May's Mutterings

Category: fun

  • Movie review: Frozen

    We all went to watch “Frozen” last night.  “Frozen” is the newest Disney animated movie and is roughly based on “The Snow Queen,” one of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. This is definitely one of Disney’s better animated movies (I’m excluding the Pixar movies from this comparison, as that wouldn’t be fair.)  The story is…

  • Review: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

    This Stephen Sondheim musical is currently playing at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC.  We took the entire family to see it on Friday night, and it was enthusiastically endorsed by everyone (even the 12 year old boy who was definitely not enthusiastic about going).  The humor is occasionally off-color, but most of the humor…

  • Movie Review: Thor: The Dark World

    We took the family to see “Thor:  The Dark World” over Thanksgiving weekend.  It got a thumbs up from everyone.  The plot was pretty clever for an action-adventure film, a genre not known for its creative plotting.  The acting was also surprisingly good.  I find Chris Hemsworth as Thor a bit wooden, but Jim pointed…

  • Best Buddies Miami 2013

    We flew down to Miami last weekend to attend the Best Buddies Miami gala.  Best Buddies is an organization that helps people with intellectual and developmental disabilities with friendships, employment, and leadership development.  We’ve been involved with the organization for 20 years, and Jim is on the board. The Miami event is especially entertaining because…

  • My Latest Obsession (Perfume!)

    So, the disadvantage of being just a teeny-tiny bit OCD is that you easily fall into random obsessions for some theoretically finite period of time.  In my case, the latest obsession is perfume. I can easily place the blame of this obsession on Rania Melhem—a Facebook friend whom I met on the Sharon Kay Penman…

  • minibar by Jose Andres

    We visited minibar by Jose Andres with some friends this past Saturday night.  It was the first time we had been to the new space, which is spare and minimalist with high ceilings and lightly painted wood.  (It’s located at 855 E Street, NW, Washington, DC.) The food definitely catered to the “foodie” crowd and…

  • Town (restaurant in Honolulu)

    We discovered Town (located at 3435 Waialae Ave) on a recommendation by some friends the last time we were in Honolulu and returned on this past trip to see if it was as good as we remembered.  It is as good and possibly better.  Here are some photos of Town’s magnificence: Appetizers include a baby…

  • Asia-Lite Summer Vacation

    What we did on our summer vacation:  we visited Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Honolulu—what I laughingly call our Asia-lite trip (anytime you go to Asia and you can drink the tap water, it’s not a true Asia trip). The weather was hot and humid in both Hong Kong and Tokyo, but they were really fun…

  • Uncle Clay’s House of Pure Aloha

    Only in Hawaii can you get away with a name like that.  But Uncle Clay’s House of Pure Aloha (located at 820 West Hind Drive #116 in the Aina Haina Shopping Center in Honolulu) not only has some of the best shave ice we’ve ever had, but it contains something even better—Uncle Clay himself. First…

  • July 4 in New York City

    We had one of the best July 4 holiday weekends ever! To begin with, we spent most of it with one of our favorite families to hang out with. And we spent it in one of our favorite cities, New York, and at one of our favorite hotels, the Carlyle (located at 76th & Madison).…