Mollusks? & Life Lessons: Family Visit Day 3

Tuesday morning we headed to Pandy beach. One of my favorites.

I don't think I will ever get sick of these waves movies I take (or my Dad takes).

My parents had a good laugh when they saw the sea glass literally littering the shore. The glass that was yesterday so elusive, was sitting in plain sight. Haha. 

There is lots of interesting sea glass, but I like the alternative route. Finding stuff that isn't sea glass. I'm never really happy until I find something to impress my parents (see: Urchel), and I am happy to report I found a real stumper!



What is that thing?! A mollusk of sorts? The curious thing, as you might be able to see, is that it is wrapped around the branch. I found it on the shore, dry. The little thing is dry and hard like a shell. There was another one, just a few inches down on the branch. And after a little more walking on the beach I found another one, near a branch, but not attached. My dad has since brought it back to CA and gave it to his marine biologist friends. I will keep you updated, since I know you are waiting with bated breath.

One of my favorite things of the past week since my parents left is finding these little Daddy The Science Guy gems from his videos I snagged.

Tuesday we also had the honor of Ross's presence. He hasn't been slacking nearly enough, so I'm trying to remind him how to do that. If there is one thing Ross will skip studying for, it's snorkeling. Snorkels, masks, and fins in flipper hand we headed to Groom's Beach.

Pretty big fans of the beach.



We traded off snorkeling, swimming, and lounging.

Ross and I decided to climb around on the rocks. 

 

We saw a dude snorkeling in the water just in front of us, and then the man tried to get our attention. We couldn't understand what he was saying, but his pushy and adamant tone made it seem important. After a few moments of listening over the waves we understood. He was telling us not to climb on the rocks because the whole cliffside could come crashing down on us at any moment.

....

Typical Grenada. Love it or hate it, Grenadians have a way of parenting all children, even if those children are adults. Even if that cliffside would also probably crush him, seeing as how he was swimming about ten feet from where we were walking.

Confused, we wandered back to sandy, less perilous shores. He made sure to track us down, get out of the water, and give Ross a talkin' too!

I've immortalized his words in text so that we never forget his sage advice:

We ended the day at Grille Master. An inexpensive, rather delicious, fast-food type place. "Fast-food type" because, this is the Caribbean after all. I got a cordon bleu burger which was delicious, but I think all of us ended up envying Ross's jerk chicken wrap. Another awesome day of vacation!

Sweetie! Schnit, and Urchel: Family Visit Day 2

I decided that Monday was a good day to get an early start and show the parents around downtown St. George's. 

It was a simple and quick trip because it can be a bit taxing to wander with deathly hot streets at your feets, "sunshine" "sweetie" "no charge for looking" in your face, and spice necklaces up your nose.

My sister and I did what we do best and made fun of all the cruisers aka 60+ers that get grabby for souvenirs. Sorry g-ma but I promise your granddaughter doesn't want that sparkle flip flop key chain, so stop stressin'.

However, Ali and I found these super neat-o souvenirs. Cass, you know which picture is for you! We made it a two fer ... or a three fer if you decide you like that cute duck face I made.

Highlights of our downtown romp include:

• Not getting ripped off
• My favorite honey roasted peanuts 
• Gelato

• Clearance fruit roll ups
• Batik fabric
• And a chocolate truffle shake that took longer to acquire than consume

and

• making my parents remember how fragile life is by walking through the Sendall Tunnel. 

We went back to the hotel and went for a little swim in the front yard. No kiddie pool required.

Highlights include: 

• looking for sea glass
• finding a pet sea urchin

Finding and playing with Urchel (whom, yes, I just named right now) was pretty fun. I honestly never thought sea urchins would be so playful. If I was a real mermaid, this would be my pet of choice. 

We made a reservation at Schnitzel Haus for dinner. I'm sure all of you know how on the fence I am about this restaurant (<-- sarcasm="">

Highlights include:

• Photo Op at dusk in the Carenage
• Everything at Schnitzel Haus

I love the way the setting sun highlights the vibrant colors of the Carenage.

Beautiful people in beautiful places, about to eat some beautiful food. 

Sisters are the best!

