SD 999–1010: More things have happened!

After many years of wanting to, we finally went to Andrew Bird’s Gezelligheid at Fourth Presbyterian in Chicago for the first time. The opener, My Brightest Diamond, was fantastic, and I always love seeing Andrew Bird perform. I think we were there on the first night, so there were some unfortunate sound issues but Bird got us through them together and it only added to the intimacy of the experience.

It also happened to coincide with 1000 days since March 13, 2020. Amazing how I’m still doing that, isn’t it? I wore my mask for the concert since I seemed to have some mild cold symptoms after Dane and Matt being sick for weeks. Most people were not masked.

We took the Fullerton bus and Red Line to get to the concert, which went surprisingly quick and smoothly. On the way home we caught the Chicago bus to the Milwaukee Blue Line only to see over a 20 minute wait for a train. Luckily a Milwaukee bus was coming shortly so caught that instead. Just felt very strange for the bus to be more reliable than the train.

Had a big workshop in the office that day before the concert as well. I taught everyone how to code! By which I mean I went real deep on CSS transitions because I felt like that would be interesting. It was. For me at least. 🙂

On the weekend went to Madeline’s new place for her birthday. Got to tell lots of people that we met Madeline through Tumblr. Which I am using again. In 2022! Because Twitter keeps getting worse!

We also had brunch at Middlebrow for the first time. Menu is limited but food was very good, and I think we will be regular visitors now.

Sunday night the most important event in television history happened, by which I mean the season finale of White Lotus aired. It was a cultural reset.

Was another busy week at work this past week as we try to get projects finished up or in a good place before the end of the year. Had a good checkin with the dev team. Nice to be surrounded by people who are so excited to be learning new things together.

In other news, I need to work on resorting to generic platitudes when I get uncomfortable. Gotta develop that critical eye!

Went to another friend’s birthday party this Friday night and stayed out till 2am eating charcuterie. We played a handful of parlor games. I highly recommend “Are you there, Moriarty?” Also, don’t try asking ChatGPT to come up with rules for Circle of Death. It is a nerd and will not comply.

Last night a lifelong dream came true. We had dinner at Olive Garden.

Ten of us also went out to the suburbs to see Mannheim Steamroller at the Rosemont Theater. There were dolphins. And lips. And other archival footage of glowing seagulls and nature. A transcendent experience. We still haven’t been able to resume our Christkindlmarkt and Walnut Room tradition post-pandemic, but this was a festive replacement in the meantime.

I am behind on my Christmas shopping. Probably not good since Christmas is Sunday. I’m not traveling, so have some time to try and figure out what else I want to get Matt and Dane. Just have not been in a mood to buy things as I feel like our place is getting smaller and smaller. Luckily the housing market is in excellent shape and we can move next year!

One more busy week of work and then a week break before we start off 2023 strong. Strongish. Much to do! I am migrating from Evernote to Notion so spending lots of productive time building and rebuilding my to-do lists. It is one way to avoid doing things. And did I mention Twitter is dying? RIP my last 8 years or so of social media addiction.

Almost forgot to mention that the Washington Post article I was briefly interviewed for dropped. It’s fun! I am fun!

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