I spent last week in Connecticut for work. A colleague and I visited a client, primarily to work on Crystal Reports and SQL Server stored prodecures. I had never been to Connecticut before (or New York — we flew into La Guardia). It wasn’t too cold, and I had a really nice time.

Connecticut has only one National Park: the Weir Farm Historic Site. Three generations of American artists lived in the house. The first artist, J. Alden Weir, was an impressionist painter inspired by the landscapes on the property. (My wife and I have always been interested in the National Parks, but we have become more interested since we picked up a National Parks passpost in Hawaii.) I got the passport stamped and saw some paintings like this one, titled The Truants:

One night, we ventured to New Haven to visit Yale University. The Yale University Art Gallery had some really nice artwork. I saw my first original Van Gogh painting and Picaso painting:

The ancient collection was pretty fascinating. They had some nice Greek vases (I haved loved the look of Greek vases since I first saw them online at the Perseus Project), sculptures, Greek and Roman coins, and a really impressive Babylonian lion relief:

While we were in New Haven we also ate dinner at Pepe’s Pizzeria, established in 1925. Some argue that Pepe’s has the best pizza in the world. While that might be too bold a claim, the pizza was very good. (I definitely prefer New York-style pizza to the Chicago-style pizza I tried last fall in Chicago.)

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Current Books

• Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew
• Alvin Maker 3: Prentice Alvin
• The Kalevala

Recent Movies

• Where The Wild Things Are
• Heroes, Volume 4
• Public Enemies
• Away We Go