What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Day 19.5: Boston, MA to Stockholm

I say "19.5" because with a flight out of the country in the evening, this wasn't exactly a whole day in Boston. I spent a smidge over 24 hours in town, so should that count as two days?

I woke up a little before Diana's alarm and futzed around a bit on my phone. She showered and got ready for work, and I got dressed in my lazy bum traveling clothes and we were off.

My morning wasn't too eventful. I dumped my travel bag at the station, and then spent the rest of the time I had until burritos with Diana and Walter writing in Boston Common and then wandering through the botanical gardens.

Much State. Very Legislature. Wow. So Government.

I appreciate the bird photobombing but not dude in the fannypack.

It was SO. HOT. that day and I very much wanted to jump in any and every body of water I saw. Fountains, duck pond, the little kid wading pool...all of them.

All of this was right after Nazi demonstrations and protests and tiki torches and all of that good stuff. (I picked a helluva time to be back in the US!) It was a topic of discussion when we were at dinner in Old Orchard Beach. Seth (Walter's boyfriend) was amazed that Nazis would even dare to turn up and show their faces in Boston, of all places—the city is so progressive and liberal and etc.

I shook my head. "Nah man, what I've heard from non-white friends of mine who live there...it's a different experience."

There were leftovers of protests and rumbles on the Common.

The text spraypainted on the ground reads "Racism will not win." We can only hope. =/

And on this monument to I guess the Pilgrims? "$ IS POWER XFREEDOM I$ RESISTANCE." I don't know if I hold entirely with that logic, protest artist. The first half, yes. But I don't know it's connected to resisting or freedom. Maybe "resistance is freedom"? Otherwise you're maybe putting the cart before the horse.

Civil War memorial to "white officers" and "black rank and file." It feels like a lukewarm attempt at Black History TM by throwing them in with the white officers but on the other hand if they fought together, shouldn't they be memorialized together?

I finished my writing and my photo-taking and wandered in the direction of the public gardens, because I guess that's what I do on vacations now?

Overheard in Boston:

"The flowers are dyin' 'cause they don't water 'em."
"They do water 'em, every day."
"Why are they dyin', then?"
"'Cause of the sun."

More overheard in Boston:

"MOM! A duck bit my thumb!"

There were a couple buskers out in the park. An elderly Asian man playing what I think was an erhu, and then a hip young white dude with a tenor sax: "Careless Whispers," "What A Wonderful World," etc.

I wandered over to the burrito place to meet and Walter. It was a take-out place for nearby young professionals, and since I was eating with young professionals, that meant there was no place to really sit or any time to really talk.

We said our goodbyes and I walked around the city a bit, despite it being SO. HOT., because I figured if I'm going to say that I visited Boston, I should have at least seen some of it? The other times I've been in Boston, I've been sequestered away indoors at anime conventions so I wanted to say that I had actually been in Boston. Or whatever.

I was due to meet another friend, Amy, at a marketplace in the afternoon, though I turned up quite a bit early so I could browse around a bit and enjoy the air conditioning. I bought some yarn for one of my knitter friends back home, and picked up a business card from American Stonecraft. I love rocks, and I love New England, and this is exactly the kind of thing that my mother-in-law loves, so I'll probably buy something online for her birthday or Christmas present. (Probably a coaster or two.)

Once in a green time a flower
Oh, fell in love with the sun.
The passion lasted for an hour
And then she wilted from her loved one.

I appreciated the tip jar humor but was fresh out of any cash at all by this point. Nor did I feel like buying some nuts, even as the guy behind the counter was really friendly and offered me some free samples. Womp womp.

Amy did the very smart thing and brought GAMES because two people with low-key (and sometimes not so low-key) social anxiety need all the help interacting they can get! Or at least I do, even if meeting Internet friends is always less fraught than I expect it because it's not like I don't know them at all or anything. Although I was still a bit of a traveling mess—piecey hair, clothes chosen for comfort rather than fashion, indescribably sweaty—so props to and everyone else that day for spending time with my unattractive self!

