The Lost Metal, by Brandon Sanderson (audio)

Posted on December 12, 2022 by Thistle

This is the fourth installment of a Mistborn series that takes place between the first and second trilogies (of three trilogies) that Sanderson says he has planned for the Mistborn world (Scadrial). You can read the GoodReads summary if you want details, but essentially this is a side-series that is essentially a fantasy western, complete with gun-toting constables and the days of early electric technology.

Before I address this particular book, I need to say this: I loved the original Mistborn trilogy. They’re the first books I read by Sanderson, the books that eased me into his world (both his writing world and into the Cosmere). I chose them originally because they seemed the most approachable for someone who had never read “high fantasy” before. They’re still my go-to recommendation for people who want to start reading Sanderson. Back then, I knew that there were a trio of trilogies planned and roughly their time periods, so I was surprised when these Wax & Wayne books began releasing. They were a side project, I heard, that turned into something more. People loved them.

I…didn’t. Actually, I couldn’t stand them. I’m not a fan of westerns and I really despised Wayne in particular. The first book, The Alloy of Law, was my first disliked Sanderson book. It took me years to come around to reading the second book, which I ended up liking a bit more. I thought maybe it was just the first book, just a dud, but then I read the third and disliked it almost as much. All that to say that I was not excited going into this book. Most Sanderson books, I began reading the instant they’re available, even going so far as to read pre-released chapters that Tor often puts out in the weeks leading up to release. This book released in November, and it took me weeks to finally download the audio and get going.

So why read it at all? It’s important. Not just to the Mistborn world, but the Cosmere as a whole. There is a lot of crossover between these novels, and while each series can be read standalone and you don’t have to pay attention to the Cosmere to read them, I’m definitely a huge Cosmere fan and want to know everything there is about it. I love learning all the secrets. I want to know everything. So yes, after debating for weeks if I should reread the three previous books (which I barely remembered), I decided to just try to read The Lost Metal cold, just to get through it, just to get to the secrets.

In the end, I put it on par with the second book of the series, Shadows of Self. I enjoyed it more than the first or third, but it’s not likely a book I’ll reread. I’m glad I read it, I’m glad I got the secrets…but that’s about it. I’ll be happy to move to a different Mistborn era with different characters and (hopefully) a less cowboy feel.

Performance: The audiobook is read by Michael Kramer, who performs a lot of Sanderson’s books, including the entire Mistborn series so far. He’s one of those middle-of-the-road performers for me, not a fave but not bad either. The weirdest thing about this book was that he uses a lot of the same accents as he uses in the Stormlight Archive audios, so there were characters who sounded nearly identical to ones from an entirely different planet. That’s only an issue when you’re dealing with a series where certain people can literally hop from planet to planet, heh.

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Sunday Coffee – So Many Books

Posted on December 11, 2022 by Thistle

Back in mid-September, my reading mojo just completely disappeared. I finished reading one book on 9/10, and didn’t finish another until 10/5. For most of that time, I wasn’t reading at all. Then, the rest of October, I only managed to finish four total books, and one of those was a 2-hour audio novella! In November, I literally read a single book. So far, December is going better – mostly because I’ve forced myself to finish a few audiobooks – but my TBR stack, kept under control for most of 2022, is skyrocketing at an alarming rate.

A big cause of this? Book of the Month. My physical non-library books are stacking up. I’ve been grabbing a lot more books from BotM, including add-ons, for the last few months. I mostly read books from the library or on audio, so these physical, owned books tend to fall to the wayside a bit unless I’m particularly excited for them the second they arrive. Result being that I now have more than half a dozen owned physical unread books sitting on my shelf. While it’s an unusual thing in the book world, I don’t usually have unread books on my shelf. These I have now equal more unread, owned books on my shelf than I’ve had since spring of 2011.

Additionally, I have a whole pile of books on hold from the library that are all starting to come in after months of being on the waiting list. Beyond that, my virtual TBR is starting to stack up. Normally, I take that opportunity to order the 20-30 books on the virtual list from the library in order to preview and determine which of them to cull, but with so many currently at home, I don’t want to add more to my plate. However, this does mean that I probably need to have a little personal readathon to clear my shelves out a little. Probably with less ruthlessness than usual, however, since I actually did spend money on these.

