Home, Sweet Home

Friday was the day I decided I want to stay here. It was the first day of the best of both worlds. My roommate from home and her cousin had flown in the night before to visit for a few days, so I was enjoying a little piece of home in my new-found surroundings. But what really led to my decision? Well, a little thing called a meet-and-greet. Matt Wertz, one of my favorite singers, showed up at our office to personally perform the single from his upcoming CD, "Under Summer Sun." When Julie told me he was on Friday's itinerary, I almost started crying. Yes, I lost all sense of decorum. No one else had a clue who this Wertz guy was, but I was on cloud nine. As soon as he waltzed into the conference room, my hand was in the air to make a request. "Marianne" or "Carolina," please. He chose the first and then played two others. I couldn't wipe the dopey grin from my face as he sat and strummed his guitar. I had butterflies the rest of the day. Check out his private concert from Seventeen's YouTube page:



But despite my being starstruck, I had so much fun with my two house guests, Ashley and Kevin. We explored Central Park (more like, got separated and couldn't find each other, resulting in more exploration than originally planned); we shopped till we dropped; and we went to the Museum of Modern Art. That's an interesting story, right there. All three of us have been in an entire year of art history courses, so we felt generally knowledgeable being able to recognize many of the masterpieces displayed there. Such as when we saw the wax statue of a man reclining on a museum bench. We knew it had to be a Duane Hanson piece because of the nature of the setting. Hanson cast his figures from live models and preferred to make sculptures of people who would not normally be represented in a gallery but are instantly familiar, such as the overweight, unattractive or badly dressed, like these found in the Modern Art Gallery:



So we figured a man uncouthly sprawled across the gallery's seating area was a shoe-in for the recognizable artist. "Go poke him," Kevin ordered me after we saw the statue twitch. I was not fooled. Of course the statue would be motorized. It was just the artist's confusion tactic, to leave you unsure of what you had seen. But, no, I was not going to lower myself to the level of having to physically examine the experiment.

It's a good thing, too, because Hanson's statue suddenly morphed into a living, breathing, large burly man who decided he'd had a long enough nap and got up and left the gallery. We didn't take the time to see where he went. We were too busy sheepishly shuffling our way out, embarrassed that we originally thought he was made of wax. And to top it off, there was no way he didn't hear us. No way. Embarrassing moment #453. Congratulations!