LOVE:

Mexico City, Always:

I know that I’m miserably behind on my travel blogging, and I’m incredibly sorry for that. It’s nothing particularly surprising or unexpected, though, is it? Do you know anybody on this planet that procrastinates longer than I do? As my joke that I so often say goes, I’ll probably live forever since I will surely put off dying. Now that I’m back home and getting into the regular swing of things, you can look forward to a post or two every week about my summer away. It’s one of my favorite things I do and why I keep this website alive. But now isn’t the time for one of my endless rambles. I spent most of the summer in Mexico City and it was a wonderful experience. I was completely satisfied every single day. Of course a lot of that has to do with being away from the usual, not having to keep to my regular schedule, and the delirious delight that fills me whenever I visit someplace new. There must be more to it, though, because when I’m in Mexico City, I feel completely at my leisure, like I totally belong there. It’s absurd. I’m from the country and I work in a small town. It doesn’t make sense that I should be completely at ease in one of the world’s most densely populated metropolises where I barely speak the language. But I am. The upcoming months will be filled with my reminisces and discoveries and the mundane things I accomplished — or didn’t accomplish — and I hope you enjoy reading about them as much as I enjoyed living them. Mexico City was a dream come true and I love it more now than I did when I first landed last year. I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to have a life that allows me to spend so long in such wonderful place.s The world is almost painfully beautiful, and I am so in love with being alive. I don’t understand why anybody would choose to limit the opportunities they have during their very short time on the planet. It sometimes feels like life lasts forever, but somehow I’m eleven months from being thirty. Can you believe? I still can’t. Anyway, I didn’t really mention much about Mexico yet, so let me make a list of some of the things that thrilled me: fish tacos, churro shops, Cuernavaca, Kindles, trees growing out of belfries, CATS all my gorgeous angel cats, especially Simba and Patrón, graves, buses, Metro cards, Spanish omelettes, being understood in Spanish, spicy Olive Garden ravioli, tattoos, gorgeous museums, the poetic letters of Khalil Gibran, flower markets, flower stands, Middle Eastern restaurants, the dark streets, broken umbrellas, and laundrymen. This list is far from comprehensive, it’s a preview. I loved Mexico City and I can’t wait to be back again. 

Night Sky App:

I have no love or deep appreciation of space. It doesn’t thrill me. I have no real interest in ever visiting even though that might be possible by the time I die. I wouldn’t mind going to a five star resort on the Moon. That’d be extra and surely a good story, but I have no desire to shoot off to Mars and die. Why go anywhere without a Hilton or an Olive Garden? I enjoy Ancient Aliens, but only because it’s so absurd. But still, the night sky is fascinating and constellations are gorgeous and I have always wanted to go out into Death Valley or the White Desert in Egypt and see the glittering band of the Milky Way shimmering in the night sky. But that’s about it. I’m getting to my point eventually, don’t worry. One of the first classes that I took when I started college courses was an astronomy class and I absolutely hated it. I couldn’t care less about the process of fission that powers stars or calculating the distance between planets. It means absolutely nothing to me, but I’m sure there are people that feel this way about my passions, so I won’t be too annoying. We had to use an app that was basically a map of the night sky and I really enjoyed perusing space even though I didn’t find the science behind it all too thrilling. When I was in Mexico City this summer, the sky from my courtyard was rather beautiful in the evenings, and I enjoyed sitting out in the darkness and looking at the twinkling stars. They’re beautiful and they’re terrible. And I didn’t know the name of any of them, so I tried to find the app I had used years ago to figure out what the bright points in the sky were. It didn’t have a way to sync with what I saw, so I found another app that was for my iPhone. It is a 3D model of the sky that is an exact replica of the sky. You simply aim the app towards a spot in the sky and the name is revealed on the screen. It’s one of those apps that is truly magical. It is simple, it works, it entertains, and it has routinely thrilled me. I now know which speck is Mars and which is Jupiter and sometimes it shows me the International Space Station passing by. It’s just fabulous and I find myself pulling my phone out regularly to see what’s about me. I still don’t care for space, but I worship this app. You must download it today. 

JSesh App:

v

I have very few memories of my childhood. Someday I will get hypnotized so I can figure out what that’s about. Or maybe it was a past life trauma and I’ll need to have a regressive hypnosis and discover how I died in a past life. I believe strongly in past lives, they are a delicious way of explaining why life is the way it is. It explains why I’m at home in Mexico City and Paris and Luxor. It explains unreasonable passions for history and language. It explains my fears and phobias. But I’m supposed to be writing about an app…how did I get on this train of thought? Oh yes, I have a bizzarely vivid memory of a kiosk at a mall that sold an old PC application that installed an ancient Egyptian font on a Windows 95 machine. As a burgeoning Egyptologist, I needed this desperately, but as a child with nary a nickel, I had no way of procuring a copy. Years later, as in this summer, I watched a fascinating lecture series by Dr. Bob Brier about Egyptian hieroglyphs. It was an absolutely fabulous course and I learned so much that I could hardly contain my glee. Dr. Brier recommended an app called JSesh that students and scholars use to create documents with hieroglyphs. Admittedly, this isn’t something that people need all that often, but when they do, a tool like this becomes absolutely invaluable. You simply find the hieroglyphs you want and then the program lines them up gorgeously with even spacing. If you need to move them around to be more aesthetically pleasing or to create a copy of an actual inscription, nothing could be easier. I wrote a research paper about the remains of the ancient Egyptian language in modern English which required me to insert some custom hieroglyphic text. This app allowed me to do it with an ease and convenience that nearly left me breathless. It looked so professional and I felt so accomplished when I submitted my paper. If you ever have need for a hieroglyphic font, get this app immediately. It’s completely free and worth it’s weight in gold…if an app had weight, that is. 

