the better part of me

2010: The Summer of Awesome, or Why I'm Not Here Anymore

Reports of my death have been exaggerated, although perhaps not greatly. This is a disgustingly belated post, but the fact of the matter is I'm just that damn busy (when I'm not just that damn lazy). Life these days is both extremely stressful and the most unbelievably amazing thing ever. I still don't really know exactly how I got here. What it boils down to is that I've done that most dreaded and reviled thing in all of internet fandom, that which I swore I'd never do: I've gotten a Real Life.

Granted, it's a Real Life of the "offline fandom" variety and not the "career and marriage" variety, but it's a Real Life nonetheless, at least in the sense that it consumes all the time that used to be devoted to internet fandom. That part sucks. It really does. I still have goals in online fandom that I am determined to accomplish. I want to reboot .moon. I want to write some more fics and make some more vids. I'm still plugging away at these things bit by bit, but on the whole, Facebook is pretty much all the online interaction I have time for these days.

I'm still around, off and on. When there's product, it'll go here. But I don't have the time or dedication to regularly write up LJ posts anymore, or to read my flist like I used to. (From the look of things, though, a lot of people have faded out over the past year.)

That's the short of it. Read on if you want the details on how my life got flipped, turned upside down... erhm, yeah.

( I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there )

On a side note, for anyone concerned who doesn't already know, I'll be at Anime North again this year. It may be my last trip, since it keeps landing at a bad point in my work schedule, but I'll make it there at least one more time.

Pretty sunrise this morning, even if I had to see it through the office window.



There won't be many more of these. I'm starting a new job soon. People who've been on my flist for a while may remember that my company's been wanting me to move up the ladder into a better job, and I was reluctant to do so because I like my shift hours. Well, an opening came up in the database area, on an off-hours schedule, and since it was pretty much my only chance to change jobs without getting stuck on a standard 9-5, I jumped on it. A ton of people put in a good word for me and helped me in various ways (seriously - I had no idea this many people even knew who I was) and after a couple of interviews I was offered the position. Truth be told, I was initially only interested because of the hours (2 PM to 2 AM, three days a week), but the more I thought about it, the more I thought it'll be fun to do something new and more technical than the support work I've been doing. I don't know yet when I'll be changing jobs, but I'm looking forward to it. Evening hours all the time, and only three days a week. It doesn't get much better than that. :)

The delays in getting things organized is a bit of a problem, since I have the North American Discworld Convention looming two months ahead and I haven't been able to request time off or buy my plane tickets yet. I need to know what schedule I'll be working over Labor Day before I can do any of that, preferably ASAP because I'm probably going to look into finding some random strangers to share my hotel room. The friend who I was hoping would join me at the con had to cancel, and that's a long con to foot the whole hotel bill for, not to mention the somewhat gloomy prospect of having no one to hang out with. :\ I'm hoping to find some other women traveling alone like me who might be looking to make some new friends - but again, can't even ask until I know for sure which days I'll be in Phoenix. Argh.

Now I'm off to my hometown for the rest of the week. Be back Sunday.

I was at No Brand Con over the weekend. Con report later.

(Question for the peanut gallery. How the hell did Anime Detour get so big so fast? Is it the location?)

I'm dying from tiredness. Got day shifts today and tomorrow before I can sleep. Got an interview thingy this afternoon that I'm completely unprepared for, whee.

Finally watched Dr. Horrible. lol latest. Kind of obsessed atm.

Saturday night I dreamed sache hacked into Stephen Colbert's computer. Might have had something to do with reading Chapter 10 of Watchmen the night before.

I'm screwed for sm_fanswap.

I've lost the pattern I need for Shel's Princess Saturn dress. Going to track down a new one tomorrow evening if I don't find it before then. Almost finished building the remaining prop pieces.

Doing four panels at Anime North next month. I should track down one more for a registration refund, haha.

That's about it.

Welcome to the middle of the crazy. I'll be your tour guide today.

