Today's Mighty Oak


Alright, let’s see what we have today. First up: Star Wars made an appearance at the Olympics figure skating!

Also from the Olympics: judging the fashion of the opening ceremony.

Also also from the Olympics, out skeleton slider Andrew Blaser raced with rainbow tape on his sled!

Randy Rainbow once again hits it out of the park:

Also, to no one’s surprise, gays and lesbians have the highest vaccine rate. It’s like we’ve lived through a plague before…

South Korea now has a walkable roller coaster as an art installation and place to stretch your legs!

That’s it for now, short update, but I’ll be bakc with more soon!



So it’s been a minute since I’ve done these, and I partially forgot how much work they are, but I’m back at it, and here is my 2018 year in review! These are the big events from the year, the things I did and the things that made me smile! There’s always so many pictures that I initially pull that don’t make it in, which is always sad, but I’m still pretty happy with how this one turned out!



Alright, let’s see what we have today. First up, we have the first look at the Mr. Rogers movie staring Tom Hanks.

Pete Buttigieg took over P-Town and it was Pete-Town for a weekend!

Pictures from World Pride in NYC to celebrate Stonewall 50.

Meeting the new president of the HRC:

In other Pride news, Gritty (who, even though I am a die-hard Pens fan, is still the best thing that we didn’t know we needed), did a great job at Philly Pride (and check out him waving the Philadelphia Pride flag)!

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (drag nuns who do street-level ministry to the queer community), were present at a commemoration ceremony of the queer lives lost in the Holocaust.

(Pennsylvania) Republicans are a disgrace, part I: screaming over the reading of a letter of a former homeless man because they want to slash the General Assistance Program.

(Pennsylvania) Republicans are a disgrace, part II: Congressman says he’s a person of color because he’s white.

And finally, as a palate cleanser, watch some T-Rexs run a race!



Alright, let’s see what we have today. First up, in amazingness, a hotel clerk clapbacks at a racist customer trying to book a room.

In case you haven’t seen it, the trailer for the sequel to Breath of the Wild:

In Pride month news, an Alabama mayor defends his plan to kill queer people and a ‘death to gay’s pastor is going to hold a rally in Orlando because Pulse.

But in good news, the NYPD Commissioner has officially apologized for the raid on the Stonewall Inn.

Google has released a beautiful digital monument for the 50th anniversary called “Stonewall Forever,” preserving our history.

XKCD hits it out of the park. This. Absorb this:

And finally today, Mika announced a new album and he released the first single:



Alright, let’s see what we have today, it’s a fairly short update.

First up, what we witnessed on Friday, while showing the absolute strength, resolution and power of women and sexual abuse survivors, was, all-in-all, one of the most heinous things concocted by the Republicans in the 242 year history of this country, and that is saying something.  Don’t forget to take some time for yourself and self-care, and if you need help, reach out.

A priest in Chicago defied the Archdiocese and performed an ‘exorcism’ of a Pride flag, burning it.  A reminder, the Catholic Church is a hate group, full stop.

There’s a new trailer for the next Fantastic Beasts movie:

Google celebrated Mister Rogers this week with a wonderful Doodle!

That’s it for today, have a great one!



We’re a third of the way through the month already!  I’ve been enjoying writing every day, and really enjoyed the more free-form blogging over the weekend (as well as the time to work on the site a bit), so I’m certainly glad I’m doing this.  However, if other NaNoWriMo projects are any indication, this is where it starts to get hard!

Anyway, first up today, it’s illegal for the Pride flag to be displayed in Russia.  But these World Cup fans have found a way around that!

The Governor of Maine has vetoed a ban on gay ‘conversion therapy torture.’  No word on if the state legislature will overrule him.

Various LGBT groups have come together to help stop the SCOTUS pick.  If he’s confirmed, we will most likely lose any kind of discrimination protection and will probably lose marriage equality as well (in addition to legal and safe abortion, contraception, voting rights and the list goes on and on).

The trailer for OITNB has arrived:

 



I’ll do another ‘blog’ type of writing today, perhaps that is what my weekend writing will become (this month is all about getting in the writing habit and see what I like and what I don’t, so why not experiment a bit).

This morning got up and ran a beautiful (although maybe slightly pollen filled) run through Schenley Park before heading to yoga at Phipps.  After that, four of us went to the Pirates pride game!

