Book Review: The Name of the Wind

Its the start of May and I have now completed my 9th book. So far I am a little ahead of my schedule to reach my goal of 25 novels by the end of the year. My latest read was The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Without giving a full synopsis the novel is about a young boy Kvothe (pictured above) and his journey from being a traveling performer to a member of the University. 

I've just recently taken an interest in fantasy novels after devouring the first five of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books. And I would venture to say that The Name of the Wind is on par with those novels if not even slightly better. The novel has a very distinct and memorable tone to it that I have not encountered in any other book, fantasy or otherwise. 

The Name of the Wind is not only one of my favorite novels of 2013, but of all time. I cannot wait to read the next book in the series, The Wise Man's Fears.

The Name of the Wind is not only one of my favorite novels of 2013, but of all time. I cannot wait to read the next book in the series, The Wise Man's Fears.

“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”

My Most Anticipated Movies of Summer 2013

Outside of video games, audiobooks, and tv shows, I also am a sucker for a great movie. With each summer there seems to be even better movies to get excited about, and the summer of 2013 is no exception.

So without further ado here are my most anticipated movies of this summer (in order of release). 

Iron Man 3 (May 3, 2013)

I loved the original Iron Man and thought that the second one showed great promise. However what gets me excited for Iron Man 3 is more the excellent The Avengers, which you have to figure Iron Man 3 will touch on the next Avengers movie as well.

The Great Gatsby (May 10, 2013)

I was never a huge fan of the book but the movie looks incredible. Combine the amazing rock and roll music and Leo Dicaprio and I think The Great Gatsby has the potential to be one of the best movies of the summer.

Star Trek Into Darkness (May 15, 2013)

I absolutely loved JJ Abrams reboot of Star Trek. I can't call myself a "treky" by any stretch but I have always enjoyed Star Trek movies but none have been better then the reboot in 2009. Into Darkness seems like a perfect continuation of that with a fun action movie with all the great Trek nuances.

The Hangover Part III (May 24, 2013)

So The Hangover Part II was pretty much a rehash of the first movie. But something about the trailers for The Hangover Part III has me excited for this. The first movie was hilarious; I have never been in a theater where people were laughing as hard as they were with that movie. Here is to hoping they can finish this off with a bang. 

After Earth (May 31, 2013)

It feels like forever since we have seen Will Smith do a big movie. I think the last big Will Smith movie I enjoyed was either I Am Legend or The Pursuit of Happyness. Either way After Earth looks like a return to form and I for one cannot wait for it.

The Internship (June 7, 2013)

If The Internship is even half as funny as The Wedding Crashers then this is going to be a great movie. Combine that with the fact that the movie is all about getting a job at Google (my dream job) and I cannot wait to laugh with The Internship.

Man of Steel (June 14, 2013)

My most anticipated movie of all of 2013 is Zach Snyder's Man of Steel. This is either going to be the best movie ever or its going to tank badly. I for one enjoyed Superman Returns in 2006 and wish they gave it one more movie. However from what I have seen of the much darker Man of Steel this may be the start of something truly epic.

World War Z (June 21, 2013)

I'm one of the last people out there you would expect to be excited for a zombie movie. But there is something truly epic in the trailers leading up to the release of World War Z. This seems very similar to Independence Day and I am hoping it hits or exceeds that bar.

Despicable Me 2 (July 3, 2013)

I am a sucker for a good animated movie, and Despicable Me was just that. From what we have seen so far in the trailers, Despicable Me 2 looks just as funny if not more so. I am really looking forward to this one.

The Wolverine (July 26, 2013)

I didn't realize that not only do we have Iron Man 3 & Man of Steel coming out this summer but towards the tail end we have The Wolverine. I have been a fan of all of The X-Men movies whether it be the original trilogy, the Wolverine movie, or even First Class I thought they were all pretty great movies.

Elysium (August 9, 2013)

I'm always ready for a great science fiction movie and after the colossal waste of time that was Oblivion, it makes me even more excited for the last big movie of summer 2013 (in my opinion), Elysium.

Caribbean Trip 2013 Day 8 (April 5, 2013): No Bingo Boogie

It’s a sad day aboard the Celebrity Reflection as today marks the end of our seven-day Caribbean cruise. We are at sea again today which means it’s all about relaxation. We woke up at 9AM when room service called and said they were bringing our breakfast. We ordered our smallest order of the week we both just got a banana smoothie and I had some bananas and strawberries.

