"My dear Holmes!" I ejaculated.

I can't even tell you how many times that sentence, or some form of it, has appeared in the Sherlock Holmes stories that I've been reading steadily throughout the summer. And it doesn't matter that I am a serious scholar of Victorian literature, or that I am a mature adult--I must suppress a giggle every time. The reason is this: within the BBC Sherlock fandom, as I am sure no one who reads this blog will be even remotely surprised to learn, there is a gigantic collective of folk who support the theory that John Watson and Sherlock Holmes are in love.

And I am one of these people.

I'm not going to offer support or evidence in this blog post--that's just not what this blog is for--but I thought it was high time I did a post on Sherlock Holmes.

As I stated before, I've been making my way slowly through the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels this summer. I bought my father the complete short stories (in a nice hardback volume that includes the original illustrations, too) for Father's Day, because he zipped through a large anthology of short stories about Texas that I gave him for Christmas. He seems to like being able to squeeze in a story a day, and I thought it would be nice for him to read something that I myself am actually doing work in. We're not reading the stories together exactly, but I've been trying to keep up with him between the Victorian novels that I'm reading on my own.

It's no mystery that the BBC Sherlock was my gateway into the fandom. I'm not ashamed. But it did seem a natural direction for my interests to take as my studies in affect have led me to the sensation novel and subsequently into the detective novel via Wilkie Collins.

So, I've developed a bit of Sherlock Radar. Just in the past week in Austin, I've taken note of the following:

R and I checked out this pub yesterday. Unfortunately, as R phrased it, the inside betrayed it to be nothing more than a "glorified Applebee's." We did not stay to drink a pint.

I was camped out at Book People earlier this week, finishing up my syllabi and assignments for my Rhetoric classes this semester. Before I left I went to the loo and what graffiti should I find in the stall but this glorious scrawl. Ha.

Shiner, Texas

My mother and I took a mini-roadtrip to the brewery in Shiner on Tuesday.

We took this journey because I have recently been struck with a kind of wanderlust to explore my homestate. This always happens when I live somewhere that is not in Texas; I feel suddenly so much pride in being from Texas and want to explore the ins and outs of the state, to experience what makes Texas Texas and to develop as a native Texan.

I like Shiner beer; when I'm in Austin I drink quite a bit of Shiner Blonde and Shiner Hefe. In Iowa City they sell all the seasonal Shiner varieties, as well as the original Shiner Bock, but not these my two favorites. At the brewery after the brief tour, visitors are given four wooden nickels to exchange for small paper cups of different beers. These were some generous cups, let me tell you. I only drank three; my mom only had two. They were out of the only flavour I hadn't ever tried (the summer seasonal grapefruit beer?) that I wanted to try (was not interested in the very dark 'black lager' or the ultra-hoppy IPA), so I enjoyed my free Blonde and Hefe, made a stamped penny for my good friend Miriam back in Iowa City, and off we went back to Austin.

On the way to Shiner, we took a detour to Mt. Palmetto State Park in Gonzales County. My mom enjoys nature and camping, and she was curious about the area. I am more of a townie (give me an outdoor cafe any day), but in the spirit of engaging in being a Texan, I embraced the beautiful view of green (not drought-dead!) trees and rock. 

It's becoming more important to me to figure myself out, and part of that means investigating where I come from. I'm glad to have spent this extra time just exploring different parts of Texas (as much as I covet my status as an Austinite specifically).