Trout Nation Posts

For my last post on the subject of Troutcation, I wanted to share with you some travel tips for visiting Secrets St. James or Secrets Wild Orchid.

Which one? So, both Secrets properties in Montego Bay are extremely close together. I snagged this picture off their website so you can see how close they are:

On the left, with the blue roofs, is St. James, and on the right, with the brown roofs, is Wild Orchid. They’re different resorts, but they share pretty much everything. Wild Orchid is closer to the restaurants and nightlife, while St. James is closer to the water sports area and the spa. The main difference I found was that due to its proximity to the shopping, restaurants, and bars, Wild Orchid felt busier, like more of a party atmosphere. Wild Orchid also features lower level “swim-out” rooms for Preferred Club guests, which open directly onto a shared private pool.

St. James felt more removed, definitely quieter than Wild Orchid (especially at night, when people converged on the nightlife area). On the other hand, Mr. Jen and I felt that St. James had the “party pool”, since it seemed a lot of the activities and games happened there. It was also the pool we never went to, because we overheard a really douchey young guy say, “Mr. Hastings! What’s up, brah?” to someone (presumably Mr. Hastings) as we walked past and we decided that we needed to never hear such phrases again.

Mr. Jen and I dubbed the Preferred Club area at St. James the “middle-aged people pool,” because it was quieter, people went there to read books, and nobody was very rowdy or particularly younger. That was our favorite pool.

When should you go? What are you there for? Mr. Jen and I arrived on a Thursday, and it was tranquil and beautiful at night. On Friday, things picked up a little bit, but there were still serene spots to visit. Saturday, all hell broke loose. There was a wedding, two corporate receptions, and a big outdoor party over in the nightlife area. It was the only night we actually heard noise from outside, and that noise was from two competing parties. Now, if we were fun people, this wouldn’t have been an issue, but Mr. Jen and I are not fun. While we weren’t put out or annoyed by these things (because we’re pretty easy going people), we could see how others might be. If you’re going for quiet and relaxation, try arriving on a Sunday afternoon.

Plan your excursions before you leave. People were telling me to do a lot of things before I left on this trip. Oh, you have to go to Ocho Rios to the waterfall because something to do with Cocktail. You should visit such and such historical plantation! Go to where Bob Marley is buried. Take a sailboat cruise to Negril. All of this sounded like a lot of fun, and we didn’t do any of it. Partially, because we were only there for three nights and our single excursion plan feel through. Mostly, though, because we didn’t plan ahead. While Apple Vacations have representatives on-site to help you make your plans, by the time we arrived we were so overwhelmed with choices and indecisive about what to do, we just ended up snorkeling the whole time. Which, you know, snorkeling is cool, but we didn’t see much of the country above water.

Don’t get a first floor room. All the rooms have balconies, so the first floor has patios. Unfortunately, the patios were all very public. There was no barrier (at least, not one substantial enough to recall) between the patios and the lawns, so in some rooms you’d be sitting in your private soak tub within a couple hundred feet of the pool where everyone is hanging out. But my strongest argument against ground floor rooms?

These bastards:

There were peacocks all over the resort. Sure, they’re beautiful and majestic, but do you know what else they are? Dumb as hell and lacking personal boundaries. They’re also aggressive and territorial with each other. Combine all of that, and you have a very high probability of waking to the squawks of a peacock fighting his own reflection in your ground-floor room’s sliding glass door. We saw this happening more than once, and always before nine in the morning.

And most importantly, keep in mind Jamaica’s anti-LGBT culture. Marjorie stopped by the last Troutcation post to give me a heads up on LGBT discrimination/criminalization in Jamaica. This wasn’t something I looked into before going, and I really dropped the ball; I never leave the house, let alone the country, so the idea of checking to see if LGBTQA+ people are more hated in the country of my destination didn’t occur to me. After I spent even a small amount of time researching it last night, I was like, “Oh, shit.” If you’re in a same sex relationship, Jamaica isn’t a safe place. Do not go to there.

However, if you can’t visit Jamaica due to the threat of violence or your conscience prohibits you from visiting,  Secrets also has properties in other, less virulently discriminatory countries, such as Mexico, Costa Rica and Panama. And this is a good reminder to always check with your country of origin on this stuff; if I had been a responsible international traveller and checked with the U.S. State Department, I would have seen their incredibly lengthy section on this.

