I was feeling a little down this morning, because when it's that time of the month as it now, I sometimes get a little depressed. I don't know. I was feeling really, really lonely, even though I spent a lovely day at my church picnic on Sunday afternoon.

Then an hour ago, my froggie french friend Francois sent me a message inviting me to chat with him on MSN messenger, and now we're chatting ahd having lunch on Friday. Thank god for friends, especially when they're french and read, speak and write fluent hebrew, greek, japanese as well as their native froggie tongue.

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.