March 2023 in Review

Posted on April 2, 2023 by Thistle

Perhaps it’s because of the time change (and ensuing insomnia), or because of the awful amount of heat we had from early March onwards, or because I spent a lot of time binge-watching TV, but March drifted by in a dreamlike state. It wasn’t a bad month, and in fact, I had some really wonderful moments throughout. They all just feel like they were ten years ago, even those that were only a few days back. I suppose that’s one reason I like writing up these monthly posts – they help me to remember, remind me of the good moments and touchstones as the year passes. (Photo: “Awkward Pet Portraits: Atticus)

Reading and Watching
I read five books this month, many of which were good experiences, as well as some not-so-great books. My favorite was definitely Nettle & Bone, and I look forward to reading more books by T. Kingfisher! (On another note, I finally chose my favorite book of January. I read many great books that month, but the one that has stuck with me the most and that I continue to think about regularly is The Spare Man, so I named it as top.)

Toward the end of the month, I was surprised by a new season of Love is Blind, even though the last season literally just ended. I have a couple friends that I watch this with, so we’ve kinda been binging this together, which is always fun even when you’re talking trash reality TV. I also watched the docu-series Waco: American Apocolypse on Netflix. I turned 14 during the siege of Waco and remember these very vague pieces of it from that time in my childhood. It was interesting to watch, particularly as one of the women interviewed – the mother of a survivor – is a family friend of a photographer I follow on Tiktok. The perspective of someone who wasn’t part of the cult, nor part of the law enforcement teams, added breadth to a situation that is too often painted in black-or-white.

The Ferals
Not much news in March. A new black kitty that looked like he could be twin to our Lord Grey showed up a few times at the beginning of the month, but we never saw him after that, and he didn’t seem interested in the food we put out. Hopefully he’s someone’s pet and he’s fixed!!

Health/Fitness
I have both good and bad news for health this month. My Mounjaro rx was supposed to increase to the next level in mid-March, but the pharmacy filled the lower dose and because it’s a refrigerated medicine, can’t take it back. I can’t get the new dose filled until closer to when this box is used up. So that’ll be some time in April, and in the meantime, I’m still maintaining my weight, just no further weight loss. On the other hand, I had more bloodwork taken this month, to compare with early December, and my numbers look more perfect than they’ve looked in years! So that’s the great news: Despite my size, my body is really healthy. For the bad news: I developed what they think is a shoulder impingement around mid-month. I have a referral out to ortho to verify, because there’s a possibility it may be a genetic disorder called calcium pyrophosphate deposition disease (CPPD), which my dad was diagnosed with about ten years ago. All this means is that for now, I have extremely limited range of motion in my right arm. Simple movements like turning a steering wheel, reaching across a table, or brushing my hair are excruciatingly painful. So fingers crossed I can see the specialist quickly!

Goals
Things continue to march along (no pun intended) steadily: crossing books off the priorities list, using up items, organizing photo-books for monthly purchase, trying out things I’ve meant to try out for a long time, etc. The big one completed this month was finally getting out of the massage membership that I’ve wanted to get out of for awhile. I love my monthly massages but not the way the business operates or the turnover rate of their therapists, so now I hope to find a better place to migrate to. I’ve also continued working on my photography goals, focusing a little more on the business side of things when I can.

House
We put aside some money from Jason’s work bonus to work on our backyard, and that project began this month. It’s still in early stages, but here is the progress so far! Borders and plants along the back fence, new plants to fill out around the nectarine tree. (Note: I do wish I could find a way to help the tree grow straight. The wind always blows this direction, so everything we’ve tried has failed.)

Favorite Photos
I had a lot of small photoshoots this month, nothing like the big group ones I usually practice with, so this month, I’ve included some of those shots as favorites. Just not ones from my personal photoshoot.

