I wanna be a starship ranger!

My family and I are currently stuck on the buzz light year ride at Disney World! It's been about 10 minuets. Pictures to follow.

I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here!

We made it! Two planes and a layover in Atlanta later and my family has made it to Orlando! A few months ago my mom got a call from someone and if my mom and dad went and looked at time shares for an hour or two we would get a cheap stay at the Hilton Parc Soleil. Before I go on about the hotel, let me say that the Hilton in no way paid me to write this. But hey, if they ever want to send me somewhere I would be totally up for that. Of course the opinions and emotions expressed in my blog are always my own, you can send me anywhere in the world but that doesn't guarantee I'll like it.

Anyway the room we are staying at is amazing. Full kitchen, bath AND shower, and even a washer and dryer. My baby sister and I love it here. We got to the hotel about a half hour before the pool closed and everyone threw on their swim suits and went for a swim. Baby sister and I swam in the pool and my mom and dad chilled in the hot tub like real adults.

Most of my family vacations are to visit family, which is always wonderful but sometimes its nice to get away. We went to the beach this summer, just the four of us and went out and swam and just bonded. We aren't always on the same page, and vacations can be stressful sometimes, but its really nice for us all to get away together and enjoy being together. I have found that my family tends to fight less when we are out of state.

I Can Trace Everything Back to Harry Potter

Everything in my life can be traced back to Harry Potter. My mom started reading them to me when I was five, and to this day I have an intense fear of snakes and spiders from the second book.

When the theme park opened I was elated. Sadly there was never time to go. Until now. Its the semester break at my school and my family is going to Orlando. We are leaving today, in about an hour actually, and I have no idea if the hotel we are staying at has Internet, so chances are I won't be blogging for the next few days. However I will be tweeting @livingmylife96.

When I come back I'll have lots of fun stories to share, so stay tuned!

Lost about half her blood and lived!

One of the things I am guilty of is buying books in the airport bookstore. My dad makes fun of me for packing a traveling library, and then I turn around and buy books at the airport bookstore. I guess that's why there is one in every airport. I hate to be board and I have the feeling so do most Americans.

That is how I ended up reading Soul Surfer by Bethany Hamilton. Anyone who has been following my blog for a while knows that my family watched the movie Soul Surfer together a few months ago, and we all loved it. It in fact inspired me to do a day with one arm. In doing so I broke one of my cardinal rules in seeing a movie before I read the book. But that was rectified over the vacation when I got Soul Surfer in one of the many airports we were in. I think it was LA, might have been Huston but it doesn't matter. What does is how amazing Soul Surfer was.

I know many people might be put off by the religious aspect of the book, but I can guarantee you that it did not come off as preachy or pushy. Yes Bethany and her family are religious and yes that does come up a few times within the course of the memoir but so does surfing. Bethany talks about surfing as much as if not more then she does about her faith and just because she talks about it doesn't mean that I want to become a devout surfer. And the same is said for her faith. It was interesting to read about but it wasn't something that made me want to go out and become Christian. That doesn't mean that the book won't have that effect on you, but the religious part of Soul Surfer should not scare you away from reading such an amazing and inspiring book. It really is worth the read.

So Thats How Russian Women Stay So Skinny

When I was seven we went to Russia to adopt my baby sister. And in Russia my family ate a LOT of Russian food. And some really good calamari at a German restaurant. But the Russian food is the important part. It tastes good, all full of butter and yumminess. Emphasis on the butter. Lots and lots of butter. And the strangest part was all of the tall thin Russian women eating plates upon plates of buttery Russian food, and still managing to stay thin.

A few days ago on the way back from Kallah I read The Winter Garden by Kirstin Hannah. I'll talk about it in a few days, but a huge part of the the novel is Russian food. And reading it on the bus made me crave Russian food like no tomorrow. Another part of the book was making food and freezing it.

For dinner tonight my mom and I made Beef Stroganoff from The Joy of Cooking. I made the first round and my mom made the second.

