Chicken Tacos

Fall has officially arrived in the Big Bend. I may go frolic in the nearest park and enjoy the fact I can stand outside for longer than 15 minutes and not be dripping with sweat. It was a very long summer. People around here think I am weird but never hated cold weather. Yes, North Dakota took cold weather to a level this Central New York native did not know existed and I did my share of complaining. Call me nostalgic for the seasons of home. Where it is currently in the 30s so I try not to complain about the heat to my family...

However, with the temperature falling to less hot and humid conditions, I was able to pull out my Crock Pot and try one of the many slow cooker recipes I've been stockpiling. I wanted to also pull it out while I would be home the entire time as it would be my first time using it with a very curious cat in the apartment. After she thoroughly investigated this new appliance on her side of the kitchen counters, and I think may have slightly burned the tip of her nose on it, it seemed to be uninteresting to her so success! I think it will be fine to leave it on for a work day if I want to do so and not come home to a monumental mess.

So, which recipe to start with? It wasn't quite stew weather yet and I wasn't quite ready to make a batch of Aunt Marcia's spaghetti sauce for the season. So, what to try? A quick search through Evernote where I hoard recipes found me this simple, easy to put together recipe for chicken tacos. I however don't have a source. I have a vague recollection that one of my friends pinned this and I saw the post on Facebook. I actually used less chicken than the recipe called for and the batch still lasted me from Sunday to Thursday. I changed it up over the week, using the chicken for traditional tacos, chicken taco salads and mixing it with rice. For the last of the batch, I covered tortilla chips with it and cheese and made some fantastic chicken nachos.

It may not look like much but it was tasty!

Chicken Tacos

Ingredients:
6 chicken breasts
1 jar of chunky salsa
1 package of taco seasoning

Directions:
1) Place the chicken in the bottom of the Crock Pot. Cover with the salsa and then sprinkle the taco seasoning on top. (I used about half the taco seasoning in the package as I used only 4 chicken breasts - use as you want to - the more you add, the more kick the finished dish will have)
2) Cook on low for 6-8 hours or high for 4-6 hours
3) Shred the chicken with forks before serving.

The Brothers Grimm

I originally had thought for my DVD re-watch project, I would go in alphabetical order. But, then Friday the 13th came around and I thought a scary movie was in order. Now, a couple of things. One, 13 is a lucky number for my family. My sister and I were both born on a 13th - I even turned 13 on Friday the 13th which I have always loved. In fact, last Friday was my sister's 25th birthday. So, I don't really have the same superstition about 13 as many have. Two, I don't actually do "scary" movies. I am a wimp and have no qualms about it. I like  dark action movie or one that is creepy but I draw the lines at movies that try every five minutes to scare you out of your skin. Not my thing. Honestly, Tim Burton is about as scary as I get. I still have nightmares about a certain Supernatural episode for the love of Pete and even my beloved Doctor Who gave me a complex about stone statues. So yeah, a wimp may be too kind a word.

However, if a creepy movie has a good enough hook, I'll watch and just bury my head in a pillow frequently. Hence why, a long time ago, I shelled out for a copy of The Brothers Grimm. Starring two of my favorites, Heath Ledger and Matt Damon, it had a promising premise. Jake and Will Grimm are con artists who go throughout the French-occupied German countryside, taking advantage of local folklore to act as 18th century ghost hunters. That all goes awry when they end up in a real enchanted village where young girls are mysteriously disappearing and they are charged by the French occupiers to discover what is happening and to stop it.

From IMDB

Sigh, this movie is sort of scary? For Friday the 13th, it fell flat. I should have gone with The Mummy. Even for me, Grimm is on the weak side. It had been a long time since I watched this and honestly, I remembered it being better. It has great potential - the idea should be great but the execution is lacking. The story meanders a lot and takes too long to get to its climax. It has good characters - I particularly enjoy Heath Ledger as Jacob Grimm, the reluctant former scholar who follows Will from one con to the next. His willingness to believe in the fairy tale is endearing and what one would expect from a Grimm. Peter Stormare also deserves a thumbs up for his creepy yet delightful Cavaldi who is constantly trying to torment or kill someone via over the top means. At one point he has the Grimm brothers dressed in aprons and bonnets scrubbing the floor a la Cinderella. It's weird and yet makes me laugh. The Brothers Grimm does have its moments, including one of its best quotes (TRUST THE TOAD!), but overall, it falls flat. One for the Goodwill pile to start out my rewatching.

Well, that's summer then...

I will admit, the fact that it is September literally shocked me. Summer went so fast! It helped that I was very busy for most of it and had lots of fun times but that also meant I apparently didn't have time to blog. I have reasons.

Up a tree. Photo credit to my awesome cousin Jodi

One, summer was, as I said, busy! I got to go home when the temperature was above 40 degrees which means dinner at the Loop, races in Oswego, ice cream at Byrne Dairy and especially an awesome, no holds barred feast up at Grandma and Grandpa's camp. It was awesome! And then I went to Orlando to hang with a super awesome family which meant actually having children with me at the Disney parks. This was novel and so much fun and slightly nerve wracking because at times, in case you've never visited a theme park of any kind in the summer months, it was CROWDED. The amount of people required capital letters. But, we had a blast and rode lots of rides and ate lots of food and just had a fantastic time at Disney. I then turned right around and left for New Orleans for a conference but I did get to see some of the city but it's on my "really need to go back and spend days exploring" list because I really only had a day to see the highlights and that wasn't doing it justice. I did get beignets and coffee at Cafe du Monde though and it is as tasty as they say. I always like when things live up to their praise.

Two, work. I love my job, I really do but we were very busy this summer. Hopefully, sometime this fall people will start to see the fruit of all our work when our new digital library site goes live but until then, I don't have much to show for everything we've done but know that we worked hard this summer on lots of stuff and hopefully this fall we'll get some awesome things to show for it. One of the downsides of my job though is a lot of hours in front of the computer screen meaning the last thing I often want to touch when I get home at night is my laptop.