Top row: Alia & Sisa at brunch; Portrait of a Stranger: Shayla and Tup-Tup
Middle: author photo for SFF author Brandi Schonberg; my Veggie Tails kittens coming home; Portrait of a Stranger: Jodi
Bottom: exploring Bastrop State Park; Alia in the fields

Highlights of March
Out of the fog, these bright spots emerged:

  • our first FunDelivered package, which included my awesome new Relaxalotl hoodie!
  • girls’ day out brunch + bookshop with Alia and Sisa
  • tax refund and work bonus arriving the same week, allowing for aggressive payments on debts as well as some fun planning for the future!
  • meeting up with Jeanne!
  • meme-cat washi-tape and tarot stickers
  • a day out with friends in Bastrop
  • “Peckin’ Street” (the Irish Siri pronunciation of Pecan Street)
  • taking author photos for a longtime author friend
  • bottle baby kittens and their extreme cuteness and sweetness
  • trying bubble tea for the first time, mmm!
  • the skaters who thought Alia & I were doing a gender reveal the night we went out to take portraits with colored smoke
  • an unexpected new season of Love is Blind
  • Atticus’ return to extreme affection after his dental surgery – he must’ve been in a lot of pain and we hadn’t realized, thinking he’d grown less affectionate as he got older, poor guy!
  • meeting a bunch of bookish peeps at the No Pressure Book Club hosted by Nowhere

Coming up in April
It’s the beginning of depression-and-PTSD season for me, sigh. The heat has been so bad already the past month that I’m worried how bad April is going to be. At least my youngest should be home near the end of the month.

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The Woman in the Library, by Sulari Gentill (audio)

Posted on March 31, 2023 by Thistle

From the publisher: The ornate reading room at the Boston Public Library is quiet, until the tranquility is shattered by a woman’s terrified scream. Security guards take charge immediately, instructing everyone inside to stay put until the threat is identified and contained. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers, who’d happened to sit at the same table, pass the time in conversation and friendships are struck. Each has his or her own reasons for being in the reading room that morning–it just happens that one is a murderer.

Let me start by adding a caveat to the above description. That synopsis only describes one of the stories in this book, and while it is the primary story, it isn’t the story that makes this book the most interesting. This is a book of layers, and not in the thematic sense. It’s a nesting doll book: an author (Gentill) writing a book about an author (Hannah) writing a book about an author (Freddie) writing a book. That seems like a lot, but basically comes down to the primary plot, described by the synopsis, and the frame story about the author (Hannah) who is writing the primary plot. You never actually meet Hannah, but each chapter she writes is separated by an email from a beta-reader named Leo, who sends suggestions, corrections, and admirations from halfway across the globe. The inner story is set in Boston, where Leo lives, while Hannah is in Australia. And just to make things a bit spicier, Hannah adds Leo into her manuscript, the way that her fictional author Freddie adds her friends (Cane, Wit, and Marigold) into her manuscript.

Now, I’m not saying all that to turn anyone off or make this sound confusing, because it really isn’t. I’m saying this because the frame around the primary plot is what turns this novel from a fairly typical old-style thriller/mystery into something more unique. It was quite enjoyable to watch the Leo-Hannah plot-line develop outside of the Freddie-et-al story, even though we only get Leo’s side of the emails. You begin to see Hannah’s reactions to Leo’s suggestions through each new chapter, especially as the story progresses. I can’t say anything more without giving away spoilers, but certainly the dual-narrative provided a far more nuanced reading.

I particularly loved the way Gentill captured voices. The chapters that Hannah sends Leo are mostly-polished, but with some mistakes that you’d expect an Australian author who has never been to the US to make. Leo is a fellow writer, as of yet unpublished, and his suggestions and corrections range from helpful to absurd. Hannah obviously doesn’t use all of them, the way a real author wouldn’t take every suggestion from beta readers. Leo is also a bit over-the-top in the way he crafts his emails, and they come off as not publishing-quality prose, because emails aren’t meant to be publishing-quality prose. He’s also obviously trying to impress Hannah, leading his missives to be a bit floral and over-exaggerated except in moments when his guard drops and his truer thoughts and emotions come through. In that way, it was masterfully crafted.

