Mr. Synesthesia

Wikipedia link for reference 

Me:  Here is that thing I was telling you about, synesthesia.  I don't understand what they are talking about so I am guessing I don't have this.  

Mr. (reading link):  What is so special about this?  Isn't this how everyone thinks?

Me (side-eye):  No.

Mr. (looking at me with incredulity):  But, if I think of the days of the week I picture a wheel with Monday at the top.

Me (side-eye):  Like a clock?

Mr.:  Yes. How do you picture them?

Me (side-eye):  I don't.

Mr.:  OK but if i say "Monday".  What do you see?

Me (side-eye):  Nothing.

Mr.:  Nothing?

Me (side-eye):  Maybe the word?

Mr.:  OK what if I tell you the number 10.

Me (side-eye):  Same.  

Mr.:  But if someone tells me a number I think of it relation to other numbers in a row.  You really don't?

Me (side-eye):  No.

Mr.:  But you were a math major.......

Me (side-eye):  So?

Mr.:  November!  How do you see it?

Me (side-eye):  I don't.

Mr.:  But I see the months in a row.

Me (side-eye):  So you see November to the right?

Mr.:  Yes. It is over here.  (points to the right)

Me (side-eye):  Huh.

Mr.:  You really don't see this?

Me (throwing him a bone but still side-eyeing) No.  If someone needs to schedule something at work, I'll picture my calendar so I can see when I have free but that's it....

Mr.:  Huh.

Me (side-eye):  So the past eleven years you have been hiding this from me?

Mr:  But I thought everyone did that.....

Me (happy not to be the freak show for once):  Nope

Read This!: The Secret Keeper

By Kate Morton

Kate Morton books tend to follow the same pattern:  present day something happens that illuminates a secret from years gone by, flashback to years gone by, story vacillates between past and present as the mystery is revealed.  I love these kinds of books and so have read all of Kate Morton’s novels.

During her teenage years, Laurel Nicolson witnesses a terrible crime in which her mother was involved.  Years later, her mother is dying and Laurel needs to know the truth of what she saw that day so she begins investigating her mother’s past during WWII in the London Blitz.  Laurel learns much about her mother that she never knew and gains the understanding she sought.

Now, I have to confess, I was reading this book, going along, one thing was revealed, then another, and so on and so forth.  And frankly, I was a bit disappointed and was like this is lame.   Then out of nowhere, Kate Morton threw me for a loop with a surprise I did not see coming AT ALL.  Maybe I am just dense but I was like WHAT???  So in the end, she got me and I have to say, I recommend this book.  I don’t think it is my favorite Kate Morton but still worthy of a read.

Memnoch The Devil

Anne Rice’s Memnoch The Devil again has her favorite vampire Lestat front and center.  Lestat is in the process of tracking a victim when he senses that he himself is being followed.  It’s the devil (“call me Memnoch”) who proposes that Lestat join him and become a sort of assistant.  Memnoch explains that he is an angel who can come and go from Heaven as he chooses, but because he questioned God’s plan he has been tasked with operating hell, which is a sort of purgatory where Memnoch attempts to usher lost souls into Heaven.  Memnoch takes Lestat to heaven and then back in time to the beginning of creation and throughout history, including to the scene of Christ’s crucifixon, in order to show Lestat why he questioned God and why Lestat should join him to oppose God.  There’s some other stuff in there about the evangelist daughter of Lestat’s victim - a woman who Lestat falls for, and appearances from some other vampires, including Armand and David Talbot.  And well . . .

I have to confess – I did not enjoy this book.

This is the fifth book in Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles series and if I was ranking them 1-5, they would go in chronological order, meaning that each has been worse than the previous installment (as I’ve previously written, Interview with the Vampire is one of my favorite books).  And the last two were significantly worse than the first three.