In good news, two of the long-time library holds I received this week both ended up being culled from my list after a little preview-reading and some spoilery reviews on GoodReads. (Spoilery reviews are the absolute best for helping me to determine if something is worth continuing when I’m not sure!!) One of those books (As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow) is one I might return to in the future as it seems to be a very well-written book, just too gruesome/heavy for my current mental health. On the other hand, I’m soooo happy I abandoned The Family Game before I got to the more, shall we say, over-the-top sections. (Seriously, if you have no interest in this book, check out the spoilery reviews. It’s like Mystery Science Theatre for books! I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time.)

Normally, December is a very quiet, non-bookish month for me. It’s not unusual for me to finish only 1-2 books. This year, there will be four audiobooks in addition to whatever I finish in print, unless I choose to put off the one that releases on the 27th (Nine Liars!!!!!!!) and start the new year with it. I’m going to have to annoy myself by posting 2022 reviews all the way into 2023, long after my end-of-year book wrap-up, which I despise doing! I like to end the year full-stop before the 1st, but I also can’t stomach not reviewing most of the books that I read. Who knows? Maybe after months and months of barely getting a post or two out each week, I’ll start posting 5-6 times a week just in time for everyone to be too busy with holidays to read blogs anyway. Heh.

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WW – A Food Time Capsule

Posted on December 7, 2022 by Thistle

Back in 2011, I was deep into the process of losing the weight I’d gained during the 11 years of hidden teeth infections (1998 to 2009). My goal was to lose 100 lbs, and that summer, I’d hit the halfway mark. For some reason I can’t account for, the first milestone along this journey that I celebrated was when I hit a third of the way to my goal, and I did it by stacking up a pile of books that weighed the same as I’d lost so far. I did the same at the half, 2/3rds, and goal weights, and with the final one, I stood on the piles that represented 100 lbs of books. (It was a fun picture, but extremely precarious, and I’ll never do that again, heh.) But books weren’t my only way of marking progress, and at the halfway mark in the summer of 2011, Jason and I decided to do a similar photo set, only with our table carrying 50 lbs of food.

At the time, there were a lot of photos going around social media that said stuff like, “This is what 20 lbs looks like in sticks of butter,” and you’d have people taking photos with boxes of butter around them to represent what they’d lost so far. It was uniform, easily identifiable, and a fairly universal concept. However, we didn’t want to buy and then store 50 lbs of butter or some other individual food, so we used a smorgasbord from our pantry and fridge to make up those 50 lbs.

We took a couple different photos, and because I was so entranced with how different I looked after over a decade of being unable to control anything my body did, I ended up keeping them all. They’re fun photos to look back on, but honestly, I like them better now because they serve as a kind of family food time capsule. In the summer of 2011, my kids were 10, 9, and 7. Morrigan was about to start his last year of elementary school, and he’d just had braces put on for the first time. I used to throw “dance parties” for them in the living room, and I still brought them with me down to the park to walk (before they started complaining that they were bored of it). Food is an ever-evolving item in a household with children as they grow and accept/reject foods, as you discover food allergies or intolerances, as you introduce new things, as old things stop being made, as you get tired of some meals and move on to new ones.

These photos show me what we ate in the Gignacery 11.5 years ago. Cereal and milk was a staple. Back then, we could get big bags of frozen chicken breasts from HEB. You still can, but in 2017, the quality of the chicken changed and half of it would be unusable, so we stopped getting them. I can’t remember the last time we bought Greek Gods yogurt. Mini bagels used to be a staple of my snacks, but I never eat them anymore. We were drinking fat-free milk then, and have moved to 2% or whole milk now. I have absolutely no idea why we had a giant jug of Ragu because I can’t remember ever using that for spaghetti. I also have no idea why we had Great Value oats because we tended to avoid that brand as much as possible. And so on.