Three, I think I am officially in a bit of a reading slump. I haven't been reading very fast or very much. Nor have I been that interested in what I've been reading. I am hoping to get back on track this fall and into a reading routine again. That always helps me stay on track with books even if they aren't holding my attention very well. 

Four, something about summer just means I go out for an hour and then spend four in front of the TV. Not good. I was hoping to get rid of cable (and temptation) but a frustrating couple of phone calls meant it would cost me more to pay for just internet instead of my current bundle (how twisted is that?!) so cable stays. However, a reading routine and books I actually want to finish will help me kick the cable habit I have developed! Also, the start of the fall TV schedule will help as when I know there is a show I want to watch at 10, I make the effort to read from 8 until 10.

Sigh, so good. Beignets and coffee at Cafe du Monde

I also am debating a movie re-watch of all my movies and blogging about it. This is both an effort to do some cleaning of my DVD collection (would I want to watch this ever again?) and also an effort to blog more about movies AND books again. We'll see if this fall works out for that or if that becomes a winter project (or at least as wintry as it gets in the South - autumn is just depressing because I really miss all the colors)

And recipes too should be making a reappearance here! I actually think I have a recipe to share that I just never did this summer so I will try to dig that up and share ASAP. I did just try a new dish last week but it was kind of blah so not sharing that one. Again, I am hoping to get back into a routine this fall and cooking is on the list to make a priority!

Happy Fall everyone!

Fated

From Goodreads

So, I'm not one for stories that end unhappily. I'm definitely more of a happily ever after kind of girl. If I want depressing and realistic, I'll watch the news. My reading is for escape. Which, I think I've mentioned before in one of my many tirades over what bugs me about a lot of contemporary modern fiction. But sometimes, I come across a book that has a clever enough concept that I'll read it even though it most likely isn't going to end well. Fated is one of those types of books. The idea behind it was so cool, I had to read.

Fated is the story of Fabio, aka Fate. He's gotten rather fed up with his job of trying to shepherd 83% of the population not on the Path of Destiny to conclusions that are just OK. Really, he's fed up with us because no matter how nice a fate he manages to create for us, we always manage to muck it up. Then, Fabio meets Sara, a mortal on the path of Destiny, and then Fate goes all down hill from there.

I think what I loved most about Fated was the cleverness of how it introduced its characters. At no point did it try to be too clever. A new character would walk in and Fabio would explain: "This is Dennis. He is Death. The thing about Death is he's X." X could be passive agressive, megalomanic, sociopath etc. The idea is these are the immortal beings directing things and they are completely off their rockers themselves. It made for fun introductions and interactions between Fabio and his fellow immortals. Fabio himself is likable in spite of himself. He is bored, lackadaisical  unhappy and frustrated. Even when he starts to change things up, he's a bundle of confusion and anxiety. He tries to play the straight good guy but being Fate, tends to blame others for what he's unhappy about. In that sense, he's a great depiction of Fate personified. 

The story itself sort of breezes along. There is no great adventure, no driving plot point to be solved in the end. We simply come into Fabio's life and follow it along for this limited period as he falls in love, repeatedly tries to be better and screws it up, gets called on his mistakes and then punished before finally reaching what, in the end, is an inevitable conclusion. Though it still erked me and actually kind of skeeved me out a bit how this story concluded. I can appreciate it but wish the author could have come up with a less...awkward ending.

So, Fated gets full marks for interesting premise and fun character development as well as a story that rolls along at a neat pace and tries to find a silver lining in the end which is more than a lot of books do these days. Check it out if you're in the mood for a quirky read and don't mind an odd ending now and then.

Food Stories (and a recipe!)

I've been watching, slowly but surely, the lectures from Edible Education 103, a class held at UC Berkeley last fall and headed up by Michael Pollan. I love to eat so a class looking at food and our relationship with it seemed like a good place to start looking into what MOOCs are but also, the class has just been fascinating. The one I watched last night was with NPR's The Kitchen Sisters who presented on collecting stories about the "hidden kitchens" in communities all over the country. One of their tenets of storytelling is that "Food is the New Music" - everyone has an opinion, a story, a song they want to share and food, like music, can trigger all sorts of memories.

Food is important in my family. We like to get together and eat. Most of my happiest memories involve food in some way. We have certain meals we eat at certain times of the year, we have certain foods we like to share with people, foods we hope our friends like when we bring them to parties. I've always loved sharing my family's recipes over the years with friends or being asked for them as my friends have scattered all over the world on their own adventures. I know my box and folders of recipes with titles like Grammy's Goulash  Jodi's Pumpkin Bread, Uncle Gary's Meatballs always meant I took a little piece of home with me no matter where I went.

Come summer, I pull out all the recipes for cold salads, dips and grilling. Recently, I made a batch of my Aunt Marcia's spaghetti salad. This was a dish I insisted I wanted for a grad school graduation cook-out to not only have as one of my favorite dishes, but also to share the dish with some of my best friends from school. Word of advice to the singles, this recipe makes a TON of food so halving the recipe means you still have leftovers but just not so much that you're sick of the dish by the time you are done. And hey, if you're invited to a potluck BBQ this summer, this recipe is a unique and delicious one to take along!

Perfect summer meal in my book! Burger and spaghetti salad

Aunt Marcia's Spaghetti Salad

Ingredients:
1 lb. cooked spaghetti
1 large green pepper - chopped fine
1 red onion - chopped fine
8 oz. Kraft Zesty Italian Dressing (1 small bottle or half a larger bottle)
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
1 bottle McCormick Salad Supreme

Directions:

1) Prepare spaghetti as noted on box. Mix together with all ingredients in large bowl.
2) Let chill for 24 hours before serving
3) Still well before serving as the vegetables tend to settle towards the bottle of the bowl over night.