These two day shifts at work are my "break" between two overbooked long weekends. You know you're busy when being at work is relaxing...

I didn't get everything on my to-do list done before my sister returned on Friday evening with my mom and jambosana, but I took care of the really vital things. It was fun showing off the new place a bit. :3 It's not quite organized enough yet for me to take pictures to share, but it's getting there. Tons of sleeping space for guests. Detour 2010, anyone? :D

Saturday I made breakfast for everyone and then we all headed to my old apartment for the big task of the weekend - cleaning the old place. The office had given us an insane list of cleaning tasks. I knew we could've gotten away with much less, but it would be nice to get the full deposit back, and I feel better leaving the apartment in pristine condition. My mom has a lot of professional cleaning experience, so I knew we'd be on top of things with her there. Unfortunately, I was a bad bad favor-asker (what's the word for that?). I had things to do during the weekend that couldn't be avoided and I didn't end up putting much cleaning time in myself. >.> But I did as much as I could, when I could.

Feel free to kick me when I admit that the first "vital" thing I had to do was see RENT on Saturday afternoon. ^^;; It was the tour with the original Roger and Mark, so I really wanted to see it, and I'd promised jambosana I'd go with her if another friend of hers couldn't make it. So after putting in a little cleaning time, we headed out. It was a close call, we got a little lost trying to find the theater but we managed to make it in time. The performance was all right. The voices were all excellent, which made it enjoyable enough. It was nice to hear Mark the way he's supposed to sound, and very cool to see the original guys on stage. Unadvertised but also revisiting her role was Gwen Stewart, the original voice of the homeless woman/rocking soloist character. Awesome. :D The acting, though... it was a matinee performance, and I got the feeling that most of the cast was just going through the motions, especially by the time intermission rolled around. There wasn't much energy there, except for Benny, of all people. Still, I'm glad I went.

After the show the cast was collecting donations for an AIDS charity, and Benny's actor was out in the hall with a bucket, so I got to add to his pot and compliment him on his performance. :) They were also selling Playbills autographed by the cast as a fundraiser, but by the time I made up my mind to buy one I just barely missed the last copy Ms. Stewart had. :\ But then we went outside, and Anthony Rapp was out in the side lot signing autographs, so I didn't feel so bad after that. :D (Should have taken a picture with my cell phone. Oh well.) It was kind of surreal... all these crazed fangirls were squeeing "You're my hero!" all over him, but he was calm and modest and didn't pay any of it much attention. (Kinda odd, in a way... IIRC he's a bit of an internet wanker. >.>) And then we got to our car and saw him walking off across the street, just like any regular guy. Funny. Better to be a stage celebrity than a movie star, I think.

By the time I dropped jambosana off at her mom's and got back to the apartment, my mom and sister had 75% of the work done. o_o I was left with the kitchen, which was more than fair. We worked a few more hours and then I took them out to dinner as another round of thanks.

Sunday was more cleaning, but there wasn't much left to do, which was good since I had to leave them again for an Anime Detour meeting. I would have skipped it, except it was the last meeting before the con (this weekend! gah!) and also likely to be my last staff meeting period. If I don't have to work whatever day the post-mortem session lands on, I'll go to that, otherwise this was it. So I went, got a few final details lined up for the con, took meeting notes, got another slap in the face. Fitting punctuation, really. :| But all else aside, I'm looking forward to doing all I can at the con this weekend. Hoping to go out on a high note.

After the meeting I had to rush back to the apartment, where the cleaning was finishing up and we were able to squeeze in our move-out inspection before the office closed. The woman who came to do it marked a big ole OK on every room on the checkout sheet and seemed impressed with the work we'd done, so it looks like I'll be seeing some money. :D I took my mom and sister out to dinner again, since I felt bad that I hadn't been able to help more and they'd done a beautiful job, and then they took off for our hometown and I went straight to bed. My sister will be back tonight, but I expect to be asleep by then, I'm wiped and I have a day shift again tomorrow. x_x

I have another giant list of things to do, but I'll spare you all this time. I'm not going to be around much over the next week as the list is quite long. Someday, I'll have some time to relax...

