I was SO EXCITED to play with a GoPro on this vacation.
I mean, have you seen the images that people can take with that thing?
Anyway, it turns out we might need just a teeny bit of practice. Because see that video up there? Approximately 75% of those shots were taken when one or the other of us thought that the thing was off and were just holding it.
I get a lot of questions about which camera I use. The answer is the Canon T4i, because it's kindergartener-level easy and I am a lazy, lazy photographer, and also because it has excellent video capabilities. But apparently the answer should be "the one that my dad has." It's a silly-fancy DSLR, and we spent yesterday afternoon playing with its rapid-shoot function, and...
oh.
#upgrade.
For the past month or so, I've ben shooting a series for SheKnows called Mommalogues.
This segment? Favorite so far, mostly because for me, this wasn't really even a question at all.
Considering that I'm a girl who grew up smack in the middle of a whole lot of concrete, it never ceases to surprise me how much beach is apparently sitting there in my blood. I mean, I like a good pair of leather pants and some heels, but if I had to wear flip-flops every single day for the rest of my life that would be just fine by me (and I stand by the assertion that Havianas are one of of mankind's Great Inventions).
What I packed for our four days in Key Largo: "sensible" (for me, anyway; "sensible" is an extremely relative term) bathing suits that I can actually haul around dive tanks in, a pair of nylon shorts that heavily resemble Umbros (remember those?!?!) and that I'm actually rawther into, muscle tees that function as beach cover-ups but that easily go out at night (here, at least) with the addition of a bunch of jewelry…and flip-flops.
There is a pair of leather shorts sitting in my suitcase for our stopover in Miami Beach (where our friend Jeremy is taking us out to a place where I suspect Umbros won't fly), and a hairdryer just in case…but there are few styling tools better than the sun and the sand.
I would like to live in this exact spot for the rest of my life, please and thank you.
PS Come hang out with me on Instagram, because the Wifi here is terrible but for whatever reason my phone works, and so Instagram is basically where I'll be for the next couple of days.
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This is a century egg.
It is quite literally the strangest food I have ever encountered in my life. Also called a “Hundred-Year Egg,” a “Preserved Egg,” a “Thousand-Year Egg,” and a “Horse Urine Egg” (oh yes), it's an egg that has been preserved in a mixture of clay, lime, ash, salt, and rice hulls for several months (like this).
According to legend, the Century Egg was discovered during the Ming Dynasty by a man who returned to his home, which had been under construction for several months, only to discover a few duck eggs that had been buried in quicklime. He ate them for some unknown reason and boom: tradition, born.
I don't get to hang out with my dad enough.
He spends half his time in California for work, and so the hours we've spent together these past few years have amounted to a quick dinner here or an afternoon together there in between trips.
I'm getting older, and more and more I'm realizing that I miss the time we used to spend together, just the two of us, doing stuff that we only do with each other: taking cheese tasting classes. Riding motorcycles. Scuba diving.
Please look at Christie Brinkley.
I mean, seriously.
#ageless.
So the primary question I have about Christie Brinkley’s skincare line is why it took her so long to develop one. Maybe she wanted to walk around as a living example of the spectacularness of whatever it is that she’s been doing to her face a little longer? (No real need; she convinced me that I should do whatever it is that she tells me to do about ten years ago.)
When I was trying to think of a title for this post the words "zsa zsa zu" kept popping into my head. I knew I'd heard that somewhere, but couldn't for the life of me figure out where, or what it meant. And so I googled, and oh:
Sex and the City.
For serious, is like every cultural reference available to women of my general age bracket related to Sex and the City? (I think the answer might be yes.)
Oh hey there guys.
A couple of weeks ago my Instagram friend (by which I mean a person who I feel that I know extremely well because I follow her on Instagram, but whom I do not actually know at all) Alexis posted about a Northern Chinese restaurant she went to in Queens called Golden Palace. And in that post, she called it a "food adventure." So: restaurant googled; trip planned.
Northern Chinese, at it turns out, is a totally different thing than the Chinese food I'm used to (primarily Hunanese, Sichuanese, and Cantonese). It's not one of the "Eight Great Traditions" of Chinese cuisine, and is considered sort of less refined by Southerners (which apparently has more to do with political and economic differences between the regions than the quality of the actual food, because it's totally as interesting - and delicious - as what you find in neighboring areas).