I also would have known I was supposed to get a Typhoid shot. Whoops.

So, that’s about it from the Troutcation Information Station. Mr. Jen and I are super grateful to Apple Vacations for giving us the opportunity to check out their hassle-free, streamlined travel service. The next time we decide to run away to a tropical destination, Apple will definitely be our go-to travel agency.

In this installment of my Troutcation report (brought to you by Apple Vacations and Secrets St. James), I want to share with you some of the stuff I did not expect. I don’t know what I expected, but definitely the things on this list were not it.

People really say “Ya, mon.” I always though this was a stereotype or something out of the movies. It’s totally not. “Ya, mon” is, despite the way it sounds, a gender-neutral expression that basically translates to “okay”, and everyone says it. “Irie” is another word we heard a lot (meaning “good” or “everything is all right”) as well as “No problem” (a driver told us “in Jamaica, we don’t have problems. We have situations.”), and “Respect.” That last one is important; if you have a positive interaction with someone, they’ll probably say this and fist bump you. Say it back. Also, if someone asks you to buy something or if you want something, and you say “no thanks. Respect,” it’s a nicer way of turning down whatever they’re offering.

Tattoos are a novelty. Since tattoos are so common in the U.S., I kind of forget that I have them until someone points them out. In Jamaica, tattoos aren’t as common, and as a heavily tattooed person, I attracted a lot of attention. Mostly, Jamaican people wanted to know if my tattoos hurt, or if they could touch them. My favorite tattoo-related interaction happened at check-in; one of the women at the desk asked which one of us was an author, me or Mr. Jen. Another woman in reception replied, “She is. She’s the one that’s got a story on her.”

There’s a haunted house, but it’s difficult to convince people that you really want to go there. One of the things Mr. Jen and I had planned for this trip was to visit Rose Hall Great House, because I saw it on some random cable ghost show once and I was interested. Ultimately, this plan fell through because we were trying to coordinate it with Mr. Jen’s boss, who happened to be staying in Montego Bay at the exact same time, and things just didn’t line up, so we ended up not going. Which, you know, bummer, but there’s always next time. Though it’s a popular tourist destination, expect some locals to think you’re out of your mind to go there; it’s apparently pretty spooky and freaks people out.

An impression of turtle sex. Remember those salt and pepper shakers from Troutcation Part 2?

Mr. Jen spotted these and said, “You have to get these. You have to.” The guy in the shop overheard us and said, “Have you ever seen the video on YouTube with the turtles having sex?” And I was like, “Which one?” You might not know this, dear reader, but I love videos of turtles humping things. Not necessarily other turtles, although that’s funny, too. If you’ve never seen a tortoise in the throws of ecstasy, you really need to. It’s adorably lewd. Anyway, the shop guy and I started listing off our favorite videos: “What about the one where the turtle is humping the bag of trash?” “Have you see the one with the shoe?” Mr. Jen stood by, utterly confused by the entire exchange, while the shop guy launched into an impression of what a turtle sounds like during mating. It was a magical moment. When you go on vacation, you usually don’t think, “You know, I might meet someone who finds humping turtles as funny as I do.”

A hotel bill of $44,000.00 While Mr. Jen and I stayed at the resort, we racked up some incidentals. $44,000.00 worth of incidentals.

Because most tourist places accept U.S. dollars, we never exchanged our currency (until the end, when I wanted some to show our kids). So, we didn’t really know what the rate was. Jamaican dollars, like Japanese yen, are like our cents. It didn’t automatically occur to me that this might be the case when I looked at our bill and had momentary cardiac arrest before spotting the USD amount hand written beside the total. I saved the bill so I can show everyone how rich and carefree with money I am, that I spent $5,848.91 on a bottle of wine, and $2,610.00 on Red Bull.

Stay tuned for the conclusion to my Troutcation spectacular, in which I’ll share my tips for having a good time at Secrets St. James and Secrets Wild Orchid.

