Eating My Way Through New Orleans

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New Orleans is an excellent place to gain weight, but with so many options of decadence, it’s wise to have an idea of which restaurants are worth indulging in.  In preparation of your trip to New Orleans, here is a list of places I ate, in order from best to worst:

IMG_47751.  Eat (French Quarter)

There is no better brunch in New Orleans.  The pain of waiting to be seated outside (which is unfortunately common in the city) is immediately remedied by a cute atmosphere and stunningly delicious food.  The must-have item on the menu is their Banana Fritters, which are fried, rolled in cinnamon and sugar, and served with chocolate and peanut butter dip.  I could have eaten those for the entire meal, but I had also ordered Eggs du Provence.  Served in a skillet with a truly massive biscuit on the side, it was the savory complement to our sweet appetizer.  Continue reading →

Unbecoming by Rebecca Scherm

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By the time books arrive at my library after months of sitting in my request queue, I usually forget how I heard of it in the first place.  Such was the case with Unbecoming, and the cover didn’t grab my attention.  I very nearly decided to return it unread, but I decided to give the first page a cursory look.  The very first sentence grabbed my attention, and by the end of the first chapter, I knew I was going to read the whole thing.

The first lie Grace had told Hanna was her name.

Unbecoming is an excellent example of one of my favorite tropes:  the unreliable narrator.  Grace shares what she wants to share, and as the reader, I had no idea how much of the information presented was truth, fibs, omissions, or outright lies.  I loved it!  The suspense was heightened even more by alternating sections that described her present life in Paris or her past in Tennessee.  Halfway through the book, I was dying to know what had happened in the past as well as what would happen to her in the future.  The double mystery made the book twice as interesting.

I don’t want to say too much, because I want people to experience the book as I did:  totally unprepared.  The characters are rich, the themes fascinating, and the plot fantastic.  What more do you need?  Read it now!  (Or click through to read the book jacket, which does do a great job of setting up the story.) Continue reading →

Movie Memories with Cousin Bess

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This weekend, my cousin Bess came to Dallas to visit me.  We spent her first night here watching all three Jurassic Park films in anticipation of Jurassic World‘s release.  I chose to view our immediate fixation on movies in a positive light:  our family is very media- and story-oriented, so really, we were honoring our ancestry.  After all, this was not the first time movies were central to my memories of Bess.

ernest-scared-stupid-movie-poster-1991-1020234965

When I was very little, I loved the Ernest movies starring Jim Varney.  So did my brother Roy and my cousins Andrew and Bess.  One night when we were visiting them in Atlanta, we rented Ernest Scared Stupid, in which Ernest must destroy a bunch of trolls on Halloween.  It is the most absurd film to ever exist, culminating in Ernest dancing and kissing said evil troll.  The four of us peered over blankets, laughing as though we weren’t actually terrified.  I vowed never to watch a scary movie again.  Continue reading →

Celebrity Crush: Ewan McGregor

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When I was eleven years old, I saw Star Wars: The Phantom Menace in theaters.  When I got home, I ran to my white board.  It was where I wrote my most embarrassing thoughts, the ones too scandalous to leave permanently on a journal’s pages.  “I know that Anakin is supposed to be so cute, but I LOVE young Obi Wan Kenobi!!” I stared at my admission of love, smiled, and erased the evidence.

kidman-mcgregor_3060451kTwo years later, I sat in a theater again, sobbing over popcorn as Christian wailed, clutching the body of Satine as the curtains closed at the Moulin Rouge.  I became obsessed, printing quotes (“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return”), taping pictures to my bedroom wall, and singing “Come What May” loudly as I vacuumed the house.  The Internet was a lot more useful by 2001, so I soon discovered that I had loved this actor before.  Both Christian and Obi Wan Kenobi were played by the same man:  Ewan McGregor.  Continue reading →

StumbleUpon Sunday (4)

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StumbleUpon is a giant collection of the best pages on the Internet.

StumbleUpon is a great way to lose hours of your life.  Luckily, I braved the Internet vortex so you don’t have to.  This week I found these especially interesting websites:

