Avenger's Initiative - Month 1

So, as some of you may know back in October I won a month free at Curves. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned all this before (if not here then I KNOW I have on my Facebook), but long story short my parent's wrangled up enough money for me to get a membership. And I've been busting my ass since then trying to lose weight/get in better shape for a group cosplay. (I needn't explain it more than to point at the title of this blog post. lol)

In the spirit of oversharing (and making me feel like I'm actually keeping this thing up to date even when I'm not currently working on costumes), I figured I'd chart my progress each month here. The "months" will be decided by whenever Curves has me do the monthly measurements/weigh in, so updates won't be up until I get the print-out each month (which will be the visit after the measurements are done).

I admit I'm leaving weight off because honestly my weight makes me cringe, and I'd prefer to just post when it hits marks I'm happy with it hitting.  Oh, and Calories Burned starts off on October 12 because my first couple of workouts weren't on the Curves Smart program ergo there's no data for them.

October 8 - November 12

Beginning Measurements:

Bust - 43
Waist - 39
Abdomen - 43
Hip - 49.50
Thigh - 14.75
Arm (bicep) - 8.50
Body Fat % - 39.80

Calories burned:

10/12 - 258
10/15 - 327
10/17 - 345
10/19 - 346
10/22 - 357
10/24 - 359
10/26 - 385
10/29 - 368
10/31 - 375

11/5 - 385
11/7 - 354
11/9 - 358    
11/12 - 374

End Measurements:

Bust - 43
Waist - 39
Abdomen - 43
Hip - 48 (1.5 inches lost)
Thigh - 14 (.75 inches lost)
Arm - 17
Body Fat % - 39.30 (0.50% lost)

Event Report: Star Wars Celebration 6

I know, I know. I'm waaaay far behind in updating. But, I'm trying at least! *chuckle* This will mostly be the post for C6 itself; I'll probably do another one about the trip in general since there was a lot of fun stuff during that.

I have to admit, I did find it kind of amusing that the first time I'd been back in my birth state in probably about 21ish years (we left when I was 2 or 3. . I'm not sure which) happened to be on my birthday. I'll also say, I honestly do not want to go back. :/ I mean, I will because I still need to visit Disneyworld and Universal and pretty much every other tourist destination there that I haven't been to. And Celebration 7 in all likelihood. But omg the humidity is terrible (and the driver's aren't much better). I'm not just complaining because my glasses would fog up stepping outside, or because it was like stepping into a shower, but also because it most likely killed my camera. After day 2 or so it was starting to focus weird and since we've gotten back it's developed bad lines across photos.

That first day we mostly spent getting our stuff organized in the room and geeking out with our roommates. Second day was the start of the convention, and I did my usual recon in civilian clothes to see how things were laid out. (Plus I had Merc's booth duty.) It was kind of like a really weird scavenger hunt since I kept stopping random mandos to ask where our booth was, each one pointing in a direction where I'd end up stopping another and so on until I finally figured out where the booth was. lol Even though it was the first day and I was out of kit, I did bring my sexy new Night Owl helmet from Skirata Arms since I wanted to show it off before Saturday when I'd wear the entire kit. Ceric was awesome enough to have snagged me some birthday hats on his way to the convention, so my helmet spent the day on the Merc's table with it's swag on.

And I got to be all "pewpewpew!" in the speeder bike:

Spent the rest of the day wandering around looking at the legos and cars and Make a Wish Foundation helmets, and that night it was the Merc's Birthday Bash (5 years!). Love the swag we got (mugs, stickers, patches, bookmarks) and the food wasn't half bad. Though I'm pretty sure most of us ended up going out to the hotel convenience store to buy drinks 'cause $3 for a glass of soda that was almost all ice was not cool (neither was the $8 for a tiny martini glass of whatever they were mixing). Speeches were given, prizes and awards were handed out, and Jeremy Bulloch told Tom he was fired. lol Uloadus of Terentatek Clan (my guys ^_^) got the party started after all the presentation stuff by dragging people out on the dance floor. After the party ended quite a few of us invaded the pool and the hot tub; I can honestly say that's the first time I've been in a bathing suit since 8th grade. I felt awkward and have totally forgotten how to swim, but Miss Tori convinced me to go with her. I have to admit, I am very glad for friends who drag me to things sometimes.