Who do you think is older? Me or Ali?

Selfie Sunday: Family Visit Day 1

Saturday night my parents flew in, and after jumping the proverbial gun and waiting at the airport for over an hour, their bright smiling faces emerged from their day long journey across half the globe!

It was so wonderful to see them and know that they were all mine for almost a whole week. We hung out at my place while I rounded up some dinner and they gave me and Ross tons of goodies. It's pretty fun to be so spoiled. I think my absolute favorite was two WHOLE boxes of Samoa Girl Scout cookies.

Oh happiness!

I hope they weren't too nervous zooming around the awful roads, on the left side of the road, when it was completely dark out, but we got them situated in their hotel room and let them get some rest before our adventure packed week began.

My parents landed a pretty incredible hotel, thanks to their crazy clever travel agent. This HUGE staircase to their room really put the "grand" in "Grand Anse Beach Palace Hotel." The whole week we had fun joking about how grand it was

Sunday we met them at the hotel, which is just a stone's throw from the church building. We had a fun adventure and walked to church in the morning. We ooooo'd and ahhh'd at the beautiful view, but my parents are a little spoiled because they have almost the same exact view from their hotel room. Lucky ducks.

With these two, I was bound to have incredible looks.

After Church we made some lunch then headed up into the jungle. But not before dad and ali dipped their toes in the Caribbean Sea for the first time (just like Rissa, had to get photo evidence)!

I've mentioned it before, but Grand Etang is one of my favorite places on the island. It was fun to steal Ross away to chauffeur us up there.

The lady at the ticket booth gave me some attitude when I politely asked if we could get in for free because Ross was a student.
"No. Today, you pay."

I took my parents aside and told them it wasn't worth it to look at their crusty "museum." So we said never mind thank you very much. Then the lady got more attitude and was like "whatever, you are here, just go in."

Yes we will thanks.  Typical. 

So we spent two minutes looking at their crusty posters, spending a minute taking the perfect selfie for #selfiesunday. Oddly making it's debut here on a Tuesday #betterlatethannever.



Then we took a purposeful NEAT-ure walk. I love that we drove up from the west coast, but here is a view of the east coast.

It's been a bit windy lately, and on our walk we heard the bamboo clinking together like wind chimes. I tried to capture it.



After we gracious thanked the lady at the ticket booth with many smiles and kind words and headed to the lake to try our hand at, well, hand fishing. Thanks to my cool friend CeCe. I've kinda become obsessed with teaching others about hand fishing.

No fish catches today. I would day I am a horrible teacher... but instead I will say I take great selfies and my students aren't very serious. I mean, just look at these students.



My dad was absolutely thrilled to put his feet in and have the millions of fish chew off his dead skin. No joke, this was a bucket list. What a lucky guy that he didn't have to make a separate trip to Asia.

Our last stop was the Lance aux Epines tidepools.


























Ross and dad had a fun time poking around at the crabs. Getting some awesome neat-ure shots. Classic dad. We ended the day at my apartment. I probably made something for dinner. But I am pretty sure it involved snow-cones.



It was a full and fun day. As you can tell from my dad's dramatic face, it was pretty hot.

TED Talk Tuesdee: Synthetic Happiness

Being out of school and an er... intellectually challenging employment situation, it's not dramatic to say my brain is turning to mush. A few months ago I was digging through my hard drive to find a paper I wrote my final semester of college. When I read it I was super impressed, who is this woman and where is she?!

Blah.

But one small {free} thing I love to do is watch TED talks. They are really fun and engaging and you can learn something totally mind blowing, funny, interesting, fascinating, or confusing in less than a half hour.

Today my friend posted a TED talk on Facebook:

Dan Gilbert: The surprising science of happiness

Being unenamored with happiness as of late, I decided that was reason enough to give it a watch. Also, this friend (although I've only hung out with him for about a week total) is one of the most positive, down-to-earth, and kind guys I know. That was another good reason. 

Go ahead and watch it now.

I am really glad I did. As I began this post I thought of all the posts I have written on the topic of happiness. From documentaries, to cute quotes, to specific ways I try to keep my chin up, I try to figure out how to be happy and stay happy. But these days, who doesn't?

