Life in dot points

[lizbee]

• America was wonderful! Although I would very much like to visit the Midwest sometime when it's not cold and there are leaves on the trees. It was very exciting to see what happens to a swimming pool when it snows, but what if swimming?
• Detroit is a marvellous city, but -- to the surprise of literally no one -- not that easy to get around on foot. At one point we parked, did some shopping, then got in the car and drove to the other end of the parking lot to get to Target, because it was so far to walk (and also two guys were having a punch-up on the footpath).
• Chicago is easy to get around, and I love it. I haven't travelled enough to say it's my favourite city in the world, but if I had the funds to conduct a proper study, I suspect it would still be in my top five. I would not like to live in the United States, but if I had to, I'd choose Chicago.
• We went to a whole bunch of chain restaurants, fast food and otherwise, and my feelings are that (a) Chipotle needs to open up in Australia; Guzman y Gomez exceeds it for quality, but the menus are very different; (b) I'm terribly glad to see that Outback Steakhouse has stopped using fake Indigenous art to decorate its restaurants; (c) Cracker Barrel is like Outback Steakhouse but for America, but I noticed that all the images of Great Americans And American Achievements featured only white people, and that was ... uncomfortable. 
• All of Detroit's sports teams lose a lot, which, as a Bulldogs fan, is a Mood. I bought a Detroit Tigers shirt, but it's a wee fraction too small. 
• We saw Hamilton in its final days in Chicago; here are some scattered thoughts: 
  • there are WAY more dick jokes than I had realised just from the soundtrack
  • there is no replacing Daveed Diggs, but the man who played Lafayette/Jefferson did his best
  • I hate how much I enjoy Jefferson in this show, even though I know we're meant to feel that way
  • the actor playing Hamilton was ... not short, but not tall. The woman playing Peggy/Maria was very tall, and (in the second act) almost literally swept him off his feet. It was so far from what I had imagined, it's what has stuck with me in the weeks since I saw it
  • that, and I've been very badly earwormed by two lines from "Hurricane", and my brain can feel free to stop anytime now
  • everyone knows that "Hurricane" sorely tested Lin-Manuel Miranda's singing ability, and it really does make a difference when the part is played by someone with a stronger voice, even if he's not so good a rapper
• We also visited rj_anderson  in Stratford, ON, which meant DRIVING across a NATIONAL BORDER, shut up, I'm Australian, this is very exciting to me!
• Now I have a pile of Canadian YA and MG fiction to read, which is very exciting and I don't know where to start.
• So, having seen Little Women the other night, I'm reading a biography of Louisa May Alcott instead, obviously.
• (Little Women was marvellous, and a gift to this Laurie/Amy shipper; it didn't quite have my favourite aspect of their relationship -- grieving together after Beth dies -- but their dialogue and interactions are electric. It's a novel I've read a bunch of times, and have very strong opinions about, but don't actually love reading? But I adored this film.)
• I watched the first half of season 1 of Succession on the plane home, and the first five episodes of Brooklyn 99's season 6 on various legs. B99 is always great, but Succession surprised me: I'm so obsessed with finding out how the season ends that we've decided to postpone season 4 of The Expanse until we finish Succession.
• It's easier to get a good cup of tea in the United States than to get mediocre coffee with any kind of drinkable non-dairy milk. At least in the Midwest. There was a hipster cafe in the Detroit suburbs which offered almond milk with their drip coffee, and I was so happy I almost cried. Do you guys ... not have lactose intolerant people?
• I've started revising the middle grade historical space opera! It's good so far -- mostly because I'm still in the early chapters, where the truly egregious continuity errors hadn't yet crept in. Though there's this whole subplot about one of the heroine's dads, and I just ... forgot to resolve it. I have no idea what his deal is. Writing is the worst. 
• I'm taking all my Rise of Skywalker angst and putting it into a fresh project: my YA fantasy arranged-marriage-leads-to-falling-in-friendship thingo. I told my writers Slack that my current comps are "the bit in ASoIaF where Sansa and Tyrion are married, Reylo, and the Snape/Lily fic I wrote when I was nineteen". For some reason this made them excited instead of horrified.
• I'm going to try to outline this one from the start instead of just throwing words at the screen and hoping for the best. So far I have A Heroine (Joan, a nerd), An Unheroic Leading Man (Edmun, an awkward turtleduck with a disability, a body count and a chip on his shoulder), A Stern And Complicated Older Woman (Edmun's mother, a common soldier who married the late king; she has an eye patch and I would die for her), The Heroine's Best Friend (Merry, does not know how she wound up in this mess; struggles with problems she can't solve with common sense or a sword); and a very thin vestige of plot: someone has murdered Joan's brother; she has to marry Edmun for Plot Reasons; there is a very high probability that it was Edmun who did the killing. I'm just chucking a whole lot of id in and seeing what sticks.
• I'm like, creating a whole secondary fantasy world from scratch is hard, but fictional murder? That's easy. 
• Famous last words. Writing is the worst.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