We are at the point of the cruise that everyone gets to; it’s the law of diminishing returns. There is just so much food you can eat and we hit our breaking point last night at Murano. We ate our breakfast on our balcony and at that time it looked like it was going to be a really nice day out. We started to get ready for the day and to take part in our first real Celebrity activity.

We headed down to the Opus Dining Room (main dining room) for the galley tour. We are always talking about how we wonder how they prepare all the food on the cruise and today we found out. We joined our group number and after waiting around for 15-20 minutes we joined one of the head chef’s and headed to the kitchens. It was super neat; they separate the galley into the courses of the meal and keep things as simple as possible. The tour lasted around twenty minutes and was worth seeing.

Right after we got done with the tour we headed over the theater to watch the Celebrity Iron Chef, which was a cook-off with two chefs and two people from the audience. The show was fun and the food looked really good.

After all of this talk and watching of food we headed back to the dining room to have lunch. I had a Tuna Melt with chocolate ice cream, and Jenn had the Pad Thai with shrimp. It was a great light lunch and held us over perfectly until dinner.

After lunch we started packing up our stuff, and getting ready for this amazing vacation to end. We sat out on the balcony, and read for a bit, and Jenn ended up heading in to take a shower. Only a few minutes after she headed in what had been a cloudy day all day turned dark in a hurry. Within ten minutes we had major rainfall and wind, followed by both lightning and thunder. The captain came on the intercoms twice letting us all know this was normal but also closing down all of the pool decks and outside areas. It was a pretty intense half hour.

From there we went down to play Bingo, which was the big jackpot game. The game was packed and was divided into three separate games. On the first round that you just had to get a line in Jenn got to stand up but unfortunately didn’t win. The next two rounds, which started with playing a game of corners and then the big jackpot round didn’t go well for us either. We had a great time but were sad not to be able to take home some extra cash.

After bingo we went back up to our cabin and got ready for our final dinner aboard the Celebrity Reflection that was at the specialty restaurant Qsine. The restaurants claim to fame is their iPad integration that acts as their menu.

Qsine is sort of like a tapas restaurant where each course you share the food and is small bites/tastes. You pick up to four courses to start off with and then once you get through the four you get to pick more. For our first four courses we chose the Painter’s Mignon, Disco Shrimp, Slider Party, and Meatball Trilogy. The best of the four was the sliders that came out on a little grill and you got to build the slider yourself. After our first four courses we also ordered the Taco Royale that came with make your own guacamole.

After our five courses of food it was time for desert. Here Jenn got the silver bullet and the cheesecake-tini. I had the “create your own” cupcake, and the surprise, which was an apple cobbler. The whole meal was just a ton of fun and we ended up staying there for over two hours.

After dinner we got our last glasses of wine at Cellar Masters and went off to the last show of the cruise that was a compilation of everything we saw from the start of the cruise. It was a nice look back and we got to enjoy the violinist again, which was great.

After that we finished packing, and got ready for our long journey home. It’s amazing how quickly a seven-day cruise goes by but this was one incredible journey.

Caribbean Trip 2013 Day 7 (April 4, 2013): Jenn Loves Crepes

We are now done with our three Caribbean stops and have two at-sea days and then we are back in Miami and on our way home. Although its sad at how fast this vacation is its refreshing to know that the last two days of the cruise will be relaxing at-sea days. This morning we once again slept in, well in fact I slept in while Jenn woke up at around 8:30 I managed to finally stir up at around 9:30.

Jenn made her way off to the Persian Gardens in the Spa area while I headed out to our balcony read some more of my book (The Rook by Daniel O’Malley) which I am not going to be able to finish by the end of the cruise. I actually borrowed it from the Celebrity Library with the intention of finishing it but its 500 pages long and I am only 150 or so in. So that’s not going to happen, it’s a great book though.

When Jenn got back we went down to the Opus Dining Room and took part in their brunch today. It’s the only day on the cruise they have this brunch which is a buffet showcasing their popular breakfast, lunch, and desert dishes. What it turned out to be though was sort of a disturbing amount of people and food. We made two passes at the buffet, ate sparingly and were out of there. We were hoping for more of a lavish champagne brunch, but just the sheer quantity of both food and people made it hard to really enjoy.

