Do you like my ms paint version of what's inside my head?
My Special Interest. My personal obsession.
Admit it, you have one too. It’s an old meme phrase but it’s supposed to represent something you once heard about and ended up obsessed with. You think about all the time and you could go on a 4 hour deep-dive down the rabbit hole every time you hear it mentioned. I’m going to share some of mine.
The Titanic - I saw this movie three times in the theater, probably a hundred other times it was on TV, no exaggeration. I also watched any and every tv special about it. I watched the OceanGate rescue coverage as well as both recently released documentaries. I just recently visited the Red Star Line Museum in Antwerp, it’s the Belgian owned company of ships - just like the British owned White Star line, that owned the Titanic. The boats were just like Titanic, and I got to think about eating on the First Class dinnerware sets on display. This event had me so curious I even went through a phase where I believed that if we lived multiple lives, I must have been on the ship and died (drowned in steerage obviously) and that was why I was so fascinated in this life.
Pompeii - Coincidentally, it is part of the Roman Empire. A whole city lost to the natural disaster of Mount Vesuvius. I can’t remember the first time, but anytime the news covered a Pyroclastic Cloud erupting from a volcano… I’ll go do a new re-read deep dive about Pompeii. I even got to visit a couple years ago and walking the streets in person. It was so haunting. I also just read The Wolf Den trilogy by Elodie Harper about life as a slave in Pompeii in the years leading up to and experiencing the eruption. It was a great read, heavily researched, and although it’s fiction, there are characters that were real citizens of Pompeii.
The raised pavers let people walk above the dirty street but were separated to let cart wheels fit through
The Dyatlov Pass Incident- There are lots of conspiracy theories out there about this mysterious tragic event, and I have entertained them all. The death of 9 hikers happened in the Soviet Union so there has been skepticism and mystery over what occurred. But come on, peoples eyes were missing, others had no shoes on, others had broken bones. Was it a Yeti? Obviously not. An avalanche? Maaaybe. Infrasound induced psychosis? Or Parachute air mines? Oh yeah, tell me more! Let me read up again on the newest theory because no explanation really fits perfectly.
Others include:
Ancient Egypt - So old even ancient Egyptians studied the even more ancient Egyptians.
Göbekli Tepe - I would go visit this in Türkiye if I had the opportunity.
Assassination of the Romanovs - those poor kids.
Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn - all the messy scandal of that court.
Bog Bodies- I saw some in a museum in Copenhagen, just fascinating.
I will always make time to jump down a rabbit hole for more information when those topics pop up.
I haven't updated here in a while but I've finally got some motivation to start writing again! I'm going to consider this a To-Do list of blog posts that I owe myself. I took a little detour with a couple sporadic book reviews but I need to catch up on my travel posts. I've fallen insanely, embarrassingly, behind . .
All those books I put on hold at the library finally came through in August and I read some really great books over the past month. I think finally I burned through all the terrible contemporary romances and got to the good stuff. I even found a new book series to obsess over!
I cut the cord in July, downsized with an Apple tv, signed up for Youtube TV so I can get live & DVR for just the channels I was watching regularly. Still have Hulu, Netflix and HBO. I'm still on FUNemployment. Trying to keep the "Fun" by binging on some excellent TV (some new and some just new to me).