Two of us hit up the tailgate party beforehand, which included a donation drive for a new homeless shelter for queer youth.  While we only make up about 4-10 percent of the population (numbers vary), queer youth are 40% of homeless youth on the street, because they are thrown out of their homes simply for how they were born.  I was hoping to see the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence there, as they’re doing a ton of work for Proud Haven, but I’m sure they need a break, so I hope they could enjoy the game outside of face!

The game was fun (I got wings, saw the pierogie race), and we even won!  Headed to Local afterwards to grab a drink and let the traffic die down…and then we got lost in the parking garage, so that was a fun adventure!  Check out the photos from the day here.

Back to the grind tomorrow, and it’s shaping up to be a very busy week!



My goal for Camp NaNoWriMo has been to get back into the habit of writing each day.  I’m sure it won’t be something I will keep up in August and September, as I’ll be putting in more miles to train for the GAP Trail Relay, but not only do I love NaNoWriMo, I also love the people I’m sharing a virtual cabin with for camp.

So far this month, I’ve been able to get just about caught up on my RSS feeds, have done some neglected work on my website (although still have lots to go, but the month is young!) and generally enjoyed getting back into this habit.

Today, while I had plans to wake up early and go running, my body had other ideas.  And that’s okay, when I did wake up, even though the temperature was great, I had no desire to drive to the park to go run long. So hopefully tomorrow I’ll go early to yoga and get a loop or two in before stretching (and then going to the Pittsburgh Pirates Pride game).

So instead, I was super productive around the house today.  Lots of laundry, brewing beer, some baking, weeding and some great self care: right now I’m sitting on my deck, enjoying the beautiful weather and clear blue sky, sitting under my new deck umbrella with an iced coffee and listening to some podcasts on a little bluetooth speaker.  Really, just a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

And writing this has been fun, a ltitle different than my normal writing: an actual blog!  I’ll be walking down the street to a friend’s for game night later, but for now, enjoying this space is exactly want I want to be doing.

Edit: Still working on a good way to add posts from my phone (with pictures), but I’ll keep working on that this month!  Hopefully you enjoy the view from my deck though!



I’ve been a local volunteer (municipal liaison) for National Novel Writing Month for a few years now.  It’s so amazing and I love helping participants and kids (through the Young Writers Program) unlock their creative potential and write for 30 days with literary abandon.  NaNoWriMo also runs two camp sessions: participants get to choose what they work on and how they measure success.  This year, I”m jumping in with a great group with the goal to write each day.

A lot of that writing will be here, some of it will not, but getting back into that discipline is something I’d like to practice a bit, and what better way than with an amazing team of writers (all of whom identify as Slytherin but they’ve adopted this Hufflepuff to create the ‘Drunkest Slytherpuff” cabin once again)!

Today’s writing (and many of them, I do have a big backlog) is a ‘normal’ blog post for me, so here we go!

Nerdist asks if George Lucas’ idea for the sequels is what you imagined.  No.  No it is not.  But, in retrospect, it gives more credence to some of the things I hated about the prequels (and again, Star Wars is his creation, he can tell whatever story he likes, we get to choose if we like it or not.  Well…Disney does now).

An amazing parkour video for Pride month:

The next season of American Horror Story will mash up Murder House and Coven.  This is exciting!

The creator of Godwin’s Law has suspended Godwin’s Law.  That’s should tell you where we are in this country right now.

That’s it for now, I’ll be back very soon!



Alright, let’s see what we have today.  First up, an awesome parody of the Cheerio’s ad:

If you didn’t see the news from E3, here is the trailer for the next Smash Bros game, which will include Mega Man!

So, Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who helped to write the immigration reform currently working its way through Congress, will vote against it if it includes protections for the LGBT community.  And in case that didn’t convince you he’s a total asshat, he also thinks people should be able to be fired based on their sexual orientation.

And Texas Governor Rick Perry thinks that we should be able to discriminate against non-Christians.  Because Christians are a harassed minority, or something like that.  Read Goldy’s piece, it’s well written.

I’ll have a longer post up soon, but Pittsburgh Pride was this weekend.  This is not from Pittsburgh, but a great sign nonetheless.  And it is great because the only way to respond to hatred sometimes is with childish humor:

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