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Posted by Daily Otter

Via Vancouver Aquarium, which writes, “It's hard to believe sea otter Tofino is already a year old! Today we celebrated her first rescueversary with an ice cake (that Luna decided was for her), clam paste art, ice treats and all the seafood a little otter could ask for!”

(Sorry this is so small; I was having technical issues and just couldn’t not have you all see this video - especially Luna running off with the cake! Watch the original here.)

Mixology Monday At Salar

Jun. 18th, 2025 08:24 pm
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Posted by Athena Scalzi

If you’ve been reading my posts for a bit, you may remember me doing a piece or two over my favorite restaurant, Salar. The posts I’ve done have been featuring their wonderful monthly wine dinners they host, but today I’m here to talk about one of their other monthly events I enjoy: Salar’s Mixology Monday!

This was the second Mixology Monday I’ve attended, the theme of this one being “Blended Beverages.” Listen, I’m a basic white girl, you already know I love a fun, blended bevvie. What I dislike, though, is the sound of a blender, especially if I’m dining at a fine establishment. It totally ruins the vibes and detracts from the classy aura of a really nice restaurant.

Fortunately, our lovely mixologist for the evening feels the exact same way, and the event was held on the secluded back patio of the restaurant so we wouldn’t disturb other guests. Salar’s back patio is my favorite patio in Dayton. It has a beautiful pergola, pretty string lights, and tons of plants that make it feel vibrant and lush.

Check out the mixologist’s setup:

A bar-station set up on one of the patio's tables. There's several different bottles of liquor, a bucket of lemons and limes, fresh herbs and sliced berries, and a thing of tajin and black volcanic salt for rimming glasses.

I thought it was odd there was a dish of poppyseeds, but upon closer inspection it was black lava salt for rimming the glass. My (silly) mistake!

Since Salar is a Peruvian restaurant, I started off with a blended Pisco Sour, which I was informed is the national drink of Peru.

My blended pisco sour, frozen and icy with four drops of bitters on top.

This was so light and refreshing, the fact it was all icy and frozen only added to that refreshing-ness. She actually let me mix this myself, which was fun.

One of my favorite things about Salar is that when you dine here, their version of “bread for the table” is housemade pita and hummus, which was served at this event, as well:

A white bowl holding some triangular pieces of pita, and there's a smaller black bowl in the middle containing the hummus, which is green in color due to the herbs they use in it. It sits atop a bed of spinach.

Their hummus is so unique, it’s super herbaceous and fresh tasting, and their pita is perfectly golden brown and crisp. I love that they start you off with something so fun compared to just regular bread and butter (not that I don’t also love good bread and butter).

Unlike their monthly wine dinners, where everyone is served their own plate per course, the Mixology Mondays have a smaller crowd (only about ten people) and are more casual in tone, so the food is served family style on larger platters that get passed around, and you just take however much you want and put it on your own plate.

Here’s some roasted veggies we were served:

A big white bowl full of roasted squash, roasted bell pepper, green beans, mushrooms, all that good stuff.

There was also a salad with grilled chicken, elote, and some kind of really yummy green dressing over top, but I failed to get a picture of that one. I do, however, have a picture of the tofu dish the kitchen made for someone with dietary restrictions, and that looked tasty:

A small grey plate with some salad, topped with two giant chunks of tofu that are dark orange in color, probably have been marinated and grilled the same way the chicken was.

Actually, I now notice that the salad the tofu is sitting on top of is definitely the same salad mix that the one with chicken had, so just imagine that salad but with chicken on top instead and that’s what I had.

Of course, gotta get our second bev going:

A super cute pineapple shaped glass filled with a reddish pink liquid. The drink is topped with a blackberry and a raspberry, plus a pineapple frond for garnish.

I absolutely love this pineapple glass it was served it, plus the pineapple toothpick and pineapple frond decoration was so cute. This drink was made with blackberries, raspberries, I honestly don’t remember what else but it was so fruity and totes delish! I felt transported to a hammock on a beach.

Even though I came alone, everyone was sat at one long table and I ended up having some great conversations with my tablemates. It was so fun chatting, sharing food, sipping our drinks, it was definitely more friendly and chill than I was expecting. Good vibes all around.

And to finish the evening, a strawberry margarita made with Mezcal, with a tajin covered lime for optimal enjoyment:

A short glass filled with pink liquid. The drink is topped with a lime wedge that is covered in tajin.

As you can probably tell, it was pretty warm out so the drinks did tend to melt kind of quickly, but they tasted just as good in liquid form as frozen form, so I can’t complain too much.

All in all, both the food and the drinks were super summery and tasty, the conversation was easy-going and fun, and it was just a pleasant way to spend a Monday evening. I look forward to the next one of these I attend.