I know it looks bad but it tasted great. My mom cut her meat better, and the one I made we froze so I haven't tried it but we used the same recipe and it was yummy. 

Fizzy

It is no secret that I want to be a doctor one day. In fact now that I think about it I have started at least one blog post like this. Because of that I read a lot of doctor blogs. One of my favorites in A Cartoon Guide to Becoming a Doctor. Its run by a woman that we call Fizzy and not only is it her personal blog full of rants and raves about being a doctor but also has some pretty cool cartoons. I can't say I always understand them, but any one I don't get had some sort of medical humor. But for the most part the cartoons are funny and somewhat whimsical. I know I would read her blog even if it didn't have the cartoons but they are the icing on the cake.

People love Fizzy's cartoons so much that she has self published a book full of them. I don't own a copy myself, but I am going to get one for a doctor I know. I'd really recommend checking out either her blog or buying her book, you'll win both ways

The Byzantine Empire for Children

Have you ever been at a library and something about a book just jumps out to you on a shelf? Something in the color combination of Anna of Byzantium by Tracy Barrett did and so I added it to my gigantic stack of books to read. And its a good thing I did, because Anna of Byzantium is such a fantastic book.

It follows the life of Anna Komnene, who lived a long long time ago. She lived in a time of murder, deception, and blood being stronger then water. Originally Anna was the heir to her fathers empire but after she is framed for something, is dethroned and plots to kill her brother. Although Barrett's portrayal is not 100% historically accurate, all of the important parts are there, and anything that is cut out is to make the book child friendly and easy to understand.

Anna of Byzantium is a great introduction to the Byzantine Empire, like Carolyn Meyer's books are for Tudor England.

Timmy Boo

You know how you cant always see how one thing leads to so many others? Well when I left my lovely neighborhood Starbucks to go home I never expected what would happen next. On my way I found a bunny eating weeds on the side of the road. Yes that's right an adorable little bunny. Someone said that they had seem him a few times and a women walking her dogs said that he used to belong to someone but that he lived in an empty field now.

I called the LASPCA. I would have taken him to ARNO but they only take dogs and cats. The women that picked up the phone said that I could bring him in and they would put him up for adoption. So I thought about it and figured that I could at least try to pick it up. My friend Bean has had a few rabbits and they never really liked to be picked up, so I didn't really expect him to comply.

But he did. The rabbit let me pick him up, and I held him and talked softly to him and he stayed in my arms. And I continued on my way home. I got some really weird looks and a few "nice rabbit"s. But the rabbit, who I named Timmy Boo after one of my favorite podcasters, and I made it home safe and sound. He only squirmed when I shifted him to quickly or if he was uncomfortable.

When I got home I grabbed everything I could think of to make an impromptu rabbit hutch. I cleared out a plastic bin, got all of the fresh veggies I could find, something to hold water and newspaper to line the bottom. All with Timmy still in my arms. I went upstairs and got both of the cats out of my room. Remus (my little black kitten) looked at Timmy as if to say "what is this? I don't know what it is but I like it!" He was hot at my feet the entire time and it took a lot to get him out of my room. Milky Way (my large older grey tabby cat) was lounging on the bed and looked up at Timmy as if to say "well finally your apologizing for getting that young black scrap."

I set everything up in the "hutch" and put Timmy in to see if he was hungry or thirsty. He did not like the thing and hopped out so I put him on my bed so I could keep an eye on him and do my work at the same time. My dad was not thrilled that I brought a rabbit home but fell in love when he saw him. And who wouldn't?

The story isn't over yet, so stay tuned to learn the fate of Timmy Boo. 

Ricky Bear

Like I mentioned before I have been giving a hand to my baby sisters Brownie troop, helping them with the sing a long and recently I chaperoned their trip to The Teddy Bear House. For those who don't know what The Teddy Bear House, it is a house in New Orleans that has more then 10,000 teddy bears in it. Ricky (the man who collects the bears) and a bunch of volunteers start stetting up the house in May and it opens for a few weeks in December. It all started because people called Ricky Rickey Bear, and has gotten a lot of press in the local media.

