all good things: sun and sea and good food

All Good Things is a weekly feature on the blog. It started as a one-hour Sunday night radio show on KSTO St. Olaf radio, featuring feel-good music and 10 highlights from the past week. The show, and its current written form, is brought to you by Clara, Second Set of Baby Steps creator, and her radio co-host Cassie.

1. Song of the week: 2am by Slightly Stoopid. Not my favorite band name ever, but the song has been our Zumba cool down song for the past few weeks and it's got a good groove.

2. Patron XO. Jason's parents recently went to Mexico and brought back bottles of this delicious coffee tequila for their sons. Fortunately Jason has been generous enough to share it with me. My favorite way to imbibe it is over ice cream. Yummm!

3. Deep fried Oreos. The best Boardwalk dessert; the kind of thing you look forward to all day long. 

4. The Casual Vacancy, J.K. Rowlings' first adult novel. It's about a tiny town in England and all the political and social drama among its inhabitants. I've talked to a few people who started reading this and gave up when it became clear that there is no magic in it. But I stuck with it, charmed by the details (always a forte of hers in Harry Potter) and, now somewhere around page 300, I'm having a hard time putting it down.

5. Chicken madras. On Wednesday Jason and I ended up going to Maharaja for dinner. Last time we went there we got the entrees with hot spice and I couldn't even eat the food-- impressive, when most Indian restaurants stateside tone it down incredibly. Anyway, we learned our lesson and had recovered enough to go back. And we had mango lassi, garlic naan, aloo palak, and chicken madras, which wins dinner this week especially since I wasn't convinced at first that I even wanted it. Another lesson learned.

6. Wildwood. As I write this I am on my way back from the Jersey Shore with my "roommates." We just spent Saturday and Sunday on the beach, napping and swimming and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and trying not to let the seagulls at 'em. So relaxing, and good girl time. Also, the sand there is so much finer than the sand at the Delaware beaches... Which is good in some ways ( it doesn't get quite as churned up in the waves, for example) but that also means it clings to things and silts into cracks and crevices.

7. Zumba! Katy and I went to zumba twice this week with our favorite instructor. And on Thursday we found out that she will no longer be teaching at the Y! That part is not a good thing, but it does make me not take it for granted. It's just such a fun reason to be super sweaty!

8. Wawa. Stopping at Wawa for breakfast to kick off a road trip has become a bit of a tradition lately. The bagels are just so good! So are most things at Wawa, actually. Hoagiefest is something I am a huge fan of as well. 12-inch subs for $4.79? Yes please!

9. How I Met Your Mother (a.k.a. HIMYM). The modern version of Friends. So funny. So current and relatable. Jason and I are currently in the middle of rewatching the whole series while we wait for season 8 to come out on DVD/Netflix. I just bought season 3 (since we don't actually have internet at home).

10. Good conversations with interesting people. I went out for happy hour on Friday with Jason and a bunch of people he used to work with, all of whom I liked a lot. Good people, warm and welcoming. I also love how my horizons are expanded every time I meet someone new.

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