One of my all-time favorite artists is Dale Chihuly, who creates large-scale, blown-glass installations which are light, and colorful, and soaring, hopeful things. Even if you haven’t heard the name, I’m sure you’ve seen the work.

And last week, the Fred and Pamela Buffett Cancer Center opened in Omaha, bringing with it the Chihuly Sanctuary and the Chihuly Atrium. I’ve been waiting for this for a couple of years. I’ve been waiting for this since I first heard there was going to be a Chihuly installation, and since I first saw bulldozers leveling the ground for the building.

Because, of course, when you hear there’s going to be a new blown-glass installation, you have to go watch the bulldozers. It’s just one of those things. So, I did that.

I didn’t take any pictures of the bulldozers, but I did take pictures of the Chihuly art. Today, they let me inside the building.

Honest, I am capable of taking a better picture than this, but this  first one was through a plate glass window.

It’s a little hard to be sure, but I think these are about two storeys tall. You can see the tops about even with fourth floor, and I took these pictures on second floor.

The comment from the nurse we happened to run into on the elevator? “I like the picture of the cows. That one’s really my favorite.”  (I did not take a picture of the picture of the cows.)

It could be that I’m in the middle of writing a query letter, and a lot of my friends are out there querying or facing some other form of rejection, but that seems relevant, somehow.

Rejection: You can be a world renown artist, making $11.2 million dollars worth of blown glass in a building that was designed for it, and some days… well, the nurse just likes the picture of the cows.

I did take a picture of my sandwich, though. Just in case you happen to be hungry or something. Different kind of art here.

That’s a real-live King Kong gyro, or at least, it was, until it met its untimely demise in my stomach. King Kong is a local business that was started by a Greek immigrant (probably before I was born) and they hire mostly other immigrants (not just Greeks) I think as a matter of principle. So, you get your sandwich, you get your salad, you get your fresh baklava… and you get the sheer joy of watching the nice Georgian (The Georgia in Europe, BTW) boy ask your somewhat squeamish mother if she wants her steak “wit blud.”

He means rare, of course, and as it turns out, she does. King Kong apparently makes a very good, very, very rare steak. **keeps eyes on fully cooked gyro.**