Beach and Hotel Adventures

I was eaten alive by a balloon turtle, yet lived to tell the tale. I found out that the Goonies is a movie about pirates, and that it was filmed in Astoria Oregon. I let my hair fly free as I enjoyed a break from walking on a swing set at a children's playground. I got into a food fight with a four year old in a nice restaurant. I walked through grassy dunes to get to a beach. I got really sunburned. I made a sand castle on the beach. And I had a fun weekend that was full of surprises with a friend and her daughter. Ultimately, we wound up staying in a hotel not far from where I live.

It started when Amber asked me to go to the Goondocks festival thingy with her in Astoria. I've never seen the movie, but that didn't stop me from saying yes. Amber, by the way, is the friend I mentioned in this post but who I hadn't talked to about introducing her on my blog. When I asked about coming up with a name for her she said I can just use her actual name, along with her daughter's which is Piper or Pip.

I don't even know how to describe the Goondocks, so I'll leave that for another post. I do know how to tell about other parts of our adventure though.

Sunset

After leaving the beach as the sun was setting, Amber and I set out to find a cabin or hotel to stay in. I don't think I can explain that part of our adventure any better than when I exhaustedly posted photos of our hotel room on Facebook, so I'll just copy and paste from there.

We were at the Goonies, and decided to stay overnight. But Astoria was booked. Seaside was booked. Canon beach was booked. Then we almost ran out of gas because canon beach doesn't know that gas stations exist. We finally gave up and decided to come home. Then got tired and decided that Hillsboro was close enough to home...and wound up in this place, which we got at a discount because the nice lady at the front desk told us to book online. Except then I booked at the wrong location, which was only blocks away...but eventually wound up here, in time to hear the birds begin to greet the dawn.

I still can't believe how nice this place is. It seriously isn't as expensive as it looks.

The room had a huge bed, a nicer bathroom than I'm used to seeing in hotels, an amazing couch and reclining chair, a desk, a table for eating, full size refrigerator, kitchen area, and cabinets. All that when we had just needed a place to sleep because it wouldn't have been a great idea to have to drive any further. It was also an excellent place for playing hide and seek with a four year old, and to our amusement Amber found an empty bottle of vodka on top of the cabinets when she was hiding on the fridge. And yeah I'm going on about the hotel, but I'm still surprised at what we saw when we walked into our room.

It was an amazing weekend, and we're talking about doing this sort of thing pretty regularly now. It's too much fun not to.

LGBT Books

Recently I signed up with BookBub, a website designed to let people know about great deals on eBooks. And during sign up, I requested to get notifications about different authors and genres. Tamora Pierce. Fantasy. Science Fiction. Jim Butcher. Bestsellers. Horror. Jane Austen. John Green. Robyn Ochs. LGBT. You know, a variety that somewhat reflects my broad (but still focused on scifi/fantasy) tastes.

I haven't read many fiction LGBT books. Or I guess I've read some with queer characters, like Albus Dumbledore, but they aren't discussed as LGBT books, so I hadn't given much thought to what will give a book the LGBT label. But after seeing the many LGBT books recommended to me by BookBub, I've come to the conclusion that it's a hot romance involving a same sex couple. Oh, and so far I haven't gotten notifications about books involving trans characters. Where the heck are those novels?

My observations got me thinking...why do we need to see a same sex relationship to get that someone's queer? (Actually, this could be part of why bisexuals get called gay or straight depending on who we're in a relationship with, but that's off topic for this post.) We catch on easily enough to the fact that someone's straight even when they're single. So why do we need to see someone kissing another person of the same gender to get that they're queer?

Maybe it's time for LGBT books to be written about queer characters who are single. We already have plenty of books about single straights, so why not?

What would these books look like? I don't know. Maybe they already exist and I'm just not seeing them. If you know of any, please tell me! I want to know. I admit that my knowledge is pretty much limited to the e-mails I've gotten from BookBub, and I'm just assuming that it's a fair representation of what's out there.

It's an idea that I wanted to throw out there. Having LGBT romances is awesome, and I'm certainly not going to complain about having them around. But we're so much more than who we fall in love with, and it would be great to see that fact explored in LGBT books.

Pile of books

Print and eBooks

People like to talk about which is better, a book whose pages you can flip or a library you can carry around on a little piece of cool technology. I know I've started to write about it in the past, I don't know why I deleted that post.

Which is better? I don't think one is really better than the other. Sure, I have a favorite, but I won't claim that it's better.

The nice thing about eBooks is that, as mentioned above, you can carry libraries around on a fancy little Kindle or Nook. Or in my case, on my iPhone. If I need to travel light, that's a good thing. Also, you can search for words or phrases, and I feel no guilt about making notes or highlighting in eBooks.

I find print books much nicer to hold, though. To feel them in my hands, turn the pages, smell them...yes, I smell books sometimes. Don't judge. It's easier to flip through them, jump from one place to another, and I don't have to recharge any batteries with them. There's also something very satisfying about seeing a bookcase full of books. Not to mention, how do you get your favorite author to sign your eBook?

I suppose the next question should be which is my favorite, or which I choose. Print books are my favorite, but I choose both. Why not? They both have their strengths, and as much as I'd love to have lots of shelves full of books I don't really have the space or money for that. Maybe someday I'll have a large room dedicated to books...this is one of my happy daydreams.

A photo from last year of my bookshelf

Which do you prefer? Do you have firm opinions about which is better? Do you have a preference? I'm curious. :)