nadat

The first game of the Highland Games season is Saturday. This coming Saturday.

Normally they start in December, but a new city wanted to take part and they decided that October was brilliant. No idea why.

This should be fun, but also interesting. We tend to be ready for the Games in November. But November comes *after* October. We may be in slight trouble. Then again, this is probably why most of the bands in Florida aren't coming. Extra time to prepare is such a lovely thing.

And then Sunday, not today, but right after the games, we have another concert. I'm not sure whomever planned that was thinking straight. "Oh hey! We have our first games the day before, everyone will be exhausted, let's do this!" Don't get me wrong. I love performing. That's why I'm a swing tenor, lol. People buy CDs to hear pipes, they go places to see the swing tenors. But we're going to be zombies. Unless something miraculous happens and we're all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, the pipers will be hitting bad notes, the tenors will be hitting themselves... I think the scheduling was a little mis-direrected.

I still have decent hopes for us on Saturday, though. We've been working on it, all of us. And yeah, there are a few spots that are still off. There's a portion of the second tune that the pipers can't space out right, there's a segment in our fourth flourish that I can't get quite right. I know exactly what I'm doing. I'm flicking my wrist wrong when I transition just before that. The issue is that the wrist-flick is normally the *right* thing to do, so it's a habit of three years. We're just going from one flourish into another, so it's the wrong thing to do here.

We'll manage it. We'll be shiny in time for the Games. And then we have two months to work on being shiny for other Games too. :D

I called things off completely with boy. He lied, this time, about what went wrong with his car, and I poked a few people who know cars and got it verified that he was lying. I'm not going to deal with that.

It makes me wonder if I'm as easy to drop, though. Not that I'm running around lying to people, but I've had a few people up and vanish on me. I still don't know what happened.

There are the older ones - Sarah from my childhood who moved and never wrote back. Liz from middle school. William from my last year of high school.

There are the ones who vanished during my early internet forays. Lord Mithrandir. Baillie from Bree. Eowyn Hobbitsister. (Yeah, yeah. I give you ONE guess as to what boards I first frequented.) Trillion. Silvershe. Haoxian.

There are the recent ones, the ones that faded and I can't find. The ones that I have to hope someday say hi once more because I've done what I can, the emails come back as undeliverable. Lila Gamgee Took. El Luitha Uren.

There are a couple I still have hope for. I poked what ones I could.

Forgive me. I'm in a weird mood. I'm not actually down, don't worry. I'm just... nostalgic. If you're reading this... go poke someone you haven't talked to in a while, someone who might well miss you or whom you miss. Make their day. (Or, you know, on the slight chance they've secretly hated you for ages, this will be your own revenge that you WON'T EVEN KNOW YOU HAD. Hee. Sorry. I had to joke around a little.)

I really should do a camping trip summary post, but... I might not. Anyway, have some fun:



The scrolls of bowtothebrows (Rock Lee) and bloodseal_soul (Alphonse Elric) are traps, just so you know. So is the alter of merciless_cold (Neill).

Third happy-thing: Apparently my contest luck has changed since JACON. I hadn't won things before, but there I won the Invader Zim shirt. Now at AFO I won a DVD - Boogiepop and others. It's interesting-looking. The choice was that, a disc of Trinity Blood, which I've got all of, and some school-girl-looking-thing.

Health-wise I'm doing better. I spent all of yesterday with a nasty fever that's mostly gone.

I'm home from AFO! I have duckies. I think the pictures and report will come tomorrow - I've got so much to catch up on at Adstring. A majority of the con was a blast. There was one issue that I need to find a way to contact the con staff about, but the other was taken care of there.

And now, on to playing and hoping my fever stays nice and low, hee.

Yeah, I had a feeling I wouldn't be managing to do it eight days in a row, but hey, I'll keep going at my own pace.

Day 2 for yesterday - First day of AFO! I HAVE ORDERED KAKASHI AND JIRAIYA RUBBER DUCKIES.

