SD 1313–1353: Happy Halloween! Happy Thanksgiving! Happy Black Friday! Happy Small Business Saturday! It’s been a semi-eventful month and some change.
Matt and I have continued our regular Logan Arcade patronage, him mores than me. I did my first league tournament. It wasn’t too scary but also it was and I have been making excuses not to go back (oops lol). Matt has done a couple more however. On one random night we ran into a friend of a friend who happened to also be from Duluth, though Matt did not meet her there. I was wearing a UMD sweatshirt and she was there with two other Duluthians (who Matt also did not know from Duluth). Small world!
We invited ourselves to brunch with the mutual friend. It was an all you can eat bottomless brunch. A lot of fun though the food was nothing to write home about. The day ended with going over to our friend’s place and spending a beautiful autumn sunset on his roof. It sure would be nice to have outdoor space.
Then it was time for Halloween. We did end up re-upping our What We Do in the Shadows costumes for the “Oops! All vampires!” theme. I did a preview dressing up as Colin Robinson for work a few days before and no one else dressed up so everyone just thought I was dressing “dapper” for the day. Oops. That did however encourage me to commit and fully shave again for the party.
Brandi wasn’t there but luckily Lauren filled in as our Nadja, complete with haunted doll. And then friend of Slime Squad who also came to Vegas and kinda looks like me showed up wearing the same costume. Colin Robinson’s power knows no limits.
Matt and I stayed out until 6am. It was a fun party! I made Dane buy polaroid film because I wanted to recreate the picture from the opening credits of WWDitS but my nearly 20 year old camera wasn’t working sadly. Now that we spent $40 on new film I guess I need to spend $130 on a new camera.
On actual Halloween we went to see Xiu Xiu in a nearby venue. It started at 9pm! On a Tuesday! With two openers! One was Kid Dakota who was exciting to see after also liking them for many years. It was a really great show but we cut out at the encore as it was already after midnight and I had to work the next day.
Just in time for the holiday shopping season, a slightly slimmer PS5 finally released so I had no choice but to buy it, leading Matt down the Baldur’s Gate III rabbit hole. We played coop for a bit and I died in the very first area standing on fire. I am very good at video games.
I have not spent several hundred more dollars for a PSVR2… yet. I am also tempted by the Meta Quest 3 but I spend so little time using my growing collection of VR headsets so IDK. We are increasingly being stressed by the limits of space in our space.
Matt’s mom came for a quickie visit from Tuesday–Saturday the week before Thanksgiving. I didn’t take off any work so did not get to spend too much time with them, but we had some nice dinners and went to see Twelfth Night at Chicago Shakespeare.
Funnily enough of the two shows I’d seen previously at Chicago Sharks, that was one of them, along with Richard III that’s also being presented this season. This production had a Caribbean theme and it was quite fun. I also saw in the program that the Sufjan Stevens musical Illinoise is coming in January and immediately bought tickets. Sufjan musical!!!!!
And that takes us to Thanksgiving. My yearslong quest to see the Chicago Thanksgiving Day Parade in person continues. For some reason Matt and Dane don’t think getting down to the Loop at 7:30am on Thanksgiving sounds fun. At least the parade was back on local television this year. And the big balloons are back! Advertising partners really stepped up their game this year.
We did the usual Friendsgiving at Anne and Renee’s and it was a lovely crowd with 12 of us in total. I drank a lot of wine. I don’t think I embarrassed myself too much. There’s always next time! Oh, and it exciting personal news we decided to go with a contractor for our brickwork, scheduled to start January 15th. Sounds like we might have a friend of Anne and Renee’s watch Babycat and we could stay in Anne and Renee’s basement. Not sure how long the work will take. Really need to figure that out… Someday! I’m still nervous as hell but having that work done means we can start doing a ton of other stuff we’ve been putting off.
Black Friday was pretty low-key and hungover. I think I had a successful Buy Nothing Day and spent no money. On Saturday we spent the day decorating for Christmas. Andy come over at night to help us with the three.
Woke up today to beautiful show coating the trees and lightly dusting the ground. It’s Christmas!!!!!! Time to chuck some batteries and put up the last of the garland.