World Heritage Update

Since I'm re-invigorating the blog, I thought I would update some of my more interesting fixations. One of those is seeing how many World Heritage Sites I can visit.

Since my last update, more sites have been inscribed (though none I've visited), bringing the total to 1154.

I have visited one site in that time: Cahokia Mounds.

It's in Illinois, just a little bit east of St. Louis. It consists of a number of prehistoric earthworks. It is unusual in that it is a state park.

Honestly, that last fact was constantly on my mind. Illinois' senators have tried to get it named a national park. I could only imagine how much of a better job the NPS could do, both in terms of visitor experience and preservation. Still, neat to visit.

This brings my total sites visited to 64. My percentage of the total visited drops ever so slightly lower to 5.55%. I have plans to visit another in September -- stay tuned!

Nebula Update

I've been away from blogging for a while (yikes, only 5 posts last year...and pretty boring ones, frankly). I started this blog during a difficult time in my life. Twenty-two years later, I find myself in a surprisingly similar one, so it seemed appropriate to return to the blog to express myself.

At least for now, I'm going to talk about more cheerful things. 

In 2004, I declared a goal of reading all the books to win the Nebula Award for Best Novel.

My most recent update was in 2019. I only had 5 books left. Well, three more years have added three more novels to read. I have, however, read all three.

The 2019 winner was Song for a New Day. I mostly listened to it on my drive cross-country last year to visit my mother in Arizona. It largely concerns people not wanting to leave their houses because of a pandemic. Eerie. I gave it 4 stars.

The 2020 winner was Network Effect, book 5 in the Murderbot series. I gave it five stars; I have really enjoyed the whole series.

The 2021 winner was A Master of Djinn, another 5-star book. It is a mystery set in an alternate-history, steampunk 1910 Cairo. With lots of magic. It's great, and I hope to see more books in the series.

So it's back to 5 left. The good news is that I am back to flying again, and I do some of my best reading in the skies.