chockful of Faberge decorative pieces. Remember, they have the largest amassed collection of Faberge outside Russia. So they had the six eggs in their collections, plus a bunch of baby eggs, umbrella handles, picture frames and other doodads belonging to the Romanov family.

Quite an amazing collection. I wish I'd had more time to explore it, but who knows, maybe one day, I'll exit off of I-95 to visit them again. Although, at this point, the more I visit the Kremlin website for more information, the more I really want to visit.

I will say, I was quite disappointed that the gift shop didn't have any egg magnets. They had egg card holders, though totally out of my price range, what with the semi-precious stones and all, but no egg magnets?

Hmph.

Walking in Richmond

Magnet #869 - Memphis, TN

STWsis got me this magnet from her trip to Memphis, TN, and I was planning to use it for when the BFF and I did the BFF Babymoon.

I mean, that was when we thought we were going to Memphis. Until we realized that it was about a 9-hour drive to get there from NC. Which meant, shoot, we might as well have driven back up to NY for all the driving we'd have to do. So, we skipped it.

Instead, we ended up in Richmond, VA. Which, if I haven't said before, revealed itself to be quite the jewel of the South. Lovely town, and so much to see and do. A true gem.

And, since I totally spaced and forgot to get a magnet from Richmond (I know! Crazy!), this will have to do.

Upstairs, downstairs

Magnet #861 - Maymont

Have ya'll seen that Clive Owen movie Gosford Park? The really good one - about the genteel Brits in the English countryside and the lives of their upstairs and downstairs servants?

That's what the Maymont House Museum reminded me of. The U.S. version of that movie. Maymont was the 100-acre Gilded Age estate of a wealthy Richmond couple, the Dooleys. There's a nature preserve and a set of gorgeous gardens, plus the house on the estate is available to tour.

So, yeah, you know we totally did the tour. It starts you off belowstairs, with a rather well-done and in-depth self-guided tour, telling the story of how the Walker family, and the rest of the servants lived and helped serve the Dooleys family over the generations. So very cool. I mean, on these tours, you always get to see the dumbwaiters, the bellringer switchboards, the pantries and the kitchens, but, how often do you get to learn the details?

I mean, dudes, it took 10-12 hours to do laundry - one load! And, the manpower needed to host a tea party, you would not believe!

When it's time, they have you meet around the house at the front door. Not the side, where the carriage entrance was - you have to love houses with carriage entrances, it puts you right in that carriage in your best day/evening dress! But, at the front door, you're greeted by one of the docent volunteers to take you through the house, presumably because the mistress of the house has gone away for the day, leaving the guide to show you around.

What a good tour and a sweet tour guide, too. You can see the tour via this lovely blogpost. But our guide took us through the receiving and dining rooms downstairs, as well as the bedrooms upstairs, all the while answering our questions where she could.

She gave me a bit of perspective, explaining to me that though the Dooleys were very wealthy - they weren't near as wealthy as those Vanderbilts down in NC - which I have to take that they couldn't have been part of Mrs. Astor's circle in NYC, could they have? I dunno.

Anyway, you'll see through that blogpost that the house was certainly the epitome of the Gilded Age - for better or for worse, filled with such Gilded Age-y ornate furniture from all over, fueled by some definitely eclectic tastes.

On the good side, that eclecticism also included a number of Tiffany pieces that were pointed out along the way - which was no surprise, since the Tiffany exhibit at the VMFA has totally taken over Richmond, in such a wonderful surround-sound branding way, that I can hardly believe it. The piece on this magnet is actually a major panel in the house in their grand foyer.

So gorgeous. So unsigned! But no worries, Tiffany confirmed that it was from their studios.

On the bad side, the eclecticism (yes, that word sounds ok - odd, but ok) really freaked me out when we got to Sallie May's room - where, upon her death, she had her bed from their second house, Swannanoa, brought to Maymont room, so it could be on display. Which wouldn't have been so bad, had it not been this huge monstrosity...in the shape of a swan.

A swan. A big giant swan.

Of course, both sisters were more worried about the Tiffany whaletusk/silver vanity table and chair. Disturbing, to say the least, but man, I'll see that swan in my nightmares.

And we'll likely be riding it, right into belly of the Kraken.

Are you surprised?

Magnet #860 - Pink Joy

Nooooo, you can't tell me you're surprised that this magnet is the reason I bought that magnet set from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts that I talked about yesterday.


eta:
Sorry for the short & sweet - got hit with a cold this week and am fevery and sniffly today, the day I was supposed to go back to work after a week off.

And, though it turns out that I probably got it from my STW BIL this past weekend, I'm really starting to believe in the physical manifestations of environmental (work) stress/distress.

Living in dreamtime

Magnet #859 - Dream

People say that if you want to remember your dreams, you should write them down in a dream journal, and with each dream that you remember and write down, you'll be able to better remember your dreams in the future.

But, for far back as I can think of, I usually remember my dreams. It's weird, I know. I think it's because I'm one of those people. You know them - the ones that come up to you every morning and tell you when they've had a weird dream.

I mean, I can remember telling my friends about my dreams in seventh grade homeroom in the bandroom. What's more, I can probably even tell you some of those dreams that I had back then.

Doesn't everybody have those dreams that stick in your mind, no matter how long ago you had them? I remember being less than 10, and having a dream of being back in Chicago, living at the old house in Palos Heights, and finding a present in every nook and cranny of my bedroom. I vividly remember the dream, because of the cool presents I was supposed to unwrap (never got to, darnit!), and because the whole dream had a pink hue to it, as if I were looking at the dream in rose-colored glasses.