All Nighter

I never pulled an all nighter in college. I was one of those annoying students who finished papers and take home exams days before they were due. I can remember two late nights. One was on an essay for my Working Girls class. Not that kind of working girl mind you, the class took a look at the portrayal of women and work through the 19th and 20th centuries. I'd not done well on my first paper for that class so I did what I often did in cases like this, blew the second paper into major dramatic proportions. I needed to nail it; it needed to be the best paper this professor had ever read. I had gone to the library to start work on it in the early evening but I got into a groove and just kept working and writing and suddenly it was 2AM and I was still in the attic of the library. Not a big deal really but it happened to be I lived quite a walk from library at the time so the walk was perhaps not something I should have been doing. The other time was actually before the last one though I remember it less vividly. I'd been getting no where on a paper. I didn't know what I was trying to say in it or where I wanted to take it. I was frustrated and annoyed. So, I did the only thing I could think of; scrapped it. All four pages of useless pratter I'd managed to write and started over. At 11PM. My poor roommate. However, once I didn't have to worry about what I'd said before, I was able to make headway and once I started making headway, I didn't want to stop for fear I'd run into a roadblock if I walked away. So I got about half the paper done before I was confident I knew where I wanted the rest of the paper to go. All this to lead up to a story about Walt Disney World. Bet you didn't see that coming.

Heading into MK at 11PM

I missed the first 24 Hour event in the Parks. I was in Florida at the time but unable to justify taking the day off, driving down and dealing with the crowds. So, I lived vicariously through my Twitter feed and was bummed I missed it. When the Monstrous Summer All-Nighter to promote the upcoming release of Monsters University was announced it just so happened to fall on a weekend I was already planning on visiting. So I talked my sister and her newly minted fiance into going when I got to Orlando after driving down from Tallahassee at 9PM. To start with, I think our timing was off. We managed to arrive just as Wishes! was going off which meant the pakring lot at MK was still full as the first mass exodus from the park had not occurred. Instead, we were parked at Epcot and left to work our way to MK. The line for the monorail was mammoth so we opted for a bus to the Contemporary and then a walk to MK. It's funny to see the park packed to the gills at 11PM which is about the time we finally made it in the gates. They had already run out of buttons and t-shirts so no souvenir merchandise for me which saved me money. We did make it for the second showing of Memories. Because of the lighter crowds in the Hub, we were able to get closer than usual and really enjoy the detail of the show.

Full Moon over Cinderella Castle

We then booked it out of there to avoid getting caught by the 1AM showing of the Main Street Electrical Parade. However, the park packed. The wait for Big Thunder Mountain was more than we were willing to wait (it would have put us on the ride at about 2AM) so we hit up Haunted Mansion and The Little Mermaid. The full moon lit the park in both a cool and eerie way. I was thinking it was a good Kingdom Keepers vibe. After Mermaid, we decided the other lines were longer than we wanted to commit to (I'd had coffee before coming so I was wide awake, my sister and her fiance however were fading fast) so we headed for our last stop - ice cream. At 2AM. No better time! The Eye Scream Sundae, special for the event, was delicious. I went for the Mint Chocolate version complete with a white chocolate Mike circa University disc. Just as we finished eating, the dance party in front of the Castle was getting started. A DJ was setting up to keep people awake and moving as they entered the home stretch. We danced out way down Main Street and started the long trek back to our car at Epcot. Taking the monorail in that time of night was fun though - seeing Epcot getting spruced up for guests the next day.

All in all, I am glad I went and experienced one of the 24 hour events though I don't know that I'd need to attend another one. A fun novelty definitely but not something I need to do again.

Brie

I grew up with lots of animals around. I don't remember a time when my family didn't have a pet of some kind. Dogs, hamsters, horses, cats, lizards, fish, rabbits - you name it, we probably had it at some point. I was also lucky enough to have an awesome fifth grade teacher who kept a Florida King snake in the classroom. We fostered baby snapping turtles that year too. I love animals of all kinds. So, not being able to have one around on a daily basis for almost three years was rather cruel. Where I lived before heading south didn't allow pets and there wasn't a lot of options in the apartment market there. So, when I knew I was moving, finding an apartment that would let me have a pet was essential.

Now, I think I am naturally more of a dog person. I think that is because my first best friend was a dog. Luk was the best friend a girl could ask for - I could do anything to that dog and he'd let me with this very patient, slightly pained look in his eyes. However, my mom put her foot down about another dog and it took me a few years to talk the parents into a cat. Me being me I chose a cat breed that grows to the size of a small dog (do you see what I did there?) I love big animals in general - I always have. Make of that what you will. However, I couldn't see bringing a dog into my tiny apartment and then making it be cooped up all day while I was at work. A cat is more self-sufficient; more willing to be queen and rule the roost than a dog so a cat fits into my lifestyle better now.

After a series of delays, I finally brought home a cat at the beginning of April. I got Brie, my adorable little black shorthair, from the shelter. I've never actually been to one which I think was a good call. About five seconds in there was heartbreaking. Little Brie was just waking up from her spay surgery earlier in the day but she came right over to the cage door to say hello to me. She was tiny - they think she is about 7-8 months old and hasn't quite grown into her ears yet. I took her out and played with her for a bit. I had to try to keep her from jumping or being too active since she was just out of surgery but I liked her and I decided to stick with her. Taking another cat out just would have made things worse for my decision making skills.

Brie has adjusted well so far; it's clear she's never been inside a house before and trying to teach her to not jump up on the kitchen table or kitchen counters isn't going that smoothly but she'll get the hang of being a house cat. When I first got her, she was by far the most zen cat I'd ever had. She rarely startled or jumped at things and just always wanted attention. She then fell ill with a massive cold. Poor thing just slept constantly and sniffled and sneezed and coughed if she was awake. I am happy to report she is definitely feeling better and acting much more like cats I am used to. She is playful and haughty and wants attention only when it is her idea and even then she might suddenly decide your hand is more fun as a toy than something to pet her. We need to work a bit on not using Krystal's feet as toys whenever she walks but we'll get there. I am just happy that she is adjusting well. I'm sure I'll be sharing more exploits in the future but in the meantime, everyone meet Brie!