I could go into what was good, what was bad, etc., but it’s probably not worth my time to write or yours to read.  There’s some interesting stuff here, in particular the detailed descriptions of Rice’s version of Heaven and Hell.  But ultimately the vast majority of the book is just Memnoch explaining Heaven and creation and God and everything to Lestat, which was just tedious.  It felt like Anne had all these ideas and thoughts and just wanted to get them in writing.  She’s seems to be trying to reconcile her ideas of Heaven and thought "why not make this into a book . . . and I’ll include the vampires for no reason."  Seriously, this could have been a stand-alone book without Lestat and it wouldn’t have made a difference.  I don’t begrudge her writing that book if she wants to, but I also don’t need to like that book.  I’ll probably continue on with the series, and I hope book six is much better (and I think it could be since it appears to follow Armand’s origins, something new and not directly involving Lestat.)

Next up:  Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (1006 pages done – thanks two week vacation)

Read This!: Dreams of Joy

By Lisa See

Challenge: Book takes place in Asia

This is the sequel to Shanghai Girls.

At the end of Shanghai Girls, there are some tragic events and revelation of family secrets.  At this point, Dreams of Joy starts.  To deal with the impact of said events,  Pearl's daughter Joy flees to communist China.  It is the late 1950s and China is essentially closed to the west and under the leadership of Mao.  Joy thinks communism is the answer but Pearl knows better and goes to China after her.  Soon Joy realizes that the communism she learned about is not the perfect way of life she envisioned when she sees the devastating effects it has on the Chinese people but now is it too late for her and Pearl to escape back to America?

Throughout most of this book, I kept thinking "What are you doing Joy?  Are you insane?" Because yikes! at some of her choices.  I also kept thinking how glad I was not be living there because, again, yikes!  Lisa See doesn't sugar coat what life was like in China in the late 1950s nor what it is like during a famine (i.e., people eating their children).  I love books about China and this one reminded me of The Good Earth during the famine sections.  In Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, also by Lisa See, she details foot binding to the point where I was on the train and it so turned my stomach I had to get off or I would puke so she does not shy away from realism.  I like this reality because it paints a better picture of the time period and doesn't sugar coat the situation.

Cruise!

So to get to all of our locations, we sailed on the Holland America boat, Eurodam.  Our vaca was entitled Gems of the Baltic.  All in all I would give Holland America and the Eurodam an A+ but there were some things about the vacation that were worthy of note.

Side note: Everyone, with all the recent cruise disasters, was like "Are you really going on a cruise?" and I was like "Yes, it's not like we are sailing on Carnival".  However, a few days before we left, Mr.'s co-worker told him that Holland America is actually part of the same corporation as Carnival so I was like "AHHHHH!!!!!"  Anyways, as I said, it was fine so I was wrong to worry.

Food

Cruises are well-known for the amount of food served on board.  This was Mr.'s first cruise and my fourth so in fact, I assumed I was well aware of how much people eat on these.  I was very surprised at the amount of food people were actually consuming.  Do you really need 7 pieces of sausage, a bowl of fruit, three eggs, 4 pancakes, a muffin, a bowl of cereal, an omelette, and some oatmeal for one breakfast?  Honestly, it was disgusting.  I am not a big meal eater and tend to graze as it is but the gluttony was judge-worthy.  I know, to each his own, but it just seemed a bit much.  Moreover, we would be at dinner and would opt-out of an appetizer because we didn't want all that food and we would be looked at like we had three heads for refusing.  I will say, even with all the gluttonous side-eyeing I did to the other passengers, Mr. and I may have really over -indulged in desserts so I am being a bit hypocritical.

Seniors

The crowd on board were pretty much all old people.  I have found that old people are my metier.  Normally, I make Mr. do all  the talking but I was Chatty McChats and all of the elderly people knew my name.  Mr. was like "Who are you?" because being social is not my thing.  I told my dad though, I was getting good recommendations for when I have to put him in the home.  Even so, I will say that we were the recipients of some ageism.  We would be sitting at afternoon tea and the look of utter horror that would come across people's faces when they would be told to sit with us was amusing.  We worked our charms and in the end, we always had a good time.  I am not one to try to find friends on vaca.  I pretty much like to hang out with Mr. and that's it so not having anyone really our age around didn't bother me at all.  As a matter of fact, I loved having the older people on our tours and such because they were always the first to complain about anything I had privately complained about to Mr. and so we got our answers and problems fixed before we actually had to bring it up with the tour leaders.  Hee hee.