Weed tourism and Jamaica have been synonymous for a long time, but cannabis has been decriminalized for less than a year. Really think about that. Less than a year. You could legally smoke weed in Washington before you could legally smoke in Jamaica. Last year, laws went into effect allowing for religious and medical exemptions, and personal use under two ounces was decriminalized, resulting in a ticket and fine. Which, by the way, is awesome, since Rastafarians use cannabis in religious worship and have been trying to get it legalized for years. It was shitty that American tourists could go down to Jamaica and smoke weed on resorts and have no legal repercussions, but Rastafarians who lived there faced religious persecution over it.

Before we went, people were telling us, “Yeah, you’re going to find it everywhere, people on the street will ask you if you want to buy. People at the airport are selling it.” I doubted that highly, but within two hours of arriving, I was rolling a j in my hotel room. Here’s exactly how it happened:

Me: *walking down the beach*
Random guy: “Hello, my friend! Do you have everything you need?”
Me: “Actually…”
Random guy: “Okay, how much do you want to spend?”

And that was it. I just had to go down and dip my feet in the ocean. Be real, real, real sure that you and the person you’re buying from are on the same page, though, because I accidentally almost bought blow. Keep your purchase low-key; it’s still illegal to sell it, and it’s just good weed etiquette to not get someone busted. Also, not everyone selling marijuana is selling other stuff (for example, the aforementioned coke), so don’t make dickish assumptions.

Now, about the price. You’re going to find people on the internet claiming to have bought four pounds of weed for thirty dollars or some shit. Do not expect this. Pot is definitely cheaper in Jamaica, but if you’re buying on a resort beach, you’re going to get charged resort prices. My personal thought on this is that they’re doing you a service by coming to you. Don’t barter. And for god’s sake, tip your dealer. You’d tip a pizza delivery person, right?

“But Jenny,” some of you seasoned stoners might be saying, “the weed in Jamaica just isn’t as good as it is in the U.S.!” This is totally not true. Beach weed in Jamaica doesn’t give you as powerful a high as something named “shark wreck” that you get from a pot shop in Denver, but that doesn’t make it of lower quality. The nameless green I bought had a beautiful, mild high without paranoia. Just a blissful sense of well-being. And my body didn’t feel sluggish; I smoked a joint about as long as my hand before I went snorkeling and never felt tired or like I was going to get in trouble swimming (though I’m a pretty strong swimmer in the first place).

Of course, snorkeling while high is probably not the best idea, so don’t take this as a recommendation. On our second swim out, I saw a fucking huge barracuda and thought, “right on,” instead of, “this is not good and I should leave this part of the reef.” But I also saw a sting ray gliding majestically through the water and thought, “That should be called a sea pancake,” so it was probably worth the danger.

Not everyone in Jamaica is a total stoner, and not everybody is cool with weed. Don’t go into a restaurant and spark up. Don’t be that tourist. I mostly smoked on the beach at night, and on our balcony during the day. And don’t worry, housekeeping is savvy:

That is a clean ashtray. The housekeeper took the old one, but left our roaches in the clean one. A++ service.

Staying at an all-inclusive resort meant there was never a lack of food for when the munchies came calling. The buffet at the World Café was amazing for this. Smoke up, get hungry, wander into a paradise untold where you could get all sorts of fruits and fruit juices. Which, by the way, is what you’ll probably get the munchies for while you’re there; the combination of the heat and the cotton mouth is going to drive you straight into a pile of fresh pineapple, papaya, and otaheiti apple (which has the consistency of a pear and tastes the way roses smell). Mid-afternoon a guy with a little cart full of coconuts and straws would walk around, if you’re into coconut water. You will, however, give yourself away if you sit down with a plate heaped with pineapple and six or seven glasses of juice.