Gilbert really delivers a fascinating talk, beginning with describing the 

Impact Bias: the tendency to overestimate the hedonic impact of future events

In layman's terms we call this "thinking too much and blowing things out of proportion." If you need it broken down even more, just think, "drama queen."

He discusses about how, "We think happiness is a thing to be found." When in fact, we can synthesize happiness from within.

Natural happiness is, "what we get when we get what we wanted."

Whereas synthetic happiness is "what we make when we don't get what we wanted." We as humans see this synthetic happiness as inferior.  I feel like, hey if you can manufacture happiness from within, that is pretty awesome! Additionally, we have evolved to have a prefrontal cortex, a whole section of our brain that can preform this function (as well as other important executive functions). 

He presents a series of fascinating studies and statistics to describe that freedom is a friend of natural happiness, but the enemy of synthetic happiness. This is because, "the psychological immune system works best when we are totally stuck. When we are trapped." 

This really floored me. When we are trapped is when we work best? You mean the months I have been trapped in Grenada have been my happiest? Well, when we are stuck, we find a way to be happy with what has happened. We make happiness.

This "psychological immune system," is,
"A system of cognitive processes,  largely non-conscious cognitive processes, that help them [humans] change their views of the world so that they can feel better about the worlds in which they find themselves"

Tell me you don't think that is fascinating! I am definitely not doing this talk justice, I hope you have watched it already, or that you will soon. Maybe I'm still a little data-struck and nerd overloaded.

But I will just end with his closing remarks, 

"When our ambition is bounded, it leads us to work joyfully, when our ambition is unbounded it leads us to lie to cheat to steal to hurt others, to sacrifice things of real value. When our fears are bounded we're prudent, we're cautious, we're thoughtful. When our fears are unbounded and overblown we are reckless and we are cowardly."

I have only about a half a million thoughts and examples of that.

"... our longings and our worries are both to some degree overblown because we have within us the capacity to manufacture the very commodity we are constantly chasing when we choose experience."

What commodity is that?

Happiness!

Music Monday #4: Happy St. Paddy's

This week my ever-fancy Music Monday falls on St. Patrick's Day!

So, this selection just makes sense. 

Flogging Molly!

Is a pretty great band. I mean, they are from LA, and the lead singer is Irish. And they started with SideOneDummy Records, almost inevitable that I would like them. Anyone that knows me knows I love my fast, loud, headache-inducing music. If it's mosh-able, I'm there. 

Music is one of those things for me that is always closely associated with memories. With Flogging Molly, it's the memory of being poor and car-less, riding trax to SLC, eating epic Chinnese food before the show, getting sweaty bodies wiped on my face, slurpees after, and eventually crashing on Scott's floor.

I'm there.

Not to be epically cliche, but it is hard to choose a favorite Flogging Molly song. If you have NEVER heard of them, listen to Drunken Lullabies. Unarguably their most famous song.

In contrast, I really enjoy "If I Ever Leave This World Alive." It is a bit calmer, not as head-smashing. So if you can't stand "Drunken Lullabies," try out this lullaby that has a lovely melody. 

My favorite lyrics of the song are:

If I ever leave this world alive, I'll take on all the sadness that I left behind.
If I ever leave this world alive, the madness you feel will soon subside.
So in a word, don't shed a tear. I will be here when it all gets weird.
If I ever leave this world behind. 

Flogging Molly's music is pretty loud and fast, but listen close and you can find great lyrics too. 

I also like Salty Dog (Irish Pub Song - take from that what you will). When you are having a bad time, cue up The Worst Day Since Yesterday and shove your face in a tub of ice cream. And on the off chance you need to mosh around your bedroom, What's Left of the Flag will be there to help you without breaking too much furniture. 

But if you'd like to break a little more furniture, check out the Dropkick Murphy's. 

And if you would like something tamer, but still Celtic check out The Young Dubliners (I'll brag about seeing them live too). 

But whoever you are listening to this holiday, have a 

Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

Racing the Rain

Today has been a lame day. 

Meaning, a terrible (stupid little) thing happened. It made me really REALLY mad. Like more frustrated than I've been in months.

