Category: Book Talk

Weekend Things

LaurenLeave a comment

Can we pause on this moment in time for just a few more weeks?  Because this pre-spring feeling has me in such a good good mood.  We’re not quite in full-on spring mode, so anytime it’s nice enough to walk outside without a jacket or grab an iced coffee or enjoy a sunny Friday happy hour feels like a true blessing.  At some point, all of those things will feel expected, so I’m loving this up-in-the-air, surprise-spring-weather time we’re having.

FRI-YAY!  We were heading to the Nuggets game (why do I feel like I hadn’t been to a game in sooooo long?) so we decided to make it a full out date night and go to happy hour before.  We were thisclose to trying out Citizen Rail but then we remembered we’d also been wanting to try Hearth & Dram and after one glance at their HH menu, we were sold.  It was even better than we had hoped!  We maybe over ordered but everything was INCREDIBLE and we maybe can’t stop talking about it!  Denverites, PLEASE GO NOW!

The Nuggets beat the Lakers afterwards, but I still cannot tell you the name of any player on the team 🙂

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Saturday started with Greek Yogurt Waffles!  We topped them with not-so-great strawberries but they still tasted good so let that be a testament to the recipe and waffles in general.  A little bit later, we hit up the gym, where I ran while listening to a Margot Robbie interview and she is GREAT.  We honestly had no real plans for the rest of the day and it was amazing!  We ate lunch — my Concord Grape Kombucha turned out real nice! — showered, made pizza dough and went to the grocery and it all felt very leisurely and perfect.

Also, they bagged someone else’s ice cream with our groceries and though we felt bad for the person who was going to get home and find themselves without dessert, Joey seemed happy to enjoy said ice cream for that person 😛

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Homemade pasta for dinner!  It was our second time around and I think we did a little better than last time!  Putting the dough through the fettuccine cutter was so satisfying.  We used the noodles to make Fettuccinne with Tomato-Cream Sauce, which we’ve been making for something like six years, so it was already a favorite, but it was EVEN BETTER made with fresh pasta.  I think we were both doing a little happy dance the entire time we were eating it (or was that just me?).  Oh and we finally watched Wonder Woman!  I had mixed feelings that had nothing to do with Wonder Woman or the way Gal Gadot portrayed her and everything to do with ARES, GOD OF WAR, being played by dorky Professor Lupin.  When they superimposed his head on that muscular body in the flashback, I about lost it.  As a fan of Greek mythology, I’m very offended by this casting decision.

Did you guys watch Sterling K. Brown on SNL?!  I thought he KILLED it!  When he came out for the monologue, we already knew he was going to be good, but then he was SO SO good!  I also laughed VERY hard at Alex Moffat as Willem Dafoe.

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We slept a little later than usual — or was it the same as usual but felt later because of the time change?? — so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to go to Annette for breakfast, since they don’t open till 10.  We did that French Press, biscuit-of-the-day, pork hash thing that we do every time we’re there and it did not disappoint.  We don’t know how they make the biscuits so perfect or the pork hash so delicious, but we’re not going to question it.  Back at home, Joey tackled lunch salads while I cleaned the bathroom/backroom and I felt very proud of us.

At 3, I walked to get a manicure and it was just lovely outside.  I saw someone with silver nails the day before and felt inspired to do the same.  I think I’m into it!  While I was out, Joey returned this horrible book that I finally finished for me and I hated it so much that this is the only time I’ll be speaking about it.  After I got home and we had watched our 100th episode of The Amazing Race for the weekend, we made dinner and then suddenly it was the end of the day and sadly, the weekend.  Noooo!  Hey, at least I got to catch snippets of both The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast and annoy Joey by singing/dancing along to “Tale as Old as Time.”

Tell me about your weekend 🙂

Book Review: Dark Matter

LaurenLeave a comment

Remember when I read/reviewed The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August way back in 2015?  Or remember when I read that one Dan Brown book (The Lost Symbol) way way back in 2008??  Okay, you probably don’t remember that second one because it was before I started putting my life on the internet, but the point is, Dark Matter reminded me of those two books (both of which I really enjoyed!) and I liked this one a lot too.  Allow me to explain.

A Brief Synopsis: Jason Dessen is a college psychics professor who put his research ambitions aside to have time for his wife (Daniella) and son (Charlie) but as he’s walking home alone one night, he’s abducted and wakes up in another universe where he is a celebrated physicist, but he’s also a complete bachelor.  He’s switched lives with the version of himself who decided not to have a family or put aside his career and it’s that other version that’s now living HIS life, with HIS wife and HIS son.  The rest of the book involves a black box that gives Jason access to the “multiverse” and enter all kinds of different universes where different versions of Jason made all types of different life choices and ended up in worlds that are different than HIS world, the only one he’s desperate to get back to.

In conclusion: SCIENCE.  It reminded me of The Lost Symbol in that it involved an abduction and sensory deprivation stuff (though in this book, it involved a drug that altered your mind… or something) and it reminded me of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August in that I didn’t fully understand the quantum physics of the whole plot but had to be okay with that in order to just enjoy the novel.  Sometimes you just have to understand it enough to not be totally lost, sort of like when you read Shakespeare.  Hey, I guess I did learn something useful in college!

Anyway, I really did find this book fascinating and creative in a way that made it a real page-turner.  I also think it tapped into a question we all ask ourselves at some point: What if?  Life is nothing but a series of decisions, some big, some small, and it’s impossible not to imagine what your life would be like if you made any number of different decisions.  If this book taught me anything, it’s that the decisions you didn’t make sucked and all the ones you did make were for the best.  Okay, not really but it does put everything into perspective.  It also makes for a mind-bending, entertainingly bizarre read that really sucked me in.

What are you reading?