84, Charing Cross Road

There is something delicious with books about books. Forget the metaness of it for the moment. It's like reading a book by the one person in the world who gets you. A person who understands the mystery and romance and adventure that can be held between covers and 300 pages. I have always loved books that explore the reader, that gives the reader the sense that they are enjoying a story written by someone who should be their new best friend. I love all books of course; however a book that loves books as much as I do gets its own category. Literally. I have an entire shelf on Goodreads entitled books-about-books. It ranges from the scholarly explorations of reader response and histories of books and readers to fiction that lives and breathes book culture. There is nothing more disappointing than finding a book in that category that mislead you. That was supposed to revel in books and then just doesn't (I am looking at you Time Traveler's Wife. I tossed you against a wall and hurried to donate you for lots of reasons but your lack of book love when one of your main characters is a librarian was nothing sort of despicable to my mind). If you can find a book that stars a bookstore on top of readers and their books, you have hit the jackpot and that book must be savored. 84, Charing Cross Road is one of these gems.

From Goodreads

Helene Hanff is a struggling writer in 1950 New York City and laments the lack of easy to get English Literature. She finds her way to writing to a bookstore at 84, Charing Cross Road in London and so begins this epistolary novel in which Helene and Frank Doehl, the worker at the bookstore who responds to her orders, develop a close relationship over several decades. The novel is a quick read; I believe I read it in one evening but not because I was not savoring it. Helene and I might not share the love of the same kinds of literature but our love of books as a thing, of reading as an activity and of London as a place made me feel like I'd found a soul mate. This is a book that celebrates so many "endangered" communication methods - mail by post, packages literally tied with string, and books of the leather bound, beautiful paper variety. While I think books as objects aren't quite as close to obsolescence as some people lament, they are a form of communication at a moment of crisis and I can't help but wonder what Helene or Frank would think of where we are in the ebook debate.

After I had enjoyed the book one rainy evening, I discovered there had been a movie made starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins. While the fact an epistolary novel was turned into a movie gave me pause, I was curious enough about how they did it to check the film out through Netflix. I am glad I did. Bancroft and Hopkins perfectly portray how I imagined the rather abrupt and ornery Helene and the very proper and upright, yet with that sneaking British sense of humor, Frank would be. I especially loved that the script very much used the letters in the book for the dialogue. Bancroft is especially strong when addressing her letters directly to the camera, as if she was speaking directly to Frank. Post-war London was depicted as both resilient and yet still recovering form the long years of war and deprivation which post war New York is both quaint and yet bustling - showing the major metropolis it would become so quickly in the 1950s and 1960s. It was a New York I think I would like better than the modern version.

I would recommend the book, it's such an approachable read, but if you must, at least watch the film. It is a charming romance between people and books an ocean apart.

A Visit to Maclay Gardens

It had been cold and gross in Tallahassee for about a week. I know, all my Northeastern readers are crying foul since apparently they are still in the dead of winter in April. I remember those winters. They are not fun. Which is another reason on my growing list I am very happy to call Florida home now. So, this past weekend when the weather finally decided to be sunny and 80 again, I decided to take myself off early and do some exploring at Maclay Gardens.

The House Path leading from the Front Gate

Now, if I'd done a little more homework before I went, I would have realized the state park, which the Gardens is a part of, was hosting a triathlon that morning. Though it was winding down by the time I arrived, it made for a crowded entrance to the park. However, once I was parked and into the Gardens area, I found it to be quiet and serene. I started out walking directly to the house at the tip of the Gardens. However, the House path travels alongside the lake so I took lots of detours to the lake edge, running into some turtles sunning themselves in the perfect morning sun.

Found some new friends lakeside

Once up at the house, a docent gave me a welcoming spiel of history surrounding the Maclay family, how they came into the area and how the house and its gardens were donated to the city. The house is half museum, half still kept decorated as the family had it when they lived there. The museum exhibits were a bit outdated and faded in places but full of good information about the family and the flowers I would see in the surrounding gardens.

The House itself is quite small; of course there was a separate house for the kids!

After the house, you enter the gardens proper. The path from the house leads directly to the Walled Garden which is when I wanted to move in. It was like something out of The Secret Garden. Though small, it embodied all you'd want to find in a walled garden: a fountain, lots of flowers, trees growing out and overhanging, benches, a secret corner. It was awesome; a childhood dream come to life. Stepping out of the garden, you find a long reflecting pool leading back down to the lake. When I visited, there was a young woman having pictures taken in an old fashioned costume along the reflecting pool.

From the Fountain in the Walled Garden to the Reflecting Pool and the Lake Beyond

Once you're past the reflecting pool, the trails get a little more wild, more like nature trails than garden paths. I did run into another bricked path that ran along a pond for a little while but that faded out once I reached the azalea patches and the Oriental tree grove. It was also about this time I realized I should have brought bug spray...the mosquitos were out in full force. Following one path after another, I found my way out at the main entrance to the Gardens again.

The only bricked path beyond the Walled Garden runs along a pond

I did explore a little more on the Native Plants trail which lead me down towards the lake again but at this point the bugs won the battle and I decided to come back another day to explore more of those trails. Despite the mosquitos, I adored the Gardens. I could have explored a lot longer as paths just seemed to go in every direction. Though I don't think you could get lost, you could definitely spend more than the few hours I did seeing what's down each of them. Also, afterwards, treat yourself to a cupcake at Lucy and Leo's Cupcakery as I did. It was, as luck would have it, on the way back to my apartment!

Turkey Chili Mac

I kept seeing commercials for this dish and it sounded tasty so I put it on my list to try at some point. Then, two Sundays ago, the recipe was also in the newspaper so I gave in and made it sooner than planned. I am always wary of anything with chili in its title because 1) that usually involved beans in some fashion and I find beans gross and 2) it usually is also spicy and I don't really do much spice. I don't find pleasure in burning my taste buds out for some reason, call me crazy. However, I am glad I tried this dish.

