So I am approaching WonderCon in March, and have not put a great deal of work into any of my detailed cosplay ideas.  So Femme War Doctor (Doctor Who 50th anniversary episode) is delayed another year.  Zahara from Critical Role may be retired as an idea.  But I still have to have something to wear for the three days of WonderCon goodness in 2018!

The TARDIS dress went over so very well, I think I want to do it again!  It’s so simple, and with my Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Stuff necklace it’s perfect.  It’s simple, which makes it great for the day I drive in to the con early on Friday.

BB-8 Disneybounding has already been done, so unless I want to debut the Halloween idea I am doing with a group of friends a bit early, which requires some decisions on execution, I don’t have a good bounding outfit at present.  If I do the early debut/test run, I need to assemble the pieces for 1920’s Leia ASAP – I already own the dress but the details need to be worked out.  Especially the hair.  So this is probably a no-go, and I haven’t put Maleficent Dapper bounding together yet.

I had a good Mara Jade when I was still a redhead, but I never managed the saber acquisition (Ultra Sabers tempts me…) and had a loaner.  So this requires finding out if the pieces still fit, acquiring a saber, finding/acquiring goggles, and a red wig since I am no longer a redhead.  Downside, Mara has been done so well over the years by other cosplayers that I won’t be that great in comparison.  But I love Mara so much.

This leaves a third day, if I make Mara work Saturday, that I need to be able to do on Sunday, which is also compatible with check out of the hotel and put stuff in the car for the day plans.

Um… Wednesday Adams-ish?  Braid existing hair and wear Modcloth bone dress?

American McGee’s Alice?  Lots of pieces to put together but my hair works without a wig, as long as I let the dark cover the blue.

N7 Lazy outfit?  I have N7 dresses, but nothing canon to the game.  I now have an Omni Blade, too.  But the armor would be way too much to do.  And another wig if I really wanted to FemShep.

Still drifting for ideas…

So recently my favorite source for nailwraps (https://www.espionagecosmetics.com/ or http://bit.ly/2mUqVC8 if you don’t mind me getting credit for your purchases and a discount on your first order) announced they are launching a new line of compacts… that look like the original old GameBoy cartridge.

That took me back for sure.  Growing up I did TV and movie background and atmosphere work, so Mom needed something that was portable and easy to keep us entertained on sets and the like.  When the GameBoy came out from Nintendo, that big grey brick seemed like a perfect solution!  What started as something to supplement the books I usually used as a distraction soon became a touchstone in our family.

GameBoys lay along the back of the couch, where the game cartridges were stored for the most common games we were switching out, charging as needed.  Mom built a platform for them, a tray for the games, and even little charging stations, because while it started with one little device soon it was a full family phenomenon.  Dad would lose hours to Tetris, Mom was a master of Dr. Mario, Andrew and I were always playing something new.  Whenever Dad would beat Tetris (again) he would pause it right before the end and hand it to one of us kids so we could feel the victory and admire the little animated scenes they reserved for those epic achievements that we were not going to see on our own.  GameBoy games became a default present in our house for holidays and birthdays.

And that big grey brick?  Andrew dropped it out of the van.  Or into the dishwater.  Once it was onto the edge of the sandbox.  Each time he destroyed another console, he had to use his own money to replace it and we got something a little sleeker, a bit newer, a minor upgrade.  Only recently have I come to realize that some of those “accidents” may have been an intentional choice to get that next upgrade.  Sneaky.

So I’ve been having some great nostalgia moments, all thanks to Nerd Makeup experts!  Really looking forward to these new cartridges of color.

Check it out at https://www.espionagecosmetics.com/blogs/press/makeup-news

It’s 2015 and I’m in Cebu, Philippines for work in late October.  This trip thwarted my Halloween costume (research said it wasn’t celebrated in the Philippines and the costume involved a heavy trench coat), caused me to miss the annual Halloween party yet again, and had my schedule all over the map – it varied from day to day so that I could train all the different shifts in the office.

My morning and early afternoon are wide open this day, since we’re going into the office to see the later shifts that day.  After hotel buffet breakfast – with my daily waffle covered in fresh mango – I feel restless and so I wandered over in the warm and humid day to the mall that is adjacent to our hotel.  A little bit of time at the mall, but it’s too early for anything but cafes to be open, I meandered back towards the hotel.  In the mean time the sky has gone solid grey, even though the temperature hasn’t changed at all.

A couple of raindrops started to fall. Decided for sure to head back. Made it most of the way through the open area between the mall and hotel to have the rain pick up quickly. That’s when I heard a wall of water approaching and picked up the pace… got under cover just in time for some serious rain to start.

And as I stood on the patio, safe and dry, the wind began gusting and rain like I’ve never seen came pouring down. Fascinated, I watched it for a while.  This utterly confused the hotel staff – they asked me if I was trying to get to the mall, and I tried to explain that we never saw rain like this where I was from. Eventually I felt bad about confusing them, so I headed back to my room, relishing the thunder and sheets of water cascading past my window until it was time to leave – by which time there were no signs left of the rain.