Basically, smoking weed in Jamaica isn’t all that different than smoking it in the States. It’s just easier to get, a little bit cheaper, and the high is a lot more mellow. I took my own rolling papers and a new, sealed roller in my suitcase. When I returned home, all of that stuff stayed behind. Do not try to bring home any “souvenirs” you’ve smoked out of or rolled with, because customs can give you a big hassle, and you can be busted if residue is found on those items. To be honest, I wouldn’t even chance bringing clean paraphernalia back to the U.S. Get something better. Something classy. Like I did:

Hey there, friends! As I mentioned last week, Apple Vacations gave me and Mr. Jen the fantastic opportunity to visit the Secrets St. James resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Mr. Jen and I don’t get a chance to go on many vacations together. Oh sure, I travel a lot for work, so I can get out and see as many of you guys as are willing to travel to a hotel ballroom to get an awkwardly over-enthusiastic welcome from me. But those trips are actually kind of exhausting, because every day of a conference you have to be “on.” So it was nice to get away from it all, not have to be “on”, and also not be at Disney World (a vacation we took late last year as a family, and which required a recovery period of its own). However, when explaining the concept of an all-inclusive, adults-only resort to our children, that’s exactly the frame of reference we used: “Imagine everything you find boring, but that adults love. Then put all of that together in a place like Disney World, but a Disney World you would immediately want to come home from.”

It didn’t hurt that everything was free, so we didn’t have to work that out. Yes, if you couldn’t already tell, this is a sponsored post. I don’t do many of those, because I like to keep this as add-free a space as possible. But come on. It was a trip to Jamaica.

We were sent as Preferred Club guests. That meant getting some extra perks, like a private lobby with private check-in, a bar, and an all day buffet of little gourmet treats. They don’t care if you take those little gourmet treats back to your room, either; two staff members watched me with amused, knowing looks as I stumbled toward them, glassy-eyed, a plate of multiple bowls of salmon tartar and some kind of ceviche on one arm, an almost Seussian stack of deserts on the other, and called out, “Hey, you don’t mind if I take this and hit the road, do you?”

The staff of this resort wants you to relax and have a good time–and to have a good time with you–from the moment you touch down at the airport. As we stepped off the plane, we were greeted by a uniformed Apple Vacations representative, who whisked us through immigrations and customs, bypassing lines like big shots. I don’t know if this is a service I got because I was going to write blog posts about the trip, or if it’s just something that comes with the Preferred Club service. On our return trip we decided to independently investigate something called Club Mobay, which is essentially the same thing. It costs $30.00 USD, and you just breeze in and out of the airport like you went to the post office and there was no line. We didn’t use the arrival service, as Apple had us set up, but the departure service was awesome. You wait in their lobby full of complimentary beverages and food (like an actual buffet; you could plan to have your lunch or breakfast there) until it’s time to go. I highly recommend that for everybody.

Anyway, as we took our private transport (thanks for that, too, Apple!), the driver told us all sorts of facts about Jamaica–which I’ll talk about in Troutcation, Part Two: “Things That Surprised Me About Jamaica”. At the hotel, we were whisked to the private Preferred Club check-in, where they greeted us with glasses of ice cold champagne and cold towels. “You’re just like Obama,” a bellman joked.  This is also where we elected to independently investigate the resort’s credit voucher system. You pay $200.00 USD and get a book of vouchers for $10.00 off bottles of wine (4), $60 off a romantic candlelight dinner (1), and some other random amount off spa services that I can’t remember. Basically, it totaled $200.00, anyway. It’s the Disney Dollar of the resort: got ’em, so you might as well spend ’em . If you’re not planning on getting spa treatments, now maybe you are, because you don’t want to lose money on the coupons. Getting a bottle of wine with dinner? Now you are! You want to use up those credits. Even if you were planning to do all that stuff, anyway, why not just keep the $200.00? Verdict: nah.

We did, however, opt for the candlelight dinner. It was pricey (somewhere around $250.00 USD), but we considered it an early tenth anniversary present. We did this on the last day of our trip, and enjoyed a dinner on the beach in the moonlight, with the gorgeous mountains in the distance. The dinner was amazing, with a shrimp tempura appetizer course, caprese salad, filet mignon and lobster tail entree, and a dessert that was like a red velvet cake with fruit and chocolate on top.

I highly recommend this option, which comes with various package levels. We did the very basic one. And after dinner:

Really cool, right? It was totally romantic. I mean, Mr. Jen and I aren’t romantic, so we ended up watching CNN and taking turns in the tub so we could both see the TV. But it was still a wonderful evening.