The only thing that bothered me about this book was the ending. I can’t give specifics, obviously, but the ending was very abrupt, and neither story – Leo and Hannah’s correspondence, nor the unpolished manuscript – have a satisfactory ending. Neither give us enough information. The manuscript in particular ends on a very strange note that could be interpreted as menacing OR heartwarming (it’s that odd!), and it’s unclear what Hannah wants her readers to conclude from it. I raced through the book, only to run off a cliff at the end, essentially. It’s the sort of book I wish I could discuss with someone! I still recommend it, because I thought it was clever, well-crafted, and unfettered by tired-out thriller tropes. But I do wish the ending had been more satisfactory.

Performance: The audiobook is read by Katherine Littrell. She did a fairly good job, though I didn’t really like the deep-south accent she used for the characters who had southern accents. It wasn’t, however, so exaggerated that I felt embarrassed listening. Just not my fave. Most of the book was read excellently, though!

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The day I was mistaken for a pregnant lesbian…

Posted on March 28, 2023 by Thistle

Over the weekend, my friend Alia and I got together for some photos, kitten snuggle time, and dinner. The weather was shaping up to be perfect – mild and still with almost no humidity – and I’d found a beautiful spot for evening photos at a nearby park. Plus, I wanted to try out one of my new colored smoke sticks without the trial going to waste (not just going to light it in my yard to see how they worked!). Alia and I took a blanket and a smoke stick out to this park and walked over to the area where there was open field, flowers, and a pond reflecting the sunset light.

I’m really glad I decided to try out the smoke stick during a practice session, because it did not go according to expectation at all. Perhaps the stick I grabbed was a dud, because it only burned for a few seconds and left a bunch powder behind, or maybe it performed exactly as intended. Either way, I was expecting a cloud of smoke, and ended up with a small stream. Most of the few photos I got during that short period has the stick canister positioned behind Alia, making it look like she has a random stream of blue smoke coming up behind her. (Aka, the photos look ridiculous.) I did keep one reference photo with the canister in view, which is the one I’ve added here.

Here’s where the story gets fun. As the smoke went up, we began to hear cheers. There were a group of skaters at the other end of the park practicing in a concrete culvert. We’d passed them on the way in and paid them no mind. (Actually, I paid them some mind, because I marveled at how similar they looked to 90s skaters, same hair cuts and baggy clothes – one kid looked like an 18-year-old version of Kurt Cobain!) These guys were the ones cheering, though we didn’t know what they were cheering at, because they were entirely out of sight from our location. I admit, I’d been extremely nervous about using the smoke stick in the park, in case someone called the police, thinking we were setting fires. The police make me very nervous!! And when I heard cheers, I thought perhaps the boys had seen the smoke and were cheering because someone was doing something tentatively (or potentially?) illegal. But I didn’t think more of it than that. For all I knew, one of them had perfected some trick and they were all cheering for him, and the timing was coincidental.

Alia and I finished our photos, which turned out beautifully as expected. I’ve included a few of the non-smoke ones here. Then we headed back to the parking lot, to go back to my house for dinner. As we passed the skaters, the Kurt Cobain kid yelled out, “Gender reveal?”

It took me a moment to register the question. Alia didn’t even realize that they were talking to us. I then had to explain that no, there was no gender reveal, despite the blue smoke, and we were just taking photos. They all seemed pretty disappointed and said that was too bad and they guessed they’d cheered for no reason. So they were cheering for us – they just thought that we were having a baby!

The whole interaction made my night, made both of our nights. One of my favorite photography-tangential moments so far!

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Sunday Coffee: Tiktok, Meta, & Social Media

Posted on March 26, 2023 by Thistle

I have never liked Facebook. In the early days of social media, I was a MySpace person. I wasn’t looking for a way to connect with old friends that I hadn’t spoken with in years. I was looking for a way to meet likeminded people while I was stuck at home with three kids who were too young for school. I loved MySpace and some of my oldest internet friends are folks I met through there. But in the end, Facebook won out over MySpace in market share, and everyone migrated, and MySpace became a graveyard of sorts.