Sadly this is the last year that The Teddy Bear House is going to be up and running because of the amount of time it takes to set it up and take it down. And it just so happened that my baby sisters troop was going to the house. So I grabbed my Senior vest and went with my mom to help out. The girls took the street car from school and we met them their, and I went on a tour of the house with about five of them. It was so cool to see the house for the last time, with so many bears, many of them with historical backgrounds. And what is better then teddies bears and history. Besides chocolate nothing in this world. 

One Month and Four Balls of Yarn

Well I did it. I made my first baby blanket. Its not perfect by any means of the word but its done and I couldn't be happier. I actually finished it on Christmas Eve, which I thought was kind of cool. What does this blanket look like you may ask? Well here is a picture:

Its totally jagged, and I am hoping that next time it will look a little better, but right now its done and I am proud of it.

Who is getting this beauteous blanket you might ask. I have no idea. There are a few women at my mothers women's shelter who are expecting soon so I guess one of them. I'll try to keep y'all posted about it.

Please Don't Hate Me! Here Have a Cookie

I babysit this adorable little girl who I in my Sunday School class on a pretty regular basis. Lets call her Lucy, because I don't want to put her real name out on here. The first time I baby sat her somehow the topic of food came up and I promised that some time we would bake chocolate chip cookies.

So a few hours before I was suppose to go over and baby sit her I open up my well worn copy of The Joy of Cooking and look for a chocolate chip cookie recipe. I put a bar of frozen butter into the mixer and let it thaw for a bit and start getting out the other ingredients. I had to call my dad to pick up brown sugar on the way home after my mom swore that we had some in the house. And then when I was measuring the flour it spilled everywhere. It was just kind of those aaaah what a mess moments! But everything after that went well and a made the batter and put it in a Tupperware to take to Lucy's house.

Chilling in the fridge waiting to be taken to Lucy's

With my moms warning of "Don't forget the Tupperware" still ringing in my ears, I walked up the stairs to Lucy's house and rang the bell. Her mom let me in and Lucy ran up to me asking "Did you bring the cookie dough." I told her I did and her smile was huge. 

After Lucy's mom left we set out to neatly put the cookies on a tray and into the oven. But when they came out they looked like this

Doesn't that look yummy?

All the cookies had squished together. And get this, Lucy doesn't like vanilla cookies with chocolate chips and thought I was bringing chocolate chip cookies with chocolate chips! She had a try me bite and decided that she didn't like them. But hey the cookies were amazing, if slightly under baked and a gigantic mass. I'd make them again another day. And next time I babysit Lucy I'll bring chocolate cookie dough with chocolate chips. And in case any of you were wondering, I remembered the Tupperware. My mom was quite surprised. 

Those Who Don't Learn History

When I first was given an iPod I didn't have any money to buy songs. I downloaded the few CDs I had onto my computer and then my dad introduced me to the wonderful words of podcasts. They were funny, informative, and best of all free. And I have been a huge fan ever since. I've always wanted to start a podcast, but never stuck with it. Well that all ends now.

I'd like to introduce you guys to my new podcast, Those Who Don't Learn History. Its about all sorts of history in all sorts of places. So if history is your style, or even if it isn't check it out in the iTunes store and tell me what you think. Or don't if you really don't feel like it.

The Few The Proud The Teenage Girl Scouts

Some people make fun of me for being a teenage girl scout. They think its weird, although when I ask why they never really have a concrete reason. Personally I think that the scouts is wonderful. Especially Girl Scouts. They teach girls and eventually women about their opportunities and you learn how to be a strong independent women because of it. I was a brownie, and bridged to Junior, but the troop at my old brick and mortar school closed down after Katrina hit and the troop leader moved. Later on I would learn that a lot of troops closed down for that reason in New Orleans.