Friday (ie, second day of con, third day in Orlando)


Started off the day by working at The Dark Empire's table even though I'd left my sith and sith recruitment scout at home. (Sadly with the weight I've gained I didn't want to wear either of them.) I did pull on my SRS sash at least, so I had that.

Even though my Early Crusader Beast Master mando wasn't approved (I had a moment of really stupid and forgot to make knee armor), I still pulled it on for a test troop on Friday. I have to say, it actually held up pretty well (I can't say the same about during the trip back. . .it's on my table with stuff to be repaired). I did some wandering up to the Droid Builder's room where I ran into a guy with a really awesome Endor Trooper costume. The only picture I got with him does not do his costume justice; the detail was fantastic. After that room Pere and I wandered back down to the main floor so I could get my picture with Roxy the Rancor, something that had pretty much been my goal since I saw the first posts about a life sized rancor being made for the con. (And really the biggest reason I did the test troop at all, otherwise I would have just left the costume at home.) I haven't got much more in the way of pictures that I took that day since Pere went off to some panels he wanted to see while I spent time wandering some more and posing for pictures for random con goers.

Saturday

For the record, I was up until probably about 5-6 am working on stuff to try to finish my purple kit. My purple stomach wraps weren't working so I ultimately just pulled on my beast master's red ones (they sort of work. . .well, at least enough that I don't know people would realize they were the wrong ones unless they knew I was making purple ones). The boot armor took the longest since I hadn't realized just how long it was going to take me to get the laces through the set up for the armor plus the lacing area itself. Long story short, I ended up missing the Merc's official member photo, but I got there in time to step in when they got everybody (official or not) into the shot, plus the females only photo. Most of this day was spent wandering around posing for pictures while I killed time until my 4 pm Honor Guard Duty at Jeremy Bulloch's table (of course I'm pretty sure I'm in a fair amount of people's photos of him and his table. . .lol). Pere was off at more panels so I've only got a couple of pics of my kit since I had to hand the camera off to others. I did find out I can kneel in this kit, it just popped one of the straps on my shin armor (which is honestly ok. . I was going to redo all the straps on the boot/shin armor anyway). All I needed was for my kit to last until after my guard duty, and it did. Now it's kind of tucked away where I can fix it up.

Sunday (last day of con)

Pere had planned on having his Royal Guard to wear at C6. He'd ordered a new helmet off ebay (his old one is a Don Post that he's fixing), but it got here too late for him to do all the correction work and painting on it before we left. So he tried to get the painting done while we were stopped in TN on our way down at my parent's house. That probably would have worked except the paint was still too tacky to put it in the car, so he left it for my mom to overnight down to us at the hotel with the thought that the paint would be fine. Unfortunately (either due to the thickness of the paint or to the humidity in TN), the paint wasn't cured enough, and when he opened it at the hotel the paint was too badly damaged to be usable. Thankfully Rubies had their new Royal Guard helmet for sale at their booth, and thankfully it's actually a pretty damn good helmet. I'm not so happy about the price. . . .but he really wanted his costume for his photo op with Ian McDiarmid. So he got that, and I ended up buying one of the crappy Anakin gloves and cutting the straps off so he'd have at least a glove to use. His actual glove didn't get sewn in time because the hotel carpet ate my sewing needle. -_- He got his photo and autograph though, plus he kept getting stopped for pictures as we were walking around.

While he was waiting in line to get his photo taken with McDiarmid, I wandered off and got Jeremy's autograph since I figured given this is the third time I've met him I should probably actually get it for once. Got both a picture autographed and one of the old convention exclusive Boba toys that Pere gave me autographed. After Pere got his stuff we just wandered among the booths (with mostly Pere buying stuff and me unsuccessfully looking for a nexxu toy) until convention close (which was waay too early in the day if you ask me).

No idea who the guy in the chair is; he just wanted Pere to pose with him for his picture. lol

 SWAG

 'Cause I like showing off.