Today I'll be running around as Urahara Kisuke. For a limited value of run... I got pretty sick last night and I'm still not feeling great.

I have no camera, and I have no laptop charger, and I even have no towel (So apparently I will never be a hoopy frood) - My ride canceled at 9 in the evening Thursday, so I called the Bleach Mob and 30 minutes later I was packed and headed to their place, hee. So I still get to go.

One day, I swear, I will find people who don't cancel last-minute.

First day mini-report: ( Where In The World is AFO? )

So there's this meme that tells you to post for eight days straight something that makes you happy, and tag back eight people. I got tagged by Youko and Jill, but I really don't think I want to tag people. If you want to be tagged, hey, you're tagged.

What made me happy today? A fic Tisha wrote for me.

A little backstory first.

Once upon a time in Adstring there was an event called Family Bonding. Characters would believe they were related to others. One of us had a silly idea, Jiraiya and Carmen being boyfriend and girlfriend. It was fun though not much happened with it. And then, after the event, they just started talking back and forth, conversations that flowed. And somehow, I completely blame Tisha, I suddenly had a second 'ship' I liked for Carmen. Saul brings out her drive, her strength, her passion for who she is and what she does and life in general. Jiraiya reinforces her, an external strength, a casual comfort that she's not known before.

All this, for a woman who views herself as Master Thief first, leader second, and then a woman. Yeah, that shell she's got is broken.

( And now, the lovely piece from Tisha, rated PG )

I'm... trying to decide what to say, what to do. It really sucks to pour hours of work into something, and then be bashed for it.

( I'll stick to general things, I think. It's long, you've been warned. )

Apparently just being productive helps things. I'm feeling a good bit better. I got a lot done at work today, then I got home and cooked one of my favorite meals, Turkey Divan. It took a bit of time to cook, and somehow it and Nickle Creek combined very well.

And I've figured out where I'm drawing the line, period, in regards to other things. So it was a better day.

Oh, and I think Zekoi and I have decided that Tenten is a secret Uchiha.

( There's logic to it, really. Okay, maybe there isn't any. )

Otherwise, why would I have two nightmares in a row where I didn't set the alarm clock, wound up two hours late to work, got fired, and instantly lost the apartment? Maybe I should have been clued in to it being a dream by the fact that Spock was walking around my office talking to Bobby Flay, but somehow that just seemed normal. I'm not going to even approach the fact that there were flowers on the wall and that I 'knew' Envy was lurking in the office, hiding and waiting for an opportunity.

For obvious reasons, I'm rather tired. Jumping out of bed panicking about being late tends to do that.

At least there is coffee in the office. Fantastic coffee.

And no Envy.

I move fairly well with music as it is. But a bunch of people I know were doing a ballroom dance lesson, and it was going to be ten dollars each. I said why not, hee.

I already knew the box waltz, thanks to a Mario, and something cha-cha-esque thanks to Yamamoto-soutaichou. Now I know the basic steps of a waltz, along with the under-arm turn, and a devplie, as well as the chachacha, the foxtrot (which was my favorite) and a turn and then dip with the foxtrot, and sorta the samba. I didn't quite master that last one before we were done.

But man. I love dancing. I need to get back to practicing my tap, I can probably use my kitchen counter for warm ups and such. And then.. I don't know. I'd love to find more chances to dance.

My face is painted and I'm at work. I love Fridays. I've heard nothing yet about the teaching position, so we'll see how that goes.

And now, a meme.

RULES: Comment and I'll LJ stalk you to find THREE FANDOMS you apparently love. And then you answer these questions about them!

01: What got you into this fandom in the first place?
02: Do you think you'll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?
03: Favorite episodes/books/movies/etc.?
04: Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?
05: Do you think that more people should get into this fandom?

erraticflow gave me Bleach, Star Trek, and Babylon 5.

( Bleach )

( Star Trek )

( Babylon 5 )

So in summary, go watch Babylon 5, the first two seasons are on Hulu, so go get hooked. And then seek out the third and fourth seasons, which were the best. Star Trek is good, but the fandom is splintered and crazy liek woah right now. Bleach is repititious but I enjoy the bit characters, so I'll probably stick with it.

