This is fun. I took an art history 103 class, the origins and developments of Modern Art in Europe and America from the French Revolution through World War II. from a painter/professor a few years ago, and in that class he always talked about wanting to teach a class on contemporary art from 1945 to the present. When I check the fall schedule for the community college where he teaches, I saw his new class. I'm so happy he was able to fulfill his wish.

I like modern art, even though I don't always understand it. Sometimes I think I just love the expressiveness of the the colours that are used. It will be interesting to see what he says about the really, really modern stuff.

I was going to take Art History 101, which is early art, but I decided I should take the Contemporary art class because it might not be offered again. The local community college always offers the standard Art History 101 and 102. You don't even have to take them in order, since I took 103 first because it was the only art history class that fit into my schedule at the time.

I know I should to take art history 101 and 102 sometime, just so I have the historical perspective on art, but I guess they'll have to wait.

It's really cool to take an art history class from an artist. The guy who teaches the class is a painter, who teaches painting classes as well as art history. He even takes a group to France every summer to paint outdoors, like the french impressionists did. One night he brought into some of his painting, and they were really really interesting. Maybe he'll do the same thing in this class.

I love studying art. I keep thinking that if I'd taken an art history class as a freshman in college, I probably would have majored in art history. I think I like studying art because I get to use my analytical skills in a way I don't normally use them. Analyzing art isn't as cut and dried as analyzing numbers; you have to be so much more creative. Plus the whole time you're analyzing a piece of art, you're studying an incredibly beautiful creation, which is so much more satisfying than staring at an excel worksheet full of numbers.

Not sure how serious this analyst is, but if he's right, I don't want to even think of the consequences to the US economy, The Big Three automakers could be headed for Chapter 11, a UBS Warburg analyst argued in a research note Thursday.

So like I know this is going to sound very silly, but I was searching the Net for how to use an electric oven. I've always had gas ovens, and now I have an electric oven and I have no idea how to use it.

There are like all these knobs. There's one know that says off, preheat, bake and timed bake, and another know that has the temperature. I tried to just put the oven on bake and then set it to the temperature I wanted, but the oven didn't heat up. Then I just put it on broil just like a gas oven, and waited till the oven got very hot and then turned the guage back to temperature I wanted.

Is it supposed to work this way? What about the preheat setting? What's that for? I miss my gas stove and oven very much.

I feel really out of sorts today, so I thought I'd cheer myself up and plan my next vacation.

At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, there's going to be what looks like to be this fantastic art exhibit.

Old Masters, Impressionists and Moderns: French Masterworks from the State Pushkin Museum, Moscow. The exhibit was in Houston, and is now in Atlanta. Featured artists include Cezanne, Picasso, van Gogh, and Matisse.

So I check out the Los Angeles County Museum website, and I don't know, I guess was expecting a more visitor friendly site. The Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art, where I saw the Andy Warhol exhibit last year, had a whole section for visitors to the museum. They had a section for places to stay near the museum, and even nearby restaurants.

I was expecting the same sort of thing from LACMA, but there was nothing! I did some research on Google, and I think I found a couple of hotels, Le Meridien on La Cienega and The Beverly Plaza on West 3rd St. Some website I found says that these hotels are only a mile away from LACMA. But a mile in LA is like a long way.

Just in case, I emailed LACMA and asked them for hotel recommendations. I wonder if I'll even get a response.

Art museums totally whine about they don't make any money and stuff, and that's all fine and good, but if they're not going to create websites which make is easy for visitors, in town and out of town alike, to visit them, then they have nobody to blame but themselves for their budgetary shortfalls.