My sister came to town

My sister wanderluster_kp came to visit this weekend!

She was originally going to come visit last weekend, but at the last minute she was on call and couldn't make it. She was going to come early on Friday to meet me right after work, but taking the day off turned into being stuck at work until 4 a.m. She's a veterinary surgeon, so almost all of what she does is surgery, and if there's an emergency, she'll get called in to operate, which means that even most of her free time is stuck waiting for her phone to ring and summon her in to work. She works like 80 hours a week and basically doesn't have a life outside of work, going to the gym, and sleeping, though she does get to travel internationally a few times a year (to go to veterinary conferences). That's why she's quitting and doing...something. She's not entirely sure yet, since she hated her first private practice job, and she currently hates her job at a veterinary school, so what's left?

Anyway, she got in late on Friday, so after I left services we met in Lakeview for dinner--it was Valentine's Day, but we found a Thai restaurant that wasn't too crowded after Strings had a giant line of people waiting to get in--and then I texted around to see who was free. britshlez got back to me saying that her sister and her sister;s boyfriend might be coming up from the south side to go out and said we could over while we waited for them. We ended up hanging out and talking until 2:30 a.m. and her sister never showed up, which I guess is par for the course. We drank wine, and wanderluster_kp talked about our family, and wanderluster_kp told britshlez about her work dilemmas, and then we called it in the early morning and went home, and I set up the couch bed for wanderluster_kp and went to sleep.

I woke up at 10:30 a.m. the next morning, and apparently wanderluster_kp woke up around the same time but kept drifting in and out of sleep. I guess I happened to catch her at all the wrong times, because I checked on her several times and every time she seemed to be fast asleep to me, only waking up at 1 p.m. That meant we missed the Chicago Folk Festival down in Hyde Park, so instead I made us breakfast and then we walked around Andersonville and looked at the shops--mostly antique shops, since I didn't want to bore her with shoe shopping or the other things I have to do, though I did go and buy more groceries at the Middle Eastern Grocery Store--went back home and ate dinner, and then came the time for the evening's entertainment.

I had originally planned to go with liszante to Whisper House, a musical by Duncan Sheik, who I was only familiar with though his 90s hit Barely Breathing before. I knew that lisekatevans had gone to see it and said she liked it when I asked her about it, so I suggested it to liszante, and when wanderluster_kp was going to be here I asked if it was okay that she came too. We arrived just barely in time thanks to my local Red Line stop being closed for repairs, but liszante saved seats for us, so we sat down and the musical began.

It was...extremely odd. It was almost like there were two separate productions going on which had been uncomfortably smashed together. In one of them, a boy whose father had died in World War II and whose mother had suffered a nervous breakdown went to live with an aunt in a remote lighthouse in Maine. His aunt had a clubfoot and so had a Japanese handyman, and the boy--and some of the surrounding people--weren't happy about having one of "them" so close by, so the play was a story about prejudice, love crossing barriers, overcoming tragedy, and the way the past comes back to haunt you. In the other one, there were two singing ghosts who kept popping up to perform musical numbers like Better to Be Dead. They were kind of the narrators, if the narrator only talked about the emotional undercurrents of what was happening rather than a strict recounting of events.

It didn't quite cohere for me, though. Very occasionally the ghosts would speak, and very occasionally other people would sing, so the musical illusion--that this is a world where sometimes people just burst into song--never took hold. It was jarring when the ghosts spoke, and it was jarring when the others sang, and sometimes the ghosts would sing songs that weren't entirely relevant to what was happening on stage like The Tale of Solomon Snell. The singers were talented, and I liked all the ghost songs...and the actors playing the other characters were compelling. The stage was well-ordered and they maintained proper distance, so that even on a small stage, when they went back behind the pillars and across to the other side, it was obvious they were going to the bell house, or the basement, or were otherwise in a separate location even though the two stage sides were maybe two meters apart. But like I said, it was like two separate performances that just happened to be taking place on the same place. I had a nice time, but I don't know that I'd recommend it.

Afterwards we went out to Murasaki, a sake lounge in Streeterville, for their monthly City Pop night. Again I texted around and again no one could come, so wanderluster_kp and I went and sat in the corner and each had one drink. I got a Minty Kiss, which both looked and tasted like mouthwash, and wanderluster_kp got a gin and tonic, and then a second gin and tonic for free because they had used the wrong gin in the first one. She drank the second one, I drank my mouthwash, and then we went home and went to bed.

The next morning we woke up at a much reasonable time, and after I made Japanese breakfast, we walked down to Andersonville again and went to the Swedish-American Museum, which I wrote a bit about here a while ago. The permanent collection was the same, though this time there was an exhibit of photography by someone who went to the Chicago Botanic Garden! There were several pictures of trees and parts of the garden in fog that looked gorgeous, but I didn't take any pictures. I suggest you go see it while you can, if you're in Chicago--it will only take a bit.

We left the museum, walked across the street, and hopped on the Clark bus to head to Boystown for Milt's Barbecue for the Perplexed, which wanderluster_kp, who has a mild dairy allergy, was extremely excited to go to because she could be sure they had no dairy on the premises. Unfortunately, while we were on our way, lisekatevans texted me and told me that Milt's was closed for a private event. I asked her if there were anything nearby that was suitable, and of the choices she suggested, I picked Shiawase, a sushi restaurant, because it was at least likely to have little dairy. We sat down and talked a bunch about the show that lisekatevans is in--she was rehearsing lines when we came in--and about wanderluster_kp work woes while we ate bento box lunch specials, and then we all rode the bus back north so lisekatevans could go to rehearsal and wanderluster_kp could pack up and go home.

She told me she was meeting our parents at a truck stop so they could give her back the dog they've been taking care for a couple months, and that she suggested we all meet in the city for brunch, but they said, "We saw dorchadas last weekend," so

But I'm really glad that wanderluster_kp came to visit! And hopefully next time she'll have more time then, and Milt's will be open, and more people will be free to meet up! And maybe she'll come in the summer or spring when the icy winter wind won't be blasting us into ice as we walk down the street. But even with the winter wind, it was a lovely time.

Oh lovely, another bigot in the RPG industry

This is news from last week, but I've just seen it now--apparently the current owners of the Judges Guild are massive Nazis. Like, just verbatim Nazi propaganda. Content warning, obviously.

I didn't get into D&D until Second Edition, so this era of D&D totally passed me by, but I do remember playing in a 1e game with a friend in elementary school who was drawing inspiration from their City-State of the Invincible Overlord. The closest connection I had is that etainemccul was dating, and later married, Robert Bledsaw I's nephew, though I lost contact with both of them a long time ago.

Looks like DriveThruRPG removed Judges Guild products from sale, to keep the money from going toward Nazis. And even places that whine about "SJWs" or "cancel culture" are condemning this because it's so obviously beyond the pale there's no defending it (I mean, Skarka's Law still applies, but).

Number of days I've gone without seeing Nazi propaganda: 0.