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My Favorite Snack
Monthly Archives: February 2025
Sloth Machine
Back in 2021, Mardi Gras was cancelled due to the pandemic. As a result, houses were being decorated and called “house floats.” Alicia and I were brand new in the house but still wanted to participate. We needed a clever theme, since most houses had a pun or reference.
Brainstorming over drinks, we narrowed it down to something sloth related. We were also still nervous about when we’d get vaccines for COVID-19. We decided it was a like a slot machine – you’d have to get lucky to get your vaccine first. Thus, the “Sloth Machine” – a sloth themed slot machine that gave out vaccines if you win.
I rented a truck and drove to Lowe’s and bought large sheets of thin plywood, as well as paint. Over the course of two weeks, I constructed it from scratch. I hand painted everything, using a cartoon sloth from the internet as inspiration.
I still can’t believe I had the energy to make this thing. In hindsight, I should have used foam or cardboard instead of plywood. I would have also hung it from the roof instead of making it rigid and lean against the way. The back-lighting worked on paper, but the street light in front of our house really prevented it from sticking out and glowing.
After Mardi Gras 2021 was over, I deconstructed it and hung the major pieces of art on the fence in the backyard. Eventually, hot New Orleans summers and heavy rain broke down the plywood and it shredded apart. Now, only memories (and a glittery 7) remain. It made great backyard art, though!
Pandemic Hair Color Change
I’d always wanted to try dying my hair, but I never thought it was very work appropriate, especially for someone presenting male. Lucky for me, the pandemic changed office work!
First off, I bleached it.
It really turned red, huh? I decided to try blue.
Looking back, it wasn’t great, but I think I was also terrible at styling my hair. I was also horrible at keeping the color vivid, so that fall I let my natural hair grow back.
I think that was about as good as it got. I doubled down the next summer and tried purple highlights, but it wasn’t very great.
Oh well. I’ll stick with my natural color.
Welcome!
Featured
You found my website! Because I’m turning 40 soon, I’ve been posting a small update every day. If you’re looking for a more general update, checkout my post from Feb 14th.
If you’re looking for details about my birthday party, reach out to me and I’ll send you the “secret” link.
Hot Sauces
I’ve gone full circle on hot sauces in the last ten years. While my friend Andrew Berns has always been an aficionado, the web series Hot Ones definitely ignited a passion to try tons of different hot sauces. The Copeland house used to have an entire shelf with hot sauces.
Now-a-days, I just keep going back to Cry Baby Craig’s. It’s my favorite.
It’s primary spice comes from habaneros, but they’ve been pickled, which dials back the heat while enhancing the flavor. It is a general purpose hot sauce that works across a ton of foods, but it’s especially good on avocado toast from Standish Cafe. While some hot sauces are exceptional in specific foods (like Cholula on fish tacos), Cry Baby Craig’s wins my all-around prize.
There’s lots of good spice out there, though. The Reaper hot sauce above was from the Minnesota State Fair and I’ve never found it since. The Last Dab (from Hot Ones) is really superior at an immediate tongue burn, as is the Scorpion pepper powder.
Any sauces I should give a shot? I’ll open up comments on this post, send me a suggestion!
Bonus: Here’s a video of me eating a ghost pepper at the Minnesota State Fair in 2018.
Meh Dot Com
One theme over the last twenty years or so has been One-Deal-A-Day sites. In the past, I’ve blogged about Woot. Woot.com was bought out by Amazon in 2010 and slowly turned into Amazon’s clearance machine. The previous owner of Woot (Matt Rutledge) left and started a new version of the same concept – meh.com – in 2014.
I’ve always liked saying “meh”, which I’d guess I picked up from Futurama in the early 2000’s. When meh.com launched, I was hooked. In the decade since, I’ve made 298 purchases, a large majority of which are “meh.” branded merchandise. I’ve certainly worn their shirts a lot.
I think what’s fun about the website is they’ve done a bunch of novel things. During the pandemic, they started a website called PastaDrop.com. For $20, you’d send someone 20lbs of pasta. The trick, however, was that some people got significantly more pasta. Everyone was randomly given either 20lbs, 40lbs, 60lbs, 80lbs, even up to 100lbs.