Not so much swag as thing I had to buy because omg cute (AT-AT bag from Thinkgeek):

Lightsaber poster tube. Because why not?

Merc's C6 exclusive patches (Left - Volunteer patch, Right - Birthday bash patch):

Merc's exclusive C6 print by Brian (dude, I can never remember how to spell your last name):

And the R2-KT patches I picked up (one is the C6 one, the other is one of the St. Patrick's Day ones):

 

Recovering from the dreaded Con Crud

I know, I know. I haven't updated in ages. I spent a good chunk of time running around like a chicken with it's head off before Celebration 6 trying to finish up multiple costumes, then I was at C6 and stayed out there through D*Con.

D*Con was a bit of a last minute plan. I found out Richard Dean Anderson was going to be there, and Pere was awesome enough to get me a ticket for his autograph as a birthday present. We had been planning on heading down there on that Monday to get our badges for next year anyway. So it became a "head there on Sunday and get badges then plus hang out" plan instead.

I'll have pics and report stuff up for Celebration soonish (in theory). I've been pretty busy once we got back, too. (We drove out there and back; so I was without internet for a good chunk of time.) Had an event on Friday not too long after we got back, and I spent the weekend trying to get some of my stuff put away again. (The garage is still a mess.)

Right now though I'm going to take some pain meds for my head (stupid con crud has me coughing so much my head has started pounding) and make some soup.

And yell at my cat to stop chewing on the plastic bags. -_-

Event Report: Emerald City Comic Con 2012

Whew. Hectic last couple of days, but I'm finally able to take a little bit of time to get this written up.

So. ECCC 2012. It was awesome. Peregrinus and I were both Minions (the convention volunteers) and worked several hour shifts each day. Long story short, I ended up not bringing any of my own costumes since I didn't want to have to haul them over to the hotel then back over to the ferry only to get to wear them for a tiny amount of time. Probably for the best anyway since my feet were killing me just after day one from all the standing you do as a Minion.

Friday I only had a little bit of time after con open to hang out. Spent most of it hanging around in the skybridge since I needed to meet up with a Merc recruit so he could try on my commando helmet to see how the fit would be on him if he bought one. Minion shift was mostly spent working the door to the Exhibitor's Hall helping people if they had direction related questions. I'm pretty sure I did something for a little bit after that but can't really recall what. I had about 15 minutes after my shift ended to run through the vendors, and luckily I ran into a couple of Merc's recruits, one of which was able to direct me to the booth that had some Jango Pez dispensers still (I only ever had the Boba so I got Jango to go with my Mando toy collection). Pere and I spent some of that night after the con up at the Ltd. Art Gallery for their "Mint Condition" comic con art show (also, their mixed drinks were kinda awesome. . .fufu berry Jones soda with vodka ftw).

Saturday I spent about 30 minutes in Adam Baldwin's line to snag his autograph (this also meant I had to spend 30 minutes listening to the guy behind me explain his My Little Pony/Thundercats fan fiction to somebody else). But, hey, I've only been waiting to get his autograph since D*Con 2008. So, that completed my trifecta of Firefly/Serenity autographs that I absolutely had to have (got Fillion's and Tudyk's at D*Con '08). If I'd had the money I would have gotten Summer Glau's, but, alas, no monies for that. Pere and I hoped into Christopher Judge's line so I could get his autograph for my brother, and Pere gave him a box of Jaffa Cakes he found at Central (we were in the store and he picked them up and started laughing; I was pretty much like "you're bringing those to ECCC for Christopher Judge, aren't you?"). We spent the last little bit before our Minion shift started going through some of the dealer's and the artist's tables. Met up with one of the local artists we'd actually first met at D*Con '11 then stopped by the Girl Genius table so Jonah could inquire about getting the rest of their signatures on the newest Volume One omnibus, and I went ahead and snagged their adorable little steampunk heart pin. Because I've been wanting it since it came out. :D Minion shift I spent the first half of standing up at registration directing people, then I got to go work the line control for both one of the DC artist's booths then over at the Image booth for Kirkman's autographing session. I would like to take this time to strongly suggest if you don't want to have your fellow con-goers murder you, don't bring every single issue of a comic ever made plus all your friend's copies to have signed. He singed stuff fast, but I still had to listen to the other people in line start complaining every time somebody got up there with a ton of stuff.