However, do you notice something about the placement of the bathtub? This is pretty key. See, Mr. Jen and I have been together for fourteen years, married for ten. So a bathroom set up like this:

isn’t going to phase us. We have no boundaries anymore. Well…almost no boundaries. One morning, the copious amount of alcohol consumed and the unlimited amount of complimentary gourmet food took its toll. “Hey, Jenny? You mind, uh…spending some time on the balcony?” he asked plaintively. “And turn the shower on? For some noise?”

I’m just saying that if your relationship is in the “bashful flower” phase, you might want to have a talk about the bathroom arrangement up front before you book this vacation. I do, however, know that this is something Apple Vacations takes into consideration for its customers at the other, equally exciting vacation destination properties they can book you at, so if you call and talk to an agent, maybe that’s something they can help you with.

Another perk of the Preferred Club was that we got butlers. Plural. Two butlers handle the arrangements for anything you’d like to do while you’re at the resort. Want that romantic dinner? They’ll help you. Excursions? No problem. Tarje and Patrick have you covered. You even get a little phone you carry around with you so you can call them if you need something, and they’ll be there in a moment’s notice. This was, of course, a service we barely used. They called everyday asking, “Are you sure there’s nothing we can do?” I tried to explain that we are but simple country folk and are used to doing for ourselves, but it was too late. I was already Obama.

We had a fantastic time at Secrets, and a big part of that was what I considered our “Apple safety net.” One of the things I dislike the most about traveling is having to know where to be, when, how much time to budget to get stuff done, etc. The night before we left, an Apple representative contacted us about when our flight would leave, what time our transport would take us to the airport, and what time to check out in the morning. When we had questions, we just went down to the lobby to ask her for clarification, because Apple has representatives on the property. Every day, they were there if we needed their help with setting up outside tours or handling travel arrangements. That was a really cool piece of mind to have.

We stayed for three nights, and honestly, that was just about the right amount of time. Sure, people go down there and stay longer, but three nights was just long enough to feel like we’d gotten away from it all, without getting sunburned or missing the kids too much. And when we did get home, we felt like we’d been gone for weeks. On our first night back, snuggled in our own bed, I leaned over to Mr. Jen and said, “Hey. Feel my neck. It’s not doing that thing anymore.”

All of us have neck things, right? Well, for a few glorious days, I did not. And it was magical.

I know this post comes off as quite commercial-ish, but I honestly can’t say enough about how well the whole thing was set up, both on Apple Vacation’s end and at the resort. Mr. Jen and I are already talking about booking a trip with them for another vacation some time. I creeped their website and it looks like for the exact vacation we had, you’d be spending under $4,000.00 total (this is leaving out some stuff I’ll talk about in another post, I’m just talking hotel/flight/Preferred Club upgrade). So, if you’ve got that kind of vacation cash and you’re looking for something short and tropical, this is definitely a good option. For us in the midwest, it’s actually a shorter flight than going to Vegas.

Also, you get to see Cuba!

So anyway, I’ll be making more posts this week about some other stuff that happened on vacation, like stuff that surprised me about Jamaica and funny stuff that happened there, including why you should never book a ground floor room at Secrets Wild Orchid, and why every Jamaican person we met wanted to talk about tattoos. Stick around.

I’m back from my Troutcation hiatus! And you’ll note that this post is happening on a Saturday. That’s because I told Bronwyn and Jess that I couldn’t do a #LegionXIII post this week, because I was still on blog vacation. And they were like, “That’s over on Friday, bitch. We’re moving the post to Saturday.”

Quick rundown of the episode: This is the episode where everyone is angry, and everyone deals with that anger in their own, immensely self-destructive ways.

Vorenus’s little “got your head!” trick with Erastes Fulman last week has led to total chaos on the Aventine. Rival gangs are killing each other in the street, and old ladies are warning people away from the Vorenus house. Even Eirene has had it with Vorenus’s shit. She’s worried that she’ll get pregnant with a monster baby if they’re living in a house with a decapitated head just rotting on the floor.

Antony has to meet with Cleopatra, and Atia is not a fan. She doesn’t have a lot to worry about, at the moment, as Cleopatra is in Rome looking for money for her son, Caesar’s heir. Considering the fact that Caesar’s actual heir, Octavian, can’t get one red cent out of his inheritance as long as Antony controls it. When Cleo tells Antony to declare Caesarion Caesar’s legitimate heir, Antony tells her to go fuck herself, and they do not part on good terms. He still has to have dinner with her at Atia’s house, though.

