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I think it’s a good time for me to retire this blog.

This month marks 19 years since I started it. I thought about going another year just to make it an even 20, but I’m not going to. If it’s not bringing you joy, why do it? This hasn’t really brought me joy in a long time. For the past few years, it’s been mostly about keeping the streak of at least 1 update per month going. 19 years of that. I’m done. It’ll be a weight off my shoulders.

I remember when I started, blogging was all the rage, but maybe it was on a downward slope of popularity. I don’t remember. I just remember being on that Air Force base near Dayton, OH trying to think of a name for it. That was the hard part. I don’t remember if I was back in MS when I made my first post or not, but posts were a lot more frequent back then.

I’m not deleting this blog anytime soon. I may even pick a new theme for it at some point. I’ve been meaning to that for a while as well as fixing some broken links. Who knows if that’ll ever happen though.

Nowadays most of my big life events are chronicled on Facebook and there’s other stuff on Twitter, Instagram, threads, and now Blue Sky. Hope to see you around!

What a great week this has been! I just woke up from a much needed 2-hour nap. I was exhausted but in a good way.

I didn’t do a whole lot of Pride-related events during the week. I had 2 PDX Gaymer game nights. I didn’t participate in any work events because I was busy trying to make a deadline. I don’t think there were many work events. We did most of our celebrating at work last month.

On Friday, I went to a going away party for 2 friends who are moving out of country. After that, I went to my first Gaylabration with 2 friends I know through PDX Gaymers, Matt and Neil. It’s the guys I’ve been going to Blow Pony with. There were sooo many people there. And I knew so many people there. I’ve been living in Portland a long time and I’ve met a lot of people. The only complaint I have is the music was pretty bad. I’m glad to say that I’ve gone to Gaylabration at least once.

On Saturday, I went to the underU4men block party to visit my friends Aaron and Josh. Aaron was modeling. We re-started our tradition of getting a pic together that started years ago when this store would have a booth at the festival on the waterfront. I spent over $100 on underwear that I’ll probably never wear. Later that day, I hosted the annual PDX Gaymers Pride Party. We all had fun. The rental space got really hot though and the A/C didn’t help much.

On Sunday, I went to CCs the watch the parade. I met up with Matt and a slew of others I’ve known for much longer, many of whom were at the going away party Friday night. Neil was in the parade. I hated not marching in the parade this year, ending a streak (not counting lockdown years). My physical condition wouldn’t allow me to do it.

There were so many things I planned to do, but never had a chance to. One being going to the festival. Everything was pretty tentative anyway.

The only negative was the Lyft driver who took me to the Pride parade. I just wanted her to get me close to CCs and I would walk the rest of the way. She was really frustrated about street closures and wouldn’t listen to my directions on alternative routes. She made some comments that came off as homophobic to me about “the gay people” and how “they want to celebrate but don’t want us to celebrate” regarding the street closures for the parade.

Anyway, I had a great time this year as always. I’m looking forward to next time.

FAN EXPO Portland was February 17-19. It was forming called Wizard World Comic Con, but they renamed it. The last con I went to before the pandemic was Wizard World Portland 2020, where I got to meet many Smallville cast members. I think this event was supposed to take place under its new name in 2022, but was canceled or delayed.

My attitude about cons has changed. I don’t have to go every day and I don’t have to remain at the con all day. This con I only attended the 1st 2 days. I did what I intended to do and left. I didn’t attempt to take many pics of cosplayers. I didn’t go to all the panels I considered. Most of this was because I was just tired. I haven’t been sleeping well lately.

The con was fun overall. There were a lot of little things that I think could be improved. I noted them all in the survey they sent out after the event ended. One thing was scheduling a lot of the better guests (either for panels, photo ops, or autograph sessions) at the same time on Saturday. It made for some hard decisions. There was a lot of Star Trek representation, which I liked. William Shatner, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden, Anson Mount, and Ethan Peck. I saw them all except Shatner. Nothing against Shatner, but maybe I’ve had my fill of him for now. And he comes to Portland often.

On Friday the only thing I really did was get my picture taken with Ethan Peck and Anson Mount.

On Saturday I went to the TNG/Picard panel with Frakes, McFadden, and Spiner. Because of the weird location of the main stage, they entered through the audience. Frakes and McFadden walked right past me. I saw a panel with Katee Sackhoff, before getting my photo taken with Jonathan Frakes, seeing a Leah Thompson panel, and ending the day with a Strange New Worlds panel featuring Anson Mount and Ethan Peck.

Overall, a very chill but fun con experience. Looking forward to next year.