On Wednesday, September 23, 2026, Daniel's father, Paul passed away. He had been sick and was in hospice care, but all the same it was unexpected. Paul had moved up to Bellingham to live with his wife, both for better climate and for a little assistance.

Daniel planned a trip to go see him and spend some quality time. They had made reservations at different fancy restaurants for every night of the week. But when he got there, he quickly realized that probably wasn't happening. The situation was rapidly declining, so he extended his trip and I bought a plane ticket to join him Friday after work so I could help out. Unfortunately, he succumbed to his illness sooner than expected. I changed my ticket to the earliest flight the next day and headed up.

Any way you slice it, it's about a full day to get up to Seattle and then up to Bellingham. When I landed, I checked the big board for my gate information for my connecting flight only to see the word, "CANCELED." Not delayed. Just canceled. I was really trying not to be a burden but I was like wtf do I do. His mom will typically not fly between cities, but take a bus charter instead. I got the details for the bus, bought a ticket immediately even if it wasn't going to work, and then set out trying to figure out where to go. You would think the website would have some instructions, but no. I called the number and this nice man stayed on the line as he walked me through where to go. The bus was waiting and I got on board and not 15 minutes later, we were set out for our 2 hour drive up to Bellingham.

I got there by like 8pm. Daniel met me at the Sheraton 4-Points hotel. We said hi to his mom standing in the rain and then went to our fancy hotel. Everything in Bellingham pretty much shuts down at 9pm, so we had to rush to the restaurant next door, and apologize to the wait staff because we were the last ones there past closing, but they were very nice about it. My goal was to just be a fly on the wall, provide emotional support, and help out in any way I could while the family sorted out the most immediate concerns.

Really, I thought we could have short stints of a nice little weekend, and we did. Bellingham is a cute town, although way far left of my comfort zone - and that's saying a lot! Our hotel was really nice, overlooking the water, far from the train tracks, and quiet. One morning, we ran into Lucien Laviscount, who played Alfie in Emily in Paris, that godawful TV show. I didn't recognize him immediately, just said good morning as we passed on the elevator, but then I paused thinking, do I know him? I turned to Daniel and his jaw was on the ground. Rumor is that Tyler Perry was in town filming a movie with John Cena and Michael Buble. We even saw a helicopter over the water performing what looked to be repeated fake rescue operations surrounded by boats potentially housing cameras? When the next Tyler Perry movie comes out we're going to go see it and if it doesn't have Lucien in a water rescue scene we're gonna feel like idiots.

We had some good meals, a few cries, and provided some useful help to his mother. Daniel is the first from our generation to lose a parent, and it was a reminder that we are entering that chapter of our lives. Paul will be deeply missed but always remembered.

Last night we attended a charity gala. I wouldn't say we're exactly gallerinas, but this one was pretty fun. We got some "free" tickets because my dad had made a donation in honor of his late brother, so there was some obligation to go. Plus this is one of the charities I've worked with in my side gig and I know the founder well, so ... we put on suit jackets despite the 100+ temperatures and set out for a warehouse venue near the Galleria.

What was funny is that it was on some random street we've never heard of or seen, and yet just the night before we were like 3 doors down. We went and saw a traveling exhibit of the Trump Epstein Files Reading Room. They printed out all 3 million pages of redacted released files, and put them into volumes on rows and rows of book cases. We promptly started pulling books out and leafing through them looking for a previously unnoticed gold nugget. Some dude came up and said, "I don't think you're actually supposed to touch the books." Which then made us paranoid so we stopped. But it was called "reading room" so I don't get what the hell else you were supposed to do there. It ended up taking like 10 minutes to get thru and then we went to dinner.

Anyway, the gala was fun. It was very inspiring to be in a room full of people who care about other people when that seems to be in low supply these days. Some of the residents of the homeless shelter program even took the mic and spoke about their experiences, which was moving. I got a little emotional when one by one they said how terrible things had gotten that they googled for help and found this organization #1 in the list, because I'm the one that got that all set up and working. So that was cool to remember that things you've done previously can continue to have a ripple effect.

Great meal, good conversations, made a little donation in excess of what we do monthly (and doubled it using my employer), so all in all I'd say it was a wonderful evening.

