the last few months of my life

16/6/2026

since march i've been very very busy!! some parts of this post have literally been written since then but i never had the time to refine and post a full entry... actually, i was even considering just skipping them all together... but i took a lot of pics that i wanted to share so we're going to have to settle for a compilation diary instead.

niagara trip

my boyfriend and i spent a few days in march in niagara! i've been to niagara a couple of times before. growing up in ontario, it's one of those things everyone does at least once. when i've gone in the past with my family we'd only ever do the boat tour around the falls and hit a few wax museums... that is to say, stuff my mom wanted to do LOL. so i was really excited to go with the intention of doing all the things i wanted to do for once! i don't know why i never asked to do these things when i went with my family. it's not like my mom would say no without reason. but i was a weird kid about that kind of stuff so!

anyway. if you're unfamiliar, the canadian side of niagara falls is a real tourist town. aside from the obvious attraction of the falls themselves, there's a bunch of fun little places to stop in for families bringing their kids and a few casinos littered around for the adults. lots of little gift and candy shops too. i find it all very charming! even if you're not interested in any of the attractions it's just a cute and vibrant little area.

that being said, we didn't end up doing a whole lot! the weather wasn't ideal as it was still a cold, canadian winter out there. it made it a bit harder to feel adventurous and really cram everything in. there were a few things i had planned that i just decided to skip entirely. but we still did almost everything we really had our hearts on, with the exception of the really cool, mariokartesque go-kart track. the weather had it closed the whole time we were there. very unfortunate.

on the other hand, this also meant that it was pretty quiet. there were still other tourists and families around of course, but not to the extent that i've seen when i've gone in the summertime. it was actually really nice being there in a less busy season! we got to take our time and wander around comfortably. there was an almost small-town feel to it.

and of course we rode the sky wheel! this is the prime thing i had always wanted to do but never did. i actually told this to my mom before going and she said that she ALSO always wanted to do it but thought i'd be too scared so she never brought it up! how unfortunate!!! though she wasn't wrong, i was scared a little, but ultimately i do love a good ferris wheel so i was very brave.

our hotel was connected to one of the casinos so after we got back one night we went in for a little bit. neither of us are really big on gambling itself but i love card games and i really love gambling conceptually/aesthetically so i wanted to try my hand at a few. and i'm glad i did! i did exactly one hand of blackjack and immediately got 21. best to ever do it 100% success rate at the casino i cannot be beat.

i also took some action shots of gin. if you're unfamiliar with gintama, he gambles all the time, so i thought it would be funny. at one point one of the workers saw me and she was like "is he telling you which one will win? :)" and i was like "no... he's a gambling addict..." LOL

friendship IS magic

this year, my friends and i have made a concerted effort at making time for each other more often and it's been... so fun and healing... for her birthday in march, my friend threw a "cafe pop-up" where she baked a BUNCH of goodies and invited us over to eat and drink coffee (that she also brewed and prepared specially for each of us). we all just ate and hung out playing games for HOURS and it was. probably one of the most fun times i've had with my people to be honest!!

another friend threw a combo birthday-housewarming for herself in april that was just as much fun too. at some point we randomly started doing youtube karaoke??? most of my friends are filipino so i learned very early in life that karaoke is a bit of a party staple for filipino households, but it had been a LONG time since we'd done this. somehow i retained all the words to the spaghetti song by the sexbomb girls even though i do not speak tagalog.

at this party there was a dress theme to come dressed as "something [my friend] likes." i thought i was pulling a deep cut by wearing an ooooold homestuck sweater of mine, but when i showed up, one friend was in a closet hetalia cosplay and another had printed out an old kpop fanfic the birthday girl used to rave about and taped it to her shirt. i was completely outdone. in some ways, being friends with people for 20 years is actually a curse.

for may we went to bingo. i'm serious. we went to a bingo hall and played bingo. my friend wanted to reserve some seats so she called but they needed a confirmed minimum of 10 people, and i guess she got nervous about people flopping (possible and fair) so she invited like, everyone she knows. this friend of mine has an extensive network of friends and people she knows and we regularly joke that everyone in our city knows her so this ended up being a lot of people. actually, at one point leading up to it, my boyfriend and i stopped into a tcg shop and some random guy i have never seen before in my life but who knows my boyfriend through yugioh walked up to us and was like "hey man are you going to this bingo thing?" ...... bro who ARE you. and then like Everyone ended up showing so we were at this bingo hall like we were on a class field trip or something. it was really funny.

