Liz versus the mouse in the house

I'm back from unexpected hiatus. Life has been a little hectic between work, softball, and as you can guess from the title of this post, there was a mouse in my apartment. See?

Photos of the Week: May 20 - 26

20. Shake Shack
21. Dancing with the Stars finale (#zendaya was robbed)
22. Homemade mouse container
23. Stormy clouds
24. Empty terminal
25. Dad with Teddy
26. A Capitol Sight

Reading: Paper Towns by John Green

 Finally found my copy of Paper Towns so I could continue my journey through John Green's complete works.

When I first started reading, it felt very familiar to his earlier book Looking for Alaska. Male protagonist likes this manic pixie girl who then goes missing possibly dead and he obsesses over figuring out what happened.

It was action packed - including an all-nighter revenge plot, cryptic scavenger hunt, and a road trip all in one book. So I was engaged with what was happening, and kept reading to find out more.

I don't actually have much more to say about it. There were references to Moby Dick and Walt Whitman as Green was trying to instill the lesson. I'm having trouble putting that into a comprehensible sentence right now, so I'm guessing it might not have sunk in or I didn't really believe it. But it involved strings, grass, cracked vessels, and humans I think. Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable read.  Now all that is left at the time of this post is The Fault in our Stars, which I am avoiding because I know it will make me bawl.

Photos of the Week: May 13 - 19

13. Capitals pride
14. Embassy of Kazakhstan
15. Potbelly's oatmeal chocolate chip cookies = crack
16. Mind-blowing Moriarty reveal
17. Racing horses
18. Setenant Stamps
19. A Storm of Swords

Liz goes to the Postal Museum

Today I decided to visit the National Postal Museum. Sure it is not every tourist's favorite spot and many DC residents might not know of its existence, but I love this museum. It is geared to a certain level of geek. I've loved stamps ever since I watched that Reading Rainbow episode in 2nd grade. So the National Postal Museum is like my mecca.

It is housed in this large building, dating back to 1911-14, right next to Union Station. When you enter the museum, you're in this large hall exactly as it was back when the building functioned as a post office. Then you take an escalator down to the exhibits about how the postal system works and how cool stamps are. Compared to the larger Smithsonian museums, it can leave one wanting more. There are only a handful of exhibits about how mail was delivered by various transportation ranging from trains, planes, cars, horseback, and even dogsleds. Did you know that people used to mail their laundry? I learned that at the museum.

Really the highlight of this tiny museum is the Stamp room, which is about 10x15 feet with about 200 panels full of stamps from around the world. It is just fascinating to pull out a panel of stamps from Bulgaria dating back to the 1880's and see how stamps progressed up through the 1960s. My favorite are the panels from Russia, given my background in Russian. Looking through each panel, you can see themes of stamps and what they found important at the time.To the Soviet Union, these stamps were little propaganda pieces and you see Lenin and Stalin on stamps way past their deaths. You can even see it on those countries that were under their influence. But enough of the history lesson.

Fun fact: there is a functioning post office inside the museum. And the gift shop sells 500 mystery stamp bags and packs of themed stamps. It is like my Disney World.

I like this museum because it is off the beaten path of Smithsonian museums. It is very quiet and not overwhelming with the number of people milling around. They are currently building a stamp gallery on the upper floor, which I think will be a great addition to display the stamps they have in storage. So I will definitely be coming back to this museum. Okay, I've finished geeking out about stamps.

Reading: Divergent by Veronica Roth

The inside praise for Divergent was true. I didn't want to put it down. In fact, I picked it up on Sunday and by Tuesday night I had finished it (which for me is incredibly fast).

It's no surprise that I started reading this book because there is a movie coming out sometime in the future. I kept seeing the casting reports on Entertainment Weekly and thought "I need to know what happens to keep up."

I felt immersed into this dystopian Chicago world as we follow the main character Beatrice or Tris for short as one choice transforms her. I've enjoyed reading dystopian novels since high school. And I think the setting is what really made me power through this book. I wasn't very invested with the characters. I only wanted to know what the big super secret plan was and how it would affect the 5 factions in the book.

Since Tris chooses to join the Dauntless faction, with its wild and crazy daredevils that jump from trains, the story was very action packed from initiate training til the very end.