What’s the best complimentary bread and butter you’ve had at a restaurant? Do you like pisco sours? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!

-AMS

The Big Idea: Aimee Ogden

Jun. 18th, 2025 02:25 pm
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Posted by Athena Scalzi

Coming back to ideas with fresh eyes is always a good idea. For author Aimee Ogden, it was eight years before she revisited the story that would come to be her newest novella, Starstruck. Check out her Big Idea to see how she made this story shine.

AIMEE OGDEN:
Ten years ago, I had the Big Idea that would become Starstruck: a world where each falling star held a soul that would animate whatever plant or animal it fell on. What would happen if those stars stopped falling? And what about when something got a soul that was never supposed to have one?

I wrote a book I loved about that idea—a fantasy for YA readers—and queried it with around a hundred different agents. And I got an equivalently hundred-adjacent number of rejections. C’est la vie écrivaine; I cried, presumably ate a cookie or two about it, and buried it in my trunk of failed stories, never to be seen again.

It turned out that out of sight did not mean out of mind. Starstruck haunted me (the book itself embodied, occasionally, in the person of a friend who also cared about it a lot), until two years ago, I exhumed the story’s corpse, and I was happy to find it still had good bones. They just needed to be arranged into a different order; and there was a fair bit of carrion flesh to strip away, too, to pare it down to a novella.

I still had a magical world of falling stars. I still had the same main characters: an abandoned human child, a gentle fox, her pragmatic radish wife, and a rock with delusions of destiny. Even the climactic moment stayed almost unchanged from the original version, except for the paring back of some elements that had proved extraneous to the story.

But the original version was YA, and the story had centered around the human boy. I hadn’t read widely enough yet to expand my conception of what a lead character could or should be. Coming back to it, I knew right away that I only wanted to write about a middle-aged radish. A magical middle-aged radish with a soul, and her enormous love, and her silent, squashed-aside regrets, and her utter inability to cope with a chunk of granite that told her it had a name and a birthday and a favorite color.

If I’d been paying more attention, I probably should have known where the story’s emotional heart lay the first time around—in the original version, the final scenes take place from the radish perspective. Even before I understood this was her story, I must have sensed that the needed closure could only come from her.

Or maybe I couldn’t have known yet. Eight years is a big gap to develop and change as a writer, and to accrue emotional baggage besides. Without that time, and without the double regret of failing with and then abandoning Starstruck, it couldn’t have been the same book. And as pleased as I was with it the first time around, it’s better now for its chance for maturation, and I have more room in my well-used, middle-aged heart with which to love it. Maybe you do, too. How do you feel about radishes?


Starstruck: Publisher website

Author Socials: Website|Bluesky

Today in “Look at This Dork”

Jun. 18th, 2025 09:48 am
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Posted by John Scalzi

Someone is a little too excited to be on the Scalzi Bridge, with the Scalzi Church in the background to the left, about to have dinner at the Ai Scalzi restaurant. It was an all Scalzi day yesterday, you see. And it was all lovely, even if the dork pictured above clearly was not at all cool about it. Shine on, silly dork!

— JS

The Big Idea: John Wiswell

Jun. 17th, 2025 03:15 pm
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Posted by Athena Scalzi

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Author John Wiswell tells us of a tale that usually ends in revenge and violence, but imagines a world where our hero chooses kindness instead. Follow along in the Big Idea for his newest novel, Wearing The Lion, and see where empathy takes us.

JOHN WISWELL:

You deserve better than revenge.

I know, you want to catch your father’s murderer and duel them to the death, but then you’ll leave the scene feeling hollow and unfulfilled. Or worse, the pursuit will corrupt you into becoming the kind of person you hated. And there’s a great likelihood that your quickness to action will make you hurt the wrong person, and then you’re inspiring revenge in others. Think better of it now, because I will throw the book across the room if you kill the villain’s entire crew but spare the villain at the last minute because otherwise you’ll be “just like him.”

So we know there are problems with revenge. But what are the alternatives?

It’s something I’ve been exploring for my entire life. It’s tough to begin thinking about because our narratives of justice overflow with blood. We’re taught to seek culturally fetishized violence. We’re promised that reprisal will give us catharsis and justice. Mythology is rich with these narratives. Every king has made enemies who would like to get back at him. And the gods? They never drop a grudge. 

Mythology is the richest place to explore this theme. Myths tell us what we think about ourselves, which is why every generation wants to remix them, ear cocked for the sound of truth. What does it do to the traditional revenge narrative if the hero refuses to hurt anyone? No cracking goons’ skulls. No blowing up a dragon’s lair. Instead, we’d follow someone who was hurt and carried that hurt in his heart, but because of that, didn’t want to see more suffering in the world. Perhaps his entire journey toward “revenge” would actually be about finding the right thing to do.

