the end of the week, a life list update and a little housekeeping

I mentioned earlier this week that my sister and her family have been in town.  This means that The Bad Girls Club, whose members are Julia and Alex, has reunited.

It's been a year and a half since the Bad Girls first formed, and I'm happy to report that they remain as thick as thieves.  As I type this, Alex is actually spending a couple of nights with my parents, so that The Bad Girls can have 24-hour meetings, which, as far as I can tell, include movie-watching, art-making, book-reading and giggling.  Lots and lots of giggling.

In addition, this year, they also seem to have recruited a sidekick:

So, yes, it's all good.  They all leave tomorrow, and I'm sure Alex will be going through serious withdrawal.

In addition to creating dodgy clubs, when my family gets together we  also drink rum -- we are, after all, West Indian.  After making quick work of The Kraken (in the form of Krak-and-Cokes, a vaguely-illicit-sounding drink suggested by Maggie), we broke open my Dad's bottle the holy grail of rums (in my opinion), Angostura 1919.

Now, I've referred to this rum before, and before I rate this, I need to admit that part of the reason that I enjoy this rum so much could be due to the fact that there is something very nostalgic for me about it -- I associate its flavour most with Trinidad.  The taste, I think, is the best combination of sweet and slightly "burny": that lovely warm feeling you get down your throat from a good sipping alcohol.  It's so great.

So again, using my highly scientific scale of 1 being rotgut and 10 being sweet rummy ambrosia (and keeping in mind that I don't think there is any such thing as a perfect 10), I rate this a 9.99.  I love this stuff.

And finally, some housekeeping -- I have a book I've been meaning to share with you.  In general, I really hate traveling without Marcus and Alex; however, one thing I do love about traveling alone is the amount of reading I get to do.  On this recent trip to Utah, I picked up the book The Thing Around Your Neck, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie -- you might remember her from this post back in November when I published her TED talk about "the danger of a single story."  I'd been meaning to read her work since then, so when I found her book sitting on the sale table at my local bookstore, I grabbed it. 

This book is really pretty phenomenal.  It's a series of short stories, all related to the experiences of Nigerian women and girls, usually related to their immigrating to the United States.  I've been to Nigeria, and I remember being struck by how much the country reminded me of Trinidad.  The same familiarity washed over me as I read her words, and while there are admittedly lots of differences between Nigeria and Trinidad, this book is the most accurate account I've ever read of what it feels like to be a black woman (or girl) emigrating from her native country to the United States.  If this subject intrigues you at all, you must go get this book -- it's the perfect summer read.

And on that note, have a great weekend, everybody.

Images:  All photographed with my Nikon D300 and the lovely 50mm that Nikon lent me.  Also, that's rum number 10 -- only 40 more to go.

Song:  A little less conversation by Elvis Presley (JXL Remix)