I usually do seasonal photo dumps upon the conclusion of each three-month period, but I decided to do this one early because I haven’t been blogging much lately, and because the Season of Discovery releases on World of Warcraft: Classic on November 30, 2023 so I might be occupied playing that with a group of friends. Here are some photographs from the last three months that didn’t make it on my blog on other posts, but are still interesting enough to share.

The beginning of September for me involved taking a trip to Southern California to help my friend Doug Wreden begin his move from the Seattle Met­ro­pol­i­tan Area to Los Angeles County. Because he was driving a much longer distance while I was coming from Las Vegas, it was easier for me to co­or­di­nate timing for his move-in logistics. I headed over to LA, spent a night in a hotel, then met up with the property manager to collect the keys.

This is the view I had from my hotel room:

Doug’s first event he ran after arriving in Los Angeles was the stretch goal stream from a prior fundraising event for the Monterey Bay Aquarium. One of the rewards for reaching a certain threshold of donations was for me to appear on his channel and do a “hot tub stream,” the concept of which has be­come notorious on Twitch and many people saying it is inappropriate for the platform due to basically being one step away from softcore por­nog­ra­phy.

Of course, I would never actually do a hot tub stream; instead, I dressed up in full business attire with a suit and tie, and while in the hot tub that was actually a cold tub because apparently it didn’t have a heater, I answered some of Twitch chat’s business-related questions. This photograph below shows the aftermath at the end of the broadcast.

Previously, I posted about going to Bubble World and Dinos Alive at the Los Angeles Exhibition Hub. In between those two tourist activities, my friend and I went to O’Sushi in the city of Rosemead. It was a small and cozy spot with good food and a friendly waitress.

We had fried squid rings as our appetizer.

My main entrée was a chirashi bowl.

The waitress suggested that we try a limited-time dish with salmon and mushrooms, so we ordered one of those too.

My friend got a couple sushi rolls as her entrée.

A few days later, we went exploring in downtown Los Angeles. I saw an interesting trolley lift system, and when I pulled out my camera to take a picture, Doug let me know that he also wanted to be in the photograph. I’m not sure if this is exactly what he was anticipating… but you cannot deny that he is definitely in the photograph.

Hello, Douglas Douglas.

Fast forward a week and a half, and it’s the end of October and I’m back in Las Vegas. A lot of my friends, including Doug, came in for a con­ven­tion. During non-convention hours, we went on an adventure exploring the Las Vegas Strip, which included the M&M’s Store. This was definitely one of the more visually overstimulating ex­pe­riences I’ve had.

The convention I alluded to above was TwitchCon. Although I’m still not a fan of it, it was a lot better last year. I imagine Twitch learned from their mis­takes from last year, and this year, they probably got a decent amount of help from the Las Vegas Convention Center staff, which is going to be much more experienced at running large-scale and logistically smooth events.

Doug had a meet-and-greet scheduled on one of the days, and upon his insistence, I joined him for it. I was mainly off to the side chatting with the Twitch staff members who were supervising the event, but once in a while, I would be requested by fans to pop in, autograph various different things, and stand in photos. Doug’s meet-and-greet went over the expected two-hour time slot by about an additional hour, and he still had fans lined up long after every other streamer had left.

After TwitchCon, we went to Guy Fieri’s Vegas Kitchen and Bar. The food was horrid; I ordered a chicken sandwich and it tasted like a sandwich you’d find at a grocery store in one of those plastic containers sitting chilled in an open-top refrigeration unit. However, as a consolation prize, at least I got a pic­ture of my friend Eric Morino taking a sip of a drink using 5 adjoined straws.

A month later, I joined some friends and friends-of-friends in a Friendsgiving gathering in celebration of Thanksgiving. Of course, in traditional Thanks­giv­ing fashion, we had to prepare a turkey. Apparently there is a way to remove and/or snap the turkey’s sternum and/or spine in order to lay it flatter and allow it to cook faster and more evenly. Our chef was having a little bit of difficulty snapping the seemingly invincible bone, so Doug decided to help.

For Friendsgiving, participants usually bring their own dishes to aggregate them together and enjoy a full feast. This year, we were given a considerable amount of freedom to decide what we want to contribute.

In a move that surprised absolutely nobody, Doug’s dishes he brought were a large Chuck E. Cheese’s pizza, four different kinds of ube-flavored snacks, and a whole coconut. Luckily, Doug was well-versed at wielding a convenient hammer we found in a cabinet under the kitchen island, so we were able to actually consume the coconut.

I’m not the biggest fan of large gatherings, so it’s rare to see me at a party this densely populated. However, the good news is that the hosts had a great cat I was able to pet instead of having to socialize.