Heracles (“Hercules” to the Romans) is such an interesting character from this point of view. His was never a revenge story. The gods drove him mad and made him slay his children, and for that he set out on the twelve labors in order to gain forgiveness. All that hydra-chopping and lion-punching was about being sorry. The modern eye jumps to thinking he shouldn’t be sorry, but vengeful toward the gods.

As it is, few Heracles retellings ever reflect on him slaying his family at all. He’s too busy doing epic stuff to be bothered with mourning. It’s like if Spider-Man never thought about Uncle Ben again.

That sort of violation would change you for the rest of your life. Doing violence with your hands ever again could be nauseating. You might do literally anything to avoid hurting others, especially if your labors were carried out to get justice for your children. When the gods said to kill that invincible lion, you could technically do it. You’d have Zeus’s strength. But that same strength would give you an opportunity to find another way through the labor. And in feeling like a monster yourself, you might find yourself relating to outcast creatures. You might find kinship with the invincible lion, and the hydra, and the titans. They might know what it’s like to feel wrong.

That became the heart of Wearing the Lion, my retelling of the Heracles myth. It changes the entire nature of his great labors. If you won’t hurt anyone—and if your power can’t solve your problems—then you have to adapt.

There is a long tradition in masculinity whereby those of us who have been hurt want to hurt others. It’s a lesson we learn before we can speak, treated as immutable nature. As I grew up, these narratives went from entertaining to exhausting. It hurts to see someone use their few resources on things other than supporting survivors, on sheltering people, healing and feeding them. There’s something about losing enough in your life (and helping others through their darkest times) that reveals how paltry retribution is. Survivors deserve better.

Yep! I accidentally wrote about the crisis of masculinity. I swear it wasn’t on purpose. 

But it was important to me to write about someone wrestling with these principles and looking for a better response to loss. The harm cannot be fixed. This sort of loss is not something you just “heal” from. It’s the sort of vacuum that makes revenge appealing, because in uncertainty, norms call to us. When Heracles rejects revenge and instead goes on the labors to understand what is really happening in the heavens, he starts to sound truer to me.

In his struggle, he questions if anyone can understand what he’s feeling. He thinks he doesn’t fit in with the world anymore. That he doesn’t belong around people. Who understands feeling that lost? Monsters.

Yes, his first new friends are a giant lion and extremely opinionated hydra. The creatures his labors send him towards know what it’s like to not fit in. They know what it’s like to not have answers. Grief isn’t something you can get tough enough to ignore. Heracles’s struggle with his culpability, and his quest to figure out which god is behind all of this, requires more than strength. It requires sides of the character I fell in love with while writing.

When Heracles is set against monsters while starving for peace, there’s the potential for a different kind of family. A found family of the creatures that civilization would never let near itself. Rather than skinning the Nemean Lion, Heracles winds up carrying it everywhere on its shoulders, because it demands snuggles. It’s ferocious about snuggles. Heracles bonding with these creatures, learning how to give support and feel worthy of it himself, are things I didn’t know I needed to write.


Wearing The Lion: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s Books|Oblong Books

Author Socials: Website|Bluesky|Instagram|Substack

Read an excerpt.

30 Years

Jun. 17th, 2025 01:28 pm
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Posted by John Scalzi

I have a lot to say about being married for 30 years — to the same person! — but I’m also on vacation and wandering around Venice, so I think I’ll save a big post on the matter for when I get back. Be that as it may, today is the actual 30th anniversary; on this day in 1995 the two of us said “I do” in front of a bunch of friends and family and haven’t really looked back from that. 30 years and there has yet to be a moment of regret. I know how lucky I got, and try to make Krissy feel like she got lucky too. She’s amazing, I look like a thumb, and we’re very happy together. I wouldn’t mind another 30 years.

— JS

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Posted by Daily Otter

Photo by Monterey Bay Aquarium, via Elakha Alliance, who writes:

Paws-itive News for Sea Otter Conservation 🦦

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has expanded its sea otter conservation program by 💥doubling💥 the size of its rehabilitation center, allowing for more sea otters to be rescued, rehabilitated, and released back into the wild.

First Dateaversary, 2025

Jun. 16th, 2025 05:13 pm
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Posted by John Scalzi

32 years ago today, Krissy and I went on our first date. Today, our most recent date included a gondola ride, because if you’re a tourist in Venice and you don’t have a gondola ride, they will probably kick you out of the city. We didn’t want that. Gondola ride it was.

