A Baby Announcement!

Yes, yes, I have an announcement. My husband and I are currently expecting our first baby. Right now I'm 15 weeks and my husband and I are both extremely excited.

I have had an eerily symptom-free pregnancy. Aside from some tiredness and the occasional mood-swing (along with constant freaking-out-out-loud about the baby's health--thank you, Javier, for being so understanding!), I probably wouldn't have even known I was expecting! It's still a little shocking (and definitely reassuring) to go to the doctor's office and listen to the baby's heartbeat. It's very exciting, of course, but also a little hard to believe! (I've developed a lot more sympathy towards those women that claim they delivered a baby without even knowing they were pregnant).

The baby is due in October, and I must say I'm really looking forward maternity leave. Here in Canada we get an entire year, and I am so excited! Hopefully in between the sleepless nights I'll also have some more free time to blog and work on my writing--and maybe I'll even have some time to read!

I haven't decided yet if I will be starting a separate "baby blog" or not. I love reading other people's baby blogs, so I'm definitely toying with the idea. However, I'm not totally sure how much I'll have to say about motherhood! I guess we'll just have to wait and find out.

*Perhaps another symptom of pregnancy: I have started making up jokes in Spanglish, which make me laugh like crazy, even though I know it's positively loony. Early on in my pregnancy, I was watching Jeopardy with Javier and I got the answer (or is it the question?) wrong final Jeopardy answer wrong. In what I thought at the time was a brilliant bit of word play, I announced "yo perdi!" (Spanish for "I lost"), which sounds a lot like the word "Jeopardy." I think I laughed for an hour. Wow.

"Blood, Absinthe, and Aphorisms: New Currents in Aestheticism and Decadence"

If you're lucky enough to be in New York city at the end of this month, be sure to check out "Blood, Absinthe, and Aphorisms: New Currents in Aestheticism and Decadence." The conference is being held free of charge with no prior registration required at the City University of New York, New York, NY from April 30- May 1, 2009.

The conference will be bringing together scholars from various academic backgrounds "to examine aestheticism and decadence in late Victorian literature, art, theater, politics, and popular culture." Reginia Gagnier will be this year's keynote speaker and the opening roundtable will examine "What's New in Decadence and Aestheticism." Other speakers include Dennis Dennisoff, Joseph Bristow, Linda K. Hughes, Richard Dellamora, and Margaret D. Stetz. Topics covered include presentations on C. R. Ashbee and British utopias, Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, and romanticism; Aubrey Beardsley and the art of the poster (that one sounds like a lot of fun!); Edward Carpenter and domestic interiors, and Black decadence in the work of M. P. Shiel.

The conference will be held at the Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY.

For more information, check out the conference's website.

Sin and Salvation: Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision

For those of you in the Toronto area who have not yet had the chance to visit the Art Gallery of Ontario's current Pre-Raphaelite exhibit, there's still time! "Sin and Salvation: Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision" will be running until May 10, 2009. Sixty of William Holman Hunt's paintings are on display at the exhibit, including Isabella and the Pot of Basil, The Awakening Conscience and The Light of the World.




In addition to the paintings, the museum is also displaying the costumes that Hunt and his family used to pose for artworks (Hunt himself used to enjoy dressing up while he was painting--I saw a great photograph of him a while ago in full safari getup while he was painting The Scapegoat). It sounds like an amazing exhibit. I only wish I lived closer to Toronto!


For more information on the exhibit, please visit the Art Gallery of Ontario's website.