Titus Pullo goes to Mark Antony to ask him for help with Vorenus. Pullo actually describes Vorenus as having “gone awry”, which is my favorite way anyone has ever described a breakdown. I’m going to call all my breakdowns “going awry” from now on. Antony goes full-on Tough Love Jen on Vorenus (Bronwyn knows what this means) and tells Vorenus to either commit suicide or clean up the Aventine and get the gangs under control, since he created that problem.

Speaking of creating problems for one’s self, Antony tells Atia that Cleopatra isn’t really hot or anything, she’s just really plain and mousy. So when Cleo shows up at Atia’s dinner looking hot as fuck, it’s clear that Antony is doing that thing where guys downplay the hotness of a girl they might end up cheating on their girlfriend with later. Queen or not, when Cleo leaves the party, Atia has some words for her. One of them is “trollop”.

Also at the party? Servillia, who has been forced to come to keep up political appearances. Unfortunately, keeping up appearances means that she has to stand there and take all of Atia’s gloating apologies and publicly accept her offer of friendship. Atia cannot, however, murder Servillia as she had planned, so she sends Timon off to his pointless story about his life that goes absolutely nowhere. Basically, it all boils down to Timon is Jewish, but not Jewish enough for his brother, who’s like, some kind of super pious political agitator. This storyline will go nowhere and add nothing to the overall season.

Concord, who is basically the goddess of getting along, is in charge of a parlay. All the rival gang leaders meet with Vorenus, who tells them that he’s in charge now. Nobody wants to commit any kind of violence or anything in front of the statue of Concord, so they don’t attack Vorenus for talking some shit about them and bossing them around. But the thing is, Vorenus doesn’t give a shit about Concord. He talks about sodomizing Concord, then smashes the statue all to pieces in front of the horrified priests and gang members. Then he tells everyone that he’s a son of Hades, and they’re kind of like, okay. We have to do this, because this guy is dangerous.

Back at Atia’s house, a lot of shit is going on. Antony and Atia are fighting about whether or not he fucked Cleo, Octavian and Antony are fighting over Octavian’s money, and Octavia has literally no fucks left to give. She just eats fruit salad and ignores everybody’s drama. Good choice, Octavia.

The thing Octavian wants to do with his money is give away the money Caesar pledged to the plebs. But Antony thinks that’s stupid, so he’s not going to give it to him. Octavian tells Octavia that he plans to take control of Rome from Antony, and she doesn’t take it real seriously.

Pullo warns Vorenus that fucking around with the gods is probably not the best idea. And this is coming from a dude who sat in a sinking boat and told the sea god to suck his cock. But you know what you shouldn’t do, Pullo? Employ some rough-around-the-edges-but-smolderingly-sexy woman to manage the prostitutes in your new mafia brothel.

The news reader guy announces that yay, the plebs are getting their money, and Antony and Atia are freaked the fuck out. They get even more freaked out when Octavian tells him he borrowed millions of whatever denomination of money they use. Shit gets super violent in one of the most uncomfortable scenes I think I’ve ever seen on TV, and Antony nearly kills Octavian. When Atia leaves the scene with Antony, leaving Octavian on the floor, he decides to say fuck it to everyone in his family and runs away to Agrippa’s house. On the way, they pass a wagon full of slaves. And inside are Lyde and the children, alive after all.

My favorite part of the episode: It’s a toss up between Vorenus trashing the sacred statue, the smooth transition between Cleopatra’s double slap of Antony, and Cleo’s expression when she recognizes Titus Pullo.

My least favorite part of the episode: The introduction of Gaia, for reasons that will be clear as the series goes on. But most of all, the introduction of Timon’s story. The reason I dislike it so much is that so much screen time is invested in it, with such little payoff. I will be annoyed by this until the end of the show. I also find that after seeing a full season of Timon killing Atia’s enemies to get the opportunity to fuck her, it’s very difficult to give a damn about him once you find out he’s got a wife and kids he’s deserting to pull all this shit all the time.

