I’m back from my two week trip to Turkey and I’m excited about the delicious 4 GB of photos I get to sort through and upload.

This trip was sponsored by The Institute for Interfaith Dialog and it was the most eye-opening and intellectually challenging trip I’ve been on.  It was also the most exhausting trip I’ve ever been on.

I am only a little bit jetlagged.  Traveling was exhausting yesterday.  We left our hotel in Istanbul at 3 in the morning and I didn’t land in Houston until 4:30pm.  We went to bed early last night and woke up early.  We went to the grocery store to get milk, Apple Jacks (for me), Cocoa Pebbles (for the husband), and Salsa Verde Doritos (for me).  I was craving chips.

I don’t feel the culture shock I usually do when coming back from foreign travel.  Maybe it’s because I’ve been doing laundry all day and catching up on email and responsibilities.  I think it’s ironic that I started reading The Ugly American before I left for the trip because I think the trip showed me in some ways how ugly of an American I am myself.

I’m not prepared to blog about the trip yet– partly because the photos aren’t ready and partly because I haven’t really had to a chance to process all the things I experienced/observed there.  Unfortunately the husband wasn’t able to go on this trip and I have hours and hours worth of ideas, thoughts and questions I need to sort out with him.  Luckily we have all next week to laze on a beach in Mexico and talk about Turkey.

What I can say is that the trip has unexpectedly affected me spiritually and has renewed a sort of fervor for living out what I believe to be a good, meaningful life.

Oh yeah, and I’m glad I missed the travesty of the Lakers’ last game.

Do you remember that scene in that Jeopardy! episode of Friends (I have absolutely no shame in still making references to Friends four years after the show ended) where Ross asks “What does Rachel claim as her favorite movie?” and Joey says “Dangerous Liasons”? And then Ross asks what is Rachel’s actual favorite movie and Joey says “Weekend at Bernie’s”?

That’s kind of like this post (without all of the confusing punctuation). If someone were to ask me what my favorite song was lately, I would want to claim:

Flobots - Handlebars

Shucks, I can’t put the video in here because they’ve disabled embedding for this music video. If you’re curious you’ll have to click through the link.

It sounds like bad Eminem at first but the lyrics are smart and I think the music video is powerful. I also think the trumpet solos are creative. In full disclosure, I first heard this song in Forever 21 at Willowbrook Mall on the northwest side of town.

But then I would be compelled to admit that my actual favorite song lately is:

Jesse McCartney - Leavin’

I don’t like the lyrics, don’t like the video (although Jesse is cute in the video, in a Jonathan Rhys Meyers kind of way), but it’s catchy! Such is the way of pop music, I suppose. I had no idea who Jesse McCartney was so I looked him up on wikipedia. Apparently he co-wrote “Bleeding Love” for Leona Lewis. Which is cool.

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I should have wrote about this in the raves post but the husband came home with Virtua Tennis 3 on Tuesday night (for only $20 at Radio Shack!). We’ve been anticipating this since our days of playing Virtua Tennis on Sega Dreamcast! The graphics are gorgeously rich, the gameplay is fantastic, and the details are impressive. On clay courts, the dust stirs up when you run, you slide on the court depending on your momentum, the ball leaves marks on the court wherever it bounces and the players move very fluidly. My only complaint is that they don’t have enough players to select from (they’re missing Justine Henin and Novak Djokovic) but they make up for it by allowing you to create custom players.

1. 3G iPhone — I’m upgrading in August
2. t’afia & Monica Pope
3. J.K. Rowling’s Commencement Speech at Harvard (video and text) — thanks for the link April!
4. Breakfast Klub
5. Tsui Family
6. Mint (refreshing money management) — Quicken killer
7. You Grow Girl
8. The Office - Dinner Party Episode
9. Yelp - help the Houston site grow!
10. ProBoards — free remotely hosted message boards

“You know what Augustine says about time? Augustine describes time as a symptom of things in the world not being themselves, having to make their way back to themselves, by moving through time–”

“There’s a paradox there, of course, since what can things be but themselves? In Augustine’s view, we live in what he calls the region of unlikeness, and what we’re unlike is God. We are apart from God, who is pure being, who is himself, who is outside of time. And time is our tragedy, the substance we have to wade through as we try to move closer to God. Rivers flowing to the sea, a flame reaching upward, a bird homing: these movements all represent objects yearning to be their true selves, to achieve their true state. For humans, the motion reflects the yearning for God, and everything we do through time comes from moving–or at least trying to move– toward God. So that we can be our true selves. So there’s a paradox there again, that we must submit to God–which feels deceptively like not being ourselves–in order to become ourselves. We might call this yearning love, and it’s just that we often mistake what we love. We think we love sensuality. Or admiration. Or, say, another person. But loving another person is just a confusion, an error. Even if it is the kind of error that a nice, reasonable person might make–”

– excerpt from short story, “The Region of Unlikeness” by Rivka Galchen, The New Yorker

The fiction selection in The New Yorker magazine is real hit or miss for me. But when it hits, it really hits.