It’s great, having these little time capsule photos. Not only do I see the spread of food, but it’s also a throwback for me to see those ridiculous chairs we had (which came from the mormon church, heh), and the stupid curtains that were up on our house when we moved in (2006) and we literally never bothered to take down the entire nine years we lived there. There was that shirt that I loved, and hey, this was back when my hair was really curly and not nearly so grey, ha! Anyway, I’ll stop strolling along memory lane, but I quite enjoyed this. It makes me think I need to document food over time a little more often (even if not in a plunked out pile like this one!).

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Sunday Coffee – So Covid Isn’t Fun

Posted on December 4, 2022 by Thistle

Good morning! I’m alive. Barely. Heh. No, honestly, things aren’t too bad. Covid wasn’t fun. I had a couple days of feeling like absolute garbage, and then I had a really severe reaction to the antiviral that nearly landed me in the ER again. But I survived that night and my doctor took me off the antiviral, so then I started to get better. At this point, it mostly feels like a long, lingering cold – coughing, sneezing, my lungs feel a bit like they’re filled with cotton like they do when you get bronchitis. It could have been much worse.

The weirdest thing about covid, at least for my experience, was the weird covid brain thing. People talk about brain fog, and there was some of that too, but mostly it was like I stopped forming short-term memories. Like, there was one day when I went to take some medicine, probably took it, left the bathroom, turned around to go back in to take the medicine, only I realized I’d probably just taken it, and I wasn’t sure. (This is VERY unusual for me!) Then there was this weird kind of neurological cross-fire thing going on, where I’d be thinking one thing, and I’d either say or type out something completely different. It was especially bad trying to type on my computer, because my fingers also couldn’t keep up with their normal typing speed, so the typos were ridiculous. Then on top of the typos would be random words thrown in that I didn’t think. Like, I may have been intending to type “covid brain” and what comes out is “covid table.” Like…what?? I’m glad that part at least is over!

Anyway, Jason and I are both on the mend. He worked from home Thursday and Friday, taking breaks during the day to rest as well. Our house is a wreck and we’re trying to catch up from not being able to grocery shop or wash dishes or look at our bills, etc. All in all, though, if we had to have covid, at least it was fairly mild and we made it through to the other side.

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November 2022 in Review

Posted on December 1, 2022 by Thistle

It’s been a big month. I started to get back into hiking just a little, I had a couple photo shoots (including one I was hired for!), then of course it was Thanksgiving this month. Plus getting covid for the first time, boo. Lots of big things.

Reading and Watching
Well, I didn’t read much this month, only finished one book, Bleeding Heart Yard. At least it was a good one. On the other hand, I watched WAY too much TV. The newest episodes of Manifest were finally released, and I binged those in addition to going back through the first three seasons. GBBO wrapped up and the holiday episodes released. There was more trash reality TV aka Love is Blind. Jason and I were going to watch Wednesday over this past weekend but of course covid interfered with that. So that’ll come in December.

The Ferals
Not much to report. Dexter and Deedee returned to the shelter for surgery. When they hadn’t appeared on the adoption list in eight days (normally the turnaround is 2-3 days), I was worried that their neurological condition had caused surgery to go poorly, which can happen. I wrote the foster office and it turns out there just wasn’t enough room down at the adoption center, so they were waiting their turn together still at the hospital wing. They finally showed up on the website on the 29th. I did write up bios for them that will hopefully encourage them to be adopted together, but we’ll see.

Health/Fitness
Like I said above, I did manage to get a few short hikes in this month, as well as a few yoga workouts. My body is definitely more mobile than it has been, but I still have limitations and I’m trying not to push too hard. As for the Mounjaro/weight update, Thanksgiving and covid both affected this, but I’m ending the month about 3 lbs down for a total of 14 lbs lost in the 13 weeks on this med. This is exactly the slow, steady rate we’re looking for. My doctor and I are waiting until I plateau out before moving me up to the next level of the medicine, so that we’re not rushing things and causing a bad reaction like I had to Ozempic. Meanwhile, I’ve hit my lowest weight of 2022 this month, which makes me happy, and if I can continue around this rate of loss, I’ll be back to where I was pre-Ozempic in a year. Yeah, I’ll still be obese and I’ll still have a long way to go, but I’ll be miles better than where I’ve been for the last couple years, the last year especially.

