My wandering mind

Don't let anyone tell you that you can't have fun when you're in grad school. When a particularly entrancing three-hour lecture is failing to make its mark on me I tend to let my fingers do the walking. These are a few drawings taken from my notes from Reference (a study of sources available to, and the theory of, reference). Unfortunately, that particular class is taught in a very uninspiring way that is well-suited for doodling.

This is my number monster series. My favorite is the number two on the right-hand side, and the number eight that's on fire and running down the highway.


Sometimes I like to make patterns. The worm pattern is one I have repeated a few times, this one being the first, and best, example.


Sometimes I just begin to draw a squiggly line and follow my subconscious thoughts of what it is. This time it turned into a lion (I think it was because I had watched Calder's Circus, which I had bought for Samantha's birthday the month before). I added to the menagerie with an ostrich.


This one started off as a series of high-rise buildings and turned into an odd party hat for the birthday boy. You might have noticed that the face is like those of the squid people in my last post. It's a really nice, easy way to abstract the face and draw attention to other embellishments, like the dancing radio.


So if you're wondering what I'm spending $10,000 a semester on, consider it an art studio that produces librarians. I had the idea that I might do a weekly post where I gather my doodles and put them on my blog but, thankfully, I've done more learning than doodling.

Oh the weather outside is frightful . . .

It's the first snow of the year in the Boston area, and it's a pretty one. Started off as sleet and now it's big, wet flakes that are drifting down. I went outside to get a picture . . .


It's amazing to think that, just last Wednesday and Thursday, it reached almost 70 degrees.
This weekend Sam and I decorated for the holidays, which mainly consisted of Christmas decorations. We have a couple of menorahs but that's about it that you can do for Hannukah--Sam complains about how our 7 foot tree makes the menorah seem insignificant, but I hope to get an electric-light menorah for the window so it can pose a challenge. Oh wow--I just decided to take a look on the internet to see how much it would cost and I found a blow-up lawn menorah! The best thing is that it's already sold out at this web site. So it's not only the Christians that have bad taste . . .

So this is our tree. Mom, you might notice the guitar and percussion decorations are on it this year.


After putting up our decorations, Sam and I did a little shopping for gifts and we made our holiday cards on Snapfish, which is a really great deal. To end the weekend, we drew in Sam's scrap book and watched The Librarian, which was a like a nerdy Indiana Jones who likes to remind you that the library can be cool. Oh yeah, he also gets busy with a girl, so he's cool like that too.

Here's what I was drawing . . . I had started a few months ago, and added the Nativity scene last night.