In many ways, it is a lot like my Grammy's goulash - just ground turkey instead of beef and a kick of chili powder rather than oregano. The recipe makes just as much - in fact, I didn't make this at the best time. I was leaving for a trip to the Mouse three days after making this which meant I had to eat it for lunch and dinner for three days to make sure none went to waste. I sadly did not have room in the freezer at the time to put some in tupperware to freeze. It could be a very plain dish but I cooked some green peppers and onions up and put them in there and that added to the heartiness of the dish. I also, full disclosure did not put the full amount of chili powder, but the amount I put in was just right for me. I recommend this for a cold, damp, grey day when you just want to curl up with tea and a book.

You could also top this with sour cream - yum!

Turkey Chili Mac

Ingredients:
1 lb. ground turkey
1 jar Ragu Old World Style Pasta Sauce
1 Tbsp. chili powder
8 oz. macaroni, cooked and drained
1 green pepper, chopped (optional)
1 medium onion, chopped (optional)
2 Tbsp. olive oil

Directions:

1) Heat 1 Tbsp. olive oil in a nonstick skillet over medium-heat heat and cook ground turkey, stirring occasionally until done.
2) At the same time, heat 1 Tbsp. olive oil in a nonstick skillet over medium heat and cook the green peppers and onions together until softened.
3) Once turkey and vegetables are done, stir into a single pot with pasta sauce and chili powder. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer covered 10 minutes. Prepare macaroni at this time.
4) Stir in drained macaroni and heat through.
5) Serve topped with shredded cheddar cheese and sour cream.

Come Thou, Tortoise

Canada is cool...in more ways than one. I grew up about 2 hours south of the Great White North and dreamed about moving there more than once. It was the home of most of my family's summer getaways. In the fall, we went south to Disney; in the summer, we want north to Canada. Toronto, being the closest city to home, was usually where we headed. When I was younger, the Toronto theaters were home to Phantom of the Opera and Beauty and the Beast. It holds the Hockey Hall of Fame, the CN Tower and a fantastic zoo. Niagara Falls is also helpfully along the way so we'd often stop to take in the falls as we headed towards the city (always from the Canadian side; the American side is just sad). There, just behind the ledge overlooking the falls was a store full of Anne of Green Gables merchandise I know Mom bought more than one Christmas gift for me there. Because of my Dad being who he is though, we did head further north once or twice. Montreal is home of the fabled Montreal Canadiens which meant we needed to be in town to take in a game, first at the original Forum and then later at the Molson Centre (I think this may be the Bell Centre now...I know it's changed names since last I was there). We were snowed in once at Montreal; a risk of traveling in February. I found the city enchanting; it has a miniature Notre Dame and the BioDome which is as cool as it sounds. I was studying French by then and trying it out for the first time among native speakers was an adventure. I was also lucky enough to have a friend with a boat so one summer in high school we made our way up the Rideau Canal to Ottawa. I visited the National Library of Canada long before I set foot in the Library of Congress and saw the changing of the guards on the lawn of Canada's Parliament before I saw Buckingham Palace's decidedly less impressive version. So, in summary, I have wanted to be adopted by Canada for a long time.

Canada also, as if they needed something to make them cooler, has a national reading program called Canada Reads. In which, a group of books is selected as contenders for that year's Read. Canadian scholars and celebrities are then selected to defend one of the books in a series of public debates in which a single book is selected as that year's winner. I repeat, Canadians are the coolest people ever. A close friend of mine from graduate school clued me into this awesomeness and while I don't follow it religiously, it has added a few books to me to-read list over the last couple of years. Jessica Grant's Come, Thou Tortoise is one of those books.

From Goodreads

Audrey Flowers is either easily confused or just likes to be willfully oblivious to most of what is going on around her. As the book opens, she is in Portland with her inherited tortoise from the previous tenant of the apartment. However, a phone call sends Audrey back to Newfoundland to deal with a sudden loss and all the confusion that comes with it. Told in alternating voices of Audrey and her pet tortoise Winnifred, Come, Thou Tortoise is one of the more unique reads I have come across because let's face it, how many books include the point of view of a tortoise? So, I did enjoy this book.

Any book which ponders toonies, loonies and Timbits must be enjoyed in my book. However, it was a slightly frustrating read. Audrey is a complicated character, a woman that you never quite figure out. She isn't the best narrator for one thing; is she confused, is there some sort of mental disorder here or has she willfully blocked out reality so well that she really does not see what is right in front of her? As the reader, you have to pay close attention to the few facts you get because that is the only way to try to read between the lines of Audrey's convoluted world view. I much preferred Winnifred's chapters. She is a tortoise who knows what is up. She spends a majority of the book with Chuck and Linda, the people Audrey has taking care of Winnie while she is in Canada. Chuck is a thwarted Shakespearean (aka an out of work actor) who uses Winnie as a bookmark and keeps telling her how inviting the Willamette River looks from the window.

I also enjoyed Jessica Grant's play with language. It's not something that works outside of books (Jasper Fforde does this a lot in his work) but I always enjoy when I come across it as it shows the medium of the book doing something no movie or TV show can do. However, Audrey takes the language into her speech and in that case, it does get old. When she's first told that her father is in a coma from an accident, she keeps calling it a comma. This is carried throughout the book, she is even corrected by several characters but she keeps saying comma. It is a coping mechanism of Audrey's and something she does elsewhere as other events take place and while cool on the page, it was one of the more trying features of Audrey's overall character after awhile.

Come, Thou Tortoise is a quirky read but fun and it has the major bonus of lots of Canada love. Downside? I'd really love some Timbits now and the closest Tim Horton's is back home...

