SD 1188–1221: Another month down the pooper! Gay Pride, we hardly knew ye. We are now well into July, which is a busy travel month for us. Our annual Duluth / CONvergence / St. Paul trip was a success, Pitchfork is this weekend, and the week after we are headed to Las Vegas.
Babycat is still coned which bums me out, but her legs are finally healing up. Just have to continue to watch it and keep the cone on a bit longer. She seems to be doing well otherwise, which is great.
My uncle Dennis passed away on July 4th. It has been very tough on my mom. She flew down to help his wife with things but did not make it in time before he went. A very tough situation.
Matt and I have been continuing our regular visits to Logan Arcade. He’s gotten onto the pinball leaderboards a few times now. I sadly am not quite as good as he is. Our brunch habit continues at full force, never letting my bank account rest. I now have less in the bank than I did in January. Oops. And still have lots to spend this month on Vegas and have to book flights for a trip to South Dakota and Duluth! Yipes! I am several months into once again procrastinating on figuring out brickwork. Argh. At least the stock market (and therefore my retirement funds) is doing better this year. Knock on wood. Here comes that recession I’ve been talking shit about. Stupid vibecession.
Let’s see, what else has happened. We had a nice cookout at a friend’s. Look how happy Dane is to be with me.
Shoutout to the Logan Square GAP Outlet for always being there for me.
Work has been a little tough, but fingers crossed that things are on the upswing. I am getting pulled into a lot more new business discussions, which is great. Trying my best to rise to meet the occasion.
I also attended my first Queer Tech Club meetup at the offices of Crafty. Jane works there but she was out of town. Rude! It was a ton of fun and met a lot of great people. Afterwards tried to pied piper everyone to Second Story, but it ended up being a bit of a hike. We stopped at Rossi’s instead which was an excellent compromise.
The Duluth trip was lovely and too short as always. I hiked up to Enger Tower everyday, which was fantastic. We never actually made it to the lakeshore, which was weird and a bit sad.
I need to book travel to fly back to Duluth in September to be on an alumni panel at UMD. Nearly twenty years since I started college and I am still procrastinating! I really do love Duluth, and really want to hold on to Matt’s mom’s house as long as possible, though I do not know that being an absentee slumlord is in my cards given my inability to manage things in my own home even at this point. So much has changed in Duluth. There is an entire new arts district with bars and restaurants that may be partially responsible for the quieting of Downtown Duluth. RIP Electric Fetus 🙁 Even that is old news at this point.
The most important part of any roadtrip to Minnesota is the stopover at Buffalo Phil’s in the Wisconsin Dells. On the way up there was a wait to sit by the train so we skipped. At least Sebulba riding a bison was there to ease the pain.
Would you take a look at these fake car owners??
Matt has been making a lot of coleslaw. I love cabbage.
CONvergence still had a mask mandate this year, which was a bit of a timewarp given how rest of the world is operating at this point. There were more people this year but still nowhere near the height of pre-pandemic days. It was fun to have all of Leders there, even though I mostly only saw Brandi while the kids were being passed off.
For day one, I Brough back the rock costume from Everything Everywhere All at Once. Brandi rocked an amazing Jamie Lee Curtis. There was an animatronic Raccacoonie this year which was incredible. We attended a fan panel for a group picture afterwards. Another Deirdre sat in the same row as us without noticing Brandi which was hilarious.
Brandi said A wanted to do Midge from Animal Crossing, so I decided to pull together a dumb and quick Froggy Chair under the assumption it would make three people very happy and confuse everyone else. I was right! A few people asked if I was Mr. Frog, which is a very niche character, but maybe I will try that next year haha. The zentai suit was kind of a pain in the ass to wear though, so not sure I really want to repeat. Not being able to zip myself in and out or easily use a phone is a bit of a dealbreaker.
For day three we went all out using mom’s amazing recommendation from last year of doing a group What We Do in the Shadows cosplay. My Colin Robinson was a bit tooo good and too recognizable. People would shout my name and then see the rest of us. Also, we won the social butterfly award in the hall contest! Glad that shaving my beard fully for the first time in 16 years was worth it in the end (lol).
It can not grow back fast enough. A week later and I am to the itchy stage. Hoping by week two it will look normal-ish. But thanks to the magic of augmented reality I was able to ease my coworkers into the change my first day back working remotely.
Arrrrrrght, matey. Until next time!