One Abnormal Girl

Posting from my Blackberry’s WordPress app just to show it that I do appreciate all it’s done for me even though I’m probably moving to the Motorola CLIQ in late November. :( maybe I can find it a new owner. But everyone wants Android these days. I know I do.

Anyway, on to much more important matters–YAOI-CON. We leave this afternoon and will be back on Monday morning. Short trip, but I’m glad we get to go at all. I kind of used up all my vacation time anyway. Har.

We have new playful costumes for Saturday since it will me Halloween. My coat is made of the stiffest fabric ever (I thought Simplicity knew what it was doing when it told me to get it, but maybe not, or I just interpreted wrong) and the vinegar in the wash didn’t seem to help it any, so we’ll just see what kind of mood I’ll be in on Saturday. But Lyns’ outfit is adorable! Not sure if anyone will get it–that these are steampunk–but we’ll have fun anyway.

I still feel so unprepared though! I suppose that’s what we get for still sewing things together the night before the trip. Will still need to sew buttons on, et cetera, at the hotel room. We fail.

AX nearly didn’t happen this year, due to other obligations, but we ended up getting to go for Thursday night, Friday morning/afternoon, and then Friday night through Monday early morning.  So while it wasn’t our optimal stay at a convention of this size, we still got to go and make the most of it.  And somehow I managed to fit 5 costumes into the time we were there, so it must not have been that short a time.

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I continue my quest to find FMA boots (that aren’t over $60). I keep coming so close to them, but there’s always something, and usually, it’s decoration I can’t remove, or too much stitch styling, or whatever else they use to make a boot different enough to catch your eye. If engineer’s boots just DIDN’T HAVE THAT BUCKLE STRAP they’d be just about perfect. Such a time sink.

That was yesterday. TODAY, though, I left my phone at Starbucks. I didn’t know where it was when I realized I didn’t have it, though, so we called the Starbucks to ask if it was out by the couches where we were sitting, and the employee answered that he had just come in and had walked by there and he didn’t see it. He didn’t go out to actually, you know, look. So we drove back and there it was, on the ground next to the couch. Thanks, atypical Starbucks employee.

The funny part was, though, that when I got it back we realized that Lyns had purse-dialed me and left a voicemail, and we could tell by the conversation that she must have dialed as we crossed the street to walk home.

HER PHONE KNEW MINE WAS BEING LEFT THERE. They are meant to be. :<

In other news, this is definitely the last year we do AnimeExpo, if we even go this year with the cosmic forces that are trying to prevent it. Fanime and/or AWA will probably replace it, but that all depends on next year’s circumstances.

I think I was only able to post regularly back in the day when I had no one else to talk to. Now there’s peeps to chat with and I have less to say.

But today, maybe I have things to say! Not all of them are so great though.

Family

In the beginning of April, my grampa had a heart attack and fell and broke his ankle, then had another heart attack while in the hospital. The fam agreed not to resuscitate if it happened again, but then it didn’t. My parents were going to cancel their trip to come out and see me since his condition was so unstable, but he didn’t stick around. A few days later he passed away. He was the last of my grandparents. It was rough not being on the east coast, and it’s still unreal because I’m so far away, but I don’t know that it would have helped to be there. There’s not much I can do with the concept of death.

After the funeral and its related transactions, my parents did come out for their trip as planned. We spent about three days in Disneyland and California adventure. It was a good time; good to have them in SoCal, and I think it was a good break for my mom. This was also my first experience with paid time off.

Cosplay

I think, if I can kick myself into action, I’ll be attempting Ishbal!Roy. I should have just enough material left to make the coat, but I will have to make my own bias tape trim, which I am none too excited about. I do however have the ring and some extra collar plates. I would need to make a new jacket, belt (maybe), over-jacket belt, and overcoat, and I’d have to buy gators to go over the boots.

This is unfortunately the best reference of the uniform I can find at my disposal:

But let’s focus on this one instead:

Nom.

Starbucks

Today they didn’t charge me for the soy in the London Fog I ordered because I’m there so often. I love our Starbucks. I love the people who work in it.

That’s it.

Writing

I haven’t been able to write consistently since college, but recently I’ve been doing pretty well in terms of dedication. I’m steadily plowing through Unconditional, which is the longest fic I’ve attempted, though that’s not saying very much. Anyway, it’s got me actively writing and interested and I’m glad people seem to like it so far because I think I’m so emotionally invested in it that I’d cry if they didn’t. 8D

Gadgetry

Before my parents’ visit, I bought a new camera. I hope it works forever. It’s delightful. It’s a Canon Powershot SX200. Here are the things that make me geek out over it.

• Need to mute the sounds, but can’t beep beep beep your way through the menu to do it? Fear not, with the right button combination you can mute all the sounds on the fly at startup.
• It has a cute little stand-alone clock on it.
• You can temporarily increase the screen brightness without digging through the menu.
• There are two time settings: one for home and one for travel, and you can flip between them.
• There’s a timer setting that will wait for you to enter the frame, then it will take the picture.
• It can automatically detect the scene mode based on its composition.
• It can automically correct red eye, or in playback mode afterwards.
• When photographing people, it will alert you if someone’s eyes were closed.
• It’s blue. I got the blue one.

Most of these things might be standard nowadays, but it’s been a few years since I went camera shopping, and the camera has definitely endeared itself to me. It also seems to take decent pictures, the LCD on the back is ginormous (to me), and despite its relatively small size, it has 12x zoom. (It also has that neat little feature that lets you choose a color, and it will desaturate all other colors.)

More Importantly

In other news, our lease is up. ;lajd;flkajdf

OH MAN.