Quarantine Diaries
Right now I am hella grateful for the scientific community. My vaccines – even though I haven’t had the latest booster yet – have kept my covid case manageable. Not pleasant. It felt like I simultaneously had a terrible cold, a mild flu, the beginnings of bronchitis, and strep on top of that. Yeesh. I know that without the vaccines, I would have been in the hospital. My immune system basically doesn’t exist at this point. At least this was just unpleasant. The worst part was actually the severe reaction I had to the antivirals, which almost landed me in the ER…

Jason tested positive the day after me, but he had his omicron booster recently (I haven’t had mine yet) so his symptoms have been fairly mild. My sister, brother-in-law, and stepmom also tested positive, so whatever my dad brought to Thanksgiving must’ve been particularly virulent! We’re all recovering now, but it’s going to take time. Meanwhile, it appears as if my mother is having either flu or her third round with covid in 11 months, unvaccinated, and without proper medicine. At this point, her ignorance and willfulness is just really sad. She absolutely knows she’s in the wrong, her pride just refuses to admit it.

Favorite Photos
The following photos are divided into non-Witchuals photos and my Witchuals photoshoot faves. I do have some favorites from my first hired photoshoot, but that was a family’s photos and I won’t be including them obvs for the family’s privacy.

Top, left to right: the red queen; grasshopper; two giant cats trying to sit in a bed meant for one
Bottom, left to right: sad Gavroche after all the fun new people left the house; my brother-in-law and sister at Thanksgiving; my uncle and his puppy

All six of these are of course from my Witchuals photoshoot back on the 13th. It was hard to narrow this down to six favorites, but this is what I chose!

Highlights of November
For the most part, it was actually quite a nice month. Even the bad parts had their up-sides. Here are some of my favorite moments:

  • Rillo got adopted on the 1st! None of my sweet babies had to wait longer than half a week before finding their forever homes!
  • got to see my last foster batch – who had to go to a different foster home because their mama didn’t like seeing our adult cats – show up on the adoption list, and they look so good!
  • nerdy board game night with my girls!
  • discovering a pop-up market when out with a friend, including a stall that sold stickers of cat tarot cards (including MY card, the 8 of Swords!), and later, another vender actually asked me to schedule to take her family photos for her !!!
  • lunch out with some cousins I hadn’t seen in over a year
  • Love is Blind watch parties (yes, multiple) with friends
  • witchy photoshoot in the park
  • making a The Craft themed movie poster out of one of our witchy photos, ha!
  • Dexter’s eye recovered well enough that he didn’t have to get it removed!
  • Ambrose made it safely to their station in Korea
  • everything related to our long Thanksgiving week shenanigans minus the covid bits
  • my first hired photoshoot!

Coming up in December
Laurence comes home mid-December, and Morrigan and Katy will be here over Christmas. At the end of the month, at our annual NYE bonfire, we’ll be scattering my grandma’s ashes. I have quite a few events and outings scheduled already, but we’ll see how many of them I make it to – I really don’t want to push myself too hard while my body is healing from covid! Hopefully, though, it’ll be a very happy month!

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Sunday Coffee – Thanksgiving Week Shenanigans

Posted on November 27, 2022 by Thistle

Happy belated Thanksgiving to the US folks out there! Jason had off this week from work, so we got to spend a little time just hanging out, and our Thanksgiving festivities started on Wednesday. We had a few errands to run, and decided to turn “errands” into a fun date day. First, we stopped by the store to pick up a jacket I’d ordered a couple weeks ago, and then wandered over to look for potential 2023 calendars. (The calendar bit is a thing we do every year together, usually as part of our anniversary festivities. We didn’t find the right one yet this year.) Then we headed across town to pick up a few Christmas gifts at Knight Watch, stopping by Mildfire Coffee for some beans along the way. Then as a spontaneous surprise, Jason took me next door to Knight Watch’s clothing shop, The Sanctuary, where we picked out a flowy skirt to match the new jacket.