Some things seemed very obvious to me and less so to Tris such as Four being from Abnegation or that he wasn't being mean, he just like-liked her. Didn't she know she was in a YA novel? Come on.

I thought it was also cheap to bring back her parents only to have them die sacrificing themselves for her a few pages later. It made sense since they were from the selfless Abnegation faction, but did they both have to die to give weight to what happened at the end?

The book cuts off right after the crisis is averted, but leaves you wondering what it will be like the day after. What will happen when everyone finds out what happened? (Will everyone find out what happened?) What will the consequences be? This is all set up for the sequel Insurgent (and then the final book in the trilogy). I couldn't care less about the romance aspect of the book. I'm more interested in how power will shift from the events in Divergent.

Photos of the Week: May 6 - 12

6. Nerdy cooking => more here
7. Anniversary present
8. Editing in photoshop
9. Look! I match the flowers
10. Best mail day in the history of Liz
11. Embassy of Czech Republic residence
12. Sunset, moonrise

Photos of the Week: April 29 - May 5

A week behind as usual. And I just noticed that I forgot to put dates in but hopefully you can associate the numbers below with the corresponding photo.

29. Petal snow
30. Jacoby Jones does not approve
1. The White House
2. Powerlines
3. Cupcake
4. DC 101 Chili Cook-Off
5. "Peyton Reed wears Converse tennis shows and eats Krispy Kreme doughnuts" ~ Bring It On credits.

Reading: Goliath by Scott Westerfeld

Goliath by Scott Westerfeld is the third in a series set during a WWI alternate universe. In it, the two warring factions are called the Darwinists (or Allied Powers in real life) and the Clankers (or Central Powers). Darwinists believe in evolution (remember high school science?) and create beasts made up of several creatures. Clankers are the nuts and bolts side that believe mechanics is the way to go. You still there? Good.

Now add an Austrian Clanker prince, Alek, onto a floating beastie ship along with a girl, Deryn, pretending to be a boy so she can serve in the Royal British Air Service and mix for three books. Anyway, the point of view jumps between Alek and Deryn as they travel around the globe in the airship Leviathan.


In the book, there is no traditional villain. The Germans serve as a sort of Stormtrooper bad guy, in that they are just kind of annoyingly there and never seem to hit their targets. Nikola Tesla is the closest thing to a villain character because he plans to use his machine Goliath to bring peace to the world. I wish this book had delved into the issue of "for the greater good", but I guess I can't expect too much from a book meant for young tweens.



Keith Thompson



Best part of the book series would have to be the illustrations. Scattered throughout the pages you see full page illustrations to just tiny characters like this perspicacious loris, one of the fabricated creatures of the Darwinists. With such a creative concept of creatures vs. machines, it helps to have visual guides to what it all looks like. The world Westerfeld created feels real with these illustrations or perhaps as real as a book featuring floating whale ships could possibly be.

Overall, I liked this series. It had: secret identities, fantastical beasts, forbidden romance, history, illustrations, steampunk elements. I don't know what else I could want in a young adult book.



Cooking: Spinach Lasagna

I'm trying to broaden my cooking repertoire because, let's be honest, it is pretty sub-par right now. I'm a one-dish meal kind of person. So lasagna is right up my alley. For my model, I used this Spinach Artichoke Lasagna recipe from Budget Bytes. I had made it twice before but this was a chance for me to really cement this recipe into my brain by doing it without looking it up.

I got all my ingredients together:
- no boil lasagna noodles
- a ton of tomato sauce
- 15 oz ricotta cheese
- 16 oz frozen chopped spinach
- 2 eggs
- all the mozzarella in the world

1. Thaw frozen spinach. Decide that since you have leftover frozen broccoli that it deserves to be in lasagna.
2. In a different bowl, combine all the ricotta cheese, 2 eggs, and a handful of mozzarella cheese. Add some pepper and other spices you have lying around because nothing says "fancy chef" than going BAM! SPICES! Mix well.
3. Add green thawed bowl into yellow mush bowl and stir.
4. Layering time: sauce, noodles, filling, some extra mozzarella. Repeat. Finish off with the noodle, sauce, cheese roof.
5. Cover with foil and bake for 40ish minutes. This is not really scientific. Near the end take the foil off and let it cook for a few more minutes. It is done when you are starving.

