You may be wondering, "Gee Hobart, why haven't you posted in such a long time?" Sometimes, friends, life gets in the way, and it certainly has this last month. Since I last posted, I unpacked my furniture, hosted my mother and sister for a weekend, went to Anthrocon, started trying different pronouns, and spent a bunch of money on pool toys that I inevitably don't need. Funny how life works, huh?
Let's start where I last left off - the furbowl on July 13th. I have a habit of bowling of doing things wrong, then eventually just locking in. Unfortuantely, this came too late, so I only got a 120 game. I could have squeezed out a 160 the next game, but the time was up and everyone wanted to go home. My raccoon friend, Zeph, my corgi friend, Ren, and I stopped at Dairy Queen. I enjoyed a Heath Blizzard. I thought about going to a rave later that night, but felt very tired after all of the bowling, so I didn't. So it goes.
The weekend after that, my mother and sister decided to drop by for a visit, before my apartment was dirty, and before most of my furry and queer belongings were hung up on the wall. I'm very happy they didn't see the pool toy collection which I hid, and I honestly enjoyed myself the whole weekend, though I do feel like I could have done better entertaining them. We ended up at the 5-8 Club on Cedar Avenue on Friday, where they met Zeph (they liked her). I paid so I'd look like a decent son. The next, steaming hot day, we decided to see all of the stuff downtown, like the sculpture garden, and the public park in St. Paul with the Peanuts character statues. Although the heat was extremely unpleasant, I do appreciate seeing my relatives.
The weekend after my mother and sister visited, I went to Twin Cities pride for one day. It was nice to see the people I knew, but I overpaid for some very high quality tater tots. I also went to the Pride Beer Dabbler, and although I very much enjoyed myself, I stopped after about 16 samples because I was concerned about being too drunk to navigate the city bus system. Pride was an enjoyable time, but I feel like I'd have enjoyed it more if I were better at socializing with strangers instead of just following my friends around and watching them look at things that I find amusing, but will not buy.
The weekend after pride was Anthrocon. After some personal experiences, I had second guesses on if I should go, but I had already paid for the plane ticket. Because of my flight selection, I walked a mile and a half to the 54 bus at around 3 AM. My flight boarded at 4:45 AM, I didn't want to bother anyone, and I learned the bus actually ran that early. It was full when I boarded, somehow, presumably full of airport staff. After a long walk through the liminal space called MSP Terminal 2 at 3:30 in the morning, and a short ride on the light rail, I got to my gate, and got through security very quickly. There was some confusion over what gate my flight left from, but the attendants with Southwest Airlines were very helpful, and I hit my flight. I then tranferred at Midway Airport, getting a double cheeseburger from the Billy Goat Tavern for breakfast, and changed planes to go to Pittsburgh. I then took a crowded, 28X bus to the Westin hotel.
Being in the big band and the disco, I was considered a "panelist" for Anthrocon, so I was allowed to use the much shorter "Events" line. After some confusion on if that line existed or not, I got my badge within half an hour, and took a walk to the National Aviary in order to see some birds. The National Aviary is modest in size, but worth the ticket price of $20. I kind of have a thing for birds, and most of them aren't even in cages. You walk into a room, and there's just birds there, and they'll land on the handrail right in front of you. I then hit opening ceremonies, enjoyed a snack of Dot's Pretzels, and hit Big Band rehearsal at 8 PM. I was one of the fourth trumpet players. The morning after was similar; after a breakfast of bagged tuna, I attended Disco Rehearsal.
My Friday at Anthrocon was dense. I had a Disco rehearsal early in the morning, on trumpet, which is by far not my primary instrument. I enjoyed the rehearsal, then spent around 4 hours on stage between sound checks and actually performing. The bands did well. Then, I changed mouthpiece sizes from a Getzen 5C, all the way to a Conn 2 tuba mouthpiece, and played sousaphone for the marching band. Rehearsal was that night, followed by a quick dinner at Jimmy John's, then a panel, followed by a party.