anime north 2026

as always, i attended anime north this year! honestly though, this year was pretty bittersweet. friday was fine. we mostly spent it at the nominoichi so there wasn't much to report. saturday, however, was TERRIBLE. there was a huge thunder storm and it rained so unbelievably hard. we made it to the venue okay but because a lot of anime north actually takes place outdoors, the hall was overpacked with people who might usually have been outside. it was impossible to move around the artist alley and where we usually would've gone through it multiple times, we did not even make it through once. around 5 we left to eat with the intention of going back in after but the storm was so bad by that point that the mere thought of walking back to the hall made us shudder. we ate and left early (×﹏×)

sunday was nice though so we finally had a day that actually FELT like anime north. and it was a lot of fun! saved the whole convention for me honestly. we finished off artist alley and then did a walk around the vendors hall. to be totally honest, i usually don't care much for the vendors and just go around it to look at the figures, but i had way more fun in there this year than in artist alley... which is a big shame! in a previous post where i wrote about attending a different con, i spoke a bit about how disappointing it has been going to anime conventions as someone who doesn't play hoyoverse games or love and deepspace. i found this to be particularly true at anime north this year. every year it feels like the anime presence in artist alley is lessening and lessening and it's really! it makes me sad. again, i know these games are massively popular right now so i do understand it, i'm just becoming nostalgic for the anime conventions of my youth.

i got to talk to some people about gintama though so that was a massive win for me!! some people asked to take pictures of my gin ita bag, one person said i "know ball," and i bonded big time with a vendor who was selling gintama stuff. ontario gintama fans i love u

one casual lolita coord i threw together last minute

because of the weather i didn't get any other outfit pics this year. i was also so unbelievably busy leading up to the con that i (1) did not get to finish the dress i was making for myself and (2) did not get to sufficiently plan my outfits. i also completely forgot to get pictures of my friend in the lolita dress i made her!!! she wore it on the saturday so it wasn't really a good day for a photo-op. she did send me this mirror pic to post though.

my biggest complaint was the stamp rallies. i have completely changed my mind about stamp rallies from two years ago. i still like the idea in theory of course, but there were an unbelievable amount of them this year and i wholeheartedly believe they contributed to making the con worse. day two was already congested due to the extreme weather, but what i didn't mention was that the artist alley hall was littered with these long line ups of people waiting to get to booths for their stamp. lines at cons aren't a new thing by any means but when its every other booth and they're blocking walkways and other booths it's a bit much!!!

i also expressed some sadness about how so many artists last year opted for making their stamp rally "task" to follow their instagram and that became a big problem this year. the connection at anime north is always spotty at best on the saturday, but paired with the extra congestion and the extreme weather it was actually impossible to connect. and i'm not talking about wifi. i mean cellular service period. so when you already have all these line ups happening for stamps and then you pair that with every single person waiting like five minutes to get instagram to connect so they can follow... last year i tried to be understanding about it because a stamp rally is a great opportunity to advertise yourself as an artist, but this was just too much... anyway. enough of that!

the haul! sooooooo happy with all the gintama stuff! the sleeper item that i'm ecstatic i bought was the nommi doll though. someone was selling some of the mushroom series for $30 (thirty!!!!) at the nominoichi and while i've never been a nommi person before, i was bewitched by them. i thought about getting several at the time but i was kind of worried that i'd regret buying even one, but she ended up being one of the items i'm most happy with so i regret not getting more...! i found out later how much this blind box series goes for at local stores too and man. MAN. $30 was a steal. daylight robbery. i was a fool.

the gintama doujinshi compliation is actually the wrong top/bottom configuration for my tastes but it is a relic of fujoshi culture so i am still happy to own it.

and etc

this post is already extremely long but there are some other real quick things i want to shout out:

• i went to nova scotia for mothers day weekend with all the women from my moms side! my moms family almost all live in newfoundland so it was a ton of fun to see them all and spend time together, even if i spent the trip worrying about all the sewing i had to do for anime north
• if you don't read my minilog you may not know that i have gone fulltime at the hardware store while applying for jobs in my field. i spend 40 hours of the week in hardware prison and as my department is agonizingly slow right now, most of them are spent reading bl. genuinely feels like all i do lately is read bl. my media log cannot keep up.
• on the other hand since i've been working so much and at such inconsistent hours when i get home i haven't really had the energy to even boot up my computer... i've been a little bummed about it because i've actually been thinking about my site and updates i want to make a LOT! so things might stay stagnant for a bit but i hope that when i do have time, it'll be in a big way.
• go blue jays ☆

arias & symphonies - spoons