After we got chocolate and chatted a bit and I saw some Andy pictures I hadn't before (ATTACK OF THE FIFTY-FOOT TODDLER!), we played a couple rounds of Hanabi, which I sucked at but enjoyed nonetheless and have since added to our small roster of games (Munchkin, Dixit, Magic: The Gathering).

After that it was off to the station to pick up my bag, which I had to pay some extra for by all of ten? fifteen? minutes. Ugh. Nonetheless, it was worth the convenience. I had a hell of a time finding the bus to Logan, and then the check-in line for Norwegian was FOREVER LONG. It wasn't as stressful as it would be if it were my flight going in—I had no pressing plans back in Sweden that would suffer if I got bumped back a few hours or even a day—but it still made me anxious. The family behind me, on the other hand, realized they had the wrong passports, and it was a rush of phonecalls and sending out teenage son to meet dad and etc. to fix it. So someone was having an even more stressful wait than I was!

We boarded on time, though, and everything went smoothly. My layover in Copenhagen was slightly shorter this time around, so I didn't try to do any more exploring. I just hung out at one of the terminals, charging my phone and letting my boyfriend know that I would be at Arlanda in a couple of hours.

Friday 5: Welcome to the Terrordome

Photo by sergio souza on Unsplash

What’s the scariest movie you’ve seen?

I don't know about scariest as such, but the most unpleasant movie I've ever had to watch is a Japanese one called Blood and Bones. Every trigger warning ever for that movie; I actually had to hit pause a couple of times and take a break for something more pleasant.

In the same vein, Pan's Labyrinth also messed me up. I went to see it with a bunch of friends on a Friday night, and afterwards the plan was to have a Dungeons and Dragons and beers session. Instead I just curled up in a ball on the couch without drinking or talking to anyone for the rest of the night.

I think the last movie thing that genuinely terrified me, though, were the TV commercials for Bram Stoker's Dracula back in the 90s. I had nightmares about vampires for a solid week after catching a glimpse of that ad.


What most recently startled you?

I guess my alarm?


What’s something in your residence that’s frightening?

I have a postcard with art that I guess someone might find frightening but I just really like. It's original art by a friend of mine, an altered photo she took of Buddhist statuary in Japan.


What kinds of social settings cause you anxiety?

Social settings where I'm not in charge of something or running something but where I just have to open-endedly interact with other human beings. So you know, most of them.


What’s something you are no longer afraid of?

I've 99% conquered my fear of getting hit by a car. As a kid I was terrified of blacktop pavement because I was afraid that cars lurked around every corner, waiting for me to step on the road just so they could run me over. (One summer when I was maybe 6 years old or so, I just straight up exposure therapy'd myself by running back and forth across the street in front of our house, as if proving to myself SEE NOTHING HAPPENED IT'S FINE.) I still get nervous crossing the street, but you don't have to carry me across parking lots anymore!

What I Read: The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu

Time for the Hercules gif.

Okay, so here's the cool part: Abdel Kader Haidara, after years of careful negotiations and curation, managed to assemble a peerless collection of ancient Malian manuscripts, both Islamic and secular. But when Al Qaeda took over Timbuktu, the manuscripts—works of art in themselves that also advocated for religious tolerance and scientific curiosity, even in the 13th century CE—became a target of Islamic extremists. Haidara and other archivists worked hard to smuggle these literary treasures to a safety.

And the book starts off with a satisfying and easy to follow history of Timbuktu and its cultural heritage in the larger Islamic world, as well as a brief history of Haidara's work hunting down and negotiating with families, convincing them to entrust these priceless artifacts with him so that they could be preserved and studied.

And of course you get snatches of Haidara and his helpers smuggling books out of Timbuktu and into safety.

But.

