Day: November 10, 2020

Back from My State Park Trip and Boy Are My Arms Tired

November 8, 2020 1 of 8

Yeah, that title pretty much says it. I’m so tired I’m getting a little punchy.

I left the house at 8:30 this morning and picked up Mila at 9. Then we started on Blanco Road, which is a smaller street that’s less congested than US 281 closer in to the city.

We got to 281 and headed north to Burnet, where we tried to get into Inks Lake State Park. I say “tried to get into” because they were waiving entry fees today in honor of Veteran’s Day. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department website recommends reservations for day use, but reservations were effectively required. So that eliminated Inks Lake State Park and Pedernales Falls State Park. I didn’t even bother trying Guadalupe River State Park.

I also tried to sign up for a state park pass and accidentally made what I intended to make my password into my username. I have no idea what my password id. My mobile data connection was spotty that far out, so maybe I accidentally typed the wrong thing into the wrong field.

Um. Actually. I just checked my email and there is an email with the username I wanted to use and that has my info and the password I wanted to use is attached to that username. I’m so confused.

Okay, so I went and got my credit card and tried again. So I now have a state parks pass. I’ll have it in my hands in a couple of weeks. And if I want to go to a state park before then, I can always have the look up my pass number.

Not that that would have done me any good today, you understand. But it’s good to have in the future.

Originally I was going to do my annual national park this weekend, but it looks like that’s not going to happen. I wonder if Alex is off on the 12th, 13th, or 14th? I’m off all three and we’ve long had plans to go back to Waco to finish Cameron Park. We could hit Waco Mammoth while we’re there. He’s probably already busy then, but I can ask, right?

Content Creators: Slacktivist

November 7, 2020 3 of 8

I’ve been a reader and occasional commenter at Fred Clark’s Slacktivist blog for a really absurdly long time. I think I was still married to Thomas when I found him. I checked him out for the reason that most people do — his deconstruction of the Left Behind books.

In the very, very late 1980s, my college roommate fell in with a group of young women who believed that the end of the world was right around the corner. When Geraldo Rivera had his show on the now-debunked Satanic panic, they had a prayer meeting in my dorm room.

I’m a Christian, but I don’t believe that there’s going to be a physical second coming of Jesus. Most of the Bible verses that are used as “proof” that such a thing is going to happen at all are taken out of context. Personally, I believe that most of it was about the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD.

But anyhow, I’m getting away from myself here.

This whole school year, with the constant talk of the rapture and everything in my room, where the only way I could get away from it was to hide in a friend’s room, was pretty scarring for me. My floormates who were near it, but not right in the middle of it, developed an allergy to this sort of talk, as well.

Left Behind hadn’t been written yet when this all went down, but a lot of the things that Fred talked about, like the Scofield Reference Bible, were things I’d come into contact with during that year. His deconstruction of that worldview, and the community that built up around his blog, was very cathartic for me.

Over the years, Fred has covered a lot of religious topics, and also political topics, and he’s talked about his own life, and upbringing, and baseball and places where any and all of those topics overlap.

Frankly, Slacktivist is one of the first places I check out when I sit down at my computer. I have trouble keeping up with the comentariat, both in terms of how fast the threads go and in terms of what they talk about, and really that’s a great experience for me, because I’ve learned so much over the years.

So I highly recommend that you check it out. If you lean progressive for your politics, or your religion, or anything like that, I think you’ll enjoy it.

And for my Gratuitous Amazon Link, I guess my comic book reading project is appropriate for this post. I first learned about Kamala Khan, the current Ms. Marvel, in the comments of Fred’s blog. So today it’s Volume 5: Super Famous, by G. Willow Wilson, Takeshi Miyazawa, Cliff Chiang, Adrian Alphona, and Nico Leon