A Suprising Lesson on Turkey Day

If you haven’t checked your calendar, listened to the news, or talked to anybody outside your house: today is the day before National Parfait Day, and the day after Eat a Cranberry Day. Yes, it’s Turkey Day: the only day where, on average, people eat 4,200 calories (that’s about two days worth of food).  

With all the thanking and the giving, many people forget all of the cooking and the fuming frustration that comes with it. Whether you’re toying with a turkey or pursuing a pumpkin pie, cooking Thanksgiving dinner can be a real hassle. This year my family was assigned dessert; which means: eight pies, one banana bread, and four batches of cookies. Three days ago was Cookie Day where we baked four different kinds of gourmet, chocolate cookies. Two days ago was Pie Prep Day, and then yesterday was Pumpkin and Cherry Pie Day. Now today was reserved for the most difficult pie: apple. With a homemade crust, filling, and topping this pie can take four hours with five people working on it- and that’s just the first one.

With its golden-brown, flaky, sugar-on-top crust, it looks too beautiful to have caused such an aggravation. Whether it be the thought of the delicious pies we would taste later, or the fact that the rest of my family is depending on these desserts to complete the dinner- we finished those pies. My father speculated that the key to our success was in the music that blasted through the house in an attempt to ease the tension (especially when our bottom oven broke with six pies left to bake… that was bad).  Here’s a snippet of what my dad calls “the tunes” because it wasn’t just my family in that kitchen- Marva Wright, Peter Gabriel, and Santana decided to join us as well.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/marvalous/id301561747  (click on any song for a preview- my favorite is Wang Dang Doodle)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaKnRUfh_5I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMwn_hnoS5Y

Whether your head started to bob, your foot started to tap, or you started to boogie like I did- it’s a well-known fact: music resonates with everybody. Turns out music can do much more than paste a smile on your face. It’s known for being an effective therapy for pain, reduces blood pressure, maintains a speedy recovery after a stroke, boosts immunity, memory, and IQ, advances physical performance and coordination, and it improves your productivity. And that’s not even half of it. As we speak, researchers are delving into the brain to truly understand why that foot-tapping we experienced earlier, does so much for our body and our brain than we ever realized.

So if you have Turkey Day blues and can’t wait for the food to cheer you up- turn up the tunes and rock out. This way, you can celebrate Thanksgiving  with Marva Wright and party all night long. 

Have a stress-freeThanksgiving!

photo cred: me! and here's one last picture of that apple pie:

  Here are some interesting articles about how music affects us:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/226000/how_does_music_affect_emotions.html

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-does-music-make-us-fe

Crescent Moon- the movie review of the Twilight Saga

      Now I usually don't do this but, because this particular movie had the fifth-best domestic opening of all time at the box office: I will make an exception. The fourth installment of the Twilight saga, Breaking Dawn, raked in 139.5 million dollars this opening weekend; which almost shattered its personal record when New Moon raked in 142.8 million its opening weekend. With the experiences of the previous three movies running through my head, I went to see Breaking Dawn with my best friend with low expectations. It surprisingly turned out a lot better than we had ever expected. 
      Anyways, let's make one thing clear- I am not a Twi-hard. I am one of the millions (or billions- who knows?) of girls (and grown women) around the world who find the Twilight series intriguing, creative, heart-melting and possibly inspiring. After seeing one of the last movies of the series on Friday, I had to wonder why so many people love the Saga. So, like my first blog post, I'm going to try and delve deeper into the Twilight series, to try and figure out the underlying reasons as to why my generation (and parts of the last one) are so obsessed with Team Edward or Team Jacob.

      First, we have the cover: a pair of white hands cupping a blood-red apple over a pitch-black background with the word “Twilight” scripted above it. Unlike 80% of the teenage girl population, I like to look on the inside cover to determine whether or not I will read it. But alas, many girls look at the cover and make a snap judgment. Whether it be the contrast of colors, the irony of the fact that the seemingly strong hands are holding such a delicate apple or, the overwhelming sense of curiosity we teenagers love to resort to, this cover is an eye-catcher.

     Second, we have the relatable, ordinary teenage girl who is super awkward because her motor skills haven’t developed yet so she trips a lot and can’t play sports. The majority of the teenager girl population, besides those who play sports, really feels like that (trust me- I know). She also doesn’t look anything special- there’s nothing about her that stands out: brown eyes, brown hair, milky white skin, sort of short… nothing freakish or unique. And lastly, she has a typical family scene: divorced parents, she’s closer with her mother than her father, and now she has to go live with her father for a few years. Oh and her name is super-ordinary: Bella. So within the first chapter, we have at least half of the teenage girl population hooked, because they’re all thinking: Well something interesting must happen otherwise this would be an extremely boring book with an intriguing cover … I’m going to keep reading because her life has got to be more interesting than mine.” For some reason that is beyond me, girls my age love to relegate their life to make the book they’re reading seem ten times more interesting. In this case, I can bet that Bella Swan’s life is ten times more interesting than everyone else’s, but most of the time- they’re not.

     Third, by the fourth chapter there are some subtle hints starting to collect in the readers mind. Why is it always raining and/or cloudy? Why are there a bunch of astoundingly pale, but also mouth-gaping attractive people that keep to only themselves? Also- why do they all have gold eyes? And lastly- what did Bella do to the guy that sat next to her in Biology to make him want to change classes all of a sudden? All of these clever suggestions keep piling up until the semi-climax happens a fourth of the way into the book: Edward confronts Bella for the first time. Whether the reader made a prediction consciously or sub-consciously, they just found out two things: whether or not they were right, and whether or not they like the new plot twist. Either way, most teenage girls would continue to read the book because this particular twist isn't a major one but more of an intriguing twist. 

      Now I’m not going to give you the whole synopsis from the sixth chapter of Twilight to the last chapter of the third book. All you need to know is that, after many hardships- they are together but not all the way happy. She still wants to get turned into a vampire like Edward so they can be together for eternity. The last four words of that sentence seal the deal. An ordinary girl gets to love a super-hot vampire (who loves her back as well) for the rest of eternity and it was true love from first sight? The teenage girl dream doesn't get any more specific than that, and in this series- it comes true. This is the final reason as to why I think we are so obsessed with Edward and Bella: because against all odds- the underlying, human- feeling of love gets to live forever.

   Here's a picture of the two, married love-birds from the fourth installment of the Twilight Saga- Breaking Dawn: enjoy. 

photo-cred: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/11/box-office-twilight-breaking-dawn-happy-feet.html

And for those of you who are serious Twi-hards: did you catch the Breaking Dawn cover reference in this picture? What game are they playing? ... Just something to ponder about...