Over the years, I’ve tried to make FB a place I could feel comfortable. But as social medias go, FB got more and more annoying to navigate. It stopped being a place where I could just see my friends’ posts. Instead, I had to sort through all the junk, figure out which friends FB had hidden from me, hide all the spam pages and posts, etc. When I look back on old memories, I see the early days in 2009/10 when FB tried to operate like Twitter, is at the front of every status. I can also see the timeline of my usage – the years when I was trying to post often, the years I just gave up and went silent. I’ve nearly quit at multiple points in the past, and it was always the memories that kept me there. Then back in early August last year, I began migrating those memories off FB onto a private blog. At that point, I stopped posting 99% of the time, and have pretty much only posted brief updates or photoshoot stuff in the last six months.

As for other social medias: I stopped posting on Twitter sometime in 2015 or 2016. I think my account is still there, but I don’t have the app or anything and I need to just delete my  profile at some point. I have my Instagram, which has honestly been my favorite social media since MySpace, and it frustrates me that FB took it over at one point and changed it so much. I’ve gone through periods of barely posting there, too, but it remains my primary social media tool. During the pandemic, I joined Tiktok, and while videography is still not my personal media of choice, I’ve found TT to be the closest thing to MySpace in terms of meeting folks that I’ve seen so far.

Now, I’m sure everyone has heard about the (incredibly embarrassing) hearings going on in Congress right now, trying to get Tiktok banned because of supposed national security threat. It’s all BS – all social media platforms use data-mining, and Facebook/Meta is the absolute worst in terms of national security. But FB is the big American company, and they’ve spent millions of dollars in lobbyists these last few years to try to get TT banned, because it’s their biggest threat. FB doesn’t like threats, so they either buy them out or bully them out, and TT hasn’t allowed itself to be bought. The whole political theatre charade going on right now is disgusting, xenophobic, and racist, and the whole thing just sickens me. I completely agree that some regulations are needed and it would be great to have measures in place that protect people who use social media from data-mining, but they should apply to ALL social medias and not just to the “scary foreign one.”

Also, governments should not be limiting access to media. To do so smacks of the kind of censorship that we see in places like North Korea and Iran. I mean, Iran is currently blocking access to TT and other social medias because that’s how word of the ongoing revolution is getting out to people around the globe. The sanctioned news about the situation is misleading or entirely inaccurate, whereas brave folks are sharing from on the ground what’s really happening. A few years ago, I read a book called Without You, There is No Us, which was an inside look at what is happening in North Korea, and it’s extremely alarming to see the early stages of this in the US. It’s honestly really scary that the government is involved in this, and to know that they’re involved because companies like Meta (FB’s parent company) are hiring lobbyists to advocate for their involvement? Yikes.

I hadn’t decided before if I was going to get off FB when I finished transferring my memories in August, or just keep a profile without adding to it. There are groups that I enjoy participating in, and there are people I wouldn’t be able to keep up with outside of it, because FB is the only network they use. However, I can’t in good conscience stay there. Many folks are deleting their FB and Insta immediately, and I also can’t do that. I’m not sure what to do about Insta, tbh. I hate that they’re part of the Meta corporation, but they’re also my primary social. So I still need to figure that one out. FB, however, will be gone by the end of August.

What I would really love is to see another competitor to FB rise up, one that doesn’t rely purely on photos or video to engage. Very few people I know actually enjoy FB, they just stay there because it’s all that’s available. This would be a very good time to create or advocate for something new. Just saying.

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Nettle & Bone, by T. Kingfisher (audio)

Posted on March 24, 2023 by Thistle

As the youngest daughter to the royal family of a small kingdom, Marra is tucked safely away in a monastery, to be kept in reserve in case she might one day need to be married off for political alliance. Both of her sisters have suffered that fate already, successively married off to a cruel prince of a larger kingdom. Marra’s life in the monastery is comfortable, but when she discovers just how cruel her brother-in-law is, she sets off on a quest to save her family – if the quest doesn’t kill her first.