Do you guys ... not have lactose intolerant people?

yes, but they're brown

white people who want non-dairy milk are invariably vegan hippie eco-freaks

neither of these are people whose business your typical Republican-voting small business owner wants; the corporate conglomerates will take their money but figure there aren't any such people in places with low population density

tl;dr people suck

[lizbee]

This makes a depressing amount of sense, and is probably the case here in Australia, too, except I never leave the cities.

[alexseanchai]

I am zero percent joking

also it occurs to me you probably haven't heard about—fml I cannot currently source this thing. *kicks Google* work damn you! anyway. food aid being a thing the US government will sometimes grudgingly provide, and Native Americans being (for a number of reasons that amount to "white USAians and the US government fucking suck") notoriously food-insecure, and giving recipients of food aid cash to take to the grocery store being too much like respecting their human dignity: here's boxes of nonperishable foods for Native American communities. including powdered milk by the four-pound tub.

as you will observe by skimming the above link, to about 75% of Native Americans, powdered milk is 100% useless! …as food. not a bad way to mark the lines of baseball diamonds, though.

[lizbee]

I've definitely seen Native Americans on lists of ethnic groups with high incidences of lactose intolerance, so I'm sorry to say I'm not even remotely surprised.

[fred_mouse]

Having travelled in rural Australia, I got soy milk where it was available, but learned to drink coffee black. Small inland towns? Not enough call for it. Somewhat larger touristy coastal towns? Not a problem (So,Esperance, multiple choices. Pretty much everywhere else we stopped between Perth and Esperance? Black coffee). Several years later, I still drink my coffee black, and occasionally have soy milk. And my gut is usually happier for it.

[amaresu]

It's easier to get a good cup of tea in the United States than to get mediocre coffee with any kind of drinkable non-dairy milk. At least in the Midwest. There was a hipster cafe in the Detroit suburbs which offered almond milk with their drip coffee, and I was so happy I almost cried. Do you guys ... not have lactose intolerant people

I've never had any trouble getting at least a non-dairy creamer, if not actual almond/coconut/soy creamer. But perhaps that is the difference between the Twin Cities and the rest of the midwest?

[lizbee]

Very possibly! The Twin Cities seem to be one of the places that keep coming up as Probable Sources of Non-Dairy.

(It was also, for example, a lot easier in downtown Detroit in than in the suburbs, hipster cafes notwithstanding.)

[amaresu]

I think Duluth, Rochester, and St. Cloud would probably be safe for Minnesota as well. I do love the Twin Cities, but I have to admit to not spending much time in rural Minnesota. Although I would be surprised to find a Caribou Coffee that didn't have a non-milk alternative. They were offering non-dairy creamer as a matter of course in the mid 90s, but again haven't tried too many outside the main thoroughfares.

[garpu]

It's far easier to find good coffee places with non-dairy milks on the coasts, I'm finding. Midwest, good luck. Midwest kind of sucks if you're vegetarian and outside of the Twin Cities, Chicago, or St. Louis. I moved away from the midwest in the 90's, but if I had to move back, I'd move to Chicago. After almost 20 years on the coasts, I don't think I could handle non-urban middle America anymore. Especially not during Trump's regime.

Cracker Barrel scares me.