And now it's time for...

A POST! Of STUFF that's been GOING ON. zomg

There's a lot of it. It's been a while, and I'm really busy this month.

I had an okay time at Ohayocon. A con report is in order, but I have yet to get around to it. Hopefully I won't forget everything by then... ^^;;

There's one last thing I can try to fix my broken hard drive, but at this point it's pretty definitely dead. My six-month-old backup of my data will have to do. I'm going to send it in to be fixed, since it's still under warranty and I want to sell it to a friend. In the meantime, I bought myself an ASUS Eee PC, one of those new mini laptops. I'd been planning to switch to a desktop/netbook combo in a few months anyway, but I can't afford the desktop at the moment, so I went ahead with the netbook for now. So far, I really love it. It's so light and portable, and can handle just about everything I need to do. I don't dare try Premiere on it, though, so vids are out for the moment.

The UFO Awards are rolling along. I'm behind on getting the nominee badges and some of the notifications sent out, but with two weeks left, I'm confident I can get everything squared away in time to start voting March 1st. I'll probably work on that some more tonight.

House-hunting and packing have been taking up most of my spare time outside of work. Our lease is up at the end of March and I want to rent a townhome for a change of scenery. After a lot of looking around, I found one I absolutely love. It happens to be owned by a retiree from my company, so he's particularly interested in renting it to me. :D I'm going to call the rental agency tomorrow and tell them we want to go for it. I'll have to learn to be a bit more responsible with my money, but I did the math and I should be able to afford it easily without too many changes. ^_^

Speaking of changes, I'm officially leaving the Anime Detour staff after this year's con. I gave my notice, or whatever, to the chairman and my department heads at today's meeting after thinking it over at great length. I don't fit in there, I'm never going to, and I've decided to face that fact and let it go. My dad's disappointed, but everyone else has been pretty understanding. Not being on staff will give me the chance to try other things. Like a Sailor Moon room party in 2010! :D I have big, BIG plans. :D I don't want the fanfic contests to disappear, though, so I'm technically going to be at-con staff in the Programming department so I can keep running those. And I told Ryan I'd chip in if they need extra help with the website. But that's it after April.

This Thursday I'm flying to Seattle for a friend's wedding (and hopefully to see killyoudead as well!). I'll be there in time for the bachelorette party, but my friend's pretty religious, so I'm not expecting anything wild. I still have to pick up a wedding gift, but she's registered at a few major stores, so that shouldn't be a problem. After I get back I have a few more nights of work, and then I'll be headed north for my godson's birthday party. Gotta fit in time to get him a present, too. >.o This year's his fifth, so as long as I remember my video camera I'll finally be ready to make the DVD of his first five birthdays like I've been planning. After I get a replacement computer. x_x

I've got the second Ouran set with me tonight, I'll break that open if I get my UFOs work done. I'm hoping to finally see Coraline this Wednesday on my only day off between now and March. @_@

So that's all the news that's fit to print. How is everyone? With all the above, LJ has been the farthest thing from my mind lately.

FYI, I killed my cell phone on Wednesday, so if you've been trying to contact me and haven't gotten an answer, that's why. I probably won't have a new phone until next weekend.

Kakkoi|con is going on this weekend, but I'm missing it because I have work. I'm eager to read everyone's con reports. :)

Two weeks until Anime Festival Orlando. I did what I said I wouldn't and entered the AMV contest just for the hell of it. I had a video nearly done, so why not. It's a boring drama video, haha, so I don't expect anything, but it's still fun entering. Fun is the name of the game this con, as I'm mostly making the trip to hang out with nephthysmoon and shel_b_129. No panels, no cosplay... just anonymous fun. I'm really looking forward to it.

But the point of this post is a belated photo dump. The last time I was visiting up north, my mom and I decided to make a spontaneous trip up to Gooseberry Falls, on the North Shore. I've always loved it up there and hadn't been in a long time. If I'm going to be outdoors, this is one of my favorite places to be. I'm not much of a photographer, but I try.