All the Snail Creams:

Before I left on my summer holidays, I mentioned on here that I was falling madly in love with a line of Korean beauty products that are made with snail slime. The idea of covering my face with the excretions of a snail was so hideous that I simply couldn’t wait to try it out. So I immediately ordered a sample size and was unable to stop slathering it all over my face. It smells like nothing and it absorbs into the skin almost instantly. My skin feels luxurious and radiant and I’ll never go back to products that don’t include some snail slime. I suggest you all do the same. When I got back from Mexico City, I had to replenish my stock of snail products, so I got on Amazon and bought the entire line. I don’t have much willpower when I’m on Amazon. It’s dangerous. I just ordered a brand new Kindle I absolutely didn’t need but this new one is gorgeous and you can read with a built-in light and I legitimately don’t know how I was even thinking I was living my life to the fullest before it. Gave the old one to Jessica. Hopefully she never sees my gorgeous new Kindle and realizes how janky hers is. Sad. Anyway I also bought a microneedling roller and new boots and a new laptop and then a case for the laptop and then a couple books but what am I even writing about? Snails. I effing love those snails. It’s ridiculous. After washing and cleansing my face, I start with two pumps of snail slime serum. Yes this is truly a real thing that I really own. Isn’t life fun!?! Once that soaks in, I can go one of two ways. If I have a moment, I’ll pause here to apply a gold and snail slime extract under-eye mask to calm my tension and rehydrate. Then I will apply a snail slime eye cream and a general snail slime moisturizer for the rest of my face and décolletage. And then I’m freaking radiant. Highly recommended products. And then a miracle occurred. A true and divine moment, reader. To my delight, my sheer and utterly glee, I received an alert on my phone from Amazon saying that an order had arrived. I didn’t remember buying myself anything so this aroused my curiosity. When I opened the mailbox later that afternoon I was face-to-face with a package that looked exactly like one that had arrived a week earlier full of the snail products I just mentioned. They sent me an extra on accident. I’m in snail slime heaven. My skin is going to be hella hydrated now. 

Flex Seal Spray:

Whenever I get home from my summer travels, I usually have something akin to a disaster to clean up. I don’t know how it happens, but disuse seems to do a lot of damage to stuff that never breaks when I’m at home. I was in a panic because when I ran my dishwasher for the first time, the floor flooded in my kitchen and there was a large and worrying puddle of water that needed to be cleaned up. I was absolutely petrified that my dishwasher was leaking somewhere and I about lost my mind. I have made many unnecessary purchases in my life, but that portable dishwasher is probably the most life changing purchase I will ever make. Having a machine do a job that I hate is remarkable, so I couldn’t accept this. Imagine my thrill when I found out that my water pipe had a tiny little puncture would that caused the leak. I am no plumber, it’s one of the skills I’ve never honed unlike my electrician skills. I can fix most electrical problems — which I know is weird — but when it comes to plumbing, lol no. I was aflutter with worry, reader. I didn’t want my floor to collapse. I distinctly remember my grandmother’s kitchen when I was cleaning it out following her death. The refrigerator had leaked, unbeknownst to anybody, for maybe a decade and the floor was rotten. It could have fallen in at any time and I have an unreasonable and lifelong term fear of falling through the floor. I don’t know what sparked this. Immediately a commercial came into mind and I knew what I had to do. Have you seen the Flex Seal commercials, yet? If not, please tune in now:

In another version, that same man cuts another boat in half and then covers it with tape and sails it over shark infested water. I was sold. Turns out that the product has a spray version that is meant to seal minor leaks of water and air. I felt as if this was going to be a good way to try to fix the issue without calling a plumber. I found a can at Walmart and could not wait to try it out. It smelled horrible as most aerosol products do, but I felt pretty confident that it would work. And reader, it did! With two applications it sealed the leak and I ran a load of dishes without a drip of water on my floor. I could have cried. The solution was so simple and so very inexpensive. I only spent $12 instead of paying a plumber to come over and fix it. I already have a bill from my internet provider for replacing a wire that some wild animal allegedly ate. Anyway, I’m absolutely on cloud nine that this delightful product worked. You absolutely need a can in your house to prevent anything horrible ever happening to you.