I like this recipe because it is simple and can be altered very easily. Swap in some meat if I want. And I have meals for the next week or so. I slice up my lasagna and put it in individual plastic containers, some of which go into the freezer for convenient last minute lunches. This batch gave me dinner and 9 plastic containers worth of meals. VICTORY!

Recipe Unlocked: Lasagna (and all its derivatives).

Photos of the Week: April 22 - 28

22. Earth day in Central Park
23. Plastic Bottle Tornado Art
24. Daily Commute Graffiti
25. Same art as Arrested Development?!?!
26. Watching the middle
27. Striiiiiike
28. Colorful yarn

Breaking the Ice: Desert Island

Stranded for an indefinite amount of time... say... on a Desert Island.... with no hope of new shipment of entertainment for a while. 3 movies, 3 books, 3 albums, and 3 television shows

Movies

1. Sound of Music
2. Pitch Perfect
3. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Reasoning: I want more music to listen to so I picked my favorite musical, my new favorite movie with singing, and then Scott Pilgrim to satisfy any video game/nerdy references I might miss while trapped on a desert island.

 Books

1. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
2. A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin
3. Watchmen by Alan Moore

Reasoning: I assume I can't take count series of books as one, so I had the difficult task of picking singular books. I went with Harry Potter and the HBP because 1) it is long 2) I liked it 3) I have fond memories waiting on line for the book and then spending the next day reading it. Plus it has the added benefit of no epilogue. I picked A Storm of Swords because that is my favorite of the ASOIAF series because shit. goes. down. It's long enough to reread and try to pick up on cues and foreshadowing and all that jazz. And I chose the Watchmen as a graphic novel because some days I just like opening it up to a random page and looking at the background details.

Albums

1. Rumours - Fleetwood Mac
2. 21 - Adele
3. A compilation of Motown hits

Reasoning: Fleetwood Mac because of reasons. I mean 'Rumours' is just a great album, why not? Adele's '21' for something a bit less upbeat. I'll just listen to 'Someone Like You' and cry on my little island.  The collection of Motown hits is for montage/singalong purposes. You can't help but sing and dance and be happy with Motown.

TV Shows

1. 30 Rock
2. Veronica Mars
3. Arrested Development

Reasoning: All three of these shows would provide enough pop culture references for me to survive on a desert island away from humanity. I have rewatched all of these shows as well so I know they hold up on multiple viewings, even as the years go on (I'm looking at you Veronica Mars with your 2004 references to O-Town and Paris Hilton). Also my vernacular has been changed by these shows dramatically. I would walk around the island saying things like "What the what!?", "There's always money in the banana stand", and "Why do you insist on pissing me off?" to no one in particular. 

Based on these picks, would you chance being stranded on an island with me? What would you pick?

Reading: A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin

There is no way I could review this book. It, and the others in the series are just too dense to break down. So I'm just going to talk about my feelings with limited spoilers.

I started re-reading this book after the 2nd season finale of Game of Thrones. I was just so jazzed about it that I wanted to keep it fresh in my mind. Well I made it 400 pages into the re-read and then I put the book down for months. Then along came the 3rd season premiere of Game of Thrones, which sparked my interest in finishing the book.

When I originally read A Clash of Kings, I was trying to power through all the books to know as much as possible. So I didn't pay attention to some of the details and foreshadowing (and I mean, who can the first time they read this monster book?)

But looking back, it was always overshadowed by the sequel A Storm of Swords (my personal favorite of the A Song of Ice and Fire series). I learned to appreciate this book more the second time around. Knowing the fates of some characters made me more sympathetic to them and what they were feeling in the moment. Here are some "awards".

Favorite Character: Tyrion Lannister
Most OMG moment: Renly Baratheon before battling Stannis
Largest gain in respect: Sansa Stark putting up with all that shit at King's Landing
Saddest moment: Leaving Winterfell :'(

Not even having read and watched Dany's storyline once before could have made that interesting. It seemed so blah to hear about how Xaro Xhaon Daxos keeps trying to woo her and the House of the Undying. And I couldn't really understand all the nautical talk from Davos during the Battle of Blackwater Bay. Aside from these two parts, I like rereading it. I will move on to rereading A Storm of Swords, but that book is quite the undertaking some I might wait again until the season finale. Let's see if I can finish it sooner this time.