Another concept is the IRK, or Instant Regret Kit. It’s how meh.com cleans out it’s warehouse – an IRK is just a box of random junk. The concept originates from Japan where it’s known as a fukubukuro. I’ve actually stopped ordering them, since I’m sick of throwing stupid stuff away.
The company itself is pretty cool. They’re based out of Dallas and never given me a problem. When the George Floyd protests ended up burning down my post office in 2020, meh.com gave me a full refund for my purchases. Having two houses has slowed down my purchasing, but there’s been some gems. As for my favorite purchase? It’s gotta be Party Bot!
Life Lesson 1: The Backyard Patio
One of the most ambitious projects I’ve ever undertaken was installing a paver patio in the backyard of our new house in MInneapolis in 2012. We bought the raw materials from Menards, found a book at Barnes & Noble, then got to work.
It wasn’t too expensive, especially given the size. But it was before I lost weight and athletically, I wasn’t ready for that much digging.
More importantly, I’ll never do it again. Where as professionals would have completed the job in a weekend, this patio took half a summer. We spent the rest of the summer struggling with what to do with all the dirt.
While the last two bricks were very satisfying to put in, take it from me – hire a professional to install a patio.
Let’s Talk About Drag
I’m not sure how to write about this, because this is my personal and professional website. I’ve always been nervous about combining this side of me with my Drag Queen persona; when I’m in the office or doing Data Science, I don’t wear a flower in my hair, I don’t dress crazy, I stay focused on the work.
But I think being a well rounded person is healthy too. When I started performing drag on stage in 2017, I was stagnating in my Data Scientist career. I was working on personalization for Target.com and the product had matured to the point where there was not obvious “low hanging fruit” for improvement. IE, it was harder and harder to develop a novel personalization algorithm that would beat our current champion algorithms. So there was some “creativity” missing in my life.
But since I turned 28 in 2013, I had been going out and exploring the Minneapolis night scene, of which drag was a huge part. And if you read my fashion post, you know I was really getting into not blending into the crowd. I’d also started watching RuPaul’s Drag Race, which was a blast.
I guess I could have tried a hundred other creative hobbies, but I was most jealous of the performers that had people coming to talk to them all night. It seemed like an art form that made you “cool” instantly.
So, in spite of being a terrible dancer and not knowing drag makeup styles at all, I went to the Monday night amateur night at The Saloon and tried it out.
It was awesome. I did terrible, did not make the second round, and there were a 100 things that went wrong. But I tried. And it gave me something to work on, and made me feel like I was putting myself out there.
I’m still a terrible dancer/performer, but mostly the crowds feed on energy, and I really try to put it out there. There’s not many heterosexual drag queens out there, but at least there’s me – Tilda Nextime. Check out @MistressTilda on Instagram for a ton more photos.
My Favorite Photo
This photo was taken by Andrew Berns in New York (on the Brooklyn side) in about September of 2008. It’s easily my favorite photo of all time.
There’s not much story behind it: Alicia and I were posing for a photo with Manhattan behind us and I leaned back to grab the rail behind us. Whoops, I grabbed bird poo. With no bathrooms or hand wipes near by, I did what anyone engaged to marry would do – I threatened touching Alicia with it. I guess she didn’t like it.
Thus, this magical photo was born.
It’s been posted to Facebook ever since and usually accompanies any “about me” slides I present at work.
Garden Trends
I’m not much of a gardener, but I really like a well put-together space. It gives you a sense of control.
About three years ago (2022), I was accompanying Alicia at Michael’s Crafts while she shopped for Halloween goods. Since it was October, they had a ton of fake flowers from the summer season on clearance. On a lark, I bought about $25 worth, which was a LOT of flowers on clearance.
The yard was pretty much put away for the season, so it looked bleak. I decided to spruce it up with my newly purchased fake flowers!
Surprisingly, they lasted the winter! Even covered with a foot of snow, they popped out in the spring looking fabulous.
Now, it’s a tradition. They require no watering, are always in bloom, and add so much color to my back yard. Yay!