Influential Books

Not sure how I started thinking about this but I suspect it came from reading Lies My Teachers Told Me. It looks at textbooks used in high school history classes and all the ways they are inadequate to the task of teaching students history in the correct way. It made me reflect on my high school experience (and perhaps the fact this year is my 10 year reunion has me thinking about it too) and that moved me more towards the books I read in English class (overall, I don't remember my history texts being the end all be all of my history classes). However, I soon realized limiting myself to books I read in class would leave out perhaps some of the most important. Books I stumbled into on library shelves, books given to me by relatives and friends and books that I, truth, can't remember how I found them anymore. All I know is these books have permanent spots on my bookshelf where real estate is at a premium and I revisit them often. They have influenced me in some fashion - be it they introduced me to a genre of books that greatly influence me or the book itself I met at just the right point in my life. So, here in no particular order:

Anthem, Ayn Rand

Of all my classes over the years, 9th grade English stands on its own. It was a unique group of people with a teacher who pushed us further than anyone had up to that point. He expected more from us and while we moaned and groaned over it, I remember "By The Waters of Babylon" being particularly painful, we enjoyed it. It's a class we still reference to this day and was the place I was first introduces to Anthem. This was, upon reflection, both a good and bad thing. Good because Anthem was pretty defining at the time. Think about, a bunch of freshman reading a book that is about creating individual identity, forging one's way outside of the safety of one's family and community, discovering how you are going to define yourself? It was also good because it introduced me to the dystopian genre, a genre I went on to devore over the following summer. This was before Hunger Games, Matched, Divergent. I had only the classics of the genre: 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World. It's a genre I still love today and kind of love that it's mainstream now. Bad? Well, Ayn Rand comes with her own set of problems. Anthem is a novella and about as likable as Rand gets. It's because of Anthem I worked to read Atlas Shrugged so hard. I succeeded but I definitely did not like Rand as much when I was finished. What had been such a celebration of individuality and exploration in Anthem just became the story of selfish, insufferable, unlikable people in Atlas Shrugged. But, I still take a summer afternoon and read Anthem, if only to remember my 15 year old self.

Anne of Green Gables, L. M. Montgomery

I sadly have no idea how I found Anne. Was it a gift? Did I buy it myself? Did I, horrors!, watch the movie and Road to Avonlea long before I read the first book? Anything is possible. I just remember begging my mother to drive me out to Waldenbooks in 6th grade because I HAD TO HAVE THE NEXT BOOK. I even recall buying the last three books at the same time as I just knew I was going to read them in record time. What would my life had been like if no precocious redhead hadn't assured me there were no mistakes in tomorrow yet? Anne was the first fictional best friend I wanted, Gilbert definitely my first fictional boyfriend and Marilla the best aunt a girl could ask for. I wanted to live in these books so bad it wasn't even funny. And hey, they were educational as well. Thank you Walter for where you fought in WWI as I distinctly remember it helping me on a test in school. Anne also introduced me to more of L.M. Montgomery's books and short stories which I still pull out for comfort reads whenever I have the chance.

The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank

My aunt gave me this book in 4th grade. I have no idea why to be honest. Maybe she'd liked it as a kid and wanted to share it with me, her bookworm niece? For whatever reason, I am forever grateful. I didn't get this book at first. WWII was just a vague concept in my head, the Holocaust a word that I knew was bad but didn't really get why. Anne explained that to me. She also though was infallibly honest. I think we heroize her a bit too much. She was a teenager; she fought with her mother and her sister, she had a crush on the only boy she could, she was a brat at times, a saint at others. Her flaws were amplified by the situation she found herself in, as were her great moments. I appreciated her more when I was older and I marvel now. This girl, in hiding for persecution based only on her beliefs, wrote that, in spite of everything, she still believed that people were good at heart. One of my favorite moments of my semester abroad was visiting the Secret Annex and paying my respects to the dreamer who hid there. It brought into my world something I had only imagined in a book.

Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen

I came very late to Austen. Shocking I know and one of my best friend was the one who properly introduced me to her finally in high school. Once I'd had my first introductions, there was no going back. Austen's brand of romance, humor and tone hits such a perfect cord with me, I read a lot of literature simply because it is marketed as "Austenesque." I even read all the continuations, moderizations; I watch all the movies, no matter that I've seen five other versions. Hell, I own three versions of Pride & Prejudice on DVD. Well this isn't my favorite of Austen's work (Persuasion holds that honor), it was the first I read and therefore the one I owe for making me a Janeite.

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Gregory Maguire

I think I found this wandering the aisles of Borders. I had read Wicked and enjoyed it though it was a dense read and Confessions sounded as if it were along the same lines. Not so. Confessions was a much more approachable book, a book with a much clearer plot and the lines of the story, while still grey, a bit easier to follow. It was not the first time I had read a revisionist novel (clearly since I had read Wicked), but it was the first time I grasped how cool the concept could be. Iris was my kind of girl; a brilliant, plain Jane, someone who is just trying to do the right thing and who, in a moment of weakness, thinks about doing the selfish thing. Many years later, Confessions would inspire my senior thesis ensuring that fairy tale retellings will always fascinate me and also remind me that nothing is as black and white as we would like.

The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I think perhaps I saved the best for last. The Little Prince is a book you have to grow into. I had a copy on my shelves from an early age though I've no idea where it came from. I had read it, enjoyed it and then forgotten about it. Then it was handed to me in 11th grade French class and suddenly it was a book of wisdom, of life lessons, a book I could always turn to for comfort, for hope, for a touch of whimsy when I needed it. It teaches you that there is always more than one way to look at something, that you must always tend your baobabs, and that sometimes, those things staring you in the face are the very things you were looking for in the first place. It is a story of trying to find one's way home and the things you discover along the way. While high school French class touched me in many ways, The Little Prince is the gift I treasure most and I'll pull out my copies (one in English and in black and white, one in French with the color illustrations) and remind myself of its lessons whenever I have a bad day.

Walking and Reading

(Disclaimer: I don't actually walk and read. I did try to perfect that back after I saw Beauty and the Beast and wanted nothing more to be Belle. Unfortunately, I lack the talent to walk any length of time reading and not hitting something or injuring myself. I reluctantly concluded I would never be as cool as Belle...)

I am feeling much more like my old self these days. I still have some tweaks of pain when I move in certain ways but overall, I am 100% better! Hopefully, this health scare will keep me on the right path from now on! While I am not quite feeling up to the zumba class a friend found for me, I am hoping to attend that soon! In the meantime, I continue my tour of Tallahassee's parks with Tom Brown Park.

