Yesterday

Daily diary:

Let's see, yesterday morning I headed over to Union College to judge the Bittleman Award for the "best" undergraduate art student. Nine students competing. I was greeted by Walter Hatke, an artist who paints suburban landscapes.

Walter has been teaching art at Union for almost as long as I've been at St. Rose (21 years). Nice fellow, tall with a short clipped white beard in that academic style, and an office right out of the 19th C.; wooden curio shelving filled with skulls, bones, stuffed birds, books, and, well, curios. Posters and paintings filling the rest of his office. After the judging, which took about an hour, he brought me to the college cafeteria for lunch.

Then a race back to Albany to interview two people for a position in our art department. One was a phone interview, the other in person. Both candidates seemed ok for the position. I had spent three days last week with several colleagues interviewing at the College Art Association conference at the Sheraton Hotel in Boston. I had a spectacular view from my 29th story window

and we found a wonderful Tapas bar, Tapeo, on Newbury Street for dinner on Friday night. A tapas bar is a Spanish restaurant that serves small plates, like appetizers, for the dinner. You order several different dishes mixing and matching flavors, and, of course, drinking plenty of Spanish wine (or in my case, gimlets) to freshen the palate.

Actually, I was proud of myself for having found Tapeo with a little on-line research before meeting for dinner. I was trying to prevent Deborah, one of my colleagues, from commandeering the group to a Thai place (I like Thai food, but not the austere atmosphere of Thai restaurants). So, I dropped the Tapas bar idea, which got an ok, and then hustled over to the hotel concierge to call and reserve a table to cement the deal. The place was packed, but we were led immediately to our table and had a swell time with great tapas and drinks.

Oh yeah, the rest of yesterday. Well, home and out with Stacy for dinner (normally we don't go out to dinner on a Tuesday, but I'm leaving Thursday to visit my son, Ben, in Prague) and tonight I will be packing. We ate in a newish downtown restaurant, The Pump Station, in a 19thC. industrial building that was a pump station (what ever that is). Most of the machinery is gone, a few giant hooks still suspended from chains and such, but it has the tallest ceilings of any restaurant I've ever been in.

What have you been up to?