Shows and Activities

There were a number of different shows and activities set up for our amusement.  There was a comedian we went to see one night, we hit up the afternoon tea, swam, read, lounged, sat around and listened to the afternoon trivia but didn't actually participate and went to pilates (Mr. too!  He wasn't lying when he told me he was inflexible but confessed he actually liked it.).  You have to participate in stuff on the cruise or else you are just sitting around so we did.

Room

Mr. and I lucked out and got a room that was on the end and handicapped so it was HUGE.  We had a balcony which we sat on here and there but really it was too cold to be sitting out there for any length of time.  Our toilet stopped flushing twice which was a bit of a loser but was quickly fixed.

Seasickness

Mr. gets nauseous just thinking about boats so he was very scared to go on this cruise.  I told him he won't even notice it and even though we came equipped with lots and lots of seasickness prevention tools, I was right.  He was fine.

Health

The first two days we were on board as a temporary measure to prevent the spread of illness, the staff served all buffet food.  I wish they had continued that the whole trip because buffets can be gross.  Also, the staff sprayed you with anti-bacterial every time you boarded the vessel or entered a dining room.  Kind of crazy but I liked it although in the end, Mr. and I did pick up a nasty cold.

Read This!: Snobs

By Julian Fellowes

I snuck in another book review before my cruise post….

Julian Fellowes is the creator of Downton Abbey (one of my fave shows) so when I came across a novel written by him, I scooped it up and read it on our vaca.

Edith Lavery is a middle-class British girl who lands herself a wealthy earl.  Needless to say, his upper class family (especially his mother) and friends are not sold on this “social climber”.  Differences between the classes are obvious and Edith begins to question whether this is the life she wants and if there might not be greener pastures with someone else…

This book takes place in the 1990s which took me a bit by surprise as I assumed it was occurring in the early 20^th century between wars.  This didn’t affect my thoughts on the novel but I figured it was worth mentioning.  Although at times I thought the writing was a bit dense, Fellowes  created quite a glimpse into the British upper class (I assume it was accurate) and, at times, his commentary made me laugh. 

Finland, Sweden, and Germany

After Russia, we sailed to Helsinki.

Because we had such a busy couple of days in Russia, Mr. and I did not do any kind of planned excursion in Finland.  Instead, we decided we would go into Helsinki ourselves and see some sights.  We originally planned to visit two places: a shop that did cake tasting and Temppeliaukio Church, which is a church that was carved from stone.  Unfortunately, it was Sunday so we struck out with the cake shop because it was closed (ok because we went to a cupcake tasting back on board later in the afternoon) and the church because services were going on (we didn't have it in us to walk the whole way back to the church later when there were no services).   Even though we printed out Frommer's walking tour of Helsinki, we skipped most of the sights and really just walked around the central square with the big Lutheran church and then went to the outdoor market for some shopping.  There was loads of stuff here made from reindeer and so was not for those who are against furs and such but we managed to buy a couple of things like a magnet and an ornament.  The weather in Helsinki switched between rain and sun every couple of minutes so that was annoying but otherwise, we enjoyed our time here.

Helsinki

After Helskini, we sailed to Stockholm, Sweden.  We had debated on doing an organized tour here but, in the end, decided to see the city ourselves.  From the port, we took a hop on/ hop off boat to our first sight, The Vasa Museum.  (Stockholm is made up of a number of different islands so the boats make a nice way to get from place to place.) Mr. had suggest going to the Vasa and while I normally veto any museum on our first day of sight-seeing in a city, I said OK.  It was actually pretty cool and I am glad we went.  The Vasa was a Swedish vessel that sank in 1628.  The Swedes managed to raise it up and build a museum around it.  The museum, one of the ones open on Mondays, opened at 10AM.  We arrived at 9:45AM and they let us in.  This was a coup because there was no line and it was not crowded at all.  YEAH!!!  We spent a bit of time looking at the ship and other things in the museum and then headed to the Gamla Stan (Old Town).  It dates from the 1600s and has lots of narrow streets, shops, and old buildings.  We had Frommer's walking tour to guide us but the sight numbers didn't match with the map which was a little frustrating.  Regardless, it pointed us in the right direction because from the Vasa, it helped us see the Royal Palace and a few other things before getting to the Old Town.  I liked Stockholm the best of any city we visited and would love to go back.

