Picasso

Hahahahah, I love it when characters actually laugh at something that’s funny.

I Remember Nothing and Other Reflections by Nora Ephron - A Review

This book was fantastic and I didn't expect it to be, which made it even better. I really hadn't heard a ton about Nora Ephron before reading it and I've really only ever known her name because of the gem that is Julie & Julia (but more on that in another post). So glad I picked it up, though. Best parts are ahead.

• I will always love hearing someone's mother's advice about anything/everything and this piece of advice I loved: "Red meat keeps your hair from turning gray."
• I love this description of her time in New York: "I'd known since I was a child that I was going to live in New York eventually, and that everything in between would just be an intermission. I'd spent all those years imagining what New York was going to be like. I thought it was going to be the most exciting, magical, fraught-with-possibility place that you could ever live; a place where if you really wanted something you might be able to get it; a place where I'd be surrounded by people I was dying to know; a place where I might be able to become the only thing worth being, a journalist. And I'd turned out to be right."
• Here's some really sound advice from the chapter where she criticizes people who prefer egg white omelettes: "You don't make an omelette by taking out the yolks. You make one by putting additional yolks in. A really good omelette has two whole eggs and one extra yolk, and by the way, the same thing goes for scrambled eggs."
• I don't fully agree with her sentiments here, but I loved the way she put this: "I have a pile of her letters. When I look through them, it all comes back to me - how much I'd loved the early letters, how charmed I'd been, how flattered, how much less charming they began to seem, how burdensome they became, and then, finally, how boring. The story of love."
• The idea of putting your own recipes alongside your own essays or personal stories in a book is so lovely, I can barely stand it.
• When she defines divorce as "a slice of anger in the pie of your brain."
• "One good thing I'd like to say about divorce is that it sometimes makes it possible for you to be a much better wife to your next husband because you have a place for your anger; it's not directed at the person you're currently with."
• I love how much she loves the frozen custards from Shake Shack, which reminds me that I still have to try one someday. It's so hard to go to Shake Shack to get a burger and a custard, it's all so heavy - and it's not like I can go there and not get a burger. C'mon.
• She mentioned the restaurant Orso in NYC and now I must go there.
• "We would drive out with the kids the day they got out of school and we wouldn't come back until Labor Day. We were always there for the end of June, my favorite time of the year, when the sun doesn't set until nine-thirty at night and you feel as if you will live forever."
• My favorite things on her "What I Won't Miss" list: technology in general, dead flowers, panels on women in film & taking off makeup every night.
• My favorite things on her "What I Will Miss" list: the idea of a walk in the park, the bed, reading in bed, laughs, the Christmas tree, taking a bath & pie.

Just a great book, definitely give it a read.

Oyster Happy Hour

Sometimes you find an app that just speaks to you. I have finally found mine.

Love

“A mixture of whitening toothpaste and baking soda can brighten up the yellowist of fingernails in a few minutes.”

Ma!

This is a video of my grandmother, Ma, making this Trinidadian candy that she's been making for decades. My mom shot the footage and my brother Gary cut it together - and it's fantastic.

Penguin Buddy

"Unlikely animal friends” is probably my top Google search of life.

Mom Says

“If a black cat walks towards you, it brings good fortune, but if it walks away, it takes the good luck with it.”

Airbnb Lists Replica Of Van Gogh's 'Bedroom' Painting In Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago has built a life-size replica of Vincent Van Gogh's famous painting, The Bedroom, in River North, and they're renting it out on the short-term rental website Airbnb.

The Art Institute's exhibit of Van Gogh's Bedrooms runs at the Loop museum from Feb. 14 to May 16, and during that time the museum will apparently be hosting Airbnb users at its Van Gogh bedroom in River North for a mere $10 a night.

"This room will make you feel like you're living in a painting," the listing reads. "It's decorated in a Post-Impressionist style, reminiscent of Southern France and times gone by. Its furniture, bright colors, and artwork will give you the experience of a lifetime." The bedroom, which is designed after a painting of the Dutch post-Impressionist artist's bedroom in Arles, France, sparsely decorated a la Van Gogh's painting with a painted wooden bed-frame, red bedspread, a side table with several water jugs and a couple of chairs. The listing advertises that the "entire home/apartment" is available for up to two guests a night, with one bedroom and one bed, a TV, wifi and kitchen.

Ummm, that's neat as hell. This would be such a fun room to spend a night in.

“To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.”

— José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses