Playing Pioneers

What was life like before the advent of smartphones? I completely admit, I am addicted to mine. I am that sicko millennial who checks Facebook 20 times a day, texts more than is humanly possible, has every email forwarded to my phone from both my work and personal inboxes, and... I confess... who sleeps with her phone under her pillow so as NOT TO MISS ANYTHING!

Things were bad enough when my Internet shorted out this weekend. So, imagine the creep of cold dread that happened as I scooted across my couch, reaching for a book, landed on my purse, and heard a faint, sad crackle.

Yep. Goodbye LED screen! And goodbye phone! And goodbye remaining connection to the Internet! Thankfully I know that I'm prone to klutz moves like this one, so I have insurance. I will get a new phone in "3-5 business days," but until then I figure I will just have to use my oven timer to wake up in the morning (no, I don't even own an alarm clock), check emails at work, and take this new-found freedom to update my blog from the public Internet in my building lounge!

It's actually been a very creative few weeks so there's lots of fun to tell about! Even though my phone is busted, the memory card is OK, and I was able to salvage a few pictures from my recent adventures.

Following in my Dad's weird hobby footsteps, my friend Kate and I decided to take a random pickling class. I actually thought it was one of the most useful of the cooking classes I have taken so far in DC. You can pickle pretty much anything and I felt like I learned so much about not just pickles, but preserves and food safety in general. In the class, we made pickled oysters, pickled vegetables, and even pickle cocktails! (I'll pass on the cocktails from here on out, but I have to say that the pickle juice does cut the alcohol flavor entirely, a lot like a martini.)

Pickles on the left, pickle cocktail on the right. 

Continuing the creative trend, my coworker Rachel came over to my house and taught me some cake decorating basics! I know how to do a basket weave now, everyone! And stars! And bows and leaves! This is something I've wanted to learn since high school so I'm glad I finally took a stab at it. Roses are still a mystery to me and I can't even picture how my mother had the patience to create all the amazing cakes she did throughout our childhood, but I will say this: homemade birthday cake frosting RULES. I forgot how good that awful stuff is. Check out my handiwork below!

Finally, it was a great party weekend and I've been so lucky to be extremely well entertained and well fed for the last five days. The gluttony peaked this weekend at one of Jason's colleagues' weddings. The bride and groom's families are both from India, so this was a humongous traditional Indian wedding, and it was a blast! No expense was spared, and it was so cool to see a traditional Indian wedding ceremony. The outfits are stunningly beautiful, and the traditions are at once meaningful and playful between the bride and the groom. And of course, the authentic Indian food literally made my nose run, but it didn't stop me from eating platefuls. Delicious!

So, that's all for now. Looking forward to reconnecting with the universe in just a few days. Until then, off to read the paperback book I picked up from my apartment building's club room.

Peace and Love,
Tori

A Dream is a Wish...

"...If you keep on believing, the dream that you wish will come true."

What bunk. I've been wishing hard every second since I got home that I was back in Disneyworld, but every time I wake up, I'm still in my own bed!

That's the amazing thing about Disneyworld. Everything about it is just so...darn...perfect! I can't figure out how something this enormous, with this many moving parts, works so well. Everyone is so happy, from the bus drivers to the ride operators to the waitresses. It reminded me of my summer at the Dodgers, where Dr. Charles had a group of us doing research on the total experience of going to a ballgame. He proposed that the experience started the moment you entered the parking lot to the moment you left. How was the view as you walked in? Where did you eat? Was ketchup available? Did the bathrooms have a hook on the door for your purse? It was those details, he hypothesized, that were more important to having a returning fan base, than if the team won or lost. Well, this is what I mean by the perfection at Disney. Everything, and I mean everything, was ideal. And that perfection, and that happiness- manufactured or not-- does rub off on you!

Jason and I only had two days of park passes, and with his conference, we probably couldn't have done it any differently. Saturday we took on Magic Kingdom. We slept in and got to the park around 2pm. It sounds late, but we realized that we had an extraordinary advantage over the vast majority of people there: No strollers! With nothing to hold us back and map in hand, we plotted our path and then boom! boom! boom! ran from ride to ride to ride. Disney has an amazing system now called "FastPass." It's included with your admission. You pick a ride you really want to go on (Say, Space Mountain.) You put your card into the FastPass machine. You'll get an entry ticket for a future time, usually about an hour or so later. At that time, you can return to Space Mountain, and cut the entire line and hop right on! Disney also has cellphone apps now that tell you the actual wait time at any ride around the park. So if at 3pm you get your ticket for a 4:30 ride on Space Mountain, you can check the app and see what other rides that have short waits to fill in the times... Pirates of the Caribbean here we come! That's where our mobility came into play. We probably zigzagged back and forth across the whole park 15 times. Then something else glorious happened...at 8:30pm, the park became empty. We could walk on to any ride we wanted between 8:30 and 11pm. So we did just that! By the end of the day, we were totally sweaty, filthy, and gross, but we had taken Magic Kingdom by storm and even rode Space Mountain twice. Somewhere in the middle of this day, my camera broke, but not before getting this one happy picture:

Our second day was at Epcot. Ugh, if there was ever a park that needed more time! Epcot is huge and definitely more "adult-y." I remember thinking it was kind of boring as a kid and now I know why. The rides are definitely not the best part. The best part is the "World Showcase" where Disney has basically blown up "It's a Small World" and lets you walk around to different "Countries." The people working at these little villages are all authentically from those countries, and you can buy food and booze all along the way and shop and dine. But with just a half day there, we did the FastPass war again and suddenly found ourselves at 8:45pm with the park about to close at 9pm. (The 11pm close at Magic Kingdom really made a huge difference!). We had just started our "around the world" journey and suddenly realized that we had no time! The last boat back to our hotel left at 10pm, so we sat down in "Germany" for dinner and had to call it a night.

There's so much more I could write about Disney. The hotels could be a vacation all by themselves. The restaurants, the water slides, the sand-bottom pools, the towels wrapped up to look like Mickey, it was all too perfect and too fun. Jason and I were actually and truly sad at the airport on our way back, in disbelief that it was over. At least I had a smile this morning while I drank my coffee:

I hope that if you're reading this, and you're a grown-up, you think about going back to Disney soon. It could be with a group of girlfriends, your parents and siblings, or maybe someone special! But doing Disney as an adult is just as awesome as it was when you were a kid. If anyone is planning a trip, find me and I will be happy to share what I learned!!

Peace and Love.