July 2026

I really feel like it hasn't been that long since I wrote the last blog post. Kinda crazy.

some smaller july activities

My partner and I went over to our friends' house for a 4th grilling night until it stormed, so then the grilling went to the stove. Their house is really coming together which has bee fun to see. The kitties are comfortable finally. When the storm cleared, we drove over towards the river to see the city's fireworks from Boom Island. "Boom" not because it's the peak firework viewing spot, but like "boom" in logging. Coincidentally, it's a great firework spot.

I drove the xB to the spot, and I almost turtled her on these massive fucking bumps that the city has been putting around town. They're like twice the height of normal speed bumps I swear to god. It's the second time I have smoked one of those too. I have to take the widest angle for them. I hate it cause a lot of people drive crazy as hell so I fear someone is gonna come in real hot and have a head-on collision with me.

My partner and I did the firefly walk at the U of M's Arboretum with his parents on the 3rd I think? It was very nice. I have seen fireflies for much of my life. I grew up having them in my yard back home. I've only recently been learning about the different species of them. My yard has the species simply named "black firefly." They're the cutest, and one of 19 described in Minnesota. There's over 2,000 species of fireflies worldwide. I really thought it was just one kind of bug. I've also learned that there's different colored ones. More research for me to do. I also forgot that people say "lightning bugs."

On my various walks and endeavors, I have been bitten by many bugs. I am absolutely covered in bug bites. For the first time in my life, I have been bitten by a deer fly. Absolutely awful.

We did want to go to EAA this year, but things didn't line up for us to do it as a group. My partner has been gathering research for next year to decide what days are best. It has been very charming to watch the flight radar.

You all probably know about the smoke that hit a lot of the US coming from the Boundary Waters area. My partner was seeing people respond to the fires with conspiracies about how it's about data centers and/or the mining company. "They are burning it on purpose" etc etc. Actual braindead takes. There were a lot of downed trees from a storm decades ago. They never burned. They needed to burn long ago, and not to this scale. Lightning struck some of this dead, dry wood which started the fires. Because of the dryness and wind, the fires spread immediately. Minneapolis was seeing numbers on the AQI as high as 500. My head was hurting. The air smelled bad. Wildfires smell like plastic kinda. People were spiraling about this too. That's just how it smells. It's not burning chemicals. Wildfires don't smell like your bonfire because they mix with the chemicals in the air from things like pesticides, cleaning supplies, paints, etc. Of course, I don't believe in blaming a consumer for environmental things, but the smell is there because it's already in the air from everyone's stinky off-gassing things and it's mixing with the wildfire smoke to make formaldehyde and benzene. Wear N-95 masks when dealing with wildfire smoke from a distance. If you live closer, higher protection is needed.

My partner and I encountered a green heron up close.

My partner and I also attended a "moth night" at the Eloise Butler Garden on the 30th. It was so fun to be surrounded by irl people who were as enthusiastically interested in bugs. We all nerded out about them. It was cute to see.

Here's various moths, bugs, and not bugs from that.

in my head

These are just things that have been floating around my head. As I write this, I don't think they're affecting me as much as they were at first.

One of the things I don't do because of my health anxiety is looking up conditions and ailments. I try to apply this to mental conditions too. However, I did break this rule to learn about autistic burnout. I wanted to figure out if it applied to what I experienced after graduating. It's been three years since college, but I still feel like I haven't recovered. I never got a job in what I studied because of my imposter syndrome (more on that later). I lost all of my drive to create literally anything, and it has taken actual years to slowly recover. I don't think it is autistic burnout, but I now fear that burnout. I may have experienced it before, and just labeled it as depression. I really have no idea because the times that I would have had it, I was also recovering from my panic disorder. It's really confusing. I came out of the research being scared of a new thing too. Cool.

On imposter syndrome, I have had it affecting me a lot lately. I'm not one to be against art school nor do I disagree with anti-art school folks. That stuff isn't what I will talk about here. One thing that art school did do to me was instill crazy expectations in myself and my work. Supposedly, portfolio reviews help, but me being a people-pleaser, they are the most damaging thing that I got out of my education. Everyone says completely different things about your portfolio. I wanted to meet all of their points, so the idea of making my portfolio is absolutely nauseating. I always feel like my work isn't good enough for client work. I just feel like I am missing that a certain "click" feeling with it. I don't know what I want from it. It's really hard to describe especially now that I don't necessarily feel the feelings that I did. Every few weeks, I get hit with the absolute despair about my work and not making enough. It's been less severe the past few times which is nice. I just have to make things, and I will feel better. My current issue is that the idea of sketching in my sketchbook makes me so nervous that I wanna puke. Really strange for me.

duluth

Okay back to fun things!

My partner and I took a couple day trip to Duluth. We've been wanting to do it, but we also wanted the car to be in good shape for it. With the new tires and a specific sound figured out, she was deemed safe enough. She did really well actually! We were nervous about the hills, but it was all good. I wanted to use the weird sport mode for that. Basically engine braking downhill to save the brake pads (will need very soon) or higher torque to go up more efficiently. Didn't use it because it wasn't too bad. The xB is really practical for trips. We got her to 90mph on the freeway which felt not good, but she did it without fuss! Just 19mph away from the governor-limited top speed... Maybe for the Mpls circuit (I-35). Enough about the car though. I love my car too much.