Lunchtime followed, eating out at a place called Eggspectations (which I’ve wanted to take him to literally since March 2020, but every time we’ve tried, something’s gone wrong!), before we came home. Our pumpkins from Halloween were starting to get a little soft and mushy in places, so we took them to the back corner of the yard and used a sledgehammer and a pickaxe to smash them up. The squirrels, raccoons, possums, skunks, and foxes can steal what they like, and maybe some of the seeds will take root and grow. They didn’t last year, though – our little urban zoo ate it all, heh. After smashing pumpkins (ha!), I got into the new outfit with two different shirts to see what color scheme worked best, and what’s the best way to get an accurate feel? Impromptu photo shoot in the yard, of course! I decided to play at fairy tales, and got a couple fun photos. While I edited those, J made some orange cranberry muffins for Thanksgiving, and then we watched some silly tv together before bed. It was a really fun day.

Thanksgiving morning started, of course, with the Macy’s parade. It was a little bittersweet this year – our first time watching it without any of the kids home. After the parade, we headed over to my aunt and uncle’s house for Thanksgiving proper. They combine Thanksgiving festivities to invite both sides of their family. Since the pandemic, there are a lot fewer folks from my biological side of the family. My aunt’s mother is elderly and immunocompromised, so only vaccinated invitees can attend. My dad’s sisters are very liberal, but have gone down the extreme new-age road of personal body purity, including distrust of traditional medicine like vaccines. (Just goes to show, both sides of the political spectrum can get sucked into misinformation campaigns.) On a better note, there is no bitterness or family divide because my aunts can’t attend Thanksgiving – there’s a specific reason, and everyone makes the choice for themselves. It’s one of the nicer ways I’ve seen people act about this when opinions are divided.

My aunt does a phenomenal job with Thanksgiving each year. We all bring dishes, but as far as I’m aware, she handles the bulk of dinner. With such a large array of people there, there are quite a few allergies and food restrictions to contend with. Thanksgiving has such a wide variety of food that most of us can find things to eat, but my aunt makes sure there are good options. This year, for instance, there were separate batches of mashed potatoes (one dairy-free), a vegan mushroom-lentil chili for an alternative main course, regular and gluten-free pies, etc. And to top it all off, she made this absolutely beautiful spread of appetizers, fruit, and decor, along with several spiked punches, for people to enjoy before everything was set up.

The day itself was horribly muggy and nearly 80 degrees without even a breeze. We sat outside a lot despite that, and it’s a good thing we did! One of the city’s greenway trails passes right behind my uncle’s house, and a biker saw us outside and hailed us. He’d been out longer than expected, and was a diabetic whose blood sugar had suddenly started crashing. We rushed inside to bring him a variety of sugary foods, so good deed done for the day! Being outside also meant spending more time with my aunt and uncle’s dog, Stella, who has a tendency to pee when excited if she’s inside. All in all, it was a lovely afternoon with a great meal, plus getting to see my sister, brother-in-law, and one of my cousins for the first time since the holiday season last year.

Friday ended up being a little strange. Traditionally, this is the day when my family puts up all our Christmas decor and lights. We made a little progress on this in the morning, and then I drove across town to a new-to-me park for my first hike since June. The semi-hike up a hill for October’s photoshoot gave me the confidence to sign up for a few easier walk/hikes. This was the first. It was a drizzling, grey day, but not as hot as Thanksgiving proper. Even though we didn’t put in a lot of miles, it was actually a really beautiful park (esp with the trees finally starting to turn!) and I didn’t have too many issues with those tendons/nerves in my back/hips, so yay!

