Lucky Soul

I was recently reading some online music reviews when I stumbled across a review for Lucky Soul’s debut album The Great Unwanted in a sidebar for a review of another band. Without hearing any of their music, I took a chance and purchased the album from Amazon.com based entirely on the strength of the review, the classiness of the album cover, and the description of their sound.

I was extremely pleased with the results of my gamble.

This album is really quite charming, and I found myself listening to Lucky Soul’s smooth neo-50s-meets-indie-pop sound in constant rotation for several days after purchasing it. The musicians keep things interesting and very catchy from one solid song to the next while singer Ali Howards delivers a nice range of vocals that hit everything from sexy and fun to sharp and poignant.

Highly recommended! Especially if you like the Life-era sound of The Cardigans.

Roy’s Hawaiian Fusion Cuisine

Yesterday (September 7) was my five year wedding anniversary. Usually, my wife and I take a trip somewhere out of town for this occasion, but this year we decided to stay in town during our vacation with no plans in particular other than that we would eat dinner at a nice restaurant on the actual day of our anniversary. This is no small feat mind you as my wife suffers from celiac disease aka gluten-intolerance. Essentially, this means she cannot eat anything derived from wheat, rye, barley, or oats (usually) without getting really sick in her digestive system for days. So if you think about how much food out there involves bread, pasta, or just seasonings that involve wheat as a filler product, then you can start to imagine how annoying and hard it is to find places where we can safely eat worry free. Fortunately, there are more and more places that are gluten aware and a few that even offer gluten-free menus, but even then we have to worry about whether the staff is truly well-informed because we have often encountered staff who prepare a salad with croûtons and simply scoop them off when they see the note about gluten-free food thinking that this will suffice when it will not.

Over the last few years since her diagnosis, our restaurant choices have been pretty narrow as it’s such a pain to feel out a new place for safety and suitability, but in the last year we have had a new resource to turn to for guidance in the shape of the Atlanta Gluten Free Dining club. People share reviews there of places where they have successfully enjoyed gluten-free meals. So with our anniversary rapidly approaching and wishing to try someplace different, we consulted the group’s forum and found a few options including the one that we eventually settled upon: Roy’s.
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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

So my wife and I went to see the latest Harry Potter film last evening.

I am not a hardcore Harry Potter fan. When the original film came out, I had never read any of the books as I don’t tend to read children’s books, although I had heard that they were rather good from some of our friends. However, the 2001 film won me over for its excellence and its since of wonder. When the second movie finally loomed near, my wife and I read the first book, and thereafter, we adopted this pattern for our Potter consumption: read the novel from which the previous movie was adapted to refresh our memories and then see the lastest film entry.

Our pattern was doomed to failure as we continued to enjoy the successive film adaptions. After watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, my wife could wait no more and she plunged ahead devouring books 4-6. Seeing as I didn’t want to risk having the story spoiled for me accidentally and seeing as my wife was eager to discuss the books, I too followed her in this reading endeavor and found myself enjoying every moment of the series.
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