A Heart's a Heavy Burden

So I started that last journal entry on Friday, and I added in the UTI stuff, which I dealt with this weekend. So — on to the weekend!

Friday Haley came over and did laundry and we went out to eat at a new vegan restaurant in Saint Paul, and I did my Cafetalks while she messed around with my phone (hers broke this week). 

After that I got home with enough time to help Steve clean a bit, because Mike, the one who donated the ITG machine to us, was coming over to play. That was a lot of fun, but since I haven't played much over the last month and a half, I'm out of shape and out of practice. We rotated turns and it was great! Steve passed his first 14, which has really spurred me to try to pass my first 13 and continue passing 12's.

Out of the blue, our doorbell rings and it's BEN AND SEAN!! They were in MN for a night to help with moving something and wanted to see us quick before heading home. Awwww. Ben played a song or two and complimented how nicely we'd modded the arrows for actual competitive play. I believe his exact words were, "I could reasonably see myself quadding multiple songs on this machine."

On Sunday, Steve and I continued "Get Rid of Half Our Stuff 2017" and finished everything in our room except for our old paperwork and Steve's t-shirts. We also finished the hall closet, which desperately needed attention (hoodies and extraneous kitchen appliances). After that we played like 4 hours of ITG (while streaming to no one), wherein for some reason I decide to play the 12 chart of 10 Minutes (Nightcore) right when the stream starts, and then pass it, which really encouraged me to keep practicing for the 13 (which is like my life goal). The 12 has 16/8/8 which means it has 16 measures of stream with no breaks (then 8 and then 8). The 13 chart of this song has 24/16/16 I THINK. 24 for sure at the beginning. I BARELY made it out alive with 16 straight measures of stream, I'm not sure I've ever done that before on any song of that speed. Slower streams of course aren't AS bad. But I had a really good ITG day, so surprising after not having played in awhile. It was reassuring that not all is lost and I can actually keep improving.

Oh, for posterity, I got my first traffic ticket in my entire life a couple weeks ago. They put in these new weird crosswalk lights and it is hard for me to notice them because they're lights but not traffic lights, and they set up a sting and I completely fell into the trap. I was leaving Nokomis and getting my stuff settled and I just did not see the guy planted there. So I got a "failure to yield at a crosswalk" ticket. The undercover guy was fighting with the officer for a good 20 minutes because he wanted me to get "running a red light" too, but I'm guessing she ultimately decided against it because I've never ever had a moving violation and she thought it was unreasonable. But it took FOREVER. He like climbed out of his car into her vehicle and everything to try to convince her.

Taking forever to write journal entries yet again. STILL haven't written my California entry...

Two of the weekends in September Steve and I stayed the weekend in Madison, though ostensibly we were there just to crash and had other things we were doing.

The first weekend, we went to Distant Worlds in Chicago, as I mentioned. Then last weekend we went to see Stephen and Owen King in Milwaukee.

Guys. Stephen King NEVER tours. He never does book signings. He doesn't need to! He doesn't care about that stuff! BUT THIS YEAR HE DECIDED TO. And! He decided to give every attendee a copy of their new book on the way out. Where UP TO 16% of them were signed by the authors (the venue said "up to 400 copies" so we don't actually know how many copies were signed). When they were talking about signing the books, SK (he calls himself Steve!!! But that would be confusing if I referred to him as Steve bc of my boyfriend) said that his son would nudge him once during each event and say, "Make this one really small." and said that ONE of the books had small signatures from each of them. 

The line to get in was INSANE, and the event was totally packed. As usual, I got Steve and myself really good seats in the lower balcony.

The event was them talking about the book, each reading an excerpt, talking about their life, and SK showed everyone pictures of his Corgi Molly, who is Facebook famous because SK refers to her as The Thing of Evil.