[cyprinella]

You'd probably do alright in smaller college towns, like Ann Arbor or Lansing to name two I know, for veg options but they're not going to be nearly as wide ranging as the big coastal cities for sure.

[garpu]

I moved away from the midwest in '97. Haven't been back, and don't really plan to now.

[cyprinella]

Oh same except for the being back part. Just pointing out that it's not completely dire out there.

[lizbee]

After almost 20 years on the coasts, I don't think I could handle non-urban middle America anymore. Especially not during Trump's regime.

Yeah, next door to the hipster cafe in the suburbs was a shopfront evangelical church whose display window was plastered with anti-UN, pro-Trump slogans. And every time my BFF used a female pronoun for her partner, I got really nervous, even though they were the ones opening themselves up.

And yet! Everyone I met was so nice, and Detroit has such a good feeling, especially the inner-urban area. My BFF and her wife are talking about moving there in a few years, and I wouldn't be sorry to become a regular visitor.

[garpu]

I hear you. After the midterms, a friend from college, who moved to rural Iowa, was saying that those of us in cities and the coasts (that is, "blue" enclaves) owed it to them to move to rural areas. On the one hand, I'm sure her Trump-loving neighbors would really like my coastal graduate school-educated ass moving in. Secondly, the Frood's family has some strange health issues, for which I'm leery of moving to a state with no healthcare coverage beyond what you can buy. (I live in Massachusetts, that has amazing coverage for everyone, comparatively speaking.) That, and should the Frood develop a pulmonary embolism like his brother and dad, he wouldn't die trying to find a hospital that would admit him. (Not to mention the difficulty of being a composer in a part of the country that has no arts funding to speak of.)

And this is assuming that either of us could find jobs in a part of the country that's...economically disadvantaged, to put it mildly.

My stepsister and her wife live in south-central Illinois, and they're working on an exit plan to move to the west coast as soon as they've paid down the mortgage on her dad's place she inherited. I can't blame them--they've been threatened plenty since 2016.

[tellitslant]

I would love to hear any of your Canadian YA/MG thoughts once you get to the books!

[starlady]

The vegetarian/non-dairy thing…is really difficult if you're not in Chicago, Minneapolis, or a certified college town. It's not even that great on parts of the coasts that aren't the actual big cities (though definitely much better on the west coast than the east coast in that respect). The problem with going to the Midwest when you can swim is that then it's extremely hot and humid.

As a Yankee, I find Cracker Barrel deeply unnerving and I have never crossed its threshold of my own volition. I haven't been to Outback Steakhouse in at least 15 years, but it's nice to hear they're not putting up fake Indigenous art anymore. Is Guzman y Gomez Australian? I've only ever seen it in Tokyo.

I'm seeing Hamilton in San Francisco at the end of this month and looking forward to taking in the differences between that company and the original cast.

[lizbee]

Is Guzman y Gomez Australian? I've only ever seen it in Tokyo.

Yup! They're sort of the "prestige" fast food Mexican chain, as opposed to the places that'll just throw some minced beef on a tortilla and call it a day.

[ase]

Do you guys ... not have lactose intolerant people?

Oh we do. The food industrial complex just doesn't care about them.

(Lactose intolerant all my life. Which is how I got started reading ingredient lists at a very early age.)

Also your writer Slack has sensible people in it. I think that sounds like a story I would read! (Okay, I think I also read that Lily/Snape fic, so.)

[lizbee]

(Okay, I think I also read that Lily/Snape fic, so.)

You did! It's how we met! (And I think that, nearly twenty years later, I'm much more able to sensitively depict a complicated and not-entirely-healthy relationship without just romanticising it.)

[tree_and_leaf]

Crackerbarrel is a weird and slightly scary place, although I believe they have at least now stopped directing their staff to sit black families near white families.

[pauraque]

Welcome back! I'm glad you had a good trip.

[philippos42]

Odd. As a white American who doesn't like soy milk but does drink lactose-free dairy milk, I would expect soy milk or lactose-free milk to be generally available in a major city?

[chocolatepot]

Oh my gosh, your story description sounds exactly like something I would read.