Gamla Stan

Sweden is made up of thousands of islands so we spent a few hours cruising the archipelago on our way out.  It was really cold and windy on deck but nature but on a great display with a double rainbow.

Archipelago with Double Rainbow

The next day was an at sea day.  Hooray!  We needed a major rest from touring before our next stop: Germany.

In Germany, we hit up two ports.  The first was Warnermunde.  From there, you can take a three hour train ride to Berlin.  Neither of us having been to Germany, Mr. and I decided to  take a full day excursion to Berlin.  This consisted of a three hour train ride, a visit to the Allied Museum, lunch, a tour around the city, three hour train ride back.  It was supposed to be a 12 hour excursion.  It took over 14 hours and frankly, I had a meltdown on the train on the ride back.  It was way too long and my head was seriously hurting and it was overall just terrible.  When I reviewed the excursions we went on at the end of our cruise, this extra few hours was the reason why they did not get a top score.  

Anyways, so at around 6:30-7AM, we boarded the train.  The ride there was OK.  I read my book, they gave us a snack for breakfast (but were sorely lacking in tea), and the entire train was chartered by the cruise line so that was nice.  On reaching Berlin, we hit up the Allied Museum first.  This was a museum dedicated to the Allies from WWII.  It was ok but generally, I thought a tad weak.  After the museum, we went to lunch at a Hofbrau (brew house).  We were served traditional German fare of pork, sauerkraut, sausages, potatoes, apple strudel.  It was actually really good.  After lunch, we took a tour around the city to see some main sites including the Berlin Wall and the Brandenburg Gate.  We did manage to get a glimpse of Mrs. Merkel, the chancellor.  This was quite exciting as I do not normally run into celebrities.  Then, we headed back to the train and this is when I may have lost it a bit.  I think I needed caffeine big time and as I discovered the next day when I woke up with a sore throat, I think I was starting to be sick.  Either way, we managed to survive and this tour piqued our interest in learning about the Cold War.   

Brandenburg Gate

(As a side note, Mr. asked me when we disembarked in Warnermunde if a quarter of me was dancing (he may have done a dance as he said this) since I am a quarter German and this was my first visit to a country of my ancestry.  I shook my leg a bit but that was the end of my enthusiasm.)

When we arrived back to the ship close to 10PM, I wanted to take a shower and go to bed.  Alas, our toilet was broken so I laid on the bed with a towel on my face until the guy came and fixed it while Mr. ordered some room service.  After trying to eat, I passed out.

The next day we arrived in Kiel, Germany.  I had originally wanted to do an excursion of the lakes and castles around there but Mr. had said that was maybe not a great idea since we were in Berlin all day on Wednesday and the next day we were leaving.  On waking up Thursday, I was so happy we made this decision.  We disembarked and walked around Kiel for maybe two hours.  I bought some things and we ate some German cuisine of pretzels and schokobrotchen (basically a donut type thing with chocolate icing and filling... OMG... I DIED over it.).  

Kiel Square

Thursday, we both started to get sore throats and come down with a bit of a cold.  It turned into a pretty bad one and made for an icky flight back to the US from Copenhagen, our final port, since we couldn't sleep and the plane was unbelievably HOT.  We had direct flights on SAS both there and back so I can't really complain seeing that SAS was generally good otherwise.  

All in all, it was a bit of a busy vaca but we saw lots of great sights and had a fab time.  

I will post a review of the cruise next since that was a vaca in and of itself.