Lake Leon at Tom Brown Park

Tom Brown seems to be, if not the largest, one of the biggest parks in the city. It holds the annual 4th of July celebration for Tallahassee along with being host to ball fields, Mountain bike trails, a dog park and a 1.5 mile paved trail, Goose Pond Trail. I met up with a friend one night after work last week and wandered from Lake Leon onto the Goose Pond Trail. Since we lost the light quickly, we didn't make it very far but we also stopped to enjoy watching the dogs at the dog park for a bit so I think we lost a bit of time there. But I liked what I saw of the park. I didn't see much of the extensive ball fields the park has since the walking trail where we started isn't close to them but the park was a busy place on a late Wednesday afternoon which is always a good sign. It was much busier than the park I've visited before but Tom Brown, as I said, it one of the largest parks in Tallahassee as well as more centrally located, right off Capital Circle. It also happens to be much closer to where I live so I hope to visit and walk regularly once we get over the spot of bad weather we're having (it's warm out but rainy and stormy for the next few days).

I also enjoyed having someone to walk with. I love my alone time, and I usually need more of that that the time I need to spend around people, but it's also fun to just walk with a friend and talk about random things, about work and family and home. It's also fun to take some time after work to unwind and complain a little if you need to. Normally, I don't have that decompression time to talk something out if I need to and I appreciated having it along with walking and feeling better. 

Next, I want to feel up to a high power zumba class but I think I'm still a week or two from that. I watched one of the Step Up movies over the weekend which meant I was dancing like an idiot around my apartment and yeah...not yet ready for zumba! So, I'll keep walking. I also should work on getting over my fear of the treadmill so even when it's gross out, I can get some walking in as pacing in my apartment just doesn't do much. That said, I don't think it's the treadmill I'm afraid of so much as the odd people I run into at the small gym at my complex. Always nice people, just odd. I almost miss a large gym just for the anonymity they offer. I might need to think about investing in a gym again at some point but for now, baby steps! 

In other news, I need to get back into my reading groove. When I feel crappy, I mostly want to lay on the couch like a slug and watch TV. But, since I'm feeling better, I'm getting back into reading.  I got a bit dragged down too by The Cookbook Collector. I really wanted to like this more than I did but in the end, I was sort of ambivalent to it. It made interesting use of the dot com bubble followed by the bust and 9/11 but I just never much cared for the characters. Confession (AND SPOILER ALERT): I thought good riddance when she killed two characters on one of the planes that hit the Twin Towers. How awful is that?! For one thing, you can see it coming so the shock value isn't really there and two, one of the characters was awful, just completely unlikable and the other character I had nothing invested in. She could have never mentioned him again after she spent a chapter or two on him and I wouldn't have ever wondered where he went. Luckily, I followed it up with a fun historical romance of a girl who runs away to join a ballet company in Brazil in 1912 and then Libba Bray's Beauty Queens which is about a plane crash which lands the contestants of a teen beauty pangent stranded on a not so deserted island. I would tell you more but it's a book you must read to believe and I highly recommend it with a caveat - you need to be someone who likes snarky comments with a Mel Brooks sense of humor (and as someone with family members who do not get that humor, I always like to warn people where it appears).

I just finished Carlos Ruiz Zafon's love letter to books, The Shadow of the Wind. Seriously, I'd like to crawl into the library described in the first chapter and never come back out. After I finish one last library book, I need to start on the stack of books I've accumulated since Christmas as gifts and from book store sales. First up on the stack? A new Flavia de Luce novel (well, new to me, I'm a bit behind on the series). A little Flavia is always a good thing!

Walking a Park

Path at A.J. Henry Park, Tallahassee

My surgery went well; my recovery was a bit unexpected. Everyone made it sound a lot easier than it turned out to be for me. I handle pain well, thank goodness, but I was not up and about easily only a few days following my surgery. Tomorrow is 10 days after my surgery and today is really the first day I've felt mostly normal since they took my gallbladder out. I guess everyone is different but this one threw me for a loop a lot more than I was expecting. Slowly but surely, I am getting my feet back under me. One thing I've been trying to do is to keep moving. It does help me feel a little less like I am an invalid and also I feel a bit like I am walking off the pain. However, doing laps in my apartment gets old fast so I figure it's time to start exploring the parks of Tallahassee.

I love walking; I always have. My favorite cities are completely walkable from one end of them to the other. I love not needing to drive or catch a bus or subway. I love taking in a walk whether it's for pleasure or to get me from point A to Point B. I loathe running or really most other forms of exercise if I'm being honest but I adore walking. Sadly, Tallahassee isn't exactly a walking city. I wouldn't walk down my road if you paid me. It's a charming road but has no sidewalk or shoulder to speak of. So, if I want to walk, I have to find a place to do so.

Tallahassee also has, thankfully, a plethora of parks to choose from. Being unimaginative yesterday, I just picked the park at the top of the list on the website. A.J. Henry Park is in the northeastern part of the city and, like anything else, took me about 20 minutes to find amongst the really nice houses I drove through. It is a fairly small park on the shores of a tiny lake. There is a short boardwalk along the lake's edge, picnic areas which were host to two different birthday parties the day I visited, and then miles of trails through the woods. I wandered the woods for an hour, finding my way to a small ravine with a stream running through it. There were stairs down to the stream which I appreciated it as taking the steep looking trail wasn't really something I felt up to just yet. It was a beautiful day for a walk in the woods and while I ran into a few other couples walking, I seemed to have the forest mostly to myself which is really the best way to enjoy a walk.

My only complaint was the trails were not marked very well. I found posts with maps that had either been destroyed or weather had rendered mostly illegible. There were color coded arrows which would have been helpful if I'd known what trail I'd been on to begin with. I suppose I could have pulled out my phone and gotten the map from the parks' website but it didn't fit my mood so I just wandered. I think I mostly stuck to the green trail but really, I have no idea. A bit more guidance would have been appreciated but I didn't get lost so I suppose that would be considered a successful walk in the woods.