  1. Silk
    This is the coolest website that allows you to create fantastic art by messing with rotational symmetry and colors.  It’s intuitive and impossible to make something ugly.
    index
  2. 49 Locals Tell You What You Absolutely Must Not Do in Their Home Countries
    Some are helpful, some are hilarious.
  3. 5-Year-Old Little Girl with Autism Paints Stunning Masterpieces
    My cynical side often thinks these child geniuses are not all that genius, but this girl’s paintings are genuinely beautiful.
  4. Time Lapse of Snow
    Oh my gosh, as a deeply devoted fan of snow, this massive accumulation of snow is fantastic.  It’s just so much!
  5. These 20 Thoughts are So Deep Your Brain Will Drown
    “If the toys in Toy Story died the kids would keep playing with them like normal but the other toys would be playing with their dead friend.”
  6. 10 Best Places to Live for Escaping World Conflict
    Never hurts to start planning ahead for retirement.
  7. If You Really Want to Connect With Someone Then the First Date Should Cost Zero Dollars
    Compelling idea–if the first date involves no money, the focus is on creativity and getting to know a person rather than going through the motions.
  8. Greek Frappe
    This video teaches you how to make a Greek frappe and is guaranteed to make you thirsty.
  9. 25 Spectacular Movies You (Probably) Haven’t Seen
    Hopefully you’ve seen some of these movies, because based on the ones I’ve seen, I completely agree that they are spectacular recommendations!
  10. 10 Reasons to Avoid Talking on the Phone
    98% of the time, I hate talking on the phone.  For exactly these ten reasons.

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

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Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant feels a little slow, but instead of being uninteresting, this deliberate pace feels more like a spell, drawing readers deeper into the plot with every new revelation.  Axl and Beatrice are an elderly couple on a journey, and I loved having protagonists at the end of their love instead of the beginning.  Theirs is a historical England, after King Arthur but before all his knights died, but the realistic setting is peppered with fantastical dragons, pixies, and a mist of forgetfulness.

This book is powerful, because I didn’t think I cared much about it until I finished the last page, at which point I hugged it to my chest and repeated a word over and over again.  I won’t say what word for fear that it will give something of the ending away.  Suffice it to say, at that point I realized the story had sunk into my body, and I am changed by it.

Themes of forgiveness and revenge, peace and memory, love and endurance weave throughout the story and our five main characters.  Different chapters have different perspectives, and most begin by jumping forward in time before slowly revealing what has happened in the interim.  Yet despite these choices, the plot slowly reveals itself, and by the time we know what is really happening and how everyone aligns with each other, it feels incredibly right.  Ishiguro is a genius.  Continue reading →

Tricia Goes Camping With Orphans

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Outside Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – July 2011

Sometime around five years ago, I decided that James 1:27 (“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this:  to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world”) ought to be taken literally.  I am still determined to adopt someone someday, and while I’m not opposed to single parenthood, I’m holding out for a marriage first.  For a while, though, I considered working in an orphanage.  When I mentioned this to Gany, a Mongolian girl working as a temporary interpreter in my hometown in Illinois, she invited me to visit the orphanage her church runs in Mongolia.  Several months later, I did just that.

DSC00265Every summer, The Children’s Place orphanage goes to a camp in the countryside to escape the polluted air of the capital city.  Gany and I joined them for several days.  Our taxi played a Backstreet Boys CD on repeat as we bounced down country roads and avoided massive potholes flooded with water.  At the campground, the door to a simple one-room building opened, and five children ran to greet us.  I had never met any of them before, but one grabbed my bag and two more grabbed my hands.  I immediately knew that my heart wasn’t going to escape this visit untouched.  Continue reading →

A Very Potter Musical

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A Very Potter Musical is a parody that pokes fun at its subject while never losing sight of the fact that everyone loves Harry Potter.  A group of college students from the University of Michigan created a three hour musical and uploaded it in short scenes to YouTube.  It quickly went viral and spawned two sequels and a theater company.

The Harry Potter books will always be first in my heart, because they are the foundation for all things Hogwarts.  But when it comes to visual representations of the stories, I believe the cheap student-made production far exceeds the multi-billion dollar movie franchise.  Continue reading →

Travel Tip: Stay in a Hostel

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When I was planning my trip to New Orleans with Michal, I scoured my usual sites for a place we could stay.  Airbnb options were either too far away from the French Quarter action or else too expensive, and every hotel within our budget was boring.  At a loss, I googled, “Best cheap places to stay in New Orleans” (always Google everything), and Auberge Nouvelle appeared at the top of a list.

I’ve never stayed in a hostel before.  I have vague images of hostels as either being the setting of a horror movie or else populated by super cool hipsters.  Not wanting to be raped, murdered, or belittled, I avoided hostels when making travel plans.  But Auberge Nouvelle offered beds in a women-only room for just $30 a night, so my budget-conscious side won the argument.  Continue reading →

Favorite Movie Soundtracks

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The first time I noticed the power of music in a movie, I was eight years old and watching Return of the Jedi.

Luke:  I will not fight you.
Darth Vader:  Give yourself to the Dark Side. It is the only way you can save your friends. Yes, your thoughts betray you. Your feelings for them are strong. Especially for… sister. So, you have a twin sister. Your feelings have now betrayed her, too. Obi-Wan was wise to hide her from me. Now his failure is complete. If you will not turn to the Dark Side, then perhaps she will…
Luke:  Never!!

Continue reading →