After brunch it was up to the Solstice Deck (deck 16) to lie out and unlike the first few at-sea days today had almost no wind and was extremely hot. I take back any complaints I had on the first windy at sea day, that is the only way you can it outside for any extended period of time. I think we lasted a little over a half hour and had to call it quits. So we headed back down to Game On for yet another rematch in the age-old game of checkers. Although I may have been obliterated yesterday I had my revenge today and whipped Jenn out in record time.

Jenn needing to wash away her defeat had us head down to the nearby bar and ordered a Pina Colada. It was so good. We both love those things and unlike the pool bar, which waters those things down this bar, did the drink justice. We sat near the window and enjoyed the extremely calm seas.  I’m not sure it if it was the Pina Colada or just the fact that we had sit in the nice air conditioned bar for a bit but we went back out to the Solstice Deck and laid out for another hour or so. The sun was just a bit less draining in the afternoon but at one point we both looked at each other and knew it was time to head in.

We headed back to our cabin and ordered down for a bucket of ice and champagne glasses to enjoy our complimentary bottle that we received when we arrived. Jenn not being a big champagne fan did not partake but I sure did. We laid around the room and balcony both reading our books and me enjoying my champagne and a little later on the afternoon snacks. I don’t think I have mentioned this much in these posts but the afternoon snacks that come with the Aqua Class room are both small yet delightful. For a cruise that is so keen on excess, the small quantity that comes with the afternoon snacks is refreshing.

At this point it was time to get ready for our final formal night. This can be quite the engagement in the Szerlip household. As mentioned on the last formal night we take these quite seriously and Jenn especially. She spent from 4PM until a few minutes before 6PM to get herself ready for the night. Our dinner was at the fanciest of the four specialty restaurants, Murano. It is a French restaurant that has a 1920’s wealth appeal.

Jenn as always looked absolutely stunning. She wore a dress that she bought originally for our cruise last year and still to this day fits her like a glove. We got ready for dinner just in time and made our way down to Murano. We were sat in a nice alcove for two and had three or four people waiting on us from start to finish. We started off with our final bottle of wine, an awesome cab from Washington.

For our first course we both started with the lobster bisque, which started as a deconstruction of the soup, and then the waiter combined it all in front of us. Our second courses were the lowest point of the meal. Jenn had a diver scallop wellington style and I had a risotto with skim milk foam. Both of these were OK, but not where near the standard of the rest of the meal.

For our main course Jenn had the lamb and I had the lobster, which was prepared tableside. Always fun having a show while at dinner so it was neat watching them prepare the lobster. I do prefer just a plain lobster that you get to dip in butter but this rendition with all of the herbs and spices was good as well. Jenn had the lamb that was excellent. We then got to do the cheese course which had them come over with a cart of cheese and allowed us to pick from it, we got some of the medium and mild cheeses which were good, some were kind of gross though. For desert I got one of my favorite deserts of all time the chocolate lava cake. Jenn who has learned on this cruise more then anything else that she loves crepes ordered the strawberry crepes. To our delight that also was prepared tableside and Jenn looked like she was at Disneyland, it was a pretty awesome crepe.

After dinner we went and took a few more pictures around the ship and then were off to see the show Reflection. The show has been promoted all week as being modern music and Cirque du Soleil style acrobatics. Well they did have some pretty amazing acrobatics especially when you consider the ship is moving. The music on the other hand had nothing more recent then the mid-1980’s, not to mention the singing was pretty embarrassing. Regardless the crowd got into it and since it’s really the last big production of the cruise it was fun to attend.

After the show we turned in for the night, went over the cruise newsletter for tomorrow to see what’s going on, on our last day of the cruise. It’s sad to see the trip fly by so quickly, but then again it’s been incredible while it’s lasted.

Caribbean Trip 2013 Day 6 (April 3, 2013): The Rope Hike v. The Flying Pizza

Yesterday was a great relaxing day. When Jenn and I got on the cruise we realized that having back to back beach days probably wasn’t necessary. So we instantly tried to figure out something to do on our last stop on the cruise, St. Kitts. From what the lady at the excursion counter was saying that one of the best things to do was hike in the rain forest. Jenn and I enjoy a good hike once in a while so we booked it.

So today marked our hike day which departed St Kitts at 10:30 AM. The way Jenn and I have been sleeping you would think that 10:30 would have been late enough but we made a 9:00AM wake up call to make sure we were ready. We ordered room service for breakfast got two smoothies each and had some bacon and waffles.