Favorite costume: This is such a mob meeting, there’s even a guy in a track suit and gold medallion:

Team Atia or Team Servilia: Atia. She threatened the queen of Egypt, over a guy. That is some brass.

Favorite watch-a-long tweet: 

Dear Mom,
Sorry you’re a bitch.
Love, Octavian #LegionXIII

— Dylan Bimberg (@dylanbim) March 15, 2016

What hairdo or costume would Bronwyn steal? 

If Bronwyn grows her hair out, I will help her make this hair style. Because I guarantee she covets it.

Guess Jess’s head canon. Two key points for Jess in this episode: When Mark Antony steps up real close behind Vorenus and tells him that he’s his master, which launches yet another ship for the Jarmada (if it hadn’t already sailed), and she got a scene wherein Pullo tenderly cared for Vorenus by shaving his face for him. So much HoYay in this episode!

Now go check out Bronwyn’s and Jess’s posts, and join us Monday at 9 PM EST for season two, episode three, “These Being The Words Of Marcus Tullius Cicero”. Tweet to #LegionXIII to join us!

Quick rundown of the episode: Because this show is incredible, season two starts directly where season one ended, with Caesar dead on the senate floor. Brutus is traumatized as fuck by the horrible thing he just did, but his horrible mother is like, that’s my boy. And speaking of dead on the floor, Vorenus is still cradling Niobe’s dead body. His kids and sister-in-law come home and find him violently shaking his “grandson”, and he realizes that his entire family has been in on the lie. He beats Vorena the Elder, curses her, and spits on her, then throws a curse on everyone just to be thorough. Then he staggers into the street, where some old guy headbutts him into unconsciousness. Meanwhile, Mark Antony has to run from murderers, and Posca has to try and get Caesar’s body through Rome for a proper burial or whatever.

Timon goes to Atia with a bunch of men to try and protect the house, and she’s super happy to see him. He’s feeling pretty heroic, until Mark Antony shows up in a full-on fury, and Atia is all, thank god you’re okay. Sorry, Timon, it ain’t never gonna happen. Antony wants Atia and Octavia and Octavian and Calpurnia to leave the city, but Calpurnia isn’t fucking budging. She wants the will read and all the funeral stuff wrapped the fuck up. But when they find out that Caesar has named Octavian his heir, shit gets complicated. The city isn’t celebrating the death of the tyrant, Mark Antony points out to Servilia and her little band of murder plotters. Octavian has figured out a really bad loophole in the “murder Caesar” plan, which means he gets to keep all the money Caesar left him. If Caesar was a tyrant, all his senate appointments are void, because they were unlawful acts of tyranny. So they’ll have to have general elections. Since the conspirators have a lot to lose if that happens, they’re forced to step back the whole tyrant thing and enter into a truce with Antony, who then uses Caesar’s funeral to whip up a lot of pro-Caesar sentiment.

Pullo and Eirene get dirt married, even though he murdered her boyfriend. Their honeymoon is cut short when they find out that Caesar is dead, and then things get real unromantic when they return to the Aventine to find that Niobe is dead and Vorenus’s kids are missing. Erastes Fulman took them. Vorenus and Pullo kill all of Fulman’s men and hold Fulman hostage long enough to learn that he raped the children, murdered them, and threw them in the river. Vorenus decapitates him and carries his severed head like a bowling bag through the Aventine.

My favorite part of the episode: When Calpurnia spit in Servilia’s face, and then spit in her face again. Oh, also, when Brutus says to Servilia, “You too, mother?” What a fucking amazing choice that line was.

My least favorite part of the episode: I really didn’t enjoy the fact that, after Antony has raped a slave, they depict her as looking all sexy and satisfied.

Favorite costume: Atia’s funeral outfit, because she looks like an Aerosmith video girl in 1997. 

Team Atia or Team Servilia: Team Atia. She’s the mother of the richest man in Rome.

Favorite watch-a-long tweet: 

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS????? #LegionXIII

— Bronwyn Green (@Bronwyn_Green) March 1, 2016

What hairdo or costume would Bronwyn steal? Bronwyn has massive hair envy, so I know Atia’s long in-mourning hair had her gnashing her teeth with jealousy.