So I’ve been lazy in writing this, but I did take notes, so I’m hoping I remember it all.  You can check out crazyloststar’s post for cross-referencing XD  Also, this is probably too much detail for most people, but I want to remember it!

About a month before the con, crazyloststar and I came up with the idea to do Greed!Ling and Briggs!Ed for a convention in January, but then decided we needed to do it for Yaoi-con as a surprise to sky_dark, on top of the FAKE cosplay we’d already planned on doing.  Yaoi-con is three days, so we’d have a cosplay for each day, but only a month to make four cosplays, two for each of us.  And what was worse, we had to keep one of them a big secret.  SO DIFFICULT.  But we managed!

Many thanks to rattmice, sky_dark, psycholullaby, inugrlrayn, and militsa for the photos.  You can find out whose pictures are whose by checking out the image name.

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I still need to do some touching up to my wig, but for the most part our FAKE cosplays are done! And this, more than two days before we leave for the convention. Unglaublich! (crazyloststar and I are also learning German, have I mentioned this?)

Here are pictures! They’re pretty silly, but they give a good representation of our 80s glamor.

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I can honestly say that progress is being made on the results of my writing request meme!  Currently I’m working on a response to crazyloststar’s “This Side of Me” prompt, but there will be more to follow, for crazyloststar, Bootses, and KalamityKat. 8D  THANKS GUYS.

But my excuse for being slow is a good one: YCON IS IN LESS THAN A WEEK HOW DID THIS HAPPEN.  I think everything is coming along, though.  Most of what we don’t have yet needs to be bought from a store, so that’s not as alarming as it could be.  Through the hurry and stress, though, I’m still so wildly excited about this year’s convention.  So many people I have connections with will be there.  It’s just a shame that it’s only three days!  How are we ever going to fit everything in D:  I also get to debut a new cosplay, which I haven’t done in a long time, and it’s very appropriate, so I’m extra excited.

In less joyous news, our router burned itself out, so we’ve been having to trade off the connection.  It throws off my normal rhythm quite a lot.  I do get the Internet all day, I just tend to want it most just before bed, so I end up staying up late to do that.  YES THAT IS MY EXCUSE FOR NOT SLEEPING ON TIME.  Maybe we can pick one up this weekend, but I definitely didn’t want to have to spend money on replacing something that wasn’t even that old.

And we need that router.  We need it because we have no cable and the new seasons are all starting up.  WE NEED IT NAO.

In other news, I’m hoping the new temp agency I signed up with will prove helpful, since the old temp agency never contacted me once about anything.  Urgh.  But mostly my thoughts are consumed by YCON.

So I don’t know if I mentioned this, but our new cosplay for Yaoi-con this year is Ryo and Dee from FAKE!  I’ll be Dee, and we’re using these as our clothing reference:

We still need a lot of accessories, though most should be on their way.  We do, however, have to make the jackets, and one is just about done!  Still need to press it and add buttons and shoulder pads, but this is pretty much it.

Also earlier today we went to a Maid Cafe and enjoyed High Tea with the surprising guest of wasabe spread on the tea cakes.

Nom!

Now I need to sleep so we can keep working tomorrow aaaah

So I’m still in California!

This came as a mild surprise to me upon returning from Anime Expo–for once, when the festivities ended, I did not pack up my things and get on a plane, foregoing physical peer contact for months into the future.  Nope, I got all my things back into a car and then I came home to an apartment not so far away, still in the company of crazyloststar.  And that’s totally awesome.  We had shabu shabu for dinner, and that was also awesome.

My first AX was a very good time, though it had its dubious moments, such as the one where some group in charge of some part of the shuttle process decided that only those people whose names were actually listed on their hotel rooms could ride the shuttle to the hotels.  Anyone who has ever been to an anime convention knows that, for good reason, not all parties in a room are on the room bill.  This presented a large problem.  Luckily, some registration officials were less strict about the rule, and the problem was solved (for our room, at least), but I would expect it to be enforced more universally next year, since we will have apparently learned how it works by then.  But it remains to be seen.

Still had an awesome time among awesome company.  Only bought for myself 3 doujin at the Yaoi-con booth price, which is far less than I usually spend.  I had taken two cosplays, but one had a partner cosplay that didn’t work out in time, so I rather happily stuck to the movie!Roy.  Eventually I will have something new, something different, but it’s a good fallback that I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of.

Highlights of the con were:

• being recognized with crazyloststar through livejournal
• learning some Para Para
• actually going to the rave
• the Ghost Stories dub
• Paprika
• MEETING LACIDIANA FINALLY
• SEEING THEREGALTIGRESS AGAIN
• discovering that one of the doujin featured Hyuroi in a phonebooth
• peanut butter [and jelly] sandwiches around 4pm in the hotel room
• meeting new people!

We did have a string of rotten convention-related incidents leading up to, and slightly overlapping, the convention, but all in all it worked out and it was good times.  The swelling from my sunburn from the beach last weekend had gone down enough that I wasn’t too bothered by it, which was a blessing.  I’m only glad I was so covered by my cosplay that I didn’t have to worry about the random red/tan skin patterns.

And now, I have other things to think about!  This includes finding a job, temporary or otherwise; planning out upcoming cosplays; possibly writing something for y-con; and reading 07-Ghost, which we learned about through the con.  Huzzah!

SO in December, edchii, crazyloststar and I went down to Georgia to visit sky_dark for her birthday. \o/ These are some pictures of some of the festivities, which mainly include cosplay and dress-up. General silliness, all much fun.  Too many to caption. ;_; (more…)