We planned this trip long ago, so everything was booked already. We had to book a campsite. We were also waiting it out to see if the smoke cleared, and it did! The purpose of the trip was to do the Duluth things and see the Great Lakes Aquarium. The aquarium was the main event. I'm sorta getting ahead of myself here. I'll go in order of events.

Of course, starting the trip was speeding down 35 because the xB loved it. We parked up the car, and wandered around Canal Park to pass the time. First planned stop was the required Northern Waters Smokehaus for lunch. This is one of the few places to eat in Duluth that is actually good. It gets busy, so we ordered sandwiches ahead. We arrived before our order would be ready which is why we had to wander around. I always get the Fuzzy Bunny with traditional salmon added to it. My partner got a smoked turkey wrap thing. I forgot what it was called, but it was good!

After eating fish, we went to look at fish. I have been wanting to go to this aquarium for a couple years now. It's one of the aquariums with a focus on freshwater fish which means that normies hate it because there's very little saltwater fishes. I think they're dumb for that honestly. They are assuming the world has the same freshwater fish that the US does, but there's like Amazonian and African fishes too. There are also saltwater fishes.

There was all sorts of stuff there. There was some absolutely crazy things in that first exhibit. We saw a horseshoe crab, giant isopods, and a chimera!! A chimera!!!!!!! I love chimeras a LOT. They share an ancestor with sharks and rays. They're really common to see in deep sea research, but the average person might not ever see one. There was one there!!! You can also touch a lot of things in this aquarium. I didn't pet the sharks, but it was available. The jellyfish petting thing was closed, but I kinda wanted to do it because I have a funny story about it. I'm only gonna tell the story because the situation is completely normal and nothing to embarrassed about and idgaf. Last year, I was catching up on my medical things along with getting my lexapro, and one of the things I needed done was a cervical pap smear. Gotta make sure I don't have cancer! Very normal thing. Also not that scary at all. While going through that, my doctor was talking about how she got to pet the jellyfish at the Great Lakes Aquarium during a wedding. She got to embarrass a relative there by telling him that a cervix feels exactly like a jellyfish. I was getting swabbed while hearing this story. I kinda wanted to touch the jellyfish just because of that.

In the next room was a big ol group of brookies which are native to Minnesota. There were a couple fingerlings in the mix. They're mostly younger. There was another tank nearby of brookies starting to turn into the creepy looking spawning ones. This tank is two floors tall and divided into thirds for the different fish. We'd get down there eventually. This second floor had a crow, a turkey vulture, turtles, ducks, and native fishes. There was a gar in one of the tanks here. He hid so well. I managed to get a picture of him that looked kinda like my family dog.

We went down some stairs into a children's area, so obviously skipped that. I really wish I took more pictures! I've been doing more living-in-the-moment stuff. There was a whole area of African freshwater fishes. There was a GIANT tank of cichlids. I don't know too much about other freshwater fishes, but cichlids are incredibly diverse. There was an area of all invasive fishes including sea lampreys. Disgusting.

In their own room was a big tank of sturgeons. I got to pet one of them! There was two that weren't to be touched. One wasn't feeling to hot, and the other has skin allergies which is really cute and charming. I say cute, but it was the largest sturgeon in the tank. I forgot his name, but he is a beluga sturgeon. He kept swimming up for pets same with the other no-touch one.

We did make it to the saltwater fishes. Very much not disappointing. I don't think I could be disappointed by fishes ever. My partner was extremely amused by some pipefish. I knew about them already, but this was the first time he had ever seen them. I never thought about how goofy they looked until I saw him laughing at them. They are very goofy.

There was a school of Pacific Lookdowns ZOOMING around their tank. It was amusing. In that same tank was a pair of hogfish fighting. I am rarely icked out by fish, but, man, fish with a protrusive jaw structure like the hogfish really freak me out. I hate them.

Okay back to that massive tank. By far, my favorite feature. We had already passed it a few times, but I wanted to talk about it all at once.

One third is the trout. Mostly brookies, but there's rainbow trout as well. At the bottom of the tank were some walleye. This aquarium has the biggest walleye. Another third was full of sunnies and lake sturgeon. Also the biggest Black Crappies I have ever seen! There was a goldfish donated to them too because the person thought it was a special carp. They weren't wrong! Goldfish are carps, but not the same as the invasive carps. There were some buffalo in this part of the tank too. Very cutie roughfish. Every once in a while, I caught a glimpse of gar in that last third of the tank. Yes, gar. Not many here. There's a total of three (I think) gar in the building. They're severely lacking in gar. I wasn't able to get a good look at them because they stayed hidden, but they were there! They lived with a bowfin that I also couldn't get a good look at.

The aquarium was very fun. It's not as extravagant as one expects an aquarium to be, but I loved it. For my first real proper aquarium, it was pretty gas.

They do research on Lake Superior and I got to see their research boat, Blue Heron! My partner told me that it's a rare sight. They discovered a species of microbe on it!