Breakfast came in around three minutes before we needed to head down to the pier to meet for our excursion. So we ate as much as we could and left the ship for our excursion. We jumped on board a bus and headed out to the rain forest of St Kits. Like most Caribbean islands it’s a pretty poverty stricken island outside of the tourist areas.

We made it to our stop and were given twenty minutes to walk around the botanical gardens, buy stuff from the gift shop, and get ready for the hike. According to the tour director the hike seemed like it was going to be pretty easy. However we got broken up into two different groups and we got the younger of the two tour guides and he had us go a new route. To make matters worse I didn’t bring any tennis shoes just my dress shoes so I used those and those looked ridiculous with shorts so I wore jeans. Not optimal attire for hiking in the rain forest but I made it through.

It was an incredible hike; we went through a ton of river streams, and lush areas. Eventually we made our way to by far the hardest part of the hike, which was an optional piece that everyone did. We went up a forty-degree incline that had you pulling on to ropes to get up to the top of the hill. It was a pretty intense climb and much of the group had a ton of trouble making it.

But eventually we all made it and had a nice descent from a small perch in the rain forest back to the start of the tour. It was an incredible hike, one that was a bit tougher then we originally thought but was so worth doing. I know both Jenn and I are so stoked we did it.

After we got dropped off back at the pier we made our way back on board. We ordered some room service and took some showers to clean off from the day. For lunch I tried the chicken wings and a cobb salad, while Jenn once again got her pasta bolognase.

After we got finished with lunch we headed back down to Wine Cellars. One of our favorite things to do is get a few ¼ pours of new wine to try. I went with a white and blush and Jenn went with red. It’s just a really relaxing place to hang out and the prices for wines aren’t too bad. After we spent a bit of time at Wine Cellars we went back to rekindle our lost game of checkers in the Game On area of the ship. The digital tabletop platforms were taken so we went with the old school checkers board and pieces. I gave a valiant effort but after my onslaught on Jenn was warded off Jenn squeezed out a victory. Or she may of smoked me it into oblivion, either way I fought the good fight.

We got done with Game On and headed back up to our room to get ready for dinner. Tonight we got to try our second of the four specialty dining rooms, the Lawn Club Grille. Out of the four we had no real idea of what to expect other then its on the 14th deck and is an outside eating venue. We arrived on time for our 6:30 PM reservation and were greeted to our table. The Lawn Club is a much more laid back environment, and specializes in grilling foods and pizzas.

We were then asked if we wanted to participate in the cooking of either grilling meats or preparing our flatbread pizzas. Jenn volunteered me to do our pizzas. So I obliged not really knowing what I was getting myself into. Needless to say they had me tossing my pizza in front of 50+ people and of course my skills as a pizza maker on a scale of 1-10 would probably be a 3 ½ - 4 range. Not too good, but I got a nice cheer from the audience anyways and am thankful that was the end of my cooking for the night.

I made Jenn and I a pepperoni and cheese flatbread that turned out quite nice. We then had the option to go to a salad bar, which I went for while Jenn didn’t. For drinks I had my favorite Stella while Jenn had our bottle from the first night of the cruise brought down so she could finish off that bottle with dinner. For our main course Jenn went with lamb chops and the shrimp and scallop skewers. I went with the filet mignon and the shrimp and scallop skewers. We also split the lobster mac and cheese, cream corn, and baked potato for sides. What’s neat about the restaurant too is even though we didn’t help in the grilling of the meats/fish, we got to watch the chefs prepare them right in front of us. The food was delicious; you can’t beat freshly grilled foods. To top it off Jenn and I had both got the restaurant specialty, vanilla ice cream on top of a warm cookie. It was an incredible meal.

After dinner we walked around on the top deck, enjoyed the beautiful sunset and headed back to our balcony and read over some of the previous day posts. We also did a quick recap of today’s fun events.

At this point it was time for the show both Jenn and I were most looking forward to this week, the comedian/magician, Scott Alexander. He was first found on America’s Got Talent where he made it to the final stages and then worked in Vegas. He sold me right when he came on with his Captain America t-shirt, but was actually a really good entertainer. Similar to the violinist a few days back I never once looked at the time and forgot I was even on a cruise ship. He was thoroughly entertaining and I know we both really enjoyed tonight’s show.

After dinner we walked around a bit and called it a night. We were both pooped from the hike, so we started watching Ruby Sparks but only made it half way through before having to turn it off and hit the sack. Today was the last stop and we have two at-sea days and then its back to life. Luckily we love at sea days so the next two days should be great. 

