They'll call it chance, or luck, or call it Fate

This weekend was fun, but very tiring. By Friday night stellawind, Greta, Nicole, and Zuryvette had all arrived at my house for the weekend. I was so happy to see them! I really miss them. Saturday was my (and Adam's) graduation party. It was good to get the chance to see most of my relatives before I leave for Japan (though I think I answered the same three questions about when I was leaving, where I would be living, and who I'd be teaching a million times). Seeing my friends was nice too because I haven't seen most of them very much this summer. I was happy that yaexrae visited on Saturday, too! It would have been nice to have a bit more time with my friends, but I wanted to also visit with my family. One of my favorite parts of the party was when my friends and I were playing with Hayden, helping him blow bubbles. It was too cute. I'm going to miss that little guy while I'm gone. I also laughed at the fact that my neighbor assumed there was something going on between DJ and I, even though I told her he was just a friend. (I think I've lost count of the number of people who've assumed that DJ and I are together, lol.) I also loved getting to see baby Graysen and holding him. He's so sweet~

This weekend was a good time. It started on Friday night, when DJ and I met up with Chris. Chris was house-sitting for people with a bunch of pets, so we stopped by so Chris could feed the animals. Among the many pets there was a sweet bullmastiff and some darling bichon/dachshund puppies. (There was also a cockatoo that shrieked like the devil, which I was not okay with.) That put me in a good mood. We then went over to DJ and Chris's friend Alex's house. Alex was still at work, and didn't get back until a bit later, but we sat around and drank with her mother Tyra for a bit. Tyra is pretty awesome, one of those mothers who is genuinely cool, not just trying to be a cool and hip adult around their kids. She's very accepting, friendly, and easy to talk to. Chris then drove all of us over to Tommy Nevin's Pub because someone we knew from high school was playing there with her band. Tyra then proceeded to buy drinks for all of us there. Lol. (Most of us weren't too tipsy, but I'm glad that Chris played DD for us anyways.)

Sunday was the Chicago Pride Parade! This was my third year in a row going. It was fine, but not as fun as last year was. I think part of the reason why this year wasn't as great was because I didn't know as much of our group. DJ and I ended up being the only ones from our usual friend group who could attend, so we joined up with Chris's group. So, out of a group of a dozen or so people I knew DJ, Chris, and Savannah. The parade was still pretty good though; loud, and colorful, and joyous like it is every year. We had originally planned on finding something fun to do after the parade (like the after party we went to last year), but we were so hot and tired that we just ended up going home. It ended up being a nice, but tiring day.

Tomorrow my friend Jamie is coming to visit me! I'm very excited! Jamie was my RA during these past two years at IU. We became really good friends over those two years. It will be good to see her, even more so now that she's graduated and I don't get to see her all the time.

A big part of reason for Jamie's visit is that this weekend is Chicago's annual Pride parade. She visited to go to the parade last year, and we had so much fun that we decided to do it again this year. This weekend we're going to stay at DJ and Elise's apartment in the city and a bunch of us are going to Pride! I can't wait!

I spent this weekend in Chicago, at Pride! It was so much fun!

Jamie and Alie came up to Chicago for the weekend. They picked up me and Allison, because we had volunteered to go with them. We then made our way into the city. We spent most of Saturday afternoon wandering around Michigan Ave. We had a surplus of food, given to us by Alie's mom, so Allison tried to be a good person and give some of it to the homeless people. She offered a box of Triscuits to a homeless man, but he turned her down! We ended up getting a hotel downtown for the night. It was a very nice room for the price. It even had a small kitchen. We were pleased.

Sunday morning we got up and checked out of the hotel. We had to check our luggage with the concierge. We didn't have any smaller bills to tip him with, so we gave him our pumpkin pie (that we didn't end up eating) as a tip. Lol. It was pretty amusing. Then we caught a taxi to Boystown. We spent some time just walking around, taking in all the interesting sights and rainbow of colors. We ended up going shopping at Gaymart, which I think is an awesome store name. It sold everything from T-shirts with funny gay sayings on them, to Doctor Who action figures. After that, it was time to find a spot to watch the parade from.

The parade was a lot of fun! We got a bunch of free stuff from it, like beads, stickers, rainbow bracelets, and condoms. At one point, the parade had to be stopped for around half an hour. It turned out that the float that was stuck in front of us was the Minibar float. This float consisted of more than a dozen cute gay guys, dancing around with each other, in nothing put pink undies. XD Eventually people started going up to the float asking for pictures with the guys, and some of them started dancing in the crowd. The float was playing a steady stream of music, so it turned into a mini dance party in the middle of the street. At one point the guys asked the crowd if we had any booze. It turned out that Jamie had some extra beer (none of the rest of our group were willing to drink any of it, because beer is icky), so we ran up and gave them the extra bottles. They were pleased and shared them amongst themselves. At this point it had started raining, so now we were dancing around in the rain. Unfortunately, with the pause in the parade, we had to leave the city before it was over. I enjoyed the weekend though. We decided that we want to go again next year.