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 have never taken classes during the summer before, and they have taken up a lot of my time. If you’re in need of reading material while I work on the usual blogs, please enjoy the research paper that I spent the past few weeks furiously researching. I’m rather proud of it. Hopefully you have an interest in the connections between modern English and ancient Egyptian vocabulary!
There is something so tragic about eating with plastic cutlery in a take out bowl. Am I being too ridiculous? I don’t think so. So, I can recommend you getting this food to take out and then plating at home on some more fashionable pieces of tableware with nice millennial gold forks. That’ll be fine. And when you’re at home you can imagine that the waitor at Tucci is back with the block of Parmesan and life is decadent and nothing is bad.
When I get overwhelmed by the overbearing Americanness of Iowa I can escape to places like this. For me, there is honestly nothing quite so refreshing as sitting in a strange place listening to conversations in languages I can’t even name as I devour something hearty and delicious. That food made me feel so good. Maybe I should marry an Indian guy who’s a chef. That is probably one of the better ideas I’ve ever had. Please send in your applications for my hand in marriage, gentlemen. Cheers.
Picture it, Paris 2009, a cozy winter night, me in a vintage Dior suit, snow gently falling and making the streets glitter under the yellow streetlights. There I am in a highly regarded restaurant on Left Bank just a stone’s throw from Notre Dame. That evening would prove to be one of the most influential in my gastronomic life.
I’m sure that you’ve seen one of those infomercials about miraculous copper cookware that nothing at all sticks to. And if not, I have little doubt that you’ve probably started a small avalanche in a store when you walk by an aisle filled to bursting with copper skillets. These things are absolutely everywhere. I was sick to death of seeing them. I couldn’t stand to watch that woman in the commercial slide another ugly omelette onto a hideous plate. I couldn’t stand the black and white footage of a distraught gentleman crying when trying to unstick some slab of meat from a stainless steel skillet.
She said something profound right then, after tutting dismissively at me, “You just live, Ben! Don’t listen to anybody, and if they ask what’s wrong, say that you fell in a damn ditch and you hurt your knee. OH! And always talk to the bartender; he has all the right answers and you don’t have to take him home.”
“Queen!” I muttered, but I don’t think she understood.
The memories of my childhood are few and far between. Someday a therapist will sort all that out, but I really don’t mind. I’m quite all right with the creature […]
I was lost in reverie when the temple first came into sight. And once my eyes had latched onto the yellow-brown stone, I felt the most inordinate connection. It wasn’t like I had been here before, or anything like what Lady M would have discussed at midnight on a rooftop in Cairo, this was something absolutely new. It was relief. I know that doesn’t make tremendous sense, and I can’t claim to understand the sensations I felt there myself, but I took great comfort in the Temple of Esna.
I quickly fell head over heels in love with the author, Barbara Mertz. When I learned that she was a trained Egyptologist with a degree from the highly respected University of Chicago, well that was it for me. I knew that I needed to do the same. So I wrote a lengthy letter telling Barbara that she had profoundly impacted my life. When I went to research the address to send it to, I read that she had died. I felt overwhelming loss. I was devastated for the longest time because I would never get to befriend Barbara. And I was sad because Amelia had been frozen. She would never come back to life in the pages of a book. Imagine my rapture, imagine my thrill, imagine my delight when word spread that there was an unfinished manuscript about Amelia!
Benjamin Phillips 