For the bad news, though: My dad contacted us to let us know he tested positive for covid. He hadn’t been sick at all the day before, but he felt weird on Friday, so he took two rapid tests and both were positive. This of course means the entire family gathering was exposed, including the elderly, immunocompromised folks. Also possibly my hiking friends, though we were outdoors and mostly not in close enough proximity for long enough time that it’ll matter. Still. And there was meant to be a gathering at my dad’s house that evening, this time with those aunts who couldn’t come to Thanksgiving dinner, which would have been the first time I’d seen them in person since the pandemic began. Obviously that was canceled. Instead, my sister and brother-in-law came to our house to hang out (after all four of us had negative rapid tests, of course). We’d all been equally exposed and everyone (except me) had recently had the omicron-specific booster, and I’d had my fourth booster in July. I guess we’ll see what happens from here. I felt so bad for my dad. His symptoms were mild so I have hopes he won’t have too bad of a case, but I know he’s feeling really bad to possibly have exposed all those people at Thanksgiving. Stupid covid.

So anyway, that was our long Thanksgiving. We still need to finish putting the Christmas decorations up today, but we’ve mostly been taking it easy. Unfortunately, I seem to be sick. As of yesterday, I was still testing negative for covid (haven’t taken a test yet today) but I’m achy and my chest is tight and last night I spiked a fever. Fun times. We may just have fallen to the Virus for the first time in almost three years of this pandemic. Or maybe it’s just a plain old cold and I’m a bit baby, heh.

ETA: Positive for covid, going to head to urgent care for meds. Jason is still testing negative but he had his omicron booster fairly recently so hopefully he can dodge it!

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Bleeding Heart Yard, by Elly Griffiths (audio)

Posted on November 23, 2022 by Thistle

In this third installment of the Harbinder Kaur series, a high-ranking MP has been killed at his class reunion. His full group of former high school friends are now under suspicion, and the case dredges up an old death, once labeled accidental, from their last days at school.

Just a few days ago, I was talking about how sad I was that the Ruth Galloway series was ending. This is one of Griffiths’ other series, and while I’m not yet as attached to these characters, I can tell things are moving that direction. DI Harbinder Kaur has transferred to London, and there is now a full cast of characters – friends, colleagues, roommates, etc – to round out what was previously a bit lacking from her world. Additionally, folks from the previous books show up briefly either in person or by reference, giving more depth to the story and series as a whole.

Personal parts aside, the mystery is brilliantly written. The story is told from several points of view, all of them human and realistic (aka no arch-villains plotting against the detective in one POV, like so often happens). The psychology, trauma, and guilt that swims through all these characters is extremely realistic. No one has superhuman reserves of mental and emotional strength – everyone is cracking and fearful and worried. Furthermore, there’s never any real hint about who the killer is. I had no clue. Even now that I know, I look back at the story and can’t see the foreshadowing. That didn’t make for a disappointing or farfetched ending, though. Instead, it served to give the story more depth. The answer was so mundane as to be almost beside the point. The point was how this whole cast of characters have coped over the past two decades since that high school death, and how they act and react to the present-day events. I love this kind of writing. It’s not for everyone, but it’s why I love Elly Griffiths as an author so very much.

The book’s ending, from the climax onward, had me smiling and wanting a physical copy to hug. This is why I’m starting to think I’ll eventually love the series as much as I do the Ruth Galloway books. Griffiths gives so much heart to her characters, with focus on friendships and group camaraderie, and this wins me over every time.

Random question for UK folks – is the term “bleeding heart” not used over there? Because there was some debate amongst Kaur and her colleagues about what the term meant, and they thought it was a term in America to describe liberals. I honestly thought this was a fairly universal term, so now I’m curious if it’s really just confined to the US! (And funny side story: Back in 2003, we had bleeding hearts growing in our yard in Wisconsin. My very liberal BIL taught Morrigan, who was a toddler, a “fact” about the flower, and Morrigan brought one to his grandmother to say, “It’s a bleeding heart! It’s the national flower of the democrats!” Ha!)

Performance: The audiobook was read by three narrators – Nina Wadia, Candida Gubbins, Jane Collingwood – for the three POV characters. I enjoyed the narration. All three women sounded different enough in tone and subtle accent that I could always tell which of the characters was narrating at that time. 

