Travelogue: Yogurt Edition.

 So, something Virginia has more than one of, but the Upper Midwest appears to utterly lack?

Awesome self-serve frozen yogurt bars.

I mean, maybe to most of you this concept is not beautiful and revolutionary, but I have just been to my first Yogurt Vi, and I was blown away by everything but the name (and okay, "just been" means like a week or two ago.  Shut up.).

Basically, you walk in the front door, and there's seating along the wall to your right, a big open space at the middle, a bunch of containers, spoons, and frozen yogurt dispensers in back, literally dozens of toppings along the left wall, and then a counter right by the door.  They charge you based on the weight of your frozen yogurt, which I think is a brilliant sliding price mechanism, letting everyone self-calibrate their dessert by appetite and greed.  Plus, it's easy on the employees -- all you have to do is clean, stock, and work checkout, unlike every other place ever where you need three extra dudes to make the food as fast as you can during the lunch rush.

Plus, the selection was choice, and the resulting desserts were delicious.  

Somebody move the damn franchise into Fargo already.

Does everyone else already know about these places?  I heard an interesting theory advanced about their proliferation, but I have no clue how accurate it may or may not be.  Y'all been holkding out on me4?

Crucible of Gold, by Naomi Novik.

 Still playing catch-up on my book tracking -- I actually read this one before I went to Virginia.  It's a little difficult to discuss the Temeraire series without spoilers, so I will just say it involved sea voyages, dragons, international politics with a corner of the world we've never seen before, and more social discourse about the morality of past societies than most books of its kind.  Not always handled deftly, but not overly forgiving.

This one was especially interesting because it tackled Inca-ruled South America, and I thought it did so thoughtfully and fairly respectfully.  The evolution of the society including the involvement of dragons and draconic psychology was an interesting perspective; nothing felt condescending or othering to me... it's interesting, though, that the people of different cultures are usually depicted insightfully, appropriately different based on culture but not stereotyped... but the dragons often reflect racial stereotypes in less nuanced and flattering ways.  Not always -- they are also individuals, and they don't think like humans -- but integrating them into the various cultures seems to have made them more archetypal, which makes them iconic, memorable, but sometimes problematic.  Has anybody else noticed this?

The other interesting thing about this book was that a character came out of the closet.  I thought it was extremely well handled.  The character is treated with respect, it's consistent with what we have seen of them before, and Laurence, as a period naval officer, is... hm.  Surprised, but not surprised that homosexuality is a thing; and while he has the appropriate moral code for a British gentleman of his day and therefore disapproves, he disapproves the Laurence way:  quietly, without overt judgement, while he sits back to think through the impact and implications

There are also several bouts of intercultural comedies of manners, which work well, and one sort-of-related bit where it begins to sink in to Laurence that one cannot always expect to judge a dragon by human standards, and that, even if you are friendly, standing between an angry dragon and its endangered rider is a bad idea.

Thoughts?