In reality, the focus (at least in the middle and end of the book) is more on the sectarian violence in Mali in the early 2010s. An extraordinary amount of detail about developments and actors in the political situation is provided when a simple summary would have sufficed. I suspect that these lefthand turns are the reason that I kept falling out of the book and why it took me several months to finish. Maybe even years? I remember reading it in an airport on the way back from a wedding, but I can't say for sure if it was Aaron's wedding in 2017 or my brother's wedding in 2016. Either way: it doesn't usually take me that long to finish your stand popular journalism kind of book. (Reading an ebook version probably didn't help, either.)

Friday 5: Waste

Photo by Bas Emmen on Unsplash

What’s something you unintentionally threw away?

Nothing, thankfully!

What disgusting memory of garbage do you have?

The job I worked at in the US has a picnic grove attached to it. It's a tourist trap (I say that in the most affectionate and loving way possible; I love tourist traps) in a small town, so naturally it has a bit of extra property with space for visitors to relax and plan their next stop (or for visiting school groups to eat their lunch). The trash cans in that picnic grove were some of the foulest things I've smelled in my life, especially during the summer or after a tour of 120 school kids with bagged lunches. They usually required two people to empty, too, since they were big, heavy-duty things, and the picnic grove was downhill and across the street from our dumpster.

I get nostalgic for that job a lot, but not for that part of it.

How are you about deleting emails?

I think the oldest email in my inbox is from 2006. It's weird to think I have emails that are older than some (most) of my students, but there you have it. I should maybe be better about deleting them, though. In case I want to run for President. BUT HER EMAILS

What do you treasure that someone else considers trash?

One of my best sources for beads is old jewelry no one wants anymore.

What’s the litter like in your neighborhood?

Not too bad. And the Nazis have stopped putting up posters as well!

What I Read: Gena/Finn

I had really personal reasons for being interested in Gena/Finn and for recommending it for my Discord book club and then it fucking disappointed me.

Most of my friends in high school were of the Internet variety, out of a group of fans of a particular TV show. Even though I was never really active in "fandom" as such (I don't write or read fanfiction, I don't hoard fanart, I'm not really interested in making the things I like the be-all, end-all of my identity...I just wanted to find the rest of the episodes online that I hadn't already seen), the way those friendships formed online were really important to how I grew up and where I ended up in life. I don't think there are many books that really tackle the importance (and also weirdness) of online friendships; the last time I'd read about that sort of thing was in Pattern Recognition of all things, and that was just a brief aside in what was otherwise a cyberpunk thriller.

I was expecting a story that chronicled the kind of awkward budding friendships I was cultivating in front of the computer screen in high school, and what I got was something else. Those were the bits Moskowitz and Helgeson skipped right over in favor of the kind of melodrama that could happen between any two friends, regardless of where or how they met, but with a sprinkling of unrealistic lefthand turn plot points for good measure (former child actors! shoehorned romance! tragic deaths!).

And the nail in the coffin for me was reading the book summary after I had read the book.

Gena (short for Genevieve) and Finn (short for Stephanie) have little in common. Book-smart Gena is preparing to leave her posh boarding school for college; down-to-earth Finn is a twenty-something struggling to make ends meet in the big city.

If I've read the book and I still need the GoodReads book description to tell me that Gena and Finn have nothing in common, and that one is "book-smart" while the other is "down-to-earth," then you've failed in your writing. In the book they come across as quite samey, except that one of them has a history of mental health issues.

Anything more specific than that will veer into spoiler territory so I'll save those complaints for book club where I know that people will either have read it or not care about it.

101 in 1001, Round 3

As of the end of March, I finished up my third 101 in 1001 list. The final count is currently available on my 101 in 1001 page, but since that will be scrubbed in a few months, I'm memorializing it here, after the jump because it's a bit long. First, the commentary.

Proudest Moments

Out of all three lists, this one feels the most accomplished so far. I cleared around 60 goals completely, and I attempted a fair amount more. I'm not sure how that compares to past lists, since I don't feel like going back and comparing at the moment, but I did power through two pretty significant items:

1. I finished my modified TIME Top 100 novels list, a goal I've had since I first started this in 2009 (!).

2. I ran a goddamn 5K. I ran multiple 5Ks. This was a goal I'd set for myself on previous lists, then invariably take off the list in favor of something else because it felt too ambitious. And then I accomplished it by accident? Life is weird.