And I'm coming out of the closet about being a Naruto fan to say GO KAKASHI! Latest chapter is win. He gets to be smart and put things together. :D This is why Maes and Kakashi working together is a dangerous thing in Adstring, la de da.

Hello, new friends from theoregontrail! I'll try to seem interesting. We'll see how long I can keep that up. ;)

So I'm reading the last book of C. S. Friedman's Coldfire trilogy. It's been really neat and different so far, but I'm reading more and more slowly. I don't see how it can end in a way that makes the previous two books as good as they were. It might be Robin Hobb's fault. I read her latest trilogy most recently, and the ending was a complete cop-out.

Forgot to thaw my turkey leftovers tonight, so I have to figure out what I'm doing for dinner, oops. Thawing, the bane of my existence.

~*~

I need to figure out what the next Team Evil plot should be for Adstring. There's a possibility with Alyx's D0g, taking her and getting a small army made to combat the robo-dinos of the inner city. But then what? They've already done the Incursion. Carmen's not gearing up for a war, she wants to rule the city and outmanuever Kakashi. She's an intellectual evil, not brute force. Maybe she could start setting up some sort of network. I need something before she starts getting bored. Bored Carmen would not be good.

At least she's got things lined up in Oregon. Heeheehee.

So our band is a teaching band. These last few Mondays the drummers been working on musical theory with one of our snares. It took a little bit of time for everything to make sense, but last night I wrote a swing-tenor score. It's written with the correct notation, it's readable...

This might not seem like a huge deal, but a lot of Scottish drumming isn't written right. And swing tenor scores don't tend to get written at all. Not only do tenors have the least to do in a traditional score, writing down the flourishes is tricky. Now we have an original hornpipe written by one of our pipers, with an original snare score by our snares, and an original swing tenor score by me. I'll be working on scoring the two jigs later. It's a very satisfying feeling to know that I finally got it.

I also started learning chanter, which is what you learn before pipes.

~*~

Now onto silly things. I got accepted into the Oregon Trail game with Carmen Sandiego. Last night, her wagon was half-full and already looked amusing - she's with Barricade the Transformer and Thom Creed, a teenage superhero. Just that combination of three right there could lead to some very interesting things.

Now another got accepted. The Patapon Army. And the next application in the queue? Zekoi's baby Sasuke. I am already cracking up over here.

I have a feeling that this wagon might not exactly make it to Oregon. But they're going to have a very wild time for as far as they do get.

~*~

And Penbee reserved Sokka at Adstring. If I'm good with my time and Oregon!Carmen isn't too taxing, I'm going to have to pick an Avatar character too. Iroh's so similar to Maes, but I do miss playing him. Azula could be amazing fun.

Yes, seriously, this is me posting twice in two days. I'm planning on trying to remember to post more often and to look at my own flist more often. Yell at me if I slack off on it?

Tonight, after band practice, I'm working on my Carmen application for the Oregon Trail. If she goes well, I might consider Maes too. I kinda like that it lasts two months - I can do that, I think. That being said, if you've got any concrit for my Maes or Carmen, something that's off or weird, please, please let me know now before I stick them in a new game?

And now, for the much-delayed Metrocon report that is divided into sections for convenience, hee.

( The flight and subsequent road trip for Unohana )
( For Friday, I cosplayed Urahara Kisuke )
( For Saturday, I was Konishi from TWEWY )
( And Sunday I was Carmen Sandiego )

And that was my first Metrocon. So next year, the plan is the Masque AND the Rave, to do the Star Party, maybe to see the Fire Tournament, and hit more panels. I'll decide later on the chess match. I might give it another shot.

Yeah, the con report's a bit late... and the pictures will be even later, lol. Oh well. I tend to forget my personal journal.

The Transformers movie comes first. I'm not going to spoil anything, don't worry. I have to say, I was pleased with part of it, but one aspect of it really, really disappointed me.

