An Unintended Star

Do you recognize this incredible piece of art, even with the metallic hair? Daughter No. 2 got a great paint-by-number set for Christmas with ten painting outlines and little pots of paint. She has completed several according to directions, but when it came to the Mona Lisa, she abandoned the guide and made it her own. If you hold the painting at a certain angle and in a certain light, the hair really does shimmer. She's a beauty, I think.

While No. 2 was working on this project, news came out the University of Heidelberg in Germany has named the true model for the famous painting. After all these years of speculation, it has been confirmed the model was Lisa del Giocondo, wife of a textile merchant who commissioned the painting. They had just bought a house and had a baby, so it was a special occasion. In 1503, a Florentine city official scribbled some notes in the margin of a book about how da Vinci was working on a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, and even though these notes were discovered a few years ago, they weren't made public until just this month. So now we no.

Something I didn't know, the painting of the Mona Lisa is also known as "La Gioconda," which means "the happy and joyful woman." Interesting that the woman in this painting has rarely been described as joyful.

We now have our own unique Mona Lisa to display in our house. Here are a few other variations:

Computer-Parts "La Gioconda"

Cow "La Gioconda"

Lego "La Gioconda"

Happy Birthday...

to me! Update: Since you have asked, I only got one actual packaged gift, a beautiful hand-made bracelet from a friend, but both girls were home for the weekend, and we had dinner at the lake and a relaxing weekend. Thanks to all of you for your lovely wishes!

My Sitemeter is All Bloated and Not Quite Itself

I'm tempted to let it sit on the couch with its feet curled up under a blanket, a hot cup of coffee in hand, a block of cherry almond bark Chocolove within reach, and An Affair to Remember spinning in the DVD player. I'm one of those obsessive bloggers, the kind who checks her sitemeter as often as possible throughout the day, the kind who gauges the quality of her writing by the number of readers who regularly stop by. I've become less interested in the overall number of hits and more interested in the number of repeat hits. The return visitors are the ones I long for. When my sitemeter reads forty at the end of the day, and the majority of those hits are webpals who have conversed, I'm happy. Forty may seem low to many of you, but I've only been at this since August. To me, forty is a jackpot. A few days ago, I sat down at my laptop and discovered a number somewhere in the eighties. Eighties! Yippee! Yeeha ! Hoo-rah ! I've been discovered by the webworld , o...

Ish People

Tell an Ish person to show up around 9 a.m., and you'll see them somewhere around 9 a.m. Tell them to show up at 9ish, and you'll see them anywhere from 9:05 to 9:20. You have given them license to dilly dally, and who wouldn't take advantage of that? The other night at the big shindig dinner party, one of the drummers said the rehearsal the next morning would begin at 9ish. "I am an ish person," he says. Immediately the clanker goes off in my head--oh, good, I thought. I can deliver my daughter a little late. No Ish person is early, so if you say 9ish, that does not mean give or take 5, 10, 15 minutes. It's exclusively a taking phrase. Take an extra 10 minutes to drink your cup of coffee. We won't mind. We're Ish people. Sunday's rehearsal started at 2:00. Because it was conducted by the same people who conducted the Saturday rehearsal, my understanding was 2-ISH. My daughter is worse than I am about taking liberties with Ish time frames, so she d...

Scout Moves

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