Tropical weather, gone as abruptly as it had arrived.

I just returned from Napa Valley – took a weeks vacation there…

Just in time for it to be filled with the worst wildfire collection California has seen in a very long time.  Fifteen fires, all at the same time in the area, over 6,000 structures destroyed including homes and wineries, current count is at least 40 lives lost with about 200 people still unaccounted for.

So not exactly the trip I had planned, needless to say.  Thankfully a few months ago I gave my husband a list of Bed & Breakfasts to stay at, one in Santa Rosa (where the worst fire damage has been), one in Calistoga (which was completely evacuated the second day of our stay), and one in Downtown Napa (between the two largest fires, but far enough away from each that it was safe), he chose Napa back then, so we didn’t lose power, get evacuated, or have our lodging inaccessible/damaged.

Tuesday we walked down to the Oxbow public market to visit their cheese shop.  When we sat down we were informed that they were doing wine tastings, but no food.  Okay, so we enjoyed an afternoon of tasting, when I spotted a 1946 bottle of an interesting fortified wine on their list for tasting – 1946!  Bottled in 2014, that’s 68 years in the cask.  We sprung for a taste, and it was heavenly.  The man next to us, who was born in ’46 apparently, also heard and decided to give it a try.  We were chatting with him a bit, and found that while they didn’t have any bottles of the 46 left for sale, there were two bottles of the ’45… but as we were discussing purchasing one the gentleman we were talking to bought them both.  Helped make the decision easier, right?  We start to close out our check and leave, but then he asks the person behind the counter to draw out two glasses from one, one for him and one for us.  He gave us a full glass of this very interesting and pretty rare wine!  More talking to find out that he was the CFO of LaToque, a Michelin starred restaurant in town, so on his advice we made Wednesday night reservations there – and it was completely worth it.  Their wine pairing with dinner was the best I have ever encountered, though Club 33 came damn close.

The main driving force for the visit was to get the French Laundry off my bucket list, we had reservations for Thursday night, a hard won opportunity.  Because of the power outages, staffing concerns (needless to say people had other things to deal with that kept them away from work, understandably so), and other issues, Thursday afternoon we got the cancellation notice. Alright, I am not to be deterred – Thomas Keller lured me to the valley so I was going to eat at a Keller Group restaurant!  Because Ad Hoc was supposed to open that night, I made reservations there.  Then my phone rings with a local number and my stomach dropped.  Turns out, in order to have enough staff and such, they were merging Ad Hoc and Bouchon (the third Keller Group restaurant in Yountville) and our reservations were transferred to Bouchon.  Okay!

Interestingly enough, halfway through our dinner a group was sat at the table behind my husband, and as I look over I see a very familiar face.  I make the spouse check for me, because I couldn’t quite believe it, but sure enough it was Chef Keller himself!  Clearly, the man eats at his own restaurants.  Because of the stress and such, we didn’t bug him at all, but it was just kind of surreal and awe inspiring to have dinner next to Thomas Keller.  All the staff treated him with respect, but also as one of the crew.  Various people from other tables dropped by to have a quick hello with “Chef” and we came to realize we may have been the only tourists in the house that night – everyone else interacted with each other as a local member of a relatively small community.

After our five days in Napa we went to San Francisco for the weekend – I never thought I would exclaim how good the air quality was in that town!  Over all a series of surreal events and a hazy half-closed town, we still had some great moments even though the plan certainly didn’t survive first contact.

This is the project that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friends, I started working on it not knowing what it was, and I’ll continue working on it forever just because…

There is a project at work that I have had to defer over and over, because it’s heavily rooted in screen shots and there have been reasons for over a year that makes them difficult to get (or I was distracted by other work when the time was right, since I didn’t know my window was going to close).  Frustrating.

We have been bit in the backside before by dated screenshots on this article, so I need to make sure there are as few clues to when the picture was captured as possible.  The idea is to make the new overhaul of this article last as long as possible, though changes will happen.  Alas, nothing will stop the inevitable progress of time, in the end.

But still I keep having to revisit, again and again.  Without any real forward progress.  And I chomp at the bit because of it.  So I vent here, thank you for listening.

This morning the Cassini spacecraft finished her mission of sending us data about mysterious Saturn and her mystic moons, so as one last step she was flung into Saturn’s atmosphere and sent back one last burst of information.

I hope someday, at the end, I am given the chance to mean something and send out one last transmission before I go.

I am exceedingly thankful for the blood clot in my side we found one year ago this week.  The one that was painful, that required they install a filter in my vein that had to be removed in a few months, the terrifying and agonizing deep vein thrombosis that made me utterly miserable.  In recent days I have come to realize I owe that damn clot my life.

What?

That clot wasn’t alone, there were clots running down my leg, and clots in my lungs.  Down the leg was bad, and could have eventually lead to issues that might have gotten them identified or caused problems that were noticeable.  But the lungs?  Pulmonary Embolisms (PEs) don’t cause many symptoms that get them identified.  Sure, they contributed to my pneumonia, but the doctors were just going to treat the pneumonia, never knowing the PEs were there.