I hope to explore more of Tallahassee's parks in the coming weeks as I try to keep active more. Sadly, most of this week will see me walking on the treadmill though as I'm returning to work. Tomorrow will most likely be a very long day but I'm looking forward to getting back onto my usual schedule and feeling like things are getting back to normal.

What a Week

There are times when you just have to laugh. Like at 11:30 last Tuesday night when I was woken by the sound of loud running water. Much too loud to just be the shower running in the apartment upstairs so I got up, opened my bathroom door, and discovered my bathroom had a new waterfall feature. Of course, it was flowing from the vent in the ceiling and right onto the floor so not really one I wanted. Over the next couple of hours, after the fire department had come and gone and the water stopped running down the side of the building from the apartment above mine, I headed to a hotel for the night. The next day, I moved to a new apartment on the other side of my complex and had to face going back into my old apartment to move things as well. An apartment that had, by that time, ceiling paint hanging down everywhere, carpets that were ripped up to allow giant fans to be placed underneath and massive dehumidifiers sat running in the corner. It took the next three days to finish moving all the belongings the complex didn't for me. I'm still working on getting my address switched everywhere. You forget how many places have your address until you have to change it everywhere - I keep remembering more places to contact. Hopefully, I don't miss any.

On top of that, I am having surgery on Friday. I am both nervous and excited. Excited because I am ready for my body to stop hating me, ready to go back to normal though, truth? This health episode, as fun as it has been, has properly scared me. I'm 28 next month - should I be having gallbladder attacks already? Should I be taking heartburn medicine like it's candy and worry about everything I eat making me feel like I'm having a heart attack? Clearly I need to change some things after this surgery to get rid of my wonky gallbladder because this scared me and I shouldn't be this worried yet. My eating habits have been better but I need to add exercise back into my schedule. The last year or so it's gotten put aside, first because TMJ made my head feel like it was exploding and I got that under control then I moved across the country and then my body decided it would rather not let me eat much more than bread and applesauce. I need to work on this.

Nervous? Well, surgery is scary. I haven't had one since I was 9 or 10. After several operations to have tubes put in my ears, my last one not only put tubes in my ears but also took out my tonsils and adenoids. Fun fact, as a kid, I couldn't breath through my nose correctly. Once they took my adenoids out though, that quirk was taken care of. I suppose you could also count getting my wisdom teeth removed in 10th grade though you even walk after that surgery to the recovery room. I don't remember walking but they tell me I did. The wisdom teeth had to come out because I'd had braces for years, teeth removed, my top jaw widened to accommodate all my teeth. Wisdom teeth would have screwed up all the money my mother poured into fixing my smile.

Reading back through here, I sound like a walking health disaster and I guess on some levels I always have been so I'm hoping to start working on that if only because it's just getting annoying now. So, wish me luck this week and hopefully things will get back to a better normal soon.

A Family I Wish Would Adopt Me

From Goodreads

A very long time ago now, one of my best friends gave me a book that introduced me to one of my all time favorite fictional families. Crocodile on the Sandbank was the first adventure of Miss Amelia Peabody, a wealthy spinster who dreamed of seeing Egypt her whole life. Amelia is smart, stubborn, brave and has that fabulous British common sense that never ceases to amuse. Over the years, when I needed comfort reading, Amelia was one of the books I reached for. Because of that, I only just read the twelfth book this week. By the time Amelia reaches her twelfth adventure, she’s gained a husband, her own children, foster children and lots of good friends and enemies that seem to always pop up at the worse times. Seriously, I want that family to adopt me already. Amelia and her family never cease to make me laugh, make me anxious and make me want to reach in and shake them. I actually had to walk away for two days from the eleventh book because one of the characters infuriated me so much that I stormed about my apartment yelling at her. Yes, I am well aware she is fictional but if the book is that good, characters become your friends and so, as when any friend does something asinine, I wanted to help her out by telling her to snap out of it.

Another reason the Amelia Peabody mysteries rule is because of their setting. Egypt of the late 19th century/early 20th century was fascinating. They were still finding new tombs and temples. Egyptology was still being defined and Amelia and her family are the preeminent archeological experts of the day so they are involved with all the major finds of the time. I feel like I learn a lot about Egyptology into the bargain of fantastic characters and great mysteries.  My friend who introduced me to the series said recently, after visiting an Egypt museum exhibit, she hadn’t realized how much she had learned until she was talking about the exhibit.  It reminded me of touring the Egyptian wing at the British Museum back in 2005 and having the same realization as I explained to my mother why I recognized the names of the mummies. A book that teaches you as you solve a fun mystery and root for the characters? I need more of these in my life. I sort of live in dread of the day I catch up with Elizabeth Peters and where she is in the series because it will be a sad day when I need a comfort read and there isn’t a new Peabody mystery waiting for me on the shelves at the library. I think that is why I am not running through the series like I usually do but I recommend you rushing out and trying out the series if you haven’t yet. Amelia Peabody is the best thing that will ever happen to you.

Happy New Year

Happy 2013 everyone! I am expecting good things from a year with my favorite number in it. 13 has always treated me well so I hope the trend continues!

I head back to Florida tomorrow after an awesome time at home seeing family and friends for the first time in a long time. I always love to come home and see what's new and visit all my favorite places. Sadly, issues with health meant I couldn't eat all my favorite things this time around but I am hoping to get home over the summer so I'll just have to eat double then. I even made it up to the Carrier Dome for an SU Basketball game through a semi-blizzard. It renewed my CNY street cred for sure.

This coming semester is going to be busy and challenging at work but I am looking forward to it and hoping to have a lot to show for myself come summer (fingers crossed!). As for reading, I've put my Goodreads Reading Challenge at 110 books. I decided to be realistic and not push myself too hard this year as I really want to continue to focus on my to read list rather than the numbers like I needed to at the end of last year to get my challenge met. It should be a good reading year indeed!

I am off to enjoy my last day at home before a day of travel tomorrow so I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe New Year's Day!