( pictures! )

I totally wore myself out hiking around, it's a steep area, but I'd love to do it again anytime. :)

For anyone as lol overinvested in fandom as me, you may be interested in a post I made over on fandom_lounge yesterday. For a long time now, I've been puzzled by the high price tag on Harry Potter conventions as opposed to other events. I finally caved in and asked for input on the sources of the difference. There's been some interesting information posted there on how different events compare to each other. What I find surprising, though, is the number of people who don't seem to know about more than one kind of event. They've been to one con, and either admit they don't know anything about any others or assume all cons are like that one. That fewer people means higher individual cost, for example, or that media cons are all about the commercialism and don't have panels. When you bring up other events that contradict these views, most of those excuses evaporate pretty quickly. This brings two main thoughts to mind. 1) I am so glad I attend multiple events and I really want to do more of that, and 2) has no one ever thought about this before?? I can't be the first person to go, "Hey, Harry Potter cons are really pricey, why is that?" But hardly anyone commenting in the post seems to have ever taken notice of the difference, and those that did apparently just accepted it as a fact of life. o_O It's been educational, to say the least.

Link: http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_lounge/743980.html

Speaking of cons, I seem to be attending Anime Festival Orlando next month instead of Anime Iowa. If I wasn't officially insane already, I believe I am now. xD This is going to be the last wild last-minute trip for me for most likely a good long time, as I really need to buckle down and start paying off some debts. This will also be my last con for the rest of the year.

I do have my 2009 cons pretty much decided, though. Ohayocon. Anime Detour. No Brand Con. Boston/North (leaning toward North atm). CONvergence (I am making it to that damn thing this time even if I have to take vacation). The Discworld con. I'll be doing a number of new events that I've been wanting to get to but haven't had a chance. And then I really am going to cut down, I swear. ^^;

Today SUCKS in lots of ways, from petty to not-so-petty. Frustrated ranting ahead. If you're not in the mood for it, please at least skip to the bottom if you're going to be at Anime North this weekend.

First of all, I had a million things to do today as I leave for the con tomorrow, so after getting home from my overnight shift this morning I only slept for a few hours. That was made worse by the fact that I didn't make it to Jiffy Lube early enough Monday night to get my oil changed before work, so I had to hang around work an extra hour Tuesday morning until it opened so I could get it done then. I was so tired today, my knees hurt more than they ever have before. Even walking down the stairs from work this morning just killed, and I've never had trouble with that no matter what shape I was in.

This afternoon was all right for the most part aside from the tiredness, I got a lot of my necessary errands done but still didn't have time to pack anything. Then it was off to the Death Note movie. Even though it was showing at a location very near me, I drove half an hour to another theater across town because that was where most of the people on the Anime Detour forum seemed to be going. I'd made a Detour sign (after having to run out for fresh ink for my printer) and had been told the other folks from the forum would meet up with me if I had an identifying sign. So I went there... and stood in the lobby for half an hour waiting, looking like a lonely loser with my Detour sign. Nobody approached me. Not a soul. Fortunately my sister had been able to come with me, or it would've been really pathetic.

The other people from the forum did go to the movie, of course. They posted in the thread afterwards saying so. But none of them said a word to me, after they'd told me they would. I should've just gone to the close location. >:(

THEN, I get home and spend three hours packing, so guess who's driving eight hours tomorrow on less than a full night's sleep! ME! Hooray! Plus, it turns out I totally forgot to run the update on .moon this week. Again. I swear, I'm really losing it. And, as if plans for Anime North weren't already going rough, with congoing friends running into conflicts and meetups not working out, a few minutes ago I find out jasonulloa's been screwed over by the military machine and he can't make it to the con after all. After all this, all the arranging and string-pulling and planning to get around things, he's going to miss the con. F**KING A. I am so furious on his behalf, I can't even see straight. He'd been looking forward to this for so long. He needed and deserved this, and now it's been taken away from him. It's so unfair.