I cannot tell you how delightful this book was! Unusual protagonist (shy, sheltered, 30-year-old woman); the interesting friends she makes along the way (like the ancient, grumpy dust-wife with her demon chicken; or Bonedog, the bone dog Marra built from bones and wire and brought back to life); the dry humor all throughout; the focus on helping family and friends rather than on romance or personal gain. The whole thing reads like a grown-up fairy tale, a sheen of whimsy and glamour over the very heavy topic of domestic abuse. (Let that be a trigger warning. All actual abuse occurs off-page, but there’s a lot of discussion about it.)

A friend of mine has been trying to get me to read T. Kingfisher for months, and I’m so glad that I finally did. I’m definitely looking forward to reading more of her books, and also glad that I started here in this 250-page standalone as a way to get a feeling for her writing. I know it’s a book I’ll revisit, especially as I listened to this one and the audiobook (read by Amara Jasper) was an added delight. I can definitely see this becoming a cozy favorite to revisit in the future. Something about it reminds me of Howl’s Moving Castle, and while Nettle & Bone is a lot heavier in terms of themes, and didn’t turn into a multi-read book for me like Howl, it’s the sort of book that will delight and comfort me on rereads in the future. Plus, I have a feeling I missed a lot on my first reading, little things that I’ll see better the second (or third, or fourth, or tenth…) time through.

Posted in 2023, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

March Self Portrait: Woodland Fairy

Posted on March 21, 2023 by Thistle

I’ve made a goal in 2023 to do a self-portrait each month to experiment with styles and settings, in addition to learning more about being on the flip side of the camera. For this month, I’d had an idea rattling around my head based on a location I frequently pass on the way to and from the animal shelter that I foster through. There’s a park nearby that expanded its walkways a couple years ago, and where it now ends, there are these tall, reedy stalks. I thought it would be awesome to stand behind some of those and shoot through them, to have my face bisected by reeds, as if I were hiding but not very well. It put me in mind of a childlike innocence, and coupled with my love of fantasy and the ethereal, this turned into a woodland fairy or sprite idea.

The outfit was simple: a ruffled dress that I’d gotten from target, a starry green tulle cloak with a long train, and shiny green leggings to match. I got my hair cut this last weekend and it lent itself to the childlike vibe, especially once I added freckles and bold colors in makeup. Green eyeshadows to match my outfit, bright red lips to contrast. Because I would be walking half a mile to the shoot location and back again, I decided to just wear walking shoes and not do full-body/feet-inclusive shots. I also took minimal gear, just my tripod and a single lens that I wanted to shoot all the photos with.

Ironically, the original idea – of shooting through those reeds – didn’t end up working out. The reeds were too stiff to get behind and kept breaking, and there were thorny vines going up between them that kept ripping at my cloak. I got a few pictures in that area that came out okay, but the light was mostly wrong, and the setting was too close, and there was either too much texture or not enough. I wasn’t particularly happy about how the photos were coming out, so after I finished in that area, I moved to an open field nearby.

The end of the newly-built walkway in that park is a lollipop loop, so that bikers can just circle back around without having to stop and maneuver their bikes manually. Most of the inner part of the loop was grass and wildflowers, so I took a few standing photos before deciding to get on the ground.

Y’all. I hate grass. Absolutely despise grass. Even seeing photos of someone standing barefoot in grass makes me cringe. I don’t want any part of my skin to touch grass or grass-like plants. However, I had this nice, big tulle cloak, and I decided to use that as a blanket of sorts. And that’s how I came to be taking closeup portrait shots on the ground, which frankly turned out far better than almost all the other photos in the shoot! I love the colors, the textures, the lighting. They captured that combination of childlike innocence with mischievous intent that I originally intended.

So that’s March in the books! Not sure yet what I’m doing in April but I do have some new costume pieces coming to me, so maybe I’ll get to have a bit of fun with those. I’m also in the process of creating a full online presence dedicated specifically to portrait photography, including Insta and TikTok accounts (both @gossamer.studios) and a website to come. Hopefully by next month, I can include some links out to that!