Well about five years went by and my baby sister started in the Brownie troop that had recently started at my old school. It was still my current school at the time. Around the same time I listened to a podcast from the lovely women at Stuff Mom Never Told You over at How Stuff Works about the Girl Scouts and their progressiveness during the suffrage movement and beyond. The combination of those two things spurred me into looking into rejoining the Girl Scouts. And through my research I learned that there was something called a Girl Scout Juliet. What the heck is that, you might ask. Well, a Juliet (named after Girl Scout founder and all around awesome person Juliet Gordon Low) is a Girl Scout that works without a troop. Meaning she does things on her own. Awesome I thought, since we hadn't had a troop for girls my age at my school EVER.

So my mom and I dragged our butts out to the Girl Scouts of Louisiana East Headquarters to get my stuff and sign me up as a Juliet. But when we were there someone contacted us that a few other girls were getting together and started our own troop. I feel like I have talked about my troop before, so lets skip ahead to this winter, when my service unit was holding a sing along. For anyone who isn't "in the know" a service unit is a bunch of troops in one area of the region.

The leader of my baby sisters brownie troop asked if I would help them learn a song for the sing along, so one Friday I went with my mom to the meeting and for an hour was in charge of teaching about 30 girls to sing Sleigh Ride and You are my Sunshine. Not the easiest task, makes you think twice about having... 30 kids.

Anyway, I go to the sing along to volunteer, because the email that was sent out said that Senior and Ambassadors were needed to run things. Come to find out I am THE teenage volunteer. There were are few moms and troop leaders but no one else under the age of 20. So I passed out cookies and kept people in line until it was time for the Sing Along portion. Where my baby sisters troop leader had me go and sing with them to "keep everyone on key."

After the sing along portion ARNO gave a presentation, and I walked around the area to make sure everyone staying where they were suppose to be and no one was doing anything that could harm them. Slowly people trickled out, and it was mostly Girl Scout staff and troop leaders left. I was standing with my mom as she talked to someone about cookies or something when a woman wearing a Girl Scout of Louisiana East polo came up to me and asked who I was. After hearing that I was "the" teenage volunteer, she asked me to give an interview.

I had seen people with a video camera wandering around all day, filming the singing and talking to other scouts. Eventually I found out that they were from something called "Speak of America" or something along those lines, I can never remember. They asked me about why I liked being a teenage girl scout and with the 100 year anniversary of the start of the scouts coming up how I think it helped the feminist movement. After words the woman in the polo came up and said that she really liked my answers and said that I was very eloquent for someone my age. She then asked if I would be ok with coming with her for some press things. I said yes, and my mom was ok with it so we'll see where that leads.

A Gem Hidden on a Shelf

Sometimes just browsing the shelves at a library will unlock treasures you never knew existed. That seems to be a common theme on my blog, but those are some of the truest words I have ever well... written I guess. Every book is a story waiting to be told behind its covers. And if you wander the shelves of an old library you might find a story that will stay in your memory for ever.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton is one of those stories. I fell upon it randomly at the library and decided to take it home with me. The story is told by many points of view, in many time periods and places from present day Australia to before the turn of last century London. It hops place and time in every segment and can sometimes be very confusing, however by the end of the first part the characters have become family and the mystery they are trying to unravel your own.

The premise is about a little girl, at about the age of four, found alone with a suitcase on a dock in Australia in 1913. The man that runs the wharf takes her home and ends up adopting her, but not telling her that she is not the biological child of himself and his wife until she is 21. And at the age of 65 she is given the suitcase she is found with. Nell, that is the woman's name, goes on an adventure to find out who she really is but dies without truly finding out. But her granddaughter Cassandra continues the search, and take the reader on a crazy journey where you can never quite predict the out come.

