August 2025

 August has been fun. A little vacation, my 25th wedding anniversary, my daughter off to her first year of college, and meeting up with old and new friends. 

I met a bouncer and we shared a mutual appreciation of the Patrick Swayze classic Road House. He said that the climate has changed from what it was when he started bouncing, and their job is to protect the business from lawsuits, so it's better to talk folks down instead of knocking them around. Basically, to be nice until it's time not to be nice. So, it's a training film.

Some movies I watched: 

Final Destination - Bloodlines. The latest chapter in the Final Destination movies. Just as ridiculous as the others, and an interesting attempt to tie them all together.

Y2K. This movie was not great. Partially due to my expectations, but also just not great. With the trailer, I expected a slightly more entertaining Maximum Overdrive set on New Year's Eve 1999. Having lived through that, it was fun to see all the references, but that's all it really was. Just a bunch of references to things you might remember if you were there.

Sinners - So a vampire movie, sure. But more than that. It was beautifully filmed, the acting was amazing, and the vampire scenes were great. Not really scary and more like a vampire-tinged period piece with a hint of action movie. 

Companion - This was interesting, and it had Guerrmo from What We Do in the Shadows. The director said that he started it with the companion robot turning on the humans and being the scary monster, but while writing it, it dawned on him that the people keeping the companion robots might be worse, and he adjusted the story. Sorry if that's a spoiler, but if you watched the trailer, it should be fairly clear

Some books I read:

I followed up last month's reading of Parable of the Sower with the second book, Parable of the Tenants, by Octavia Butler. Another brutal dystopian tale of people trying to make it in a messed-up world. I would love to think it was far-fetched, but in the current political climate, it hits hard. I feel like the current rightwing playbook lifted all the bad guy ideas from this book just to 'Own the Libs'. Regardless, Octavia Butler is an amazing writer, I'll be digging into more of her books.

For the difficult book club, we read How We Show Up by Mia Birdsong. As I started reading it, I felt that it was not focused on me, and it's true, but I read it anyway because that's how you learn. I did learn a few things from it, stuff I thought I knew, but seen from another perspective. This book was clearly doing what the difficult book club was meant to do. 

The last book I finished was To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers, and I have not read a single Becky Chambers book that I did not love. I had read some mixed reviews on this novella; some folks not liking the fact that the challenges are limited, and they felt that the narrator explained a lot of what was happening, but for me, it was a chill and relaxing read. A bit like The Martian by Andy Weir without the intensity. 

I am still reading Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez. Its one of those books that is pulling me through it slowly. It's entertaining and interesting. The writing is great. But it's a slow read for me.

I'm also rereading The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemison with the plan to read the next two books in the series following that. I liked it the first time, and I'm catching a bunch of things I missed the first time I read it.

As for writing... the idea I had been working through in my brain and in my notes is still being worked through. I don't have it solid enough to begin writing any of it, but it's still fun to think about. I may try to write a few separate sections and some parts to flesh out the main story to get a feel for the tone and how I'm going to write it when I do. Or I'll just jump right into it and start at the beginning. Sometimes it's easier to get the bones of the story down and then go back through and add the meat and fat where it's needed. We'll see how the mood strikes me. Maybe I'll do both.

That's it for August!

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This image is of Woodruff lying on the back of the couch and is an accurate representation of how I feel sometimes at the end of a long day.



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