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Sunday Coffee – StoryGraph

Posted on March 19, 2023 by Thistle

For the last few years, I’ve been trying to get away from Amazon purchases whenever I can. But I also realize there are other places where Amazon has a big grip on the commercial market, namely in Audible and GoodReads. I have yet to figure out what to do about Audible – there isn’t a comparable market elsewhere yet (though I’m told Spotify is trying to get there). And this year, I began using StoryGraph alongside GoodReads to see if it was a viable option to switch.

Importing my books from GR to SG was a fairly easy process. I had to make a few tweaks afterwards, but for the most part, everything appeared correct. I wasn’t worried about stats for former years, as I never tracked my stats through GR – I mostly used it for shelving purposes, to track books read in which year, in which genre, etc. StoryGraph seems to be more focused on stats, and I’ve found that I’m actually quite excited by some of that functionality. SG (both online and in app) is also far quicker to use, without the enormous lag times and failure rate of the GR app and website. I find that I’m a little more accurate about which edition I have for SG, since that’s what it uses for stats, whereas on GR, I don’t care as long as the shelves and dates read are accurate.

I haven’t fully switched over to SG yet, though, because I’ve struggled with one specific thing. Y’all are going to laugh at me, because I came to draft this post with the intent to ask if I was just stupid and couldn’t find a certain function on SG, or if SG didn’t have it. Then while I was typing up the sentence about importing from GR, I realized I had a memory of functionality related to what I hadn’t been able to find for the last two months. So I went to look again…and I found it. So yeah. Apparently I am just stupid.

Not trying to be cryptic. The thing that’s most important to me in a book database is being able to look back at the books on particular shelves/tags. I want to be able to click on my “translation” label and see what I’ve read in translation. I want to click on my 2022 shelf and see everything I read in 2022. SG doesn’t have the ability to create exclusive shelves like GR, so my “tbr future” shelf and “to investigate” list all get lumped into the TBR pile, and I’ve just labeled them as “tbr future” or “to investigate.” I want to be able to see each of those lists as well. However, for months, all I’ve been able to find is my TBR pile. I couldn’t even see a list of books I’d read this year so far. That was driving me insane. But again, it turns out that I just hadn’t looked in the right place, and while drafting this post, I found it. I can look at all my Read books, or all my books under any particular label. I can search within those labels. All the functionality is there, it’s just in a place I hadn’t looked.

This makes me happy. I’ll be honest – when I suddenly had a couple dozen books to add to my investigate list after those visits to Nowhere Bookshop, I didn’t bother to add them to GR. GR takes forever to locate and add books. The code for their website and app desperately needs to be updated and streamlined, and I didn’t want to spend half an hour adding books there when it took all of 5 mins to do on SG. I’m still tracking books that I’m reading in both places atm – the goal was to do both for a year and then decide which to abandon – but I’m leaning toward giving up GR sooner than later. Especially now that I discovered (today…) the last piece of the puzzle I couldn’t figure out.

Is anyone else out on StoryGraph? I’m pookasluagh out there, just like everywhere else. At present, I haven’t added people and I don’t use any of the social aspects, but that was only because this was originally an experiment, and I’m pretty sure that I’m a convert at this point.

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Fosters: Expect the Unexpected

Posted on March 17, 2023 by Thistle

On Tuesday, we said goodbye to Huey, Dewey, and Louie. They’d been with us for exactly four weeks, since Valentine’s Day. In that time, they went from uncoordinated wrestlers with triangle tails to big “fierce” playful boys who loved to cuddle but remained essentially rough-housers. We never did learn to tell Dewey and Louie apart except by their collars, they looked so identical, and the foster office had to ask us which was which by collar-color when we brought them in. Ha!