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Baby Photographer

Posted on November 21, 2022 by Thistle

Back in 2011, my family visited my in-laws in northern Wisconsin. While we were there, we hired a photographer friend of my sis-in-law to take some family photos for us. I don’t know exactly how experienced she was but even then, we knew she wasn’t a professional. Her charge was fairly cheap, either $50 or $100 (I can’t remember which), but we’d seen the (nice) engagement photos she’d done for my sis-in-law. Since we couldn’t afford a professional photographer, this seemed a perfect solution.

The session itself was a bit of a nightmare, tbh. First, she spent less than half an hour with us. Second, she treated all of us like toddlers with that saccharine-sweet fake high-pitched voice adults use with kids when they don’t know a thing about kids. The boys consequently acted up throughout the entire thing, which frustrated me and caused Jason to turn into his goofy self that could get the kids to stop being grouchy, and so on. Lastly, she gave us almost no direction for most of the shoot, and when she did give direction, it put us in unnatural poses. Honestly, having sat for some actual photographers at different times, I thought this was fine, until I saw the photos and discovered that the poses looked as unnatural as they felt.

I was so upset when she gave us the photos. There were maybe 15 photos total, and there wasn’t a single good one among them. Literally only three included the entire family, which is what I’d really wanted. (The bottom photo in this post was the “best,” and in it, Laurence is actually crying…) Most were photos of the kids, with a few of Jason and me. I was the person who took pictures in our house, so I already had tons of the kids. I wanted family portraits. On top of all that, every photo looked wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on specifics, but not a single photo seemed worth the money we paid for them. It was really upsetting.

Fast forward to the present day. I’ve been studying and practicing photography for the last two years, and I know that I’ve barely scratched the surface when it comes to either knowledge or skill. In October, I began doing practice photoshoots with friends. It’s a win-win situation. We all have fun, they get free photos (hopefully good photos), and I get a chance to practice. One of the unexpected benefits from this is that I’ve been contracted to take some family photos for a woman I met at a vendor show. I explained to her that I was a baby photographer and I’m not comfortable charging for photos at this stage because I can’t guarantee the quality. She either didn’t mind me being an amateur or she was happy about the idea of doing this for free, because she still booked with me. A friend of mine said that even as a baby photographer, I should be charging small amounts, just to get used to asking for money (another learned skill!). And that made me think back to that 2011 family photo session.

I kept most of the photos we were given back in 2011. Even though they were bad, they were important to me. I’m glad that I did, because I may not have been able to name why the photos were so bad in 2011, but I certainly can now. Partially finished and very visible blurred photoshop lines alongside parts of bodies. Horizon lines that are never straight. Patches of sunlight across faces. Glaring background objects that distract from the main subject. Kids caught mid-blink. Photos not cropped to properly frame the subject. The photographer even sent us the photos where the only thing not in focus were the people! No one should have been charged for that kind of work. It was absolutely unprofessional quality.

This is why I’m not charging. While I know better when it comes to the things I mentioned in the last paragraph, I also know there’s a lot that I don’t know. I make a lot of mistakes, whether that’s forgetting to check that there’s nothing left in the background that I’m going to have to remove later, to adjusting a setting but forgetting to adjust other settings to compensate. I’m especially new when it comes to photographing people rather than cats, butterflies, flowers, etc (aka the stuff I’ve mostly practiced these last few years). Plus, I only started learning how to use photo editing software a few months ago. So all in all, I mean it when I say I’m a baby photographer. Until I have a lot more practice and knowledge under my belt, I don’t want to charge. Even if it’s only $50, I don’t want to give anyone the kind of experience my family had in 2011.

