Thanks to Adam Freetly at archGFX for writing a widget-friendly version of Depo Clean. Now I have my blogroll, comments section, and all sorts of treats back, plus a great new design. Boy, do I love the word free.

I hope you like the new theme at What Makes Me Laugh. It’s by Derek Powazek and it’s called DePo Skinny. I think it’s more stylish than my old theme, but I do miss my old header. And I’m missing a lot of other stuff too – like my blogroll, and other sidebar widgets. Plus, the footer is still incomplete, so please bear with me as I figure out how to widgetize this theme and work the kinks out. It may take a while.

So, I went to see the movie Julie & Julia last Friday night. And I loved it. Mostly because the heroine is a blogger who achieves fame and fortune and it appealed to my fantasies, but also because I love to cook. I also despise the Joy of Cooking (my mother will be shocked and my husband will be shocked – he swears by it). I also love Nora Ephron and all of her books and Meryl Streep is simply brilliant.

I never really thought about Julia Child all that much. I might have seen her cooking show once, maybe twice? I don’t know. I like French cooking, but it’s a little heavy on the butter and the force feeding of geese for their livers. Deboning a duck? I don’t think I’ll ever try it. But I must admit it was a genius idea for a blog. Now that I’m jealous about.

Hannah demonstrates her "jazz hands" on the trail to Lake Agnes

I get very annoyed with magazine editors who run teasers like, “The Top 10 secret hiking spots, or secret small towns, or secret erogenous zones, or some such nonsense.”

I mean, c’mon, do we have to advertise the best places to the whole world? Why can’t some things remain undiscovered?

So, it’s with some regret that I will announce my new favorite hiking trail. Though it’s really no secret. Lots of people visit it already. Just don’t tell anyone else, will you?

Last Friday we hiked to the teahouse at Lake Agnes, a beautiful glacial lake in the Canadian Rockies. The teahouse has no running water or electricity and all of its goods are brought in by foot, or horseback. It even has its own facebook page (so it’s not too secret). To get there, you hike about 3.4 kilometers from Lake Louise in Banff National Park. That’s the only clue I’m giving. You’ll just have to be adventurous and find it on your own from there.

Lake Agnes teahouse

Anyway, my sister Laura planned the hike and though Doug and I dragged behind a little bit, she and Hannah patiently waited for us to make it to the teahouse.

When we arrived, I was stunned by the selection. They don’t serve just any old tea. We chose Adams Peak Rare White Tea because Laura insisted that having Earl Gray would be a little like going to a specialty ice cream shop and ordering Vanilla. Point taken.

The Teahouse menu

Our waiter sold us on the tea when he explained that it is one of the few teas to be harvested above 8,000 feet on “a mountain sacred to almost all of the world’s religions” with a peak called “the footprint of Buddha.” Well … this tea must be tried. It was delicate and flavorful, just like my lemon poppyseed cake, and it gave me some extra oomph in my step as we climbed the next 2 kilometers to the peak of the Beehive for a spectacular view of the Canadian Rockies.

At the Beehive summit

On the drive back, we passed by Canmore, where Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt used to share a home. It was at this moment in the drive that Hannah turned and repeated a question to me that she overheard two other women puzzling over. It was a question so complex and concerning that I’m not sure it will ever be answered to anyone’s satisfaction.

She looked over at me in the car and said, “Why do you think Jennifer Aniston can’t keep a boyfriend?”

And so it is that I leave you with that little brain puzzler of a question, to be discussed over a pot of sacred tea in the heights of the Rocky Mountains. Truly, the answer may be the world’s final hidden secret.

We turned off our television for the summer, and after going through withdrawals that included turning up the volume on a Steve Earle album and playing air guitar around the house for entertainment, I decided to get Netflix as a television substitute. Not that dancing around the house isn’t good for us, we agreed to do it more often, but one can only play so many games of Scrabble and dance for so long before looking for mind-vacating entertainment again. 

Anyway, I’m a big fan of Ricky Gervais. I love his standup. I love the BBC’s The Office. And I love Extras, the series he did for HBO. But I didn’t catch the second season of Extras, which is a show about Ricky Gervais and a friend playing extras on film sets while not-so-secretly wanting careers as “real actors”. So, I ordered it from Netflix last week.  Each episode includes a famous actor letting down their guards on the set and saying some things you would never imagine would come out of their mouths. Well, not to give too much away, Ricky’s character Andy Millman gets a big break in the second season, and starts his own sitcom. One of the episodes includes Daniel Radcliffe, the actor that plays Harry Potter in the series of movies based on the books.

Anyway, I laughed so hard I cried over the scene with Daniel Radcliffe, Ricky Gervais, Dame Diana Rigg, and Ashley Jensen that I’m including it in this post. For Harry Potter fans, this may be blasphemous, but it makes for incredible comedy, and includes a lesson in the usage of can or may. I couldn’t ask for more. Ricky Gervais is simply brilliant!