This is kind of turning into a travel blog, but that's usually the only thing of note going on lately. I'll try to come up with a few different topics here after this. But, we just got back from New Orleans. It was technically my second time there, but first time since I started forming and retaining memories.

The main reason we decided to go now was for Ben's 40th birthday party, which happened to coincide with a big gay festival, Southern Decadence and some big late night party called the Horsemeat Disco. Getting to NOLA is beyond easy. We took Southwest out of Love because Daniel had a leftover flight credit from his short lived stint at the startup and we needed to use it or lose it. We normally will only fly American because we're holding onto gold status by our fingernails these days, but it made sense to this time not to. And boy does that eliminate a lot of stress. Love is down the street, we could practically walk there. And the flight was barely an hour long, so easy.

We really had a nice time in the city. The food is great everywhere we went. Great drinks, good nightlife. The night of Horsemeat Disco we took a little disco nap and made it out. We had purchased new clothes just for the event so we would be ever so slightly appropriately dressed. Turned out we were almost the only ones wearing clothes. Lots of butts hanging out everywhere. It was crowded. It was stinky. You could hardly move much less dance, could hardly talk. All in all, I'd have to say not my scene. But I did my best to hang and have a good time, mostly by imbibing.

The next day we went to the Southern Decadence parade. It was so hot. It was so crowded. It was impossible to do anything, so when our friend Ashley had to head for the airport to get back to her kids, we took it as an excuse to escort her back to our hotel where she'd stashed her bag and then we went to the pool. All in all, I'd have to say not my scene. My scene gets more and more specificity added to it every year. Luckily Daniel agrees.

Our last night we went out to dinner in the French Quarter, had a lovely meal, and then strolled down Bourbon Street on our way back to the hotel. At the end of the street a complete nut job had set up an amplifier with a microphone and had dip shits on either side holding big placard signs letting us all know that we were going to hell. When he saw Daniel and me, he singled us out and started harassing us. Daniel grabbed my hand and we told them to fuck off as we walked by. What a downer at the end of the trip.

It did get me thinking though. The analogous opposite of that just truly doesn't exist. Nobody ever sits outside of churches on Sunday morning with big signs saying "None of this is real!" or "You're all morons!" while someone screams at them in a microphone, "You're not going to heaven when you die dipshit!" So ... looking for volunteers for next Sunday. Let's liberate a few minds from the clutches of Idiocracy!

I'm cheating again and I'm going to backdate this blog. I used to just say sorry I am so late getting around to it, but these days I use my blog like a Time Hop, so I'd rather have a semi-accurate date on it depending on the story I'm telling. But I digress. We just got back from a long weekend in NYC.

We've struggled to find our place there. Different hotels, different neighborhoods, nothing ever really felt right. Well, folks, you'll be as thrilled to hear as I am thrilled to announce - we finally found our home away from home in New York. The Chelsea Hotel. It's this super old building with a rich and storied history of being a haven for artists and musicians. But it's been bought out and turned mostly into a high end hotel. I say mostly because some people still live there, so walking down the hall to our hotel room, we passed two residents' doors. I assume that is occasionally annoying but it probably also basically saved the building so take what you can get. There were three restaurants, and we tried two. Both were fab. And we'd go to the bar at night for courvoisier and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

I'd never been to a Broadway show so Daniel got us tickets to two shows while we were there. One was Oh Mary! starring Meg Stalter. I love her to death and she did an amazing job, but ... eh. It was like bawdy and irreverent for the sake of it. I didn't really think it was that CLEVER or anything. Funny enough and we had a great time watching. But ... nothing like our second show Titanique - the telling of the story of the Titanic from Celine Dion's perspective. It was continuously riotously funny throughout with the best music and dancing. Loved it. Loved it.

What else? We went to the Met. Daniel had tried to gaslight me into believing I'd been to the Met before, but I definitely hadn't. Then we walked through Central Park and later on through Hudson River Park, and yowzah the eye candy. I definitely need to step it up or start taking peptides or something. We also saw Davbart and he and Colin took us out to a more traditional Chinese brunch that was completely chaos and then to the Tenement Museum which was super cool and I would def go back to that.

