Hawaiian Map Hijinks

While we were at Pearl Harbor, we found this big map on the ground.

First, Josh asked me to stand over Hawaii:

Then he told me to stand on Portland while HE stood on Hawaii:

Then he told me to stand on both Portland and Hawaii, making a highly unlikely and structurally unsound bridge with my body:

He said that he thought of this series of pictures as "What Can I Get Emily To Do in a Picture?"

A lot, apparently.

On the Zipline

This year we decided to take a few trips to celebrate the end of my third year of grad school. First, we went to Reno and Medford, but then we went to Hawaii (which I have been begging to do basically since our one year anniversary).

We decided to go to three islands: Maui (where a couple of friends of ours were getting married), the Big Island (to visit the temple), and Oahu (mainly to take a "Lost" tour, but Josh is planning a big, long post about that). In addition to the wedding, we also went ziplining on Maui, at a place called Skyline Eco Adventures. Neither of us had done that before, but Josh had read about it and thought it sounded cool.

There were eight ziplines, ranging from 450 to 1100 feet, over two canyons. They drove us near the top of a mountain, then we ziplined and hiked our way down.

We had to wear harnesses and helmets the whole time, which we sometimes a little unwieldy. We basically swung across from one platform to another, which looked something like this:

We would launch off the side with the stairs (we had to run down the stairs and leap into the air), and land on the side with the ramp. Sometimes I got going so fast it was really hard to land correctly. You were supposed to transition your zipping momentum into running momentum and run to the top of the ramp. I was terrible at it.

But first we would attach to the wire like this:

And then swing across like this:

It was similar to sitting in a little seat, if your seat was made of nylon straps that loosened if you moved too much. It sounds scary, it looks scary, but it wasn't scary at all. I never felt like I was going to fall out, but I was terrible at the landing, and it was a bit hard to steer (ie stay facing forward).

This is what the typical zipline looked like:

We also had lunch about halfway through. The view was beautiful:

The only downside was that we got really, super dirty. At the end, our legs looked like this:

It was quite the adventure! If you're ever in Maui (or, apparently, Dollywood), I totally recommend trying it.

Did I mention...

... that I got a haircut? Because I did.

It's the first time in quite awhile (20+ years) that I've had bangs, because when I did they looked like this:

and sometimes like this:

I like the change. I think the bangs make me look older, which is nice when I'm supposed to be an expert that people come to with their problems. I've been having that experience lately where, when I tell people I'm a therapist, they don't believe me. 

30 Books Before I'm 30: My Life in France

My Life in France by Julia Child

This book was written with the help of Childs' grandnephew, Alex Prud'homme. He writes in the forward that the book came about from a series of conversations he had with her in August 2004 about her life in France during the 1950s. Because of this, the book is written in a very conversational style, and is more a series of recollections than a cohesive "this happened and then this happened"-type autobiography. The book starts with Childs' time in France, but extends beyond and to her husbands' death.

I realized while I was reading this book that there were a couple of things working against me. #1: I hate cooking (in fact, when Josh went camping with his scouts I mostly just ate uncooked egg noodles and didn't even notice until the end of the week that I hadn't eaten much of anything else), and #2: I've never been to France (even though my family thinks I have). But I still really enjoyed this book. 

Things I Liked: Although I know I wouldn't have been friends with Julia Child if we had ever met (mostly because I think she would have felt I was boring), her joie de vivre is contagious. She was a woman who loved her life and reading this book makes it obvious.

Since this book is episodic, it makes it really easy to pick it up and put it down again. I tend to bring books around with me so I can read whenever I have time, and with this book that was really easy.


Things I Didn't Like: Julia Child makes me feel really inadequate, though it makes me feel better that she didn't really start her cooking career until her mid-30s. I wish I was more like her-- indiscriminantly friendly, outgoing, and singularly-minded (writing her first cookbook took something like 12 years of solid work, and I can't even get through vaccuuming the upstairs hallway without getting distracted halfway through). So I don't like that this book made me feel bad about myself, but that's my thing more than the fault of the narration.


This book would be great to read: in the bathtub, or anywhere that you want to read a little at a time and don't necessarily need to keep track of plot points.

I would recommend this book to: anyone with even a quasi interest in food, France, or biographies. I would also recommend this book to my mother, who said she doesn't like to read anything depressing or stressful.

This book is an incredibly easy read, though Childs' narrative voice may be annoying to some people.

If you liked this book, you might also like: the movie Julie & Julia (2009), which was based in part on this book, or the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (Washington DC), where you can find a model of Childs' test kitchen. She had a thing for pegboard, on which she would outline her pots so she would know where everything went. 

30 Books Before I'm 30: The Devil in the White City

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

This novel is the factual account of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. In the forward, Larson notes that everything that is in quotes comes from either letters or written statements, and that everything else comes from extensive research. He focuses the story on two men: Daniel Burnham, who was the brains behind the construction and presentation of the World's Fair buildings, and Dr. H.H. Holmes, who used the fair as a way to funnel single females into his Murder Motel. Holmes is considered to be America's first serial killer, and his exploits are disturbing. 