I ended up at the Omni William Penn Hotel for a pancake party. I saw a sign on the escalators earlier in the day for a room in that hotel, and figured I had nothing else to do, so I walked over. I was second guessing it, thinking, "what if this was an elaborate joke," and got off the elevator at the correct floor. I was greeted by the heavy, heavy smell of bacon.
I walked in to see a couple of people bullshitting and enjoying some pancakes. A third woman was also in the room and very clearly stoned out of her mind. I was offered a pancake, and continued to make some of the best small talk I ever had. I got to see multiple boobs that day, between the stoner taking her shirt off because she wanted to be naked, and another person in the room changing their shirt. Honestly, everyone there was very nice and I felt very welcome. The person running the party is a guy from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, who often has the "amount of people hugged" sign on him. He's pretty good at giving hugs; he gave me one, and a Hershey kiss when I walked out of the room. He also had a four foot diameter exercise ball. I asked him if it was a pool-toy related thing and it turns out it was. Always nice to see common talking point between me and strangers. The pancake party was a vibe, and I plan to return anywhere it's being offered. After leaving, I had a beer, people watched a little bit at the waterfront, maybe saw a couple fireworks, saw the patriotic bridge lighting for the Fourth of July, and retired to my hotel room.
Saturday was an early morning for me. I noticed I had been having some stomach trouble, and a lot of heartburn, eating Tuna for breakfast, but chose to ignore it. I had a bag of tuna, moved some stuff for the marching band, then wandered off to the Dealer's Den for some shirts. I have a shirt sold by Triangle Manor that says "Thirsty." I bought matching ones that said "Tired," "Wired," and "Hungry." I figured I may as well have the set. I then got to peruse some other wares, and gave a fursuit maker who I've been eying up (Sour Citris Suits) a $5 tip for "being the problem child with the mullet and processing my quotes." I'm hoping I'll one day get the chance to work with them; the proprieter is very nice and I accidentally made small talk with her for half an hour during a business inquiry.
After a Dealer's Den run, I ate a walking taco from the concessions stand in order to get more salt in me, and met up with the marching band for the fursuit parade. Fortunately, band members were exempt from the poodling ban, so I went through the trouble of wearing a crop top and booty shorts. This is foreshadowing. We stood around a bit until it was time to march. They wheeled a child in a wheelchair back and the band gave the child a "special performance." Admittedly, although it is a nice gesture, because I am not a great person, my mind jumped to "is this a make a wish type of thing going on???" After the performance, we were all screwing around, and managed to get out a couple pep band tunes. Apparently, if you're on tuba, and start belting out "Hey! Baby!" arranged by Tom Wallace, a lot of other people will join in. After that affair, the band marched up and down the street, and I made it onto local television. We sounded good, and took a very weird and unusual path back to our starting place. The equipment was put away, and I sort of just relaxed until the band played at the block party. Block party went well, and I was happy to be free of any other musical commitments that weekend.
At the marching band gathering, someone passed around a poster advertising a "Gooning Party," which turned out to be a crab rangoon themed party. After looking at myself in the mirror for a while, because my booty shorts and crop top made me feel very androgynous (more on that later), I walked down there. I had some crab rangoons and made small talk with a guy from Iowa, then a different guy from Alabama, about honestly completely arbitrary stuff which I don't remember, but they both seemed very cool. The guy from Iowa was from Davenport, and called Dubuque a "Pictureqsue City," and I agreed with him; northeast Iowa has some very beautiful terrain people look over. I brought a 12 pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a pound bag of Dot's Pretzels. People actually really liked the PBR and said I have good taste, which made me feel good. I also requested multiple Jimmy Buffet songs. The goat with the control of the speaker said that I had extremely good taste, and happily played both, giving me a very good soundtrack to otherwise get sloshed to. I had a PBR, a fruity drink, a different fruity drink, and another PBR. I was not feeling right by the end of the night, and passed out in my hotel room at about 1 AM.
