I’m writing this from the train, we passed through Milwaukee about ten or twenty minutes ago, on our way to Minneapolis for Summer Games Done Quick 2026.
Excerpt from unpublished SGDQ 2025 post
I’ve been watching GDQ events on and off since the big polar vortex hit Chicago in January 2014. Windchills of -40 (Celsius or Fahrenheit, it doesn’t matter, they’re the same at -40). Most of the city’s office workers, including me, worked from home that week. It was great to have the event on TV all week! Seven years later, AGDQ 2021 was the first event my wife and I watched together as a couple, and we absolutely adored the experience. Watching the amazing, multi-hour Yoshi’s Island run was easily the highlight, as that’s a game we both adore. Since then we’ve watched nearly every one together, as well as the Frame Fatales events that started a few years ago. This year, we finally did something we’ve been talking about forever: We went to SGDQ 2025 in Minneapolis, Minnesota!
I’ve been struggling to look forward to the event this year. I’ve been struggling to look forward to anything. After everything that’s happened since last year and earlier this year, I feel like I’ve lost the ability to enjoy anything. My friend asked me if I was excited for the trip and I immediately changed the topic to some catnip I harvested and set up to dry. My therapist asked and I kinda basically lied to her. Though I guess in some moments it’s easier to find a shred of excitement, so I guess it wasn’t a full lie. I just keep remembering last year. I keep remembering this spring.
Excerpt
I am writing this through a lot of pain and struggle with my housemate over the calendar year that feels like it’s come to an almost irreversible point.. as well as the death of her cat on Saturday July 26th. I’m not sure what’s okay to say online or not, so I’ve deleted a huge paragraph and I’m simply going to state: we’ve been in an unhealthy pattern for seven months now and I recently declared my exit from the pattern. Meanwhile, her cat, Mitchell, I loved that old man. He was one of the sweetest cats I ever met, and honestly had a temperament similar to Duster. I originally met him in 2020, but we started living together in late November 2024 so that we could get him out of a situation with another cat who was super aggressive towards him and already scarred his right eye. We lost Mitchell on Saturday, July 26th 2025. It was just another massive heartbreak on top of an already ongoing massive heartbreak.
We always take Amtrak (I say always, as if this isn’t just our second time) because it’s really comfortable and low stress. It’s the same route we would take to Milwaukee when we go back there too. I used to take the Wolverine line to Pontiac, MI a lot during college to visit family but otherwise had not set foot on an Amtrak until a few years ago when I took whatever line it was from San Jose to Oakland, California. The trip to Minneapolis is long, over seven hours, but again the low stress and higher comfort really make it a worthwhile investment over flying. My wife can stretch out her long legs, I can easily get up and walk around, pull out all of my tech and games and books, and make a small nest for myself. It’s really comfy.
Excerpt
We decided against driving, and took the Amtrak Borealis line from Chicago to St. Paul. It was a super relaxing trip where I read the whole time and stared out the window heartbroken after a discussion the day prior with my housemate / ex-girlfriend. There’s been a lot of confusion and uncertainty, and this was the first time I had any certainty about what things were between us. The first time in a full year I finally understood what we were to each other. It was not what I had hoped for, but the certainty was something I could at least hang on to. I think it’s better to be heartbroken and know why than to be hopeful and not know why.
I’ve already talked about what I want to do more of at this year’s event: socialize and see more of the onsite-only panels and discussions. Socialization is going to be hard, for all the reasons it’s been hard doing it at home too. I just don’t think I’m ready yet. But everyone I know will be happy if I just try and push myself to do it, so I guess I should do that.
Already on today’s train I’ve identified quite a few people going to SGDQ, including a couple of trans women a few rows behind us. I always look forward to GDQ events because of how safe they feel and how much they really make me feel like we’re going to win.
Excerpt
Let’s talk about the politics of GDQ. Things were pretty rough ten years ago in terms of, for example, transgender acceptance. But you’ll also see some “controversies” over the years about kicking out some red hat wearing shitbag, for example. I’m not sure what started pushing GDQ more left, but the event is essentially a transgender event now. So much of the audience is trans or nonbinary, so many runners are trans or nonbinary, and so many staff and crew are trans or nonbinary as well. It made for an immediately relaxed environment, where we didn’t have to question if anyone was going to bother us or shit on us. The organization has made so much effort over the years to become a completely welcoming place (as long as you’re not an asshole or promote assholism), and it’s really paid off. So many people claimed it would be the death of GDQ for “pandering” or “going woke” in modern parlance, but like.. uh, the event is just getting bigger and bigger and raising more and more money for these charities. And as I’ve mentioned in a previous entry, the bigots that appeared in Twitch chat have been less and less prominent every single event. Aggressive moderation works!! As talked about in that entry as well, the constant chants of “TRANS RIGHTS!” really drive home what kind of space this is, and it actively pushes away the shitty people who would just make this kind of event unfun anyway.
Even if I don’t end up socializing, I’ll still be among good and safe people, and that still means a lot these days. I’m not sure what I’m expecting this week, except to finally get some nice solid nights of sleep in the hotel room. Last night, as I was putting fresh sheets on my bed, I discovered a small moth larva had climbed on to the head-end of my top sheet. Investigating further and I found… a lot of eggs and webbing-casings on the box spring below my mattress. Turns out that animal fibers also means human and cat hair too. I did more research and it’s specifically the keratin they eat from animal fibers. Of course they’d have a ton to eat down there, as loose hair falls down and collects. I stuck the vacuum between the headboard and mattress and got what I could, there was no way I was going to be able to sleep otherwise. It was 00:30 by the time I felt like I had vacuumed all I reasonably could. As you can imagine, I barely slept at all. This is now beginning to brush up against my bed bug PTSD.
And I’m not looking forward to returning and having to pull my bed out, strip the box spring of it’s fitted sheet (the sheet is so Sabot doesn’t crawl around INSIDE the box spring, I love him so), and then deep vacuum everything around there. Probably getting what we can between the mattress and box spring too. In my research I found that the eggs usually hatch within 4-10 ish days, whereas the larvae can exist in their larval state for anywhere from 2 months to 30 months.
That is to say, up to two and a half years as larva. Which really helped me understand how they got into our ex’s stuff. The larva were already in the house, not as eggs but as little woims, and they crawled into her stuff well before she left. All of us are going to be fighting this for a while. I can’t help but keep writing things to you, so: try to keep on top of your loose hair and Little Miss’ as well. I feel like the moths here at the house moved to find my lost hair because we had taken away all of the clothing they were eating. Again, I’m so sorry. I wish I could do more.
The excerpts in this post are from my big, long unpublished SGDQ2025 post. I didn’t feel right about some of it, so I just sat on it for a whole year. I wrote the post a couple weeks after we returned, so it became a very long recounting and just got very messy with emotions. It feels good to pull in some passages from that post here and I’ll be doing so as I write more during the event this week.
I got everything I needed packed, but I forgot a purple and black wavy checkerboard pattern hoody in the dryer. I’m really kicking myself for forgetting that. It’s really comfortable and comforting.
But for now, I’m getting back to reading: either Witch Hat Atelier Volume 6 or Contact.