Year 50 Day 33

Me sitting in front of a bookcase, lit by sunlight coming in from the side. My head is freshly shaved, beard freshly trimmed quite short.

Day 33: All trimmed up and looking far less scruffy. Also glad I got finished with that before we got hit with this power outage. Last estimate is that it’ll be a few more hours before we get power again. And while my laptop is nicely charged, I don’t actually know how long the UPS that’s powering our internet connection will last. It’s an experiment…for science!

Year 50 Day 32

Four Papauan young women at a table with information about Papua, next to my wife and I visiting the booth.

Day 32: Spent a very nice morning at the Kent International Festival. The Papua booth was staffed entirely by Highline College students, so we had fun stopping by and chatting with them for a while. Also visited a lot of other booths about other cultures, and sampled food from Mexico (pastries and tacos), Venezuela (empenadas), Thailand (pot stickers), Uzbekistan (samsas), and India (ice cream). Now we’re home and stuffed full of good food.

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Year 50 Day 31

Me wearing a short-sleeve button-up shirt with a print that looks like rainbow paint was poured over and is dripping down the shirt. I'm leaning on my office wall. On the wall next to me is a rainbow-colored laser-cut wood plaque of the Vulcan calligraphy for Kol-ut-shan, or IDIC - Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.

Day 31: Happy Pride Month, take two—this time with color!

A friendly reminder: While I‘ve generally defaulted to “straight” as my most common shorthand, in conversations about such things, I’ve also been noting for decades that it’s “somewhere in the 80-90% range, depending on the situation and people involved”. But I’ve really never felt like “bi” applied to me, even if it might be arguably technically correct for anyone who isn’t a solid Kinsey 0.

So I think “statistically straight” is a good way to put it. All of my relationships have been with people who (at the time, and as far as I know, carrying into the present) were and are cisgender women, so a graphed trend line would certainly go that direction, but the totality of my experiences plus my awareness of my own self would definitely introduce some wobbles into that theoretical trend line — certainly enough for a qualifier of some sort on the “straight” designation. Hence, “statistically straight”.

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Year 50 Day 30

Me on my office balcony, with trees, a sports field, water, and blue skies in the background, wearing a plain black short-sleeve button-up shirt.

Day 30: Happy Pride month! I didn’t think about the date in the morning blur while getting dressed, so my rainbows are looking a little dark today. I’ll be a little more colorful on other days, though!

Year 50 Day 29

Me at my desk at work, with one hand on an ergonomic keyboard.

Day 29: I’ve long been curious about ergonomic keyboards, but never enough to spring for one, in case I didn’t like it. We got a stack in at work, so I’m borrowing one for a while to see what I think. Only two hours in, but so far my typing speed has dropped by half and I’ve realized that I type “B” with the wrong hand, so now any word with a “B” gets spelled with an “N” instead on the first try.

Year 50 Day 28

Me, a white, bald man with light red mustache and beard with a lot of white in it around the chin, wearing sillver half-rim wireframe glasses, smiling slightly at the camera.

Day 28: Another “grab a selfie while sitting on the living room couch” shot. Shows off my end-of-the-month scruff, though. This is about as long as I let my face fuzz get, as it’s almost time for me to do my turn-of-the-month trim.

Year 50 Day 26

Me sitting outside the fence of a community park baseball diamond, with players visible in the distance. I'm holding a cup of frozen yogurt.

Day 26: Had lunch, then grabbed some frozen yogurt and went up to a local park, where we found a little league baseball game going on. Don’t know who was playing or what the score was, but it was a pleasant way to spend some time this afternoon.

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