We had some time to kill before we could check into our campsite, so we went to Enger Tower. I had never heard of it. Apparently, it's one of the Duluth things to do. Pretty good view from there. It was nice.

We checked into our campsite, and immediately were warned of a bear. My partner and I had mentioned like "oh at least we don't have to deal with bears." We were so wrong. The person that we checked in with warned us that there was a bear in OUR area that morning. This would freak me the fuck out. I have never encountered a bear before.

We parked up the xB, put up our tent, and went about our evening. Dinner was later, so we walked around the town. We hung out on the beach. The beaches in Duluth are really rocky. I got a few rocks from one of the beaches because the rocks are primarily igneous rocks. My area and hometown are entirely sedimentary rocks, so igneous and metamorphic rocks are the coolest shit to me. Duluth sits on an area that was an aborted continental rift. It stopped then filled with water making Lake Superior. The UP of Michigan is a part of this too, so they have a similar mineral composition to Minnesota's North Shore. These rocks are almost as old as multicellular life.

For dinner, we went to this Mexican place. My partner and I are fans of those restaurants that are Mexican but still are pretty American-influenced. There's one in Milaca, MN that is SO GOOD. We are so blessed in our part of Minneapolis to have real Mexican food, but sometimes, we want the weird stuff with the infinite chips and salsa. We got a spot on the balcony that looked over Lake Superior. We were watched by a very loud gull and two pigeons.

We walked back to our car after more beach time, and I drove us out of town to our campsite. We had a fire, I was scared shitless, and we were tormented by two Barred Owls this time. We can't escape the Barred Owls. I am also really understating how scared I was. I was FREAKED OUT. There would be a slight rustle, and I'd jump. There were so many mosquitoes too. My legs look insane.

We ended up staying late because the fire we had kept burning. It was dry, and we didn't want to leave it unattended. Wildfire season stuff. Bedtime came around like 1am-ish. I slept so hard. Some of the best sleep I've had in a while. We got up late, but we did not care. It was vacation. Lunch was Northern Waters again. We did the deli part. Somehow, we each at a pound of salmon. It was so damn good.

After lunch was the William Irvin tour. Unfortunately, tugboat Lake Superior isn't a museum anymore, and she is listing in a hidden area in the harbor. Tugs make me really emotional. I have no idea why. I really love them. Irvin was cool though! The tours are self-guided now which sucks, but there's people around to talk about things. The tour is very much for the normal person that doesn't know much about the Great Lakes shipping industry which is fine because that's the majority of the audience that visits. I want the nerdy stuff though. My partner and I were too shy to ask questions or we already knew the answers to our own questions.

There was the best guy ever in the bridge though. He wore a hat that simply said "USGC Sundew" on it. Safe to assume he was on that cutter. He was an older gentleman with a lot of enthusiastic energy. He managed to get all of our asses by pretending to blow the horn which hasn't worked in years. My partner who KNEW it wouldn't do anything was got by him too. He was just so good. My partner and I are desperate to get a complete tour of the vessel from him. We'd do anything for that. We'd pay out the ass for it.

The last things we did in Duluth was get ice cream from a cute spot and sat on the beach again. I drove us out of town, and my partner did the rest of the drive back home. Duluth was my first freeway driving experience, and I made that shit my race track. I like busy, crazy driving more than monotonous driving. I need obstacles and dopamine.

vibes/inspo

I've been really into a few things lately. I've been interested in graphic design again. Binging some Kelliot episodes will do that to a sucker. I made a whole thing about what I've been into.

1. Barely Legible Lettering: I am loving swirls, curves, wispiness, etc. Anything with a weird but ethereal charm to it.

2. Dr. Pepper Zero: I love sodies. I don't drink them often, and I feel awful drinking them both weird diet guilt and also makes my mouth feel bad. The "zero" sodies do taste better than the diet versions.

3. Natural Illustrations: I've always been into these. This is a constant for me. Anything about nature and animals.

4. Early Human Symbols: Mentioned in my previous blog. I just want to use these in my artwork all the time. I do want to be conscious about where they originate and how they are used though!

5. Illo + Design: Combining illustration and design is such a cool guy thing. The textures, colors, etc etc it's wonderful. I want to find a happy unity for my work and design.

6. Illustrated Borders: Goes with both the illo + design and barely legible lettering. I love when it cuts into an image and has floating bits.

7. Ancient Artifacts: I don't know if the examples are actually ancient, but I just love the colors and textures on them. The greens that copper/lichen tend to have is a new fave.

8. Local Radio: Again trying to cut myself off of YouTube more. Radio K is my go-to for whenever I wanna not use YouTube.

not pictured:

-The Uniball vision elite pen is better than the Zebra Sarasa. Sorry Sarasa fans. The Uniball keeps up with me like no Zebra ever has.

-Kelliot + Oversettext

Cottage cheese.

songs:

august

I think I am going to be exhausted in August. We have to move, then we have the State Fair, then the Ojibwe Forest Rally, and maybe Rollag again. Man, I don't know. I am gonna be busy as fuck though wish me luck.