PEs can cause death, though.  They sit there, relatively silent, until suddenly, possibly in your sleep or some random moment of life, you can just die.  The symptoms related to them can often be disregarded as other issues, like that pneumonia I had, or my asthma.  So they can be overlooked until it’s too late.  But because I was in severe pain in my side, sick for so long and suffering the agony every time I tried to lay down, tried to move, tried to lift something, they ran tests.  Including ultrasounds, CT scans, and a chest x-ray.

That large chunk of the day I spent in radiology, starving and dehydrated, enduring wave after wave of pain, gave the sharp eyed doctor – the third doctor assigned to me that stay – the data he needed to spot the big clot in my side, which got him looking close enough to find the clots in my lungs.

My trip to urgent care on Monday of that week had been fruitless, because the doctor there blew me off.  Luckily the pain on Tuesday was so bad that I ignored his orders to give it time and went to another urgent care.  If it had just been the PEs, I wouldn’t have been suffering enough to do that.

Maybe I should have named that stupid clot, because only now do I see that without it raising the red flags, being too huge and painful to ignore, I could have just slipped away.  Thank you, nameless clot, I’m not sad you are gone, but I am glad in a way that you were a brief and uncomfortable part of my life.

My finances are fine. I have a comfortable savings pad.

So why in HELL is my brain torturing me about everything money related? Reminding me of my frivolous expenses, followed by urging me to stress-spend, which then loops me right back into guilt over my lack of ability to budget effectively.

I kind of hate my current apartment – we had what appear to be our annual plumbing issues recently – but there’s no chance of even finding the equivalent for what we currently pay. However I recently read and article reminding me that I shouldn’t be spending more than 30% of my income on rent… needless to say I’m a bit over that and stressing it.

Of course, it doesn’t help that in my attempt to spend time with friends and relax I went out to brunch, and on leaving managed to damage the front bumper of my car enough that it needed to be replaced. Concrete pillar, car bumper, attention on what is going on behind my car and not on where the front end is, overall not a great combination.

I am my own worst enemy right now.

When I create a new tabletop character, I like to have a written out backstory for them.  In large part it’s because I need writing practice, all the time, and this is a way to make me write something.  Especially as creative writing of that storytelling sort is often all tied up with my Achilles heel, dialogue.  But it’s also a fun way to shape the character and give the Game Master something to play with as the tale is told.

Some characters started with a question, such as Maeve the 5th edition Tiefling warlock.  I started wondering what would the child of a child-eating witch be like?  Why would a child-eating witch raise a child, anyway?  Well, what if the child wasn’t like others, what if she was an abandoned member of a race that would potentially be problematic to eat?  Tiefling came from that question, descendant of demons would potentially be non-appealing as a meal.  And without going the evil route of the mother, where does that lead someone as a class?  Why doesn’t that figure turn out evil?  It lead to some fun writing and reasoning.  And as I wrote the story, I found the fey a feasible way to take this strange child into an adventurer archetype, with the warlock class and the Archfey patron.  So with a lot of fun giggles I wrote out the story of the ever-naive and optimistic Maeve.

Flynn Keller, the Jack-jacker in Iron Kingdoms got a similar story-driven start.  The exact image was of a character cresting a hill back to their allies, with a banner-bearing robotic icon of the Protectorate of Menoth (the religious fanatics) in tow, yelling for his allies to get the paint to “disguise it, quick”.  What classes would it take to accomplish this impossible task of stealing the giant steam-powered robots of war?  What kind of person would even try something like that?  So he was formed as an arrogant, impulsive, teenage boy – one with a shady background as a rogue and a magical spontaneous style as a sorcerer.  I recently went back and read this story, and while there were some edits required, for the most part it was still a strong story – normally reading old writing is a cringe-fest so this was kind of nice.

However, sometimes story would be putting the cart before the horse.  In the case of Ciara of Serric, the dwarven cleric, I just wanted to try a cleric, and the dwarven pantheon sounded like fun in the Iron Kingdoms setting.  Then I selected clan Serric, as a tie in to the story in progress.  Working with my GM we decided that the reason she left home was on orders of her family to find a husband.  From there the story developed naturally in the course of the game.  Her written background was a sparse and quick outline, and details are getting filled in as time goes on.

Other times it’s a chance to challenge myself to be something I’ve never been before – like Cindy the Nosferatu vampire in our Vampire: The Masquerade LARP (Live Action Role Play).  I was doing a one off character for the night, so I went bruiser, took some major flaws like thin blood and amnesia (why write the story for a character I’m only going to be once?).  I rarely play physical characters, so this was a way to roll out without overthinking it – of course the fact that I played the character for years afterwards and had to deal with all the blows I’d lined myself up for was… interesting.  When the head Storyteller writes your background and slowly unveils it for you… watch out!  Sudden turns and sharp story curves ahead, for sure.