But, the good news is, I won!

There are many "games" that I play here in Grenada. Like kill the cockroach games, walk home with 40 pounds of groceries games, try not to miss the bus games. Those games. Today I played the Race the Rain game.

Because on grocery day, it's never good to see this:

























I was sitting on the bus with all my groceries hoping and praying that I would win the race.

It was a close call. I wasn't very fast out of the gate, but a caught up and in the last stretch was able to pull ahead to avoid this.



About five minutes after I got in it really started coming down. So there is your silver lining of the day.

The Last Bookstore

In light of Ross turning in his priorities for clinical placement, and crossing our fingers for getting CALIFORNIA, I thought I would pick a random California summer adventure and blog about it.

Last summer Ross and I spent time in both Utah and California, trying as best as we could to visit all of our family and friends. Sadly I didn't get to visit everyone I wanted, but it was still a great summer!

Whenever I am in California there is always ALWAYS something new to do. That is one of the reasons I love it. No matter how many hundreds of times I have explored the beautiful city of Los Angeles, there is always something new to discover.

At the same time, there will always be that handful of things I want to do over and over. Most of them involve food (Tito's, I'm looking at you). This one involves books.

In the past three or so years my family discovered a little gem of a place called The Last Bookstore. It's in the heart of beautiful downtown LA. My heart aches just thinking about it.

The Last Bookstore is the largest independent bookstore in California. They buy and sell new and used books and records (ah, Amoeba Music, I miss you too). Don't let the title "independent" scare you. This is not your typical mom-&-pop-hole-in-the-wall place. This isn't your hostel-bookshelf-filled-with-random-German-books-and-Danielle-Steele-novels place.This isn't your uppity-everything-costs-5-times-more-than-normal place.

The outside is very unassuming. In fact, the first time that we went (I think they had just recently moved to that location) we almost missed it. But from your first step in the door you begin to understand.

You start to see the tip of the book-berg (iceberg, but with books).

Kind of like this:



Books Books Books. On shelving carts, in boxes, on the wall, on the floor. 



Once you are all in (but seriously there is no turning back now) you get a nice view of the ground floor.

But this is a view from the second floor...

The ground floor is a great place to find strategically grouped and categorized books both used and new. But in my humble opinion, the real magic starts when you go upstairs. Head to the left corner, back by the little coffee bar. Go up the stairs (because you shouldn't trust that elevator). You'll feel pretty sneaky, like you are breaking some rules or something. At least, I did the first time.

The mezzanine is the "Labryinth" which is just so magically fitting for a place as unique as this. Take all the imagery from Pan's Labyrinth and The Labyrinth, smash it together, add a massive amount of books, and BOOM, You are there.

One of the most magical things about this Labyrinth is that every book is only $1. Yep. I said that right. ONE DOLLAR. It is like a treasure hunt. Hasn't it always been your dream to just sit in a room full of BOOKS?! Maybe... maybe not.

You could wander upstairs for hours and not get bored. Some of the shelves are roughly categorized (sometimes with little sticky notes) and some color categorized. It really is like a scavenger hunt. I don't recommend looking for a specific book, but just wander, take a gander, and fall in love. You'll easily have piles of books in your hands.

Since everything is a dollar, now might be a good time to learn all about Swedish Jazz Disco-Graphy like you've always wanted.



You can gaze at the random pieces of art, wander through book tunnels and stroll into the old bank vault. You'll find light switches in books, and maybe even a secret room!



There is a very wide variety of books, some are more recent and very decent looking. Some are ancient but amazing. They have over-sized books that are great for your coffee table, best selling novels, kitschy books, seriously, ALL KINDS. Some of my favorite finds include a Laura Ingalls Wilder craft book and a 1950s Best of the Pillsbury Bake-off.

Even if you hate books (which I am pretty sure makes you The Devil -but I don't judge), it is such an artistic (can't help you if you don't like art) and unique place that it is worth a visit. If you ever find yourself leaving the store at a decent hour, you can ride "the shortest railway in the world" or get some amazing food at the Nickel Diner, to name a couple more amazing things in downtown L.A.