SD 2265–2333 2,349: I really thought I’d written a June post, but… I guess not! I turned older, as one does. I attempted to enjoy summer, as one does. Matt and I celebrated 20 years, as two does.
I went to the Pokémon fossil exhibit at the Field Museum a second time. I began my attempts to steal the identity of Excavator Pikachu.
I attempted to leave the house on weekends to make the most of life. I still have not used the Virtual Boy Switch accessory I bought. I unfortunately have played close to zero videogames recently, aside from a smidge of the new Diablo IV expansion, but even that… was over a month ago I think.
I finally made it to Best Intentions for the first time for an afternoon beer while reading. That was cute! Also the Chicago Eagle has opened which seems to be doing well for itself and is a cute time with a variety of events. Something about the red lighting and handsome bartenders in the upstairs bar off the patio makes it feel very animatronic gay Disneyland to me. But that’s just my brain!
On Pride weekend I did no Pride events but I did finally make it back to the gay beach for the first since my brief period between switching jobs in August 2019. I suppose gay beach on Pride weekend is a Pride event. Also excited to be able to wear an outfit for 3 minutes I bought a year or two ago for the first time.
July kicked off with our annual Minneapolis/St. Paul/CONvergence/Duluth road trip. Food is just better in the Wisconsin Dells when delivered via train.
CONvergence was cute as usual. I didn’t have any time to put together truly new costumes but assembled a quarter assed last minute Excavator Pikachu (maybe a little too niche) and recycled past Log Lady (always a hit) and Jonah costumes.
But the most important thing was we went to the Mall of America and ate at Rainforest Café.
Matt also got to look at birds in Loring Park and there were a bunch of turtles so that’s fun.
We also made it to Jimmy Boofetla’alaalalritaville again.
Oops didn’t finish this post and two more weeks passed. Is this my longest gap since Covid started? Guess it really is over. Uhm. Then CONvergence was over. So we went to Pizza Lucé.
Then our time in St. Paul was over so we went to Duluth.
Chester Creek is still pretty. Duluth is still a cool city. Burrito Union is however under new ownership and no longer has Brewhouse beer and has an AI-generated logo. Blergh. Food was still decent!
I did a pretty good job of maintaining my near daily hikes to Enger Tower again this year. The iced coffee food truck wasn’t there the first few days but thankfully showed later in the week.
Have I mentioned I like Duluth?
We managed to run into another Chicago gay and did a bar crawl of the Superior Flame, The Main, Pizza Lucé, and the Duluth Flame. Always… an experience!
We also did the Munger Trail bike ride again for a sweaty 25 miles.
More Duluth chill vibes.
Returned to where I proposed to Matt 15 years ago. Should do something about that eventually.
Do look back in Enger I say.
Also made it to the beach briefly for the first time in a few years. The water was bearable! Global warming is real.
Saw some other Duluth sights.
And then it was time to go home and see what we missed in Chicago.
Which turned out to be forest fires. We just missed it in Duluth where it sounds like it was much worse.
And then being back in Chicago it was time to be gay in various places. And then it was time for it to rain a whole lot. Also it was time for HVAC maintenance so I got onto the roof and looked at those new buildings next door that are taller than us now.
Then more being gay. Here’s my foot.
And some drinking of beverages.
And then we played Root for the first time in ages!
And then more than half of August happened. But maybe I’ll save that for the next post to get out of here.