And on my end, what was to be the biggest .moon meetup to date is now back to me driving all the way to Toronto alone like I did the first year. I'm still excited to go, for the people who are still going to be there, but I'm having trouble keeping my optimism up. :(

Anyway... rant-fest aside... if you're going to be at Anime North this weekend, I'll be there Thursday night through Monday morning. Friday and Sunday I'll be carrying the Anti-Ego Sword, and Saturday I'll be in my Princess Pluto cosplay. I'll be on the Sailormoon panel, the PGSM panel, and the general fanfic panel, and I plan on being at the fanfic contest awards roundtable. If you see me, please say hi. Even if you've met me before, I'm absolutely horrible at remembering faces, so please don't wait for me to recognize you first. ^^;; I do want to see you, I swear. :)

I'm sorry I haven't been commenting much lately, flist, but with cons and everything I've been out of the loop for a while. Trying to get back on top of things now. :)

I was going to blog about my weekend, but it all seems kind of meh now. I didn't go to No Brand Con, because I didn't have anyone to go with and it's kind of soon after my recent con run to be footing another hotel bill all by myself. And then I ended up paying for lodging anyway, as my sister and I went up to our hometown for the weekend and didn't want to stay at Mom's because her boyfriend was there. It was just a crummy Motel 6, though, so it wasn't too expensive. I don't know what the heck was going on up there this past weekend, but almost all the hotel space was booked up.

We took my grandma to the casino. She hadn't been there in a few years, since she can't drive anymore and my aunt's too broke to go. She had a lot of fun, and I won $60 on the penny slots, woohoo! I have a new favorite kind of machine for the next time my best friend and I go to Black Bear. xD

We had to come home early Sunday so I could make the Detour post-con meeting. I missed it last year due to Anime Boston, and I was determined not to miss it again. I did miss my sister's band concert, though, since the meeting was very long and the concert was moved up an hour. :\ I've been thinking about Detour waaaaay too much lately. I dreamed about the con again yesterday. -_- It was in a new venue... if the new hotel turns out to actually look like that, I'll be pretty freaked out. xD

Other than that, it's pretty much back to same old same old for me. My top projects at the moment are working on my scrapbook and judging the Anime North fanfic contest entries. I also finished catching up on Absolute Boyfriend, so now I'm just waiting for the final volume to come out. Boy, do I ever see what littlemoonhime meant now. The series was always a bit out there, but in volume 5 it really goes off the deep end. o.O All of a sudden 5000 crazy things happen over the span of one volume. I have a feeling Watase-sensei was eager to get to the end. >.> I'm still interested to see how it turns out, although with the situation as it is at the end of volume 5 it seems there's really only one way it could go...

On an unrelated note, is there a ?style= URL add-on that will let me view entries in the plain default LiveJournal view? I want to scroll through my old entries to add a new tag, and that's easiest with the previous/next buttons that show up on the no-style entry view. But I can't remember how to get that view...

I haven't been doing much this week, just lazing around and recovering. Since Detour, I've been feeling really weak and dizzy. Annoying. I think whatever I've been running on is running out. :\

I finally stopped dreaming about the con. xD Hard to think that now we start the whole thing all over again. I got mailing addresses for all but one of the remaining fanfiction contest awards, so I only have one Judge's Choice certificate left to send out. I also finished putting together the PDFs of the contest entries, but I sent the drabble contest file out to the authors to make sure I'd typed everything correctly, so I'm giving them until tomorrow to respond before I put it up on the website. And then I'll be all done with everything from 2008. :D

My sister and I finally got a chance to see Vantage Point. I liked it. And it had a line that instantly jumped onto my "favorite movie lines" list:

"We need to act strong!"
"No, we need to be strong."

And now that I've caught up on JF, I'm thinking about maybe going to this. The official website is pretty unimpressive, but I'm intrigued by the description. I could make it on the 17th.