The 2023 Locus Awards were just announced. I love these round-ups because I hardly keep in perfect touch with what's popular in the reading circles I'm in. I just cherry-pick around the popular titles and recommended lists. I'm definitely gonna scour the novellas. Now my hot takes:

First, I hated The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi. I loved his Interdependency series, but this was a quick "DNF" for me. The prose was juvenile and pandering; I could imagine him like "HAW HAW I KNOW WHAT PPL WILL LOVE" and I guess they did. My choice would have been Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel 100 times over. As an aside, I didn't read most of the fantasy novels on the list, and I didn't even read Babel but I also don't like R. F. Kuang's writing, nearly for the same reason as I didn't like Scalzi's novel, so I guess I'm just snobby and bitter.

Now, how did Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree not win? The hype was huge, right? I LOVED it, and I wouldn't primarily consider myself a "cozy" reader. Granted, I did not read the winning novel, The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler but knowing it defeated a book I was hearing a lot about, I'm gonna add it to my to-read for sure. I also forgot Neon Yang came out with a new novel and made the finalist list, so I'll add that too.

Finally, so happy and unsurprised to see Becky Chamber's A Prayer for the Crown-Shy win for novella. Spectacular little series. Maybe I am going "cozy"....

I'm trying to "be done" my website so I can just use it, like post blog updates, book reviews, and photos, etc., but that's not going well. It's just too fun to mess around with the code and learn new stuff. I've been trying to get offline, go less-tech, but I ended up going headfirst into the most techy shit I've been up to since I first got a laptop when I was like 12. It's like how a few months ago I declared I was going to change my whole wardrobe, dress nicer, with fitting clothes and belts and cardigans, then just ended up wearing borderline sweatpants and super baggy t-shirts since then. As if declaring an abrupt change in myself only makes my soul reiterate, hard, who I really know I am.

But I'm learning, and having fun, so whatever.

Sundays are my fiance and I's sacred days. First we go to "church" (a spiritual community for the Science of Mind) and then we'll go on hikes, or brunch, coffee dates, whatever, just some quality time together. Yesterday we went to a great antique store we'd happened upon last year. The kind with labyrinthine rooms in an old barn, floor to ceiling with junk and treasures. Recently, she got an old early 2000's Olympus 35mm camera and I've been playing more with my Diana+ adapter for my DSLR (basically taking cheap plastic 35mm lenses and attaching them to a digital camera for blurry, light-leaky goodness). So we both ravaged the camera corner. I decided I wanted to have fun with old digital cameras more, the kind my mom used to have, with like 4 mega pixels and three buttons. A lot took weird batteries and had no associated charger. Some had sticky notes that just said "no" or "broken" lol. I got two to bring home.

The Fujifilm on the left ended up taking a CF card, not an SD card, and they're hard to come by so I'll take it as a loss. But the Aiptek video camera on the right took AA batteries and an SD, which for the time it was made was probably unheard of? Its super cheap, very small, the screen is re-purposed front-facing glass from old cell phones, and when I put the batteries in, it immediately froze upon starting.

Naturally, I took the next few hours attempting to fix it. I know nothing about electronics. I rode my bike to a handful of stores looking for a tiny screwdriver to pry it apart, and the fourth store (Walmart coming in clutch) had a full set of tiny screwdrivers for like 8$ so now if I need to fix my glasses or something I'm set. Anyway, I opened it up, put it back together and it worked! Electronic magic. I am so excited, its 5 mega pixels and has audio. I'm gonna take dumbass home movies of my friends.

Oh yeah, P.S. I got a Kodak slide box full of teeth.

IT'S JUNE. It's summer, usually hot, and I'm happy. I'm a Leo, I just wanna be a little lion basking in the sun. So I've been doing a lot of that.

Cordata Park

I recently moved from streets-and-neighborhoods Sunnyland to what I thought was big-box-stores-and-concrete Cordata but I was super wrong. I mean I was right... there's a lot of that, but there's a lot of preserved wetlands, amazing bike lanes + infrastructure, and a couple great parks.

I'm spending my hours + days off exploring my new neighborhood, finding fields, trails, and secrets. Riding my bike and reading in the sun. Slowing down, getting offline + off socials, sharing more deliberately (like this), taking photos, being outside, reading a lot.

Rue is doing the victory garden at the Spiritual Center we go to. I'm usually too lazy to go in the evenings...but it's looking good, despite poor fencing and some leaf nibblers. I miss our old garden in Sunnyland, but this one is bigger and communal and helps us get to know our fellow "church" folks.

My bff Lotie and me are starting a new Sims 2 journey together, too. The entire Sims 2 + all the expansion packs and "stuff packs" are free online! She's making a neighborhood and I'm helping populate it with weirdos and kooky houses.

Too bad this keeps happening:

And I'm taking a fuck ton of baths for some reason. Its just the most relaxing thing with a nice beer and my new Kindle.

So that's how my summer is getting started! This is formatted like garbage but it's fun trying to make everything look good. Maybe next time it actually will.

Electronically yours,
Love

Hmmm. This is kind of a test post, kind of an exploration of possibilities. I mean like possibilities and possibilities because everything is new and fun to me right now. Images! Colors! Gifs! I'm suddenly in that moment in my mid-teens when everyone finally migrated to Facebook from Myspace and I was lagging behind, resistant, because you couldn't change anything at all about your profile. No music! The same colors, same background, everything the same for everyone. I had a choice and I chose wrong. I'm re-making that choice now. For many reasons. But right now I'm just thinking about how fun this shit is.