Moments of Reflection

1. I like the old-school Dr. Who, I really do, but we got up to the French Revolution story line and Lord Xenu kind of lost interest in it so we stopped watching. I don't really watch much TV or movies on my own, either, so if he doesn't want to watch something, I just won't watch it. (On the other hand, he's often quite keen to watch MST3K.) I'm torn between A) still including this because I like Dr. Who, or B) not including it because I'll probably fail at it again. I might just compromise and scale down the attempt (like, just finishing the French Revolution story line from the first series, or just finishing the first series, rather than the first two Doctors).

2. There were a lot of political things that got tacked on this list because The Election happened midway through. But I did a bad job counting them and an even worse job being consistent. I might scale it back, or figure out how to find my rhythm.

3. How much do I really care about that IMDB list? I don't know. But even though I failed pretty spectacularly on foreign movies and documentaries this time around, I do care about those, so that goal will definitely continue to stay on.

4. Now that running is a well-established habit, the next thing to tackle is strength training. I like yoga, but it's not the most efficient strength training route. The RCAF 5BX (or rather the adapted version here) seems like it might be a better option. I might also incorporate a planking challenge as an item? I don't know.

For the Next List

1. The reading goal is shaping up to be a combination of this Modern Library list and some books recommended in this post.

2. I might have to up my Swedish reading game, since I'm no longer in Swedish class. (Lord Xenu uses English with me so it's not like I get that much practice at home.)

3. I have some hard travel choices I'm going to have to make. After being invited to vend at last year's WorldCon (in Helsinki), it occurred to me that...I might do really well at WorldCon? It'll be in August 2019, which is sneaking up already. In addition to bulking up my Etsy stock, I would have to get a proper show table and display ready. On the plus side, one of my best friends (founding member of the Austin Feminist Science Fiction Book Club) got in touch with me about attending WorldCon in Dublin, fond as he is of the city (and, I hope, of me...!). The other horn of the travel dilemma is a wedding in Seoul, South Korea in March, which is less than a year away! Neither my sanity nor my budget can afford both (probably), so...

Friday 5: The Shine of A Thousand Spotlights

Image courtesy Jacob Morch on Unsplash

What physical trait are you (or have you been) self-conscious about?

Hi guys, I could write a whole novel on being fat! But so many other writers handle it better, so rather than go into it myself I'll just post links to two writers whose perspectives helped me get right with Fat Jesus.

Dances With Fat

Jill Grunenwald (and her memoirs Running With a Police Escort)

Even though I've gotten right with Fat Jesus, small things remain. Mostly my nose. I don't hate it enough to go under the knife, and my human brain recognizes that it's a perfectly normal nose, but my lizard brain can't stop comparing it to adorable ski jump button noses. Even actresses who are constantly put on "quirky beauties" or "big noses" or whatever lists don't have the same kind of nose I do.

When did you last do something risking injury?

I guess going for a run always risks injury, right? So depending on when this post goes up, either Wednesday or today.

Why do critics and the general movie-going public never seem to agree?

I'd say the operative word is "seem." I suspect most of the time critical opinions and the public's opinions are generally in line. Otherwise I imagine that the contributing factor is that movie critics are a self-selecting group of people who gravitate towards the arts and appreciate, even crave, novelty in the form and as a result they're generally more appreciate of movies that are subtle or unusual. Most people watch movies for comfort or entertainment rather than critical engagement, and so they're more drawn towards predictable (or surprising-within-predictable-schemas) and comforting rather than challenging or difficult.

How do you feel about Hugh Jackman as an actor?

#NotMyWolverine

Who is the best singer you’ve seen in live performance?

I don't really go to live music performances that often. (Aside from the odd years where I can make it to Musikfest.) I guess two come to mind:

Ssingssing, with lead singer Lee Hee-moon

Black Masala, with singer Kristen Long (though my memory of their Musikfest performance seems to have a different singer?)