The Forgotten Garden is truly a work of literary genius, and I am really surprised it doesn't have more of a following. The story is complex and weaves together like hair in a braid. As Cassandra discovers more about her heritage the reader does also but by reading about it as it "actually happens." My dad had to make me go to bed one night because I just could not put it down. I can't wait to read more works by Kate Morton and I urge you all to go and pick up a copy of The Forgotten Garden, it is worth buying. Its a story that I will read again and again over the years and give copies of to my friends so that they can enjoy the story as well.

What Would You Do?

Hearing about all of the disasters going on in the world and hearing the survivors stories makes you wonder what you would do in that sort of a situation. And you come up with a calm clear plan of action. But the truth is, thinking about a life threatening situation hypothetically in the comfort of your own home is so much different then actually living it. Because after the fact you have all of the information. But during the event there is so much confusion that normally you don't have to full story until its to late. I've heard these stories of people who refused to get on lifeboats when the Titanic was sinking because they thought there was no way something that grand and powerful could sink. The Titanic was so sturdy out on the ocean and the life boats that looked so small on the sea. But by the time they figured out that those rickety life boats were the only things that could save them, it was to late. And the great ship, the one people said was unsinkable, was going into the bowels of the Atlantic.

That's a lot like what people said about the Twin Towers. They were so tall and regal. A symbol of the modern world. Of progress. But being so massive so eye catching they were also a target. But on September 11th 2001 to most people they were offices. Until a shake that changed everything. Angel in the Rubble by Genelle Guzman-McMillan is about that day. To her, September 11th was just another work day. But after a string of events she ended up piled under the wreckage of the second tower for 27 hours. That's right 27 hours. And lived to write a memoir about it.

Genelle was raised religious but had fallen out of practice as the years went on and she moved to New York. But under the wreckage she found salvation in God. Obviously I am a religious person but in a different way then she is. Regardless it was still inspiring to read her story of survival. It was also heart breaking to learn about the people that would not make it out alive. You know going in what was going to happen, and though that there was no way all of the people escaping with her would make it out alive but being as hopeful as I am, reading Angel in the Rubble I hoped a miracle would happen and they would live.

Genelle promises that if she lives through this harrowing experience she would stop taking life for granted. Someone, and I forget who once said that "life was wasted on the living." And that is very true. Most of us take life for granted and sadly it normally takes a huge personal tragedy for people to realize how precious life is and how lucky we are to still be living it. I know that's what happened to me. The world is a beautiful place, even if it doesn't always seem that way. Put there is so much beauty around us if you were to just slow down and soak it in. So that is my challenge to you. Live each day like its your last. Because you never know when it might just be.

I'm Jonesing for a Coke

A little break from what I normally do for a small update about my New Years resolutions. Its been two days and I am craving a Coke like you wouldn't believe. I guess its true what they say, you don't really know what you have until its gone ey?

Its gonna be a long year.

He's Not Dead Yet

Like I said in the last post I wrote involving books, the last time I went to the library the upstairs containing all of the adult books was closed. So I was forced to look through the recently checked in books downstairs. Who ever had just checked in books really liked WWII, because I found two books next to each other about the Second World War. Next to Love why I talked about a few days ago and Unbroken by Laura Hillendrand.

I have heard about Laura Hillendrands previous books Sea Biscuit but had never read it nor any of her other books. But the description in the dust jacket of Unbroken intrigued me, and although I couldn't tell if it was a true story I checked out Unbroken and brought it home. And once I started to read it I fell in love.

The tale in Unbroken of an Olympic runner Louis Zamperini who then after a plane crash lived in a raft for almost 50 days and then in a Japanese POW camp for two and a half years. It also describes the his post traumatic stress disorder and what it was like to try to live a regular life.

Unbroken is an amazing story of survival and beating the odds. It is almost unbelievable that a human could live through what he did, and I spent the first half of the book wondering if it was a work of fiction. Zamperini's story is so remarkable and inspiring that I could not put it down. I had to know what would happen the Louis and his friend Allen who was also with him. Its a great read for the holidays, because you'll need a lot of time to read it, because Unbroken was almost impossible to put down.