And there are many dreams I've had that I remember vividly. Every so often, they give me feelings of deja vu - like yesterday when I had dinner at East Coast Wings, telling my friend about meeting Dave Price. I've dreamed that entire restaurant/dinner set-up before. I was even waiting for a phone call that was supposed to come through, while I was telling her about meeting Dave. I've never been to ECW, and up til last week, I'd never met Dave. The phone call didn't come through, but still. Freaky.

The weirdest part is looking up the things that I dream about in any online dream dictionary - more often than not, it's right on par with what my subconscious is feeling. Sometimes, scarily so. Like the dream about helicopters and kumquats. Or, the roller coaster rides or speeding trains. Scary.

Oh! You know what else is scarier than you'd think? The other week, I dreamed I was on a mission with Burn Notice's Michael Westen. Like, we were ducking and covering, because people were shooting at us. You know how cool it looks when you're watching on tv? That stuff's scary in dreamtime, man. Like you wake up in a sweat with your heart pounding, you realize it is SO not cool being in a shoot-out. Heh.

Anyway, I just bought this magnet as part of a set at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts gift shop (hello, love their gift shop and the museum). I figured I'd use it for today, since I have a 12-hour train ride to finish THINK ABOUT YOUR FUTURE, Part Two, Get-a-new-life Bugaloo, wherein I actually have think about my own future, rather than that of my company.

Of course, maybe after tomorrow, it'll be decided for me. Maybe not.

But, a girl can dream.

eta, sometime later in the middle of the night:
So the downside of remembering these dreams, is that you remember the bad ones just as well as the good ones. *shiver*

I'm not writing that one down here.

eta2:
But, I just looked it up, and damn, did that just make sense. Whoa.

Died of a theory*

Magnet #858 - White House of the Confederacy

And, here it is, the White House of the Confederacy, nestled in the heart of Richmond, where we went last week on the BFF Babymoon Over the Confederacy roadtrip. It's part of the adjacent Museum of the Confederacy.

I always feel a little weird going anywhere with heavy Southern sympathizer tendencies, mainly because some of the teachers I had growing up in the South were old enough to remember the last years of an America before the Civil Rights movement. I remember being the fifth grader asking the hard question about which camp this little Filipino girl would fall in. And, I was always considered the Yankee (and foreigner) who moved from Chicago to North Carolina...in kindergarten.

But, I suppose history is something you can't ignore, and when you're here in the South, it's almost unavoidable. But last week, we actively sought out history, to look it right in the face.

The Museum of the Confederacy was actually a pretty cool little museum - it takes you through the major battles of the Civil War, which of course, I totally related back to North and South, and the battles that Orry and Billy Main and George Hazard fought.

But the White House was supercool. It was the residence of Jefferson and Varina Davis, and their six kids. He took us through the receiving room, as well as the sitting and retiring rooms, as well as the upstairs private rooms. Though some of the decor was questionable, it was quite amazing to walk the halls of history.

From the coal-shaped "IED" that the confederates would stuff with gunpowder and stick into coal piles to be able to blow up ships/trains, to the rubber hoses made by Mr. Goodyear to pipe gas down from the chandeliers to the table lamps. And learning that Jeff Davis didn't believe in disciplining his six kids, believing that it would stifle creativity...so much so that whenever they placed nanny ads, they had to place it blindly, with a fake address and a fake name, so that no one knew it was for the Davis kids.

C'mon, that's a movie in the making right there.

Such a great tour. And you know I always say that the tour guide makes the tour. Always.

The 3pm tour last Thursday the 24th of June? Out. Standing. He was so good. You could tell the kid wanted to share much more about the lives of Jefferson and Varina Davis, and the Civil War. He was just bursting with information, and he was coaxing us to ask the right questions.

Loved it. No matter how you feel about the War between the States, this museum/tour is definitely on my Recommend list!


“If the Confederacy fails, there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a Theory.”

- Jefferson Davis

The Old Well

Magnet #853 - UNC's Old Well

The Old Well is a long-standing symbol of Carolina, once the only water supply for Old East and Old West, now two dorms. Old East is actually a national landmark, they call it the oldest state university in America (from 1795).

There are a few legends about this well, though. The first is that all in coming freshmen should drink from here, to ensure great grades. The other, is that there's a reason some folks nicknamed it the Pee Well. Ewww.

I picked this one that my sisters got me a couple of weekends ago, because in a few hours, I must get up and over to my BFF's house, so we can get this roadtrip on the road.

We'll be stopping along the way for a late breakfast in Chapel Hill with another friend and then the start of the BFF Babymoon Over the Confederacy Roadtrip to Richmond begins in earnest.

Richmond's a place that we've both driven through, but never been. I mean, all I know about Richmond, is what I know from whizzing by it on 95. The crazy streets with the tons of crazy drivers, zipping around the corner of that really pretty church. I swore I've never been, but I have a dim memory of driving around deserted streets. My dad confirms that "Oh, c'mon now, don't tell me you've never been to Richmond! We've had Chinese dinner there!"

Uh, yeah. That totally doesn't count!

I'm superexcited about our trip. The Virginia Museum of Fine Art is what I'm hanging my hat on. You'll see why, soon. Just gotta get into that gift shop!