JPEG GHOST

I REALLY need to get in the habit of posting on here again. I genuinely enjoyed detailing my days, even if it's boring af for everyone. I need to play catch up. The EFFORT. UGH.

I'm almost at the end of my tattoo apprenticeship! Yay! I have like 3 tattoos to do this week (for free), which I'm enthralled about. I wonder if I should post them? HMMM.

Alex's birthday was a few days ago and we had a gay old time. Alex had a party yesterday at a kitschy tiki bar with a bunch of his friends and he had like 7 drinks. I'm the perpetual designated driver so I was okay with it. We have so many mixers at home I figured I could make my own drinks for free lol

Let me think of something recent story worthy...

OH. When I was in bumfuck MAGA country for my birthday!

The weekend of my birthday took place in Fredericksburg, Texas. Alex had been there over 4 years ago (important!) and said it was a little German village. Awesome! Cool! I love German food and I can speak a little Deutsch. We set up an AirBnB, got a reservation for dinner, and went.

It only went downhill from there. Going to Fredericksburg, we realized how many people without masks were there ... (This is in May, when the Texas vaccination rate was awful) And there were quite a few red hats. Okay. Weird. Moving on. We walk around, notice we are getting a LOT of strange looks (we weren't even holding hands!). There's a surprisingly low amount of German ... Anything. It's all replaced with Pampered Chef and hunting stores. Alex keeps saying "I don't remember it being like this ..."

We go to the German restaurant. Notice there's not a lot of German... anything. A lot of American flags. No one has a mask. "Less Government, More Beer" banners. The German food has been replaced with burgers, fries, and chili. There's a miniscule German food section. Something is wrong.

We see a server. MAGA hat. Then, the back of his shirt, as he walks away ... It says: "It's not about who votes, it's who counts the votes - Joseph Stalin"

Okay, that's enough. I'm out of here. We leave the restaurant after a very tense and uncomfortable dinner where we notice we are being stared at by patrons. We decide we will have fun and drink at the Airbnb ... Except when we go to the Valero gas station to get drinks, Proud Boys are watching us at the end of every aisle. This is very wrong. Alex keeps apologizing, saying "It wasn't like this when I was here!"

So we leave at 4 AM because we can not handle being gay men in such a crazy yeehaw town. I looked it up, and it appears that many things in Fredericksburg were owned by German immigrants, which were recently bought out by many rich Conservatives because cheap land, and these douches replaced the unique shops with basic stores. Somewhere along the way, Qanon and Trump supporters ended up in the mix and it became a hostile scenario. I have never been so uncomfortable in a town before! It's hilarious now, imo.

 Me and Alex looked at houses yesterday!

Well, sort of.

On my lunch break during Friday, we ventured to look at the exterior of some houses. The first one was ... Eh. The second one was even more eh, with all of the sidewalk torn up by some invasive trees while all the other houses had pristine sidewalks. It became EVEN MORE eh when we were leaving and I got a massive nosebleed all over the interior of the car. I never get nosebleeds (like once every two years) so I thought it was funny afterwards. Alex theorizes I got punched in the face by an enemy stand user. I theorized it was haunted and didn't want me there.

Then Saturday we lazed around for a good long while before going to look at other houses. We found one we really liked up north, which would be only a twenty minute commute for me... I hope we can get it. We tried two others but they were too far away from anything.
The unfortunate reality is that all the cool things are within the city and you get crappier homes for more money, but at the luxury of having things you like around it. On the other hand, you can get a nicer house out in the suburbs, but at the expense of having NOTHING around you other than a Church's Chicken, Chevron, and maybe a loan office. Oh, and the toll roads. We are probably gonna bite the bullet and get a slighty iffy rental house so we can stay near work, friends, and things to do.

We played House Hunters Drinking Game later which is just taking a drink every time they say "stainless steel appliances", "granite countertops", "backsplash", etc. God the people on that show are EXHAUSTING. 1.25 MIL BUDGET?!

In three days is Alex's birthday! He's not really excited but I am, I want him to have a good night so I think that I will make him some chicken a la king and even attempt to bake, which as we know, is my Achilles heel. You think he'd still love me after I give him a burnt but runny cake?

P.S. Penpals, I haven't forgotten you I'm just busy and need to grab some stamps from the UPS... Soon you will get a postcard from moi...

I'm without Alex for the night. Frown.

Even though we spend pretty much every day together, he and I still live separately. If it wasn't for the pandemic, we'd likely be slowly moving his + I's stuff into a warehouse apartment in East Downtown until my lease is up in a few months. But we can't, because Covid. I hope that when I move, it'll be into a shared apartment with him rather than the crappy place I live at right now, but everyone's lives are kind of up in the air right now and there's no solid plans for anything.

On a much more pleasant note, my sister sent me an early birthday present! I only have one sibling, Holly, and she's great and I am constantly texting her and calling her. She was so excited about the present she had me face time her as I opened it.



Isn't it cute! There's all kinds of paranormal cryptids on there, my favorite being Nessie. I have a massive backstory regarding cryptids: As a child, I was obsessed with Nessie and lake monsters. Ogopogo, The Hook Island Sea Monster (Whose pictures scared me so much I would flip past them at hyper speed), you name it, I was obsessed with it. As a kindergartener up until third or fourth grade, I told EVERYONE when I grew up I was going to hunt Nessie, Bigfoot, and the Chupacabra. Imagine! I would be the first person to tame Nessie! And she would be my best friend! And play Pokemon Silver with me!

When my family would go on vacation, Holly + I would beg and plead to go on a ghost tour or to hunt for spooky things. One time we spent the night at a hotel next to a cemetery and 'investigated' it for fun. We also ran around Gettysburg at night being little heathens. Holly and I have always been weirdos so getting a cute lanyard and some stickers reminds me of my childhood... And the eventual Bigfoot roadtrip I'm planning.

You know, if Yosemite doesn't explode or whatever else 2020 may have in store for us.