For my birthday, Fef got me a foil Chalice of the Void! It went immediately into my colorless commander deck. Once I move to Pittsburgh, I should actually get to play it! I can't wait! My parents got me a super cute cookie jar shaped like a cheese wedge with a mouse on top and a mouse going through the holes in the cheese. They also got me an original movie poster for The Lord of the Rings. I can't wait to put that up in my new apartment. They also got me a pink cake with frosting roses on it. I really liked that, but I can't really tell the reason my mom had for getting it. She said that she had to get it because it looked so good, but also apologized for it being pink.

Friday morning I got up at 8:30 to be ready to leave at 9:00 like mom told me. We then didn't leave for an hour. Of course. The actual trip up with my mom was pretty nice. We just talked the whole time. We got to the apartment a little bit early and my mom started talking with a couple walking a corgi. Tom showed up shortly after and we chatted while she talked with the corgi people. The first apartment we looked at was weirdly shaped and Tom didn't like that. I wasn't wild about it either so we moved on. The next one was pretty nice and Tom liked it to some extent, but took issue with the aesthetic. And the last one had a Ridiculous I-beam in the room and we decided it was too big. When we went back downstairs, Tom decided he didn't like the building enough (and was a bit uncomfortable with just how nice it was) and we didn't get a double. So I went back up (Tom came with just 'cause) and looked at a suite, that I signed up for.

After we were done with the apartments, my mom decided to take a cab to the airport, so I went off with Tom to Phantom of the Attic then dinner at Little Asia, then to the "Dunkhut", Brian and Owen's place. It's been years since Brian and I hung out, so I was pretty excited, until I heard that Brian was out of town for the weekend to visit Skye in D.C.. So I got to meet Owen and everyone else who lives there, but Tom and I arrived while the house was empty, so we just played some board games for a while. After people showed up, we basically ignored them and I created my next DnD character, 3 Kobolds in a Trenchcoat. Still, though, it was pretty nice hanging out (or just saying hi) with them, and I enjoyed my time there even though it was a very messy place.

Saturday I got up early and went to IHOP with Fef, something we love doing together. We got some delicious pancakes and had a really good time just talking. After that, we drove back to the school to see if SoHo was open. It wasn't so we sat outside the room and I watched her play Celeste. After a little while, we realized that we had forgotten to go to the Tech general body meeting, so we just decided to head back to Kids Table and I continued to watch Fef play Celeste. When her hands would start to hurt, we switched to me playing Kirby while she watched (after a good amount of time setting it up). Even though I was just watching, I had a ton of fun watching Fef play. I can't wait to do this again and see the rest of the game.

After platformers, we went to the Allies Gendersquad meeting. There were a TON of people in that room (and even more than just the number of bodies since there were 3 systems). I felt too intimidated by the sheer number of people to really say much, and what I said was just about moving and not about any of the gender stuff I've been going through. When we got to the end of the meeting to discuss leadership for next school year, someone asked me if I wanted to volunteer to help lead Gendersquad. I said that I didn't want to promise responsibility before I'd even moved back, but I did say for them to come back to me at the end of summer if there was still a gap in leadership.

For dinner, I went with Miriam to the Dumpling House. Since I had DnD at 7:30 and we didn't leave Gendersquad until around 6, we didn't have that much time, but we got our food quickly and I really enjoyed my dumplings. Mir got some chicken dish that she was disappointed with, since it wasn't as traditional as she would have liked.

DnD was pretty fun, and everyone was okay with me leaving for half an hour to go watch the dance that Fef lit at Dancer's Symposium. After I had gotten down to the lobby of my hotel, I realized that I had forgotten my tech lams, so I had to go back up to my room to get them, or risk not being allowed in to see it. I lost 5 minutes doing that and had to really rush to get there in time to see the dance. I drove a little faster than I was really comfortable with, and ran to the building from the Morewood parking lot. By the time I got up to the tech balcony, I arrived maybe 30 seconds before the dance before Fef's ended. It was a really close call, but totally worth all the effort to get there. Fef's lighting was really great, easily her best yet. She told me that she went over the normal limit of lighting cues that they're allowed to give, but it didn't really feel like extra. She had some really great uses of color, especially some blues and purples that really matched the mood of the song (Stay High). She also had this really cool effect where she flashed a red light on the front of the dancers while a light in the background changed colors from blue to green. It was really great and I was so impressed.

Sunday morning, I woke up early like on Saturday even though I didn't have any set plans to do anything with Fef. I did say to her before I left Gendersquad that if Ren was okay with it, I'd we willing to accompany the two of them to breakfast the next morning. Fef woke up too late to go to breakfast though, since she had to get to the airport for her noon flight. In an effort to spend more time together, I offered to drive her, but my first offer was ignored. When I asked again, I got a very curt response, saying "I do not want you to drive me." I suspect that this was not Fef, or at least not mostly her. I considered going back to sleep, but just watched some videos instead. After some time, I got a message from her saying that the roads were blocked for something and the 28X wasn't available, so she asked if I could drive her. Of course I obliged and after some planning to actually pick her up (since Forbes was entirely blocked for a race), we were on our way. We had a really good time just talking, so that kind of backs up that the message from earlier wasn't Fef. We arrived really quickly (only 25 minutes as opposed to the 28X's time of 1 hour), and said our goodbyes. I miss just talking with Fef and can't wait until she moves back to Pittsburgh at some future date.

So after I got back to my hotel, I headed over to the dunkhut again. Not knowing what to do, I cleaned it up a bit. I was told to leave everything but the kitchen stuff, so that's what I did for a while. Then I played some mariokart and chatted with people a bit. Then Brian and Skye came back! I got to really say hi to Brian for the first time in years. I say "really" because I had said hi as they drove by in a car and said hi through Fef over the past couple of years. Then we all went to a late lunch at a greek food event happening at a nearby chuch, where we met up with Brian's brother, Adam. It was cool, the food was good, and at some point I came out to Tom as nonbinary, since Brian knew and was using they/them pronouns for me. I also finally found out why I didn't get into the fraternity back in freshman/sophomore year. Turns out that 4 members didn't like me and that was enough to veto me from getting in. It was probably a good thing, in hindsight.

Soon thereafter, Tom and I headed over to Christophe's place for a miniatures game with him and Seth. It wasn't 40K, since Tom really hates that rules set, so three of us had to learn new rules quickly (with two of us having little-to-no experience with miniatures games at all). Christophe and I were on the defending side of the encounter, so we got to plan out setting up and what our strategy would be. It started off looking pretty unlucky for us with some bad rolls that really put a dent in our defense. Things started to lean more in our favor when we "deep strike"d in some "terminators" that completely obliterated the squads we had them attack. In the end, we got lucky and won the game. I really look forward to playing some more when I move back to Pittsburgh, though I am still kind of terrified by the move.