school days & holidays

It's the time of year when the kids are back in school and soon we will be as well.  And because we are in the school mentality we are also doing Holidays! We celebrated Thanksgiving with a visit from brother Larry (who came up from Miami) and our new neighbor and Phil's long time friend Jean who moved here in September.... Then we had a weekend of dining with Larry at favorites of his and ours... and we went to the beach and just relaxed. 

so here are some catch up photos since the last post-

We met up with CBGB at Mis En Place to celebrate Georgia's birthday! We had some really good wines and food but better conversation as we caught up with them after our summers up north (theirs in Michigan and ours in Chicago) two apps from that evening- pork belly and a tuna carpaccio with an empanada

the week of Thanksgiving had us at old favorite Columbia for tapas and cava sangria-

we also had some good food at Mediterraneo -

then on the night before Thanksgiving we stopped in at Kasa - our favorite sushi place -

and after Thanksgiving we did Star Fish and the beach and Blue Marlin on Friday and indigenous on Saturday  (below-  a view from our table followed by three beach scenes)

Larry's Thanksgiving flowers

our wines from indigenous-

The winter term catalogue has been delivered from our lifelong learning academy and we are looking at lecture dates and course description and if you have kids recently in college this sounds familiar we're sure...

And because we live in a community with many options for continuing education - especially in the arts - we also have classes at the Sarasota Arts Center (for what I would call "hands on production") and classes for all kinds of fine arts skills in media and film and animation etc. at the Ringling College of the Arts.

I have decided on two classes - one at the lifelong learning academy on Asian Art taught by the teacher I had last year for the Asian mysteries course and a second one at the Ringling College on architecture...

The Skyscraper from America to Asia
M/12:30-3:15 PM, 11 sessions  Christopher Wilson                                                                                         
This course surveys American architecture from the Great Fire of Chicago in 1871 (which is credited with giving birth to the skyscraper) to today.  The skyscraper, seen as a uniquely American architectural product even though it now appears throughout the world, will serve as the main point of reference.  Opposite views such as the "City Beautiful Movement," suburbanization, and recent "New Urbanism" will also be discussed.

and here is the description of the LLA course I will be taking

this upcoming week is a busy one with NTLive and the Asolo performance of Evita and the second ballet of the season (at the Opera House) plus we have the added delight (not) of buying a new toilet for one of our bathrooms - we have been having trouble since last summer and its innards finally failed over the holiday weekend...

so never a dull moment... I thought when I got our screening for the cage repaired last week we were done with home repairs for a while  but apparently I was wrong! More to follow- of course...