I don't know if New York changed, or if I changed, but I really enjoy it more now than when I was younger. I was even commenting that like nobody was rude the whole time. To us or otherwise. People on the subway said, "Pardon me," when it was their stop. Staff everywhere just super welcoming and friendly. Idk, it is just so enjoyable now where I didn't feel like that 20 years ago. The only thing I didn't like was that EVERY FUCKING ONE was playing Alicia Key's "New York" on repeat. Every store, every pedicab, everywhere you went, you'd sometimes even hear 2 or 3 renditions going on out of sync simultaneously. PEOPLE! There are SO MANY songs about New York. Mix it up!

Then whoosh, we were back home. A super fun little trip for no particular reason. And one we'll hopefully start to do with more regularity.

I've been desperately trying to observe or overhear something funny today so I could relate it to all of you, but as of yet, I've got nothing. I haven't even seen something that I thought to myself, "That would have been a lot funnier if ..." and then could be related to you all as if that had happened. I'd even go so far as to say, I've not even spent any time daydreaming where I've thought "You know what's funny, ViD?" and answered myself, and then completely lied to you all and said it happened. My life is that boring.

But do you know what is funny? When monkeys ride dogs like horses. Not in and of itself, but if you put a saddle on the dog and a little vest and cowboy hat on the monkey, holy shit. You will get me every time with that shit. The other thing that is funny is the Joe Schmoe Show on the Spike Network, the first network for men. It comes on Tuesday nights at 8, so if you haven't been watching, start now. And if you want to watch it with me tonight, just let me know. HE THINKS IT'S ALL REAL!

I dunno, maybe something will happen to me on the way home, but I doubt it. This place is so blase, so passe, so cliche, so predictable. More on that, after this....

Welcome back, you wayward Sidesho-Viewers. My site has returned, less technological than its ever been. So fear not, along with my site, I too have returned from the depths of anonymity. If you can't tell, a couple things have changed around here. There's a lot I still want to do, but I told myself I was going to release V5 tonight if it killed me. It still stands to be determined if it will actually kill me, since its 3:30 in the morning and I have class tomorrow. Some things are just more important, y'know? Like all of you to me.

In case you didn't gather, or I didn't tell you repeatedly, all of the words on this site have been replaced with my handwriting. You may think it was easy, but you would be wrong. I've been spending every free moment of time for the past week scanning in words, and photoshopping them so they look good online. Hehehe, 'photoshopping.' Its such bad grammar to verbify nouns. Keith can vouch for the fact that I've been hunched over my computer for hours every day. Anyway, there's still a couple of things that I want to convert to handwriting, but they're all obscure and none of you will ever notice. So for now just enjoy what you can see.

I've dispensed with the buttons, the tabs, and the navigation bars and opted to go for an 'all on one page' design. I think it is a little easier, on me at least. I'm not so sure I love the black and white of the page, but every great artist goes through a grey period, right? Sorry to all of you who used to be on the cast page, I'm sure I'm going to have some angry friends who feel they deserve their name on the one and only site dedicated entirely to myself. We'll see about getting something like that back on here soon. I'll think somethin' up, don't you worry.

The webcam is no longer 24/7 as it stands. Without its own dedicated page, its hard to make it refresh automatically every 30 seconds. So the majority of you would just see a black square, or an empty chair while you read my blog, and I surely don't want that. The pose I've left for you is my 'Dis be da shit right heeya' pose. I think its appropriate. The pics are all grey and grainy right now, but will soon pop links to bigger full color pictures. You've all seen me anyway, so you can wait on that. I've added a link to my archives, in case you ever missed a day in the past year. Now you can go back and read the old blogs. The search function is also different. It now just searches the blogs for keywords instead of my entire site. I like it better. Plus its built into my page now.

I added contact information back in. That was the one thing missing from my American Flag design. Of course, if you ever need to get ahold of me just insert 'SideshoViD' wherever you can and it'll work. I have Yahoo Messenger now too, I guess I could add that to the list. Its SideshoViD on there, of course. I took down the Sidesho-Poll for the time being because I hate that Sparklit crap I was using to host it. I'm going to learn how to host it off my own site if its the last thing I do and then the polling will commence once more. But it could very well be the last thing I do, so we'll see.

As you can tell, I'm rather excited about my new design, and the blogging is just flowing out of my fingers now. I'm totally rejuvenated after a long rest and a new layout. So if you would be so kind, please be sure to leave me a comment or two letting me know what you think of this layout. Thank you for coming back, and I hope to see you again real soon.