Three posts in one. Here we go:

We stayed up until 2AM last night watching WEC on Versus. Torres v. Maeda (bantamweight) was easily the best fight I’ve ever seen. I mean, come on, double toe holds?! It was a great fight on their feet, a great fight on the ground, and both fighters were aggressive. When Maeda first drew blood, you could tell Torres was a little shocked and shaken. But he came back strong. For those of you who didn’t watch, the fight was stopped by the ringside doctor because Maeda’s eye was swollen completely shut. I can only imagine what two more rounds would have produced.

The Faber v. Pulver (featherweight) fight was pretty impressive as well, considering how much of a beating Pulver can take and still keep coming at you. But it wasn’t as exciting as the Torres v. Maeda fight.

I really like it when fighters mutually respect each other. I also like it when fighters hold up each other’s arm in victory after the fight.

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I’ve recently come to the realization that ice cream is my favorite dessert. More than cake, brownies, creme brulee, panna cotta, sopapillas, etc. You would think that I would have noticed this favoritism in high school when I started eating ice cream for breakfast but I shrugged it off as wanting something cold and refreshing to wake me up in the morning. I don’t really discriminate when it comes to ice cream although I do have preferences.

I think Blue Bell Ice Cream is the best. I think it’s the best because it has a firmer texture than other ice creams and when you make a scoop you can actually see the bands of fluffiness on the scoop (visible in the photo above). I really like mixing in strawberries with my ice cream but I don’t like how it means that my ice cream is partially melted by the time I get it. Ice cream is meant to be firm. Not soupy.

I had this ice cream realization last night immediately after I told the husband that the pint of blue bell ice cream was so wonderful and fluffy that it seemed as though someone had hand-cranked and whipped the ice cream right before I took it out of the freezer. I knew how crazy that sounded and that’s when I knew ice cream must be my favorite dessert.

In all fairness, Haagen-Daaz is pretty awesome too. I have never been disappointed with their ice cream and they do offer a more interesting line of ice cream flavors like Dulce de Leche. I honestly have not sampled their line enough to choose it as a favorite. I don’t like the pricetag on Haagen Daaz ice cream. However, what I always think is a worthwhile splurge is their Vanilla and Almonds ice cream bars (pictured above). Haagen-Daaz definitely has Blue Bell beat when it comes to their bars. The secret is in the chocolate coating. They take their chocolate much more seriously than Blue Bell.

Ice cream stores in order of preference:

• Baskin Robbins (this is tops only because they serve Blue Bell ice cream, I don’t really enjoy the environment, decor, or menu options at Baskin Robbins)
• Amy’s Ice Cream
• Cold Stone Creamery
• Marble Slab
• Haagen-Daaz

Ice cream flavors & combinations I enjoy:

• Amy’s Ice Cream - Mexican Vanilla with Strawberries
• Blue Bell - Buttered Pecan
• Blue Bell - Pecan Pralines ‘n Cream
• Blue Bell - Cookies ‘n Cream
• Blue Bell - Moo-llennium Crunch
• Blue Bell - Strawberries & Homemade Vanilla
• Blue Bell - Peaches & Homemade Vanilla
• Blue Bell - Rocky Road
• Marble Slab - Cinnamon with strawberries
• Marble Slab - Sweet Cream
• Cold Stone Creamery - Strawberry Shortcake Serenade

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Car washes. I don’t like to segregate the genders but I have to ask. Is it a man thing? I mean, I like it when people take good care of their things. I generally take good care of my things. I keep my books and DVDs and electronics in nice condition and I care that the things I own are well maintained. With one huge exception. My car. Maybe it’s because I used to drive old junky cars that were passed down from my parents or because I’m a wimp when it comes to manual labor. I don’t know what it is. But it never, ever, crosses my mind to wash my car. Okay, maybe not never, maybe once or twice a year. But the husband, the husband talks about washing the car every 1-2 weeks. It’s amazing to me. And it’s not just washing the car by driving it through the autowash at the gas station. We’re talking about taking it to the coin-operated car wash where he races against the clock to manually rinse, soap, foam brush, rinse, and spot-free rinse. And then we take it home where he waxes it for 30 minutes. I helped him wax it once and my arms were sore for the next three days. We took it to Mister Car Wash and Bubbles once or twice but we just couldn’t stomach the price. I like shiny cars. I like it when my car is shiny. But a car wash is really low on my priority list.