It was really easy to get through this book once I really made the commitment, but it was initially difficult because Larson vacillates between two essentially unrelated topics. He even says explicitly that Burnham and Holmes never met. I couldn't tell whether Larson set out to tell a story about Holmes but needed to flesh it out (pardon the pun) with information about the cultural climate that led to such atrocities (not just the murders, but that Holmes got away with it for a ridiculous amount of time), or that he wanted to write about the World's Fair and needed something to spice it up. Either way, it is incredibly fascinating but disjointed and at times very frustrating when I get into a storyline and then have it switched in the next chapter.

Things I Liked: Once it got going, this book was hard to put down. I zoomed through it. Larson did an impressive amount of research and gives details that color the landscape well. I love stories about America at the turn of the century, and this book made me desperately wish to travel back in time and attend the World's Fair and walk around in the buildings that were described. 

Things I Didn't Like: In an effort to make his novel a page-turner, Larson gives little nuggets of information and then hints at the importance it will play later in the story. For instance, Holmes had an assistant that had a few kids, and Larson says, essentially, "These kids are important! I'll be coming back to them!" But toward the end of the book Larson had so many storylines going it was hard to keep them all straight. I couldn't remember all of the people he had told me were important! 

Also, there weren't enough pictures. For fiction novels I hate pictures, but when the author is writing about real people that really designed real buildings? I want to see more of it. Perhaps if the book had been about one man or the other (Burnham or Holmes) then there would have been more room for more pictures, but it's also possible that he just couldn't get the picture reprinting rights.

Best Place to Read this Book: On the beach or anywhere that you can be undisturbed for several hours (it can be engrossing).

I would recommend this book to: people with an interest in history, architecture, or serial killers and psychology.

I would also recommend: the documentary H.H. Holmes: America's First Serial Killer by John Borowski. It's on Netflix streaming right now.

Wait For It

We went to Hawaii this past week. It may take me awhile to blog about it, but we took tons of pictures. Here's a preview of one of our many adventures:

ShepAlder Temple Adventure #35: Kona, Hawaii

For my August break, Josh planned a trip to Hawaii (Maui, the big island, and Oahu), for the wedding of some friends and for general relaxation and adventure-having. We were hoping to visit both the Kona and Laie temples, but the Laie temple is closed until November for renovation (which made Josh sad, but I told him we would be coming back to Oahu in the future so he doesn't need to be sad forever), so we just went to Kona.

The temple is so close to the highway, you could jump out of your car and land in the grounds. We didn't even need a GPS to get there because we had seen it on our way to our hotel and just guessed which exit we needed to take. I was impressed with us because we have a horrible history of getting lost either on the way, inside, or while leaving temples. 

The Kona, Hawaii temple is another small temple, like Medford and Reno, which meant that I knew the layout exactly, which was comforting. Even though the construction is almost exactly like the other small temples, there are several things that sets this temple apart, both inside and out.

First, and this may be a cultural thing, the temple is not very well-guarded. This means that there isn't really a perimeter fence, so people could probably stroll the grounds whenever they would like. I was shocked by that! But that's because I live in a city where, if the temple grounds were left vulnerable like that, someone would spray paint or try to break into the building.

The non-gates (at the top of the stairs)

There were also these cool, marble benches:

And these fan palms:

The temple was kind of at the edge of a neighborhood, at the end of a cul-de-sac with just a stake center on one side, and this oddly singular house next door:

The temple is to the right. Josh was so weirded out that there was just this random house so close to the temple, he kept taking pictures and videos of it.

The stake center next door had a satellite dish, which also entranced Josh because it was so big:

I made a conscious effort not to use the same dressing room like I had in the Reno and Medford temples (because I thought three times in a row might have been a little weird), and instead chose a room that I thought would be unpopular because it was at the back, but apparently it was the most popular changing room, and there was a long line of ladies waiting for me to change into my street clothes at the end of the night. I should have just stuck to my routine.

Other things of note about this temple:

* Instead of individual chairs in the ordinance rooms, there were benches, which threw me off. They were like pews. I think some of the older temples are like that, too (I'm thinking specifically of the Los Angeles and Manti temples), but I've never seen a newer temple (Kona was opened in 2000) like that.

* It was the first time I was the only White person in a session. I have been in a minority before (like when we went to the LA temple and it was a Spanish-language session and it was me, some blonde chick, and her husband who probably went to a Spanish-speaking mission and thought it would be cool to go through the temple in Spanish), but it was really just little old Whitey me, a gaggle of Hawaiians, and Hispanic Josh. I liked it. I was fascinated about what the experience made me think about.

Coming Up:

We've been talking about taking a Church History Tour for Spring Break and go to some of the temples in the Midwest. I always feel like I'm being self-righteous when I talk about visiting temples around the country, because it invariably makes other people feel bad about their own temple attendance, and I know that hitting the 50 temple mark is going to make it worse, but if we take this trip then it will put us in the mid-40s range.