A quick vacation

I got back from a small vacation yesterday. I took the train up to Chicago on Tuesday, puttered around the city for a couple of days, rode the L, zoomed around on a Divvy bike, skulked around the enemy's baseball stadium (it's neat! I would have done a tour if they were having them), and generally was on no one's schedule but my own for a few days.

I ended up in Wicker Park, to see Myopic Books, of course, but also Quimby's. Quimby's is a bookstore full of independent publications, and more importantly, zines. I've been going through my backlog, and picked up a few there. It's a great store, and if I make it back to Chicago, I plan on going again. That it's right on a subway line is just an added bonus.

Part of this trip was to have time to myself to focus on creative work. I really didn't do that. Since I put out my last big project, my brain has been empty. I feel like I have nothing to say, which actually concerns me a little. I think I'm worn out, though, and maybe this is a sign that I need to just read for a while. I should get back to nonfiction, that tends on getting the brain stew bubbling.

A couple of things:

Behind the Wheel: a zine about driving for Lyft in San Francisco. The first issue seems to take place around 2012/2013, or whenever the rise of Lyft and Uber were. Enjoyed the crap out of this one, and the writer's feelings towards tech bros really reflected mine of the tech bros in Seattle five years later.

Behind the Wheel (http)

I've been neglecting Gemspace, and it's because I've just been busy, and I've had to turn off some things to focus. It doesn't help that my work filters the port Gemini is on. I don't hold that against them, they have to lock down what they have to. I used to have a linux box here that ran headless, just for remoting into from work for writing and doing things like browsing Gemspace. I should set that guy up again.

I ate at a kaiten sushi place in Chicago, which seemed to be the only one in the city. I missed those. I feel like there's at least a dozen in Seattle I used to eat at, and absolutely none here. Again, no grudges there, I don't think this market could sustain one. I imagine their margins are small.

-donut

5 November 2022