Emchap's Shit from the Internet 3/8/17 🍠
Greetings from sunny Miami, where I have been staying in a startlingly nice $30/night hipster hostel since Saturday. I haven't cried once, even during the uncomfortable stretch on my first night where I was slightly lost and walking through construction and the wind was awful. (Y'all I have eaten so much good food and drank so many good drinks and I definitely saw Elijah Wood today at the Standard and I don't think you understand the magnitude that this event has for nine-year-old Emily. PLUS I bought a day pass for their spa and I am so relaxed, pretending to be rich is amazing.)
Shit to read
This week I finished The Goldfinch (finally, who wants to talk about it), read The Year of Magical Thinking (why does Slouching Towards Bethlehem not have an ebook edition???? but obvi v. good, recommend for anyone dealing with grief and not yet up to making it through that CS Lewis book), stole Invasive from the hostel library (such fun, I should really read more of Wendig's fiction), and slogged through John Dies at the End (the very nice man whose reading list I stole it from called it "well-written trash" and said he didn't think I'd like it and he was correct). Am now in the middle of my seventeenth reread of Live Alone and Like It, and if you haven't read it you ABSOLUTELY SHOULD. It is a charming and funny look at women living alone and I read it whenever I'm in a self-pitying mood.
Apparently "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" is English rugby's go-to song despite the fact that that is horrifying, so go read this NYT article on that.
This woman figure out how to do good school lunches for her students at scale and it is just a tremendous piece about a woman who knows her community and is working really, really hard and I recommend it with my entire heart.
A coworker friend mentioned the other day that he did not have the foggiest what I was referencing when I talk about Daria. How tremendously sad for him! I recommend this 20th anniversary commemorative piece on it.
Shit to eat
Buy a plane ticket to Miami.
Take a cab (like an actual cab, we all know the ride share companies are all evil, the ones here all let you hail them with Curb) to the Versailles restaurant.
Go inside.
Order the shrimp with creole sauce, which comes with white rice and sweet plantains. Order a side serving of black bean soup because you are young.
Eat all of it (it will be amazing). Watch a Cuban-American family get into a multilingual fight with each other behind you because of someone's poor personal choices.
Order key lime pie for dessert because your nice Twitter friend told you to.
Concede this was the correct choice even though you don't like key lime that much.
Go home to write an email newsletter.
Shit to listen to
The sound that comes through when you submerge your ears in the water in a big metal tub while the water is still running and there are people around you but your face is still out (so you don't drown).
Shit to buy
A day pass to the Turkish baths at the Standard in Miami ($75 during the week, $150 during the weekend, gets you access to their completely amazing pool and the abovementioned tubs and some saunas and things; complimentary if you buy a service totaling more than the cost of the pass).
This field jacket, probably? I've been eyeing it for a few weeks now and need to pull the trigger.
Checked luggage on a flight. The cost ($25) is not too bad given the cost of the rest of everything else you're doing, even if work isn't paying, and it's so nice not to be sweaty in the airport. This goes back to the theory I have about money you spend in an airport being magnified (like a $15 sandwich is more than $15 worth of material comfort if you're in an airport).
F'rosé, if you can buy it, or make this recipe I just linked.