Receipt of R&R

The Best Part of Today #137:

Hotel confirmations.

Ignoring the pit in your stomach caused by exorbitant hotel prices, getting a confirmation of a future hotel stay causes butterflies to flutter around and take your focus away from the pit. It means you're going somewhere, more likely than not on vacation, for some fun, excitement shameless tourism.

My sister and I just booked 3 nights at hotel for another anime convention during the summer and I'm very excited. We went to the same one last year, and it will be interesting to see how it's different this year. Now that my sister and I know what anime conventions are like, we're hoping to sell the idea to some more friends and get them to come along with us. If that turns out well, it'll already be better than last year!

a vg epiphany

The Best Part of Today #136:

Family video game time.

Getting my whole family together at point in time is tricky, and the chances of being together long enough to do something together on any given weeknight are slimmer still. But tonight my sister and I somehow wrangled our mom and dad together to play Mario Kart Wii. Strangely, the original idea wasn't even ours. We'd suggested playing Mario Kart, but it was my mom's idea to play video games together in the first place.

My sister and I are among the odd population of girls who like video games (and don't look like we do). By this I mean we aren't tomboys who shun the ways of feminism, far from it, but rather we're girls who embrace many guy-oriented activities, I a little more than my sister but still. My dad has an appreciation for video games's design and ingenuity, and the problem solving skills required, to an extent. But, like most parents, shares the opinion that there are more worthy pleasure time pursuits. My mother has but the tiniest fraction of appreciation for video games; she normally just tolerates my sister and I playing them and starts to nag us to do other things if we play them for too long, especially if the sun is out. And yet, it was she who eagerly suggested we all play tonight. And we had a great time! I'd like to think that she saw the value in an a stimulating activity (unlike Scrabble, her slow, painful death game of choice) that could bring us all together.

For readers eyes only

The Best Part of Today #135:

A new record.

I may have said something hinting at this before, but I love to read a lot. I'm not a very fast reader though, because my incessant editing skills make me rather thorough so I can't speed through books like the people who got the latest Harry Potter and stayed up all night to read it in six hours. That's not my style. I like to digest books. Ironically, if I am in fact reading a new book and something dramatic just happened I sometime can't stop myself from jumping to the bottom of the page, the next page, or even the end of the book (though this last one is rare) to find out what happened, or to make such and such person isn't dead or so and so was able to find or accomplish something.

Last night though (or rather this morning), despite my slow reading habits, I finished my new book, which would top out this reading time at three days, a new record for me. Despite my slow habits, this was consistent with another of my habits: to stay up until the wee hours of the morning to read, and, more often, finish books. No I'm not talking about total hours spent; that would make this total reading time less than a day. Obviously I didn't spend every hour of the past three days reading this book, but I still count it as three days because I started it on Friday and finished it on Sunday, so I think it makes more sense that way, rather having to try to count u[ my hours.

The book I just finished was The Throne of Fire by Rick Riordan, and I pretty much recommend anything by him. Now I'm on to the 2nd book of the Halo trilogy, The Flood. This one follows the storyline of the first Halo game, while the first book, The Fall of Reach didn't follow the Halo: Reach game so much as it provided backstory for Master Chief and the Spartan program, and their near destruction on the planet Reach, with Master chief as the sole survivor. I look forward to finishing this book, and the series; hopefully they are as good as the first one was.

Good old times

The Best Part of Today #134:

Coming home, and feeling like you never left.

After breakfast, the first thing I did on my first day back at home was take my dog on a walk. The familiarity was so pervasive that it was like the past three years had never happened, almost. I went to my favorite spot down a dirt road to a river where a tree had fallen from the far side and made a perfect perpendicular, arched bridge fairly high over the water. It's been my favorite place to dangle my legs for years, but unfortunately the years have made changes on my favorite places as well as me. My faithful bridge finally wore out and broke in half, or rathe into about 3/4 and 1/4. Of course the larger end was on the other side of the river, and in my efforts to push it back in place, I slipped into the water. I was wearing jeans and sneakers, but fortunately it was very warm today.

I tried to push using another piece of wood as leverage, but it was upriver and too heavy. I did succeed though in building another bridge by dragging a lighter piece of wood across the river and laying it on top of the heavy one. Unfortunately, anything light enough for me to drag didn't hold my weight. After doing this, I went and got the new installment in a book series I love by Rick Riordan, The Throne of Fire and read outside with a bottle of Orangina. And that's what I'm about to go do more of right now!

Nice, nice

The Best Part of Today [yesterday] #132:

May the fourth be with you.

This would have been better had I had the time to post yesterday, on May 4th, but alas, printers run out of ink at the most inopportune times. Despite the disappointment of having to spend such a wonderful day of tribute to the best science fiction movies ever studying and finishing last minute projects, it was still fun.

The Best Part of Today #133:

The cherry on top.

Whether it was an actual cherry on your cream, or that one extra part of your day that made it great, it's always good to have an extra nudge in the right direction. Mine was, in fact ice cream related. I was already happy that today was my last of school, but after my mom and I finished packing up the car, we stopped for ice cream on the way home. It made it just that little bit better.

And other sundry tips...

The Best Part of Today #131:

Short restaurant waits.

You're hungry. You've been fasting all day so that you can fully enjoy the enormous portions that restaurants make of their dishes. And you have to put your name down and wait. Those 30-45 minutes can seem like hours to your stomach, protesting more and more loudly for the lack of food. (Anything longer than an hour and I usually find a different restaurant.)

But it's such a joy when you go up to the concierge and it's either, "right this way" (score extra points for immediate sit-down) or "it'll be about 10 minutes." 10 minutes? No problem! I wanted to go to the bathroom anyway! (Girls can spend 10 minutes in bathroom; I don't know about guys.) Or that's the perfect amount of time to look at a menu before sitting down, so that you can give your meal order to your server right away when he or she asks you for drinks, and you get out of there faster!

Another fabulous tip to try out (if the restaurant will let you)...

When was the last time you had dessert after a meal at a restaurant? (and if you're above the age of at least 16). With the aforementioned potion sizes threaten to pop your buttons and snap your belts, it's no wonder that many of us haven't eaten dessert since we were still eating kids meals. But the way to go is to either eat only half of your entree and take the rest home so that you have room for dessert and a good lunch for tomorrow, or ask for you dessert to go. This way you have time to work off your meal on your way back home, and then you can enjoy a restaurant quality dessert in your comfy pj's and bed, and you don't have to worry about getting whipped cream on your face, or struggle with a fork to eat an ice cream sandwich that would be so much more easily eaten with your hands.

Happy eating!

One tall cinnamon dolce latte, and a complimentary grande mocha

The Best Part of Today #130:

Nice baristas.

Ever been to a Starbucks in New York? They are mean. I don't mean to spread generalizations, but I have never been to a New York City Starbucks and come away with a positive attitude about the baristas. Sure, in general they're serving drinks all day to people who can afford starbucks and that can get on your nerves day after day. But that doesn't mean they have to be mean to those of us who are just regular people treating ourselves to a nice flavored coffee drink.

That's why today's post is about nice baristas in coffee shops everywhere, but specifically the ones my starbucks at school. They are the nicest baristas, and just generally nice people because you can tell most of them are probably students or at least locals. The best part, though, is that when someone double order by mistake and there are unclaimed drinks on the bar, the baristas let anyone take for free, instead of dumping them down the drain and wasting them (which I've seen happen elsewhere). Nothing says customer service like getting more than you paid for.