Guess Jess’s head canon. Oh man, I know for a fact she’s a sucker for strong, wounded male characters being healed emotionally and physically by another strong male character, so the Vorenus/Pullo arc is really hitting every branch on the slash tree for her at this point.

Now go check out Bronwyn’s and Jess’s posts, and join us Monday at 9 PM EST for season two, episode one, “Passover”. Tweet to #LegionXIII to join us!

Hey there everybody! I have some news, but first I want to let you in on how my PopSugar reading challenge is going!

So far, I’ve completed the following items on my list:

A book written by a celebrity: Why Not Me?, Mindy Kaling. Whoo boy. This book was something else for me. While Kaling writes a lot about struggles I’m never going to have to deal with (striving to succeed as a dark-skinned Indian woman in a world where so many doors are closed to anyone who isn’t white), I empathized a lot with her fears about success being snatched away, professional envy, and the overall feeling of the title–why not me? This book came at a time that was so awesome. I was down in the dumps after hearing about yet another incredibly bad book becoming a blockbuster, and hearing someone as successful as Mindy having similar doubts and fears as me (despite our personalities being so vastly different), sprinkled in with hilarious anecdotes about what it’s like to work in Hollywood (my favorite? A cringe-inducing story in which she spouts off about anti-vaxxers in a room full of them and tries, unsuccessfully, to dig her way out of a hole that only becomes deeper), really lifted me out of a bad depressive episode.

A book with a blue cover: Truthwitch, Susan Dennard. I saw a lot of bloggers fighting over ARCs of this book, and in my experience, books with that amount of prolonged hype don’t live up to expectations. But I decided I would read it because it sounded like an interesting premise, the author is from Michigan, and I met her on a plane and she seemed pretty cool. It not only lived up to, but exceeded the hype. It’s a YA traditional high fantasy in the vein of A Song of Ice and Fire. Set in a world on the brink of war as the terms of a peace treaty are set to run out, politics and magic mingle freely. The main characters, Safi and Iseult, are “theadsisters” of vastly different backgrounds (one is a poor girl from a racial group closely resembling the Roma, the other a noble woman used as a pawn in her uncle’s political machinations). Their only ambition is to be able to live their lives together, while outside forces pull them apart. The system of magic in the world building is awesome, and the storytelling is as cinematic as George R.R. Martin’s. I recommend this book so hard, I have to restrain myself here from blurting out the whole story like a second grader giving a book report. “And then…and then…and then…” Seriously, it’s that good.

A book about a culture you’re unfamiliar with: Craving Flight, Tamsen Parker.  I picked this book because it’s a BDSM erotic romance about an Orthodox Jewish couple. How do you not pick up that book, right? I know basically nothing about Judaism, other than the dietary restrictions, so it was interesting to see how a convert struggled to fall in line with expectations and custom as opposed to how members of the community from birth viewed their way of life. At the same time, I felt like the book was too short to include all of that and present a believable romance. I would have loved to get the hero’s side of the story; he’s a widower who, despite his family’s objections, marries a woman his family doesn’t approve of. He also just happens to be a Dom, and it’s clear that this was a role he had with his late wife. But very little of that is explored, and that’s a fascinating idea to me. How does this man, whose late wife was his last sub, feel about moving on to a similar sexual relationship with a stranger only three years after her death? Plus, I thought the romantic resolution was rushed, and the lack of safe words or discussion of safety of any kind in the bondage scenes bothered me. That aside, this was a good read. Just not the OMGYOUHAVETOREADTHISRIGHTNOWITSTHEMOSTAMAZINGBOOKEVER book I was promised when people recommended it to me. Still, I liked it enough that I wish it would have been longer.

That’s it for my reading challenge news for now, so on to the rest!

Are you in the mood for something to watch? Cinema Tyrant has come up with a list of the ten best French movies available from Netflix.

Audiobook news! My recent re-release, Bride Of The Wolf, will be getting an audio version. More information to come on that one. It will be produced and narrated by two-time Earphone Award winner and 2013 Audie nominee, Tanya Eby, who has narrated books by Lisa Kleypas, Susan Mallery, Debbie Macomber, and Nora Roberts. So I know this book is in good hands.

New installment of The Afflicted. Another chapter of my historical horror serial is up at Wattpad. You can read it here.