And how was the gondola ride? It was lovely, and it’s also an attraction that leans heavily on the novelty of Venice’s canals. I mean, basically, we were cruising past people’s houses for 30 minutes. If we did that in a golf cart in a Florida retirement community, no one would think it was special. But on water in nifty boat, pushed along by a dude with an oar? Magical.

Of course, the most important thing was who I was with. As long as I’m with Krissy, gondola or golf cart, the date is going to be magical. I like her a lot. Even after 32 years, it doesn’t get old.

— JS

A couple weeks in

Jun. 16th, 2025 10:32 am
metawidget: A platypus looking pensive. (Default)
[personal profile] metawidget
Yesterday was Father's Day and also two weeks into me sleeping in the new place. It's shaping up — I keep chipping away at the move; there are still boxes and bags in the front room at the new place but all the rooms feel pretty homey. Father's Day included going to Ada's concert where she sang '22,' which involved more Communauto adventure than anticipated — Elizabeth couldn't unlock her booked car, then I grabbed one that turned out to have a flat, and walked to the replacement. Third time lucky! Also, the concert was running late so Ada got to sing despite our travails. Afterward, we hunted for a brunch place and found a spot at Alpina up in northern Aylmer. They were slammed but nice and the food was copious and tasty.

In the afternoon I found a couple of items from the dregs of garage sales to fill out the kitchen and back deck, and then Andrea and Morgen came over and we went to the nearby city pool all together and had supper. It was lovely to show them around and splash in the pool (I'm not a huge swimmer but it was mostly goofing around in the shallow end).

Things are still mostly cordial with Elizabeth — she got brunch for us, she's offering to help with stuff — but August scheduling is presenting some challenges — trips and plans and kid preferences on what to participate in. More discussion required, I guess.

Union-wise: it's likely real, I plan on handing over the presidency of the subgroup (the local committee) to a young, keen activist (votes permitting) as I've wanted to for a while. That gets me to the state I have wanted to be in for a while.

Lastly: car and ferry booked for adventure with Ada! Lots more to plan, but it's getting real!
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Posted by Athena Scalzi

Have you ever been watching a Shakespeare play and thought, wow, this would be a lot cooler if the actors on stage were drinking, there was improv involved in every scene, and tons of audience participation going on? Well have I got just the thing for you! Dayton Drunk Theater is an amateur troop here in Dayton, Ohio who decided historically famous plays needed more of two things: laughter and liquor.

The founder of the troop, Bobbie, created Dayton Drunk Theater last year, and so far they have done Macbeth, Hamlet, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The fine print after the titles of these shows reads as “Kind Of,” as these aren’t exactly the truest adaptations of Shakespeare you’ve ever seen, but they are damn funny.

Saddling up at the Yellow Cab Tavern for all their performances so far, all their shows have managed to sell out! I saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream this past Friday, and my ticket was only twelve smackaroos. I had a friend in the performance so I wanted to go support him, even though improv isn’t usually my thing.

For twelve dollars you definitely get your money’s worth. A ticket gets you a chair and over two hours of entertainment, including the pre-show of improv games involving volunteers from the crowd.

Of course, there’s plenty of beverages to imbibe thanks to the Yellow Cab Tavern, and you can even buy the actors a drink for them to have during their performance. The way it works is that each actor has their drink of choice predetermined, and everyone has tally marks next to their name so no one ends up with ten drinks. You tell the bartender which actor you want to buy a drink for, and they have someone run their beverage out to them on stage (or behind the scenes if they aren’t on stage at that moment.)

If someone gets like three drinks bought for them at once, the bar makes sure to space out their beverages appropriately so everyone stays safe and upright! I think that’s a super rad system.

The performance itself was a riot, with improvised locations changing all the time, characters having to pretend like they’re in a Western or Noir film, people losing their place in the script, a chase scene involving a giant 3-foot dildo, it was wild all around.

If you’re looking for a perfectly performed, true to form Shakespearian play, this is not the show for you. However, if you want to have a beverage and watch a bunch of goobers do improv, be quick, witty, and slightly lewd, then this is the show for you, and I would recommend following them on Instagram or Facebook to see when their next show is going to be.

Plus, while the event is at a bar and it is called Dayton Drunk Theater, you don’t have to drink if you don’t want to! There was a great selection of mocktails and non-alcoholic beverages available. The person behind me I ended up talking with got a mocktail and it looked really yummy.

All in all, I really enjoyed my time at their show, and I hope to see the next one, which if I remember correctly is going to be Dracula. I think they’re doing auditions sometime soon, so if you’re in Dayton and are interested in performing, maybe check them out!

Does Dayton Drunk Theater sound like something you’d watch? What’s your favorite Shakespeare play? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!

-AMS

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