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Sunday Coffee – The End of an Era

Posted on November 20, 2022 by Thistle

A little over three years ago, I read The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths. It was the first in her Ruth Galloway series, and even though the first book is not the strongest of the volumes, I was hooked. Over the next couple weeks, “hooked” turned into “obsessed,” and I devoured the entire as-of-then-published series (11 books) in under a month. Since then, I’ve read each new release as they’ve come out, all the way up to book 14 this past summer. A couple days ago, Audible suggested that I use a credit to pre-order The Last Remains, the 15th book in the series, which will release in 2023. My heart caught in my throat when I read the first line of the description:

[spoilers for earlier volumes] in this not-to-be-missed last act of the beloved Ruth Galloway series…

But. But. I wanted the series to go on forever! I mean, I know 15 books is a long run for a series, and I know Griffiths has other series that I enjoy also, but I’m so going to miss my yearly fix of Ruth, Nelson, Kate, Cathbad, and all the rest. I suppose soon it’ll be time to go revisit those early books that I sped through. It’s not the same, though, not quite. There are so few mystery/crime procedural series that I just love, so I’m going to miss this one quite badly. Though honestly, I just need to thank Griffiths for giving me so much bookish joy over the last three years. She’s been one of my favorite authors discovered in recent years, and I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next!

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Fire and Rituals

Posted on November 17, 2022 by Thistle

There’s a special place in San Antonio that I discovered with some friends back in December 2019. The city has worked to put together 80+ miles of walking/biking trails in what will eventually be a loop around SA. Portions of the Greenway Trails have been around for decades and are being expanded and connected so make one contiguous path. Back in 2012, I trained for a half marathon along a section of the those Trails, and later explored still more as I joined my hiking group in 2019. It was on one of my first outings with my hiking group, along the same path I used to train on a decade ago, that we discovered something magical.

If you go just a little ways off trail and into the woods, you’ll turn a corner and find a gigantic double-trunk live oak tree that is several hundred years old. Despite its size, the tree can’t be seen from the trail, even though it’s maybe 50 feet max away and the trail is easily visible from the tree. Pictures don’t do justice to the size and majesty of this thing. I’ve watched people stop dead in their tracks the first time they see it. It’s that breathtaking.

This past Sunday, it was on fire. From the inside.

Here’s the thing. Most people don’t know about the Big Tree, but some definitely do. People spend time in the clearing around it. Sometimes, they bring offerings – flower bouquets, beaded necklaces, painted rocks, etc. Sometimes they leave religious tracks or build cairns. Sometimes it’s folks out for a party, and they leave behind garbage that ranges from Doritos bags and broken bottles to used condoms and worse. I have no idea if the fire started from a tossed cigarette, or was lit purposely, or if someone left a candle in a hollow in some idea of tribute. All I know is that a brush fire was called in, and it turned out to be the Big Tree burning alive from the inside. No one knows if the Tree will survive, or if it will have to be removed as a safety hazard. (If it falls toward the path, it could kill someone – again, despite not being visible from the trail, this tree is ginormous!)

I keep picturing what it would have been to show up and discover the tree on fire, or to find it covered in fire retardant and caution tape afterwards. Because that was almost the case. My November group photoshoot was centered around the Big Tree. Three friends and I were taking a bunch of props out there to have a fairy-tale ethereal shoot based around the idea of offerings, complete with flowers, wooden beads, acorns, broken pottery, and incense sticks. I was literally about to leave my house – and two of the others were already en route – when another of our friends texted us the news alert about the Tree. If she hadn’t seen the news and passed it along, the four of us would have blithely walked into a nightmare firsthand.

Obviously, we had to do a last minute relocation, and due to the lack of a central focal point to the shoot (aka no Big Tree), we ended up doing a series of photos that became more witchy than fairy tale. Kudos to all of us, honestly, for rallying despite what came as devastating news (for reasons far deeper than losing a photoshoot setting). We pulled it together and honestly had quite a lovely evening, with an end product of photos that weren’t exactly what we pictured, but awesome nonetheless.

I really hope the tree survives. I’m sad to think that someone might have done this, whether intentionally or not, and that more people will now be tramping around this place that honestly feels sacred and magical. I personally haven’t been out to the tree since March 5th, and even then, I was worried for the Tree because someone had taken a knife to parts of it, cutting off sections of bark. It feels strange knowing that I may never be able to go back, to spend time with it again, to introduce other friends to that space. It’s just really sad, and a little surreal, and though it’s been a few days, I’m still trying to wrap my head around it all.

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