Caribbean Trip 2013 Day 5 (April 2, 2013): Beach Break

After a great day in Puerto Rico we are now on to our second stop of the cruise, St Martin. We went back and forth on the type of excursion we wanted to do in St. Martin and landed on the most popular excursion, which is called the Afternoon Beach Break. The excursion takes you to the very popular Orient Bay, which is supposed to be the nicest beach on the island.

But as you may have noticed we booked an “afternoon” excursion which meant we had the morning free. So in typical Joel & Jenn fashion we slept in until 9ish and barely made it up in time to order the breakfast room service. We have said it in past cruises but we never sleep better then when we are on a cruise. There is something too the fact that you are being rocked to sleep every night, and that we are lazy and love to sleep.

Regardless we had a super relaxing morning. For breakfast we went the smoothie route again, we love the banana smoothies. I had some fruit and Jenn had toast. After breakfast we got ready for the day and the first thing on the agenda was to do the self guided iPad Tour that started at 11:30. So Jenn and I promptly made our way down to guest services at 11:30 where it was completely empty and asked for the guided tour of the cruise ships artwork.  We got the iPad, which had an app on it that let you select art work near by and read up on it. What’s pretty ridiculous about the whole thing is that each art piece has a little plaque next to it saying almost the exact same thing. I tried to see if I could mess with the iPad and when I saw it was locked down pretty good I gave it back to Jenn who gave it back to guest services a few minutes after we picked it up. Jenn said Guest Services seemed a little perturbed that we only used it for five minutes, but oh well the tour was sort of lame.

Since the self-art tour only took a total of ten minutes we went out and explored the near by St. Martin. It looks as though this must be a recently built port. Next to us were two other giant cruise ships (one from Royal and one from NCL) and a ton of recently added shops and bars. It did feel a little like a tourist trap.

We ran out of things to look at within a half hour or so and headed back to the ship for lunch. We decided to head back to our favorite food stop so far the Bistro on 5 that serves crepes for $5 a person. We absolutely love the food there.  Jenn went with her same order as last time the egg and cheese crepe and a banana chocolate crepe for desert. I went different and had a spicy Italian sausage crepe and a Spanish crepe for desert. It was an incredible meal and given that we were on of the few occupied tables in the restaurant it was like we had it to ourselves.

After lunch we went up to the 9th deck to check out a little space called “Game On”. Think of it like those old Microsoft Surface concepts that they used to show. We sat down and tried to play a game like Marbles that didn’t work so we then changed to a very competitive game of checkers. I forgot how competitive we could get and we were we both out for blood in this game of checkers. Luckily for our marriage the time to go came and we both ended up with four kinged checker pieces. Let the records show we ended in a draw but that I Joel Szerlip was about to make a pretty stellar offensive that would have ended Jenn’s chances for victory.

We made our way off the ship and met up with our excursion group on the pier and made our way to the bus that took us to the beach. As you would expect the beach was stunning. The beach was all crystal clear blue water that was warm, not bath water warm, but warm. Jenn and I picked an awesome spot right up front with a nice umbrella that kept us from burning on top of our already pretty red burns. The excursion lasted around two hours and we were back on the bus on our way home. It was the perfect amount of time any longer and I think we would have been like lobsters.

After we boarded our cruise ship it was time to get ready for our first specialty restaurant dinner. Of the four this is the second most fancy of the four restaurants on board and is called the Tuscan Grille. We arrived around 15 minutes late to our 6:30 reservation, and didn’t get out of there until a bit after 8:30. The Tuscan Grille is an Italian Steakhouse and has a giant menu of selections. Since it’s an Italian Steakhouse we used our second bottle of wine, which was an awesome Cab from Australia. For our first course Jenn started off with the calamari and I went with filet mignon carpaccio. For our second course I went with the fried goat cheese salad and Jenn had her favorite minestrone soup.

For our main course we both went with the rib eye steak. However Jenn knows what she likes and so she asked for a side of the spaghetti bolognase with her pretty large rib eye and looked like she was in heaven. The pasta was to die for and the steaks were excellent. We also got a side of amazing garlic mashed potatoes.

After dinner we were dead tired and decided to skip out on the singers and dancers show and went back to our room. We ended up watching Hope Springs that was a pretty good movie and hit the sack after. It was an incredible day and it makes us both even more excited for tomorrow’s day in St. Kitts.