At around 9 in the morning, I woke up, and surprisingly didn't have a headache from the large amount of water (about a gallon) I had consumed immediately after realizing I was more drunk than I had ever been. After going to the orchestra performance, and attending the charity auction, I realized something wasnt' right: I felt like I was either going to throw up in the toilet, or ruin a perfectly good pair of underwear. In fact, my best underwear, the custom Hobart underwear from Tail Ends, an excellent, small business based out of Connecticut that makes everything in house. I ran back to my hotel room, and after failing to poop or vomit, laid down on the floor on my left side. I then farted several times, very loud, and very long, but felt better afterwards. I helped move some band equipment because I was available, got some street cred with some of the other musicians that way, and ended up attending the closing ceremonies.
After closing ceremonies, I had dinner at Mad Chicken, then walked to the Allgheny Incline. The gentleman at the window complimented my Kwik Trip T-shirt, saw me start to count out change, and let me on for $2 instead of $2.50. I reached the top, in the Mount Washington neighborhood, and got a bunch of fascinating views of the City of Pittsburgh. You can see the entire sprawl from the top of Mount Washington. My manager at United States Steel called Pittsburgh "the greatest city in the world." As a feirce Midwesterner, I disagree, but it's definitely up there. I got ripped off on ice cream though. At DiFiores, when you pay $8.50 for a waffle cone, they don't fill the cone! What the hell! I then caught the Monahegala Incline down, and ended up not paying because my dollar bill got stuck in the pay terminal. I walked back to my hotel room, maybe took a victory lap around the convention space, and fell asleep after all of the walking."
Monday morning, I checked my bags in at the desk, and had breakfast at Nicky's Grant Street, an excellent and very reasonably priced diner in Pittsburgh. I then walked to the Fort Pitt Museum, and absorbed a bunch of history that boils down to "we kicked out the Native Americans." After that, I walked along the Ohio River, got my bags, and made my way to the airport. This is when the problems started. My flight was delayed about six times, causing me to miss my connection at Midway, requiring me to take a different flight. My plane was delayed, in order, because of weather, rain in the gate, weather, an alarm at the gate, and a maintenance issue (tire popped when plane pushed back from gate). By this point, my flight was delayed by three hours. My second flight was automatically rebooked to one later in the day to Minneapolis from Midway, but they started to pull people off the plane. They listed off several cities, and said, "You missed your connection, if you want to get home today, you need to fly to Baltimore and connect there," so they unloaded about half the people off the plane and reseated us for weight distribution. Although I got a $100 voucher, I still missed the transportation home from the airport, so I ended up getting a cab and sticking it out at work on 4 hours of sleep. One good thing came from this: Rhubarb, the violin player of the band Otter Chaos, recognized me by name, without a badge on, without ears on. It's always good when people remember who I am, as I am vain.
Anthrocon was a good time, and I will likely go again. Hopefully I'll end up in the Omni.
Outside of Anthrocon, I have had thoughts about finding another job, though I feel like the stresses occuring outside of work may have caused this. I noticed that I get upset when people fail to set standards for themselves that aren't as high as mine, and our clients suck. I enjoy the people I work with a lot, though I am also having doubts on if the professional experience I am developing aligns with the professional life I want to curate for myself. It's sort of frustrating, and I can't seem to calm down at work anymore.
I have started therapy recently with a guy named Wade. He honestly seems very dedicated to his job, and I have high hopes I'll end up in a better spot as a result of working with him.
Finally, my gender crisis is in full swing: in the last month, I tried to use "They/Them," then realized "He/Him" wasn't dysphoric enough, so at the time of writing, I take all pronouns. I was content being strictly male, but the amount of times I've looked at myself in the mirror and thought "I could be a cute girl" have been too many to reasonably be male. My crop top and booty shorts also make me feel very androgynous, along with the mullet. Pretty much, I keep seeing myself with a long, androgynous haircut, and keep seeing art of Hobart with it, and feel like that's kind of the identity I'd like. The only thing sure about my gender is chaos. I know at some point things will snap into place; right now it's just a waiting game and sometimes poking things with a stick.
I actually got a haircut today from someone named Benny at Open Hair Space in Richfield, Minnesota. Although they continued the existing mullet, I felt like they understood my gender goals, and the small talk was great. I have never felt better when receiving a haircut.
More in two or three weeks - I have a family reunion going on in Gatlinburg, Tennesee the week after next, and I imagine there will be plenty to write about. You will get to hear about the lore of Hobart's extended family.