(Huey, Dewey, Louie)

So that was on Tuesday. Wednesday, we finished cleaning out the foster room, but still needed to sanitize and rearrange. Kitten season is only beginning and there haven’t been a lot of kittens on the foster-needed list, so J and I figured we’d get to all the deep cleaning in that room over the weekend. But then I got a call yesterday morning.

One of the foster coordinators had been caring for a litter of bottle babies for about three weeks. They were now healthy and growing, and likely about four weeks old. They still needed the bottle, but it was 4-5 hours between feedings and they could go 7-8 hours overnight. She asked if we could take in this litter of four, and I agreed.

Meet (from left to right) Brussels Sprout, Okra, Broccoli, and Green Bean. As usual, I can take no credit/blame for the names, heh. Sprout and Broccoli (the brown tabbies) are both girls, while Okra and Bean are boys. Okra is a true runt, much smaller than his siblings and underweight for his age, and he has this weird peach-fuzz hair with wrinkly skin that makes him look part sphinx cat. We’re not sure if this is just how he is, or if it’s due to how sick he was a few weeks back when the litter arrived at the shelter.

In any case, these four babies are with us for at least the next four weeks, potentially longer if it takes longer for them to make the two-pound mark. Usually, they don’t split up litters if some make weight and the others don’t. Because these four have been bottle fed since early days, they’re extremely social, though they’re also pretty timid (likely because they’ve spent a lot of time at the shelter as their foster mom works). Over the next month or more, we plan to help them grow into the sweetest, cuddliest, most social babies ever!

Right now, they’re confined to a playpen because they’re so little. I did get a big chunk of the room sanitized before they came home, and after J got home from work Thursday night, he rearranged the furniture so we could sanitize the floor in those sections. Keeping a foster room clean and safe for multiple litters is a Process! But worth it, because by taking home this litter, we free up the shelter to accept more kitties for rescue, just as kitten season is starting to ramp up. Plus it means we get to snuggle a lot of kittens, and that’s some instant serotonin right there!

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WW – Bastrop Birthday Bash

Posted on March 15, 2023 by Thistle

This past Saturday, a group of friends and I drove up to Bastrop for a belated birthday trip. I’d never been to Bastrop State Park before, and I’d learned that there was an indie bookstore in Bastrop as well, so that’s what I wanted to do with friends for my birthday.

Things I did not anticipate: Bastrop was a much larger city than I expected. I thought I’d be going through some mostly rural podunk town of 2-3k people, with a single main street where we could get lunch and visit the bookshop. No. It’s a city of 10k folks that’s near enough to Austin that its part of Austin’s metro area. It has several major highways going through it, though the bookstore was indeed on the old main street. The other thing I didn’t anticipate was that it would be over 90 degrees with bright, intense sun on that Saturday. The cold front that was supposed to make the day beautiful got delayed by a few days. Despite sunscreen and parasols, there was a lot of sunburn going on! Didn’t help that there was almost no shade at the park. Bastrop State Park had a major fire about a decade ago, so much of its tree growth died out and is still regrowing.

My plan for the park was to hike (walk) one of the small loops for maybe 1-1.5 miles on mostly-flat paths. I also wanted to take a few photos, planned and impromptu, while along the route. That part all went to plan. Also, I worked up the courage to ask several strangers if I could get photos of them, which honestly turned out to be the most exciting part of the day. It was completely nerve-racking and I expected folks to be annoyed, but they all seemed surprised and delighted that someone wanted to take their photos. There were two women in ren-faire dresses with hiking boots, another another woman with close-shaved blue hair and almost full-body tattoos. All the shots came out gorgeous, especially one in particularly of the third woman.

After our walk and pics, we got to have FunDelivered excitement. If you haven’t heard of this, look it up, it’s amazing! You can buy unclaimed packages through FunDelivered, and have no idea what will be inside. The fun is in the experience of opening and seeing what you ended up with, and trading stuff around if you’d like. It’s a big trend on Tiktok right now and I thought it looked awesome, so Jason and I ordered a box a few weeks back. We opened a few packages, and I had the rest left for this day in Bastrop. Gifts ranged from a pair of (off-brand) running shoes to a spool of fishing line. My favorite – and so I’m really glad I’m the one who opened it – was a “Relaxolotl” pocket hoodie that was just my size!

