sir soane and the loose women

Today was fun. Instead of having art history in the classroom, we went to Sir Soane's Museum. Our professor called it a "cabinet of curiosity," which he said was something that was popular in the late 1700s as a way of entertaining guests. It's basically a collection of random things that can range from a physical cabinet to – like in Sir Soane's case – the entire house. The highlight for me was the sarcophagus from Seti I. It's probably the closest I've been to an actual Egyptian artifact – we were close enough that I could see the hieroglyphics coving the inside and outside of the marble tomb. It's amazing how much work must have gone into creating the piece. I'd really like to know how it came to be in central London in the 1700s. Soane was an architect (he originally designed the Bank of England) so he had tons of Greek and Roman samples of architecture. All this stuff was packed into a tiny little house, about the size of a small townhouse in the United States. Despite its size, it was a really fascinating place to wander around.
Then as a entire group we went to the taping of this talk show called Loose Women. It's a lot like the View – four women discuss "current topics" like obesity and how they would date older men. I felt like my brain was going to fall out through my ears, but it was kind of cool to be on the set of an actual television show. And I might be on iTV Lifestyle tomorrow! So that's exciting. It was definitely aimed at a very specific audience: middle-aged women who need something to do in the afternoons. That's fine, but I felt bad for the nine men in the audience, including three from our group. Speaking of our group, others made sure everyone knew we were from AMERICA, and that we were AMERICANS and so we were LOUD. While the rest of the audience politely applauded, we yelled and clapped like, well, Americans. I think the only people who rivaled our obnoxiousness were the four drunk women in the front, who had apparently got tired of queuing and popped into the pub across the street before joining the rest of the audience. So at least we weren't the only ones making fools of ourselves.
Then I made pasta (they say paasta) and then here we are hanging out.
Cheers!