Transformers was a children's cartoon. What they added in the first as far as sexual content goes was fine, it made it fit the stereotypical movie mold. It wasn't unexpected. But all they did in the second movie was ridiculous. Dogs humping all the time, everything about college being sexualized, the pants 'jokes,' the drugs? What the heck? Why? People brought their kids to see this movie because THEY grew up on it. Instead, a woman near us had to explain to her children that it was drugs in the bag, and at another point the group next to me was going "Don't go there, we know, you don't have to f---ing say it." And yet, the movie did say it. Over and over.

It was cheap. I will not buy this movie. And I won't be seeing the third in theatres if/when it comes out, unless I hear the makers grew up. My favorite character got a good moment in this. But I would be embarrassed showing this movie to guests, quite frankly. So it won't be on my shelf.

But there was fun to last night's outing anyways. The movie was decent despite the immaturity. And we went to the German place near my house for dinner, where we ran into Prince Hesperus of the Anime Fest Orlando RPG, lol. I have no clue what his real name might be.

Mm. I'm tired. But it's a stress tired, so a nap would be useless. It's RL stuff, and it'll get worse before it gets better. But it will eventually get better. The worst isn't sustainable for any period of time.

1. Your Middle Name:
2. Age:
3. Single or Taken:
4. Favorite Movie:
5. Favorite Song or Album:
6. Favorite Band/Artist:
7. Dirty or Clean:
8. Tattoos and/or Piercings:
9. Do we know each other outside of LJ?
10. What's your philosophy on life?
11. Is the bottle half-full or half-empty?
12. Would you keep a secret from me if you thought it was in my best interest?
13. What is your favorite memory of us?
14. What is your favorite guilty pleasure?
15. Tell me one odd/interesting fact about you:
16. You can have three wishes (for yourself, so forget all the 'world peace etc' malarky) - what are they?
17. Can we get together and make a cake?
18. Which country is your spiritual home?
19. What is your big weakness?
20. Do you think I'm a good person?
21. What was your best/favorite subject at school?
22. Describe your accent
23. If you could change anything about me, would you?
24. What do you wear to sleep?
25. Trousers or skirts?
26. Cigarettes or alcohol?
27. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together? (If you have no idea, just say something crazy, it'll entertain me!)
28. Will you repost this so i can fill it out for you?

Hey! Guess what!

Hurricane season starts today!

Wooho-- wait. That's not a good thing.

Oh well. Last season wasn't too bad. Sure, the lake flooded the seawall, the riverwalk, the street, and half the lawn, but the Fay herself wasn't too too bad.

Hee. We'll see what happens.

First, the quick summary that goes outside of the cut: Jacon was fun. It wasn’t my favorite con, that honor so far goes to AFO, but it may have been the most organized I’ve been to. Granted, I’ve only been to AFO twice and Megacon twice before this, but things seemed to move at a pretty good rate. The one delay I know about was the hotel’s fault, so, yeah.

I was Urahara Kisuke Friday and Carmen Sandiego Saturday. Plain clothes on Sunday for the win, hee.

( And now the part of the post that's very very very long! )

So the plan for Metro is:
Friday: Maes Hughes
Saturday: Urahara Kisuke
Sunday: Mitsuki Konishi or Kisuke encore.

And then for AFO I should have four to choose from since Tsunade will be in the mix as well. With Plushie!Slug.

Oh. My. Gosh.

Yes.

Yes.

YES.

I have a new favorite sci-fi movie. Yes, more favorite than Firefly.

Yeah, I got distracted again. Funny how Adstring tends to do that. :) I'm not dead, the Wolverine movie was highly disappointing, and I get to see Star Trek tomorrow.

Anyways, have a meme, that I'm stealing from all sorts of people: Give me a character or a pair of characters, and a one- or two-word prompt, and I'll see what I can do for you.

Things I'm feeling up to writing from: Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, Saiyuki, Star Trek, Babylon 5, or adstringendum.

Give it your best shot? :D