The four of us had lunch at a bizarre (but delicious) Lebanese-Italian combo restaurant, and then Stephanie had to return home while the rest of us drove over to the bookstore. The Painted Porch Bookshop was a lot smaller than I expected with a limited selection – a lot more like I’ve seen in indie bookshops over the years. (I’ve grown spoiled with Nowhere in the last two weeks, heh.) But they also had some really fun items, and I did buy a few things, including a Furbi pin that says “Take me back to the 90’s” ha! Across the street from the bookshop was a bakery/cafe, so we decided to get some pie before making the two-hour drive back to San Antonio.

It was a lovely day. Did I end up burnt to a crisp? Yeah, pretty much. Was it worth it? Definitely.

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American Predator, by Maureen Callahan (audio)

Posted on March 13, 2023 by Thistle

Subtitle: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

Israel Keyes was a serial killer active all across the US during the 2000s, before he was caught in early 2012. He was meticulous and calculating, and so far under the radar that no one connected the crimes he committed to a single person, much less to him, until after his capture. The official description of this book goes much more into detail about Keyes’ methodology – his travels, his kill-kits, the way he stalked his randomized victims – but I’m just going to say this: This book is an incomplete look at a man about whom so much but so little is known, and some speculation of the damage he might have left in his wake.

I’m iffy about true crime. I love shows like Unsolved Mysteries, that focus on trying to find answers and get resolution for folks. True crime that showcases forensics, search methodology, and how law enforcement found and captured the perpetrator is far better in my mind than true crime that glorifies the crime or the criminal. I don’t get the romance of serial killers, but I am interested in the psychological aspects of crime, mostly because I’m interested in psychology/sociology generally. I’m also very turned off by exploitative true crime. Respect for victims and their families is of utmost importance, which is why I tend to gravitate toward either historical true crime or, again, shows like Unsolved Mysteries, where families are asking for help. Point is, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect from this book when I picked it up. The subtitle indicated that it was more about the search than the crimes.

The first portion of this book is about Keyes’ last victim, who eventually led to his capture. At this point, it mostly highlighted the utter ineptitude of Anchorage law enforcement. Eventually, Keyes was caught in Texas and transported back to Alaska, where interrogations began. This continued to highlight both ineptitude and the beginnings of egotism and corruption throughout both the police and legal system. At this point, the book veered off in three directions: Keyes’ life history (especially childhood), a couple crimes that Keyes confessed to in interviews with police, and a bunch of suspected crimes that he didn’t confess to. Almost all of the latter 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the book were based on Keyes’ interviews over the months between his capture and suicide.

I will say this – the book didn’t glorify or romanticize Keyes. However, because so little information about his crimes has ever been confirmed, the book necessarily had to focus on Keyes himself. So we hear a lot about his horrible childhood, his early sociopathic tendencies, his struggles with religion and sexuality, etc etc etc. There was so much internal politicking in the law enforcement offices that the interviews with Keyes were largely bungled and incompetent after the early days, when Keyes readily confessed to another crime – the only other one that can be almost-definitively tied back to him. Everything else in the book is repetitive speculation combined with the posturing of inept cops/lawyers.

In the end, I’m not sure I really understood the point of the book. Yeah, it’s suspected that Keyes was this serial killer tied to about a dozen bodies, but literally only one was confirmed, with two others highly probable. The rest is speculation, some solid, some very farfetched. And in the absence of any concrete information, this is just a story about a fucked up guy who did a fucked up thing and then claimed that he did far more than he would actually admit. Mixed with a story about how law enforcement ranged from inept to corrupt. And all of that is just as easily, and more quickly, obtained through a read of Keyes’ Wikipedia page.

Performance: This book was narrated by Amy Landon, who did an excellent job. Honestly, I think her performance kept me more interested in the book than I would have been otherwise.

Posted in 2023, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , | Leave a comment