Flagstaff, Mindy Kaling, and New Kids on the Block

I've lived a lot of places. (Alaska is my 6th state, and I'm starting to think about moving again.) One day I'll live somewhere permanently, maybe. But who knows when that will be.

One of my favorite places I've lived is Flagstaff, AZ.

I went to college at NAU (Go Jacks!) and I'm sure that's part of the reason I love Flagstaff; college was super fun. But I stayed around for a semester after I graduated working for the geology department and I loved it then too. Here are 5 of my favorite things about Flagstaff:

1. The peaks- The San Francisco Peaks are a left over stratrovolcano that would have been huge. You can see them from everywhere and they are beautiful.

2. Downtown- Downtown Flag has a good bar scene (as most college towns do), but it also has good shopping and restaurants and is a good way to waste an afternoon. In college on Friday afternoons, my friend Kali and I would often have Beer Friday. We'd head downtown in the afternoon, get a beer at Flag Brew and then window shop. Excellent start to the weekend.

This is actually from Hot Toddy Tuesday (which became Mojito Tuesday in warm weather) but Beer Friday looked a lot like this too.

3. Hippies- Flagstaff is FULL of hippies. (Coconino County is the only county that continuously votes democrat in elections) But what I like about it, is that it's liberal without hitting you over the head with it. (Most of the time)

4. Seasons - it has them. Flagstaff is at almost 7,000 feet, so unlike most of the rest of Arizona, it gets snow in the winter and it's not 1000000 degrees in the summer.

Fall in Flagstaff

5. Outdoor pursuits- I'm not even going to talk about the Grand Canyon because it's awesome and everyone knows it. But there is lots of other cool stuff too. Hiking, biking, climbing, rafting, patio drinking...

Enjoying the outdoors with my parents

Patio drinking: my favorite outdoor pursuit

Book Review Time!
I just finished Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling.

I knew I was in for a good read when I flipped to the back cover and found this:

I originally wanted to get it to read on my way to Nashville, but it was checked out. I'm really glad I didn't get it because I would have been that crazy person laughing to themselves on the plane. And nobody likes that person.

I like that it reads like something one of my sorority sisters could have written. It's approachable and real life-y. Yes she talks about living in New York and LA and going to awards shows, but it all seems so...normal. And amazingly funny. Good work, Mindy. Let's be best friends?

If you do the math, I'm too young to have been a New Kids on the Block fan. But lucky for me, my sister is 5 years older than me, so I was exposed to their wonder at young age. That sounds inappropriate, but let's go with it. We had shirts, pins, all the tapes, 2 videos, posters, even a sweater. (Yeah, like a sweater-sweater, not a sweatshirt.) I regret not having the sheets. I even got the Joey McIntyre doll as a gift one year. Joey McIntyre was, and is, my favorite. Because he's inarguably the cutest, duh.

This week's hot jam is Please Don't Go Girl. This song has everything a hot jam needs. Whispering/talking, the adorable Joey McIntyre singing lead, awesome 80's hats, microphone dancing, and only something like 12 words in the whole song.



Fun fact: If/When I get married my BFF Steven and I are dancing to this song. Weird? Probably. But it's happening. It will probably be choreographed.

Cooking, Erik Larson, and Pure Prairie League

I'm adding a new feature to a few of my favorite things this week, but I'll get to that.

In general, if it's between the hours of 5pm and 7pm, you'll find me like this:

Sometimes without the beer, sometimes bundled up in pants and sweatshirt, sometimes wearing a full apron, but you get the idea. I love cooking, more specifically, I love the science of cooking. I like seeing 5 seemingly random ingredients turn into something delicious. I like watching soup thicken after adding corn starch. I like feeling like a mad scientist when I'm mixing stuff up.

My favorite part of cooking is figuring out how to make something I've eaten at a restaurant. There are a lot of restaurant hack websites around if you are looking for something specific, but I mostly just mess around until I get it right. There is a restaurant in Flagstaff, AZ called MartAnne's. It's the best Mexican breakfast food you can get.Whenever I go, I get enchiladas y huevos. I had a giant craving for them, but being 3000 miles from Flagstaff, I had to make them myself. I found a super easy and delicious enchilada sauce recipe online and went to work. (If you are interested, it's here. I don't use flour, because it always gets thick enough without it. I also add a little cocoa.) And they turned out delicious!

New Feature!
I read a lot of books. Like a lot. Last year I read 50. I read all sorts of stuff; fiction, non fiction, short stories, biographies, etc etc etc, so I decided to add book reviews to my favorite things. Here's how it's going to work: If I'm reading/have recently read a good book I think other people might like, I'm just going to write a little about it and then maybe you'll want to read it too. Fun and informative

Right now I'm about half way through a book called The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson and it's excellent (so far).

It's an extremely well written book that combines the story of the architects of the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago and America's first serial killer, H.H. Holmes.  The architects were using the fair to put the United States on the map, so to speak, and  H.H. Holmes was using the fair to lure young women to their death. In fact, it's so well written that I can only read it during the day because the parts about Holmes are so unsettling. Pardon the colloquialism, but H.H. Holmes was mad scary.

It's also full of interesting facts that I'm sure will come in handy if I'm ever on Jeopardy! For example, in the first 6 months of 1892, there were nearly 800 violent deaths in Chicago (e.g., deaths due to stabbings or shootings). That's about 4 per day! And that's not including deaths due carriage accidents, streetcar accidents, or any of the numerous maladies (typhoid, small pox, cholera) that plagued the city.

This week's hot jam is Amie by Pure Prairie League. A couple years ago I spent the summer in Jackson, WY. (Which is beautiful and amazing and one of my favorite places ever.) Every Tuesday at the Silver Dollar Bar in Jackson is bluegrass night and a band called One Ton Pig always plays.They play originals and covers and one cover that always seemed to come up was Amie. Which is fine with me because I love that song.



Sorry, I couldn't find a good live video.