Saturday night we had fun at dinner down in the Elephant & Castle with some of the 501st and a couple of the other TK Merc's clan members. The fish and chips there is awesome, btw. Since Thaxos was rooming with us, we also spent that night in the room making the rest listen to the podcast. XD

For the record, I'm pretty sure none of us got much in the way of sleep. We kept saying we should go to bed then always ended up staying awake until around 3 am talking. On the bright side, I have a potential romance novel title out of it all. "Between the calves of two men." I think it'd be a best seller. lmao

Anyway, with Sunday as the last day we ran over to check out the gaming section (I got my brother a nifty Drizzt print) then were back to work as Minions. I got a chance to work panel entry, which wasn't too bad actually. Though the artist for the first panel ended up canceling and it sort of turned into a Minion Q&A. XD After that I was put on line duty up in the voice actor's section. For the record, I pretty much felt like a horrible person because I was the line cap for a My Little Pony actress' line and had to turn away a crying little girl. :/ But other than that it wasn't too bad. Though I am still sad I missed Wil Wheaton since I got down to the celebrity room a little too late.

So, in parting, some of the few pictures I managed to take while running around like a chicken with its head cut off:

Food Time: Crab Nachos

These are pretty tasty and cheap for those of us who sometimes get seafood cravings but can't afford a lot. ($2 a can for crab meat from Walmart if you buy their brand, so, yeah, just because it's seafood doesn't mean you need to spend a lot on it.)

Normally my family uses a Mexican cheese blend or a queso cheese on the nachos, but I opted to try Italian cheese blend on my latest ones. It also works really well.

Oven - 400

1 can crab meat
Sour cream (I like using Darigold's Mexican style sour cream)
Tortilla chips (I usually opt for a big bag of On of the Border chips since they last me for lots of meals)
1 bag shredded cheese (I suggest either a non-spicy Mexican blend, a simple queso, or an Italian blend)

- Arrange chips on baking trays; I highly recommend putting down parchment paper under the chips since it will help cut down clean up time. Trying to clean potentially burned cheese off the baking tray is not so fun.
- Put about half a spoonful of sour cream on each chip, spreading the dollop out a little.
- Place small amount of crab on top of the sour cream (how much is up to you, I usually put just enough to cover the sour cream but not much more)
- Sprinkle cheese over chips
- Bake for roughly 5 minutes. I tend to keep an eye on them and just remove them when the cheese is melted on the chips themselves.

Crafty: Steampunk inspired jewelry box

So, as some of you may know I love the Steampunk aesthetic. I fully admit it's taken me a lot longer than I wanted to get my steampunk costumes finished (because I keep changing my mind lol), but I do fiddle around with small things here and there.

I've been wanting something else to hold my jewelry in rather than the book box that it's all been in, at least until I get my jewelry box from home. After keeping my eye out at Goodwill for options, I stumbled upon this box (for $1.25):

It's handy enough to keep what little jewelry I have in, but it was definitely not the colors I wanted lol. So I set about making it a bit more like something I'd want using what I had on hand. First step was painting a gloss black over the outside. It took a lot of coats, and the embossed parts were still kind of visible if you tilted it right. Next I sponged on a metallic ruby paint I had:

Then sponged the antique gold I had on over that (since I've got a ton of that stuff and have no need for it since I sold my slave leia):

The final steps involved gluing some old gears I had made up for other outfits on top, plus one of the little acrylic gems I had for my twi'lek's old headband. I got some flowers from the dollar store and cut the flower parts off to glue them on top since I felt it was a bit lacking with just the gears and gem. So, here are some final series of pictures:

I don't have any pictures of the inside, but I went more punk and less steam for that. lol Put down some Pactra racing pink then sponged some black on over that. But, it's a nice box for my stuff for now, and I'm pretty happy with how it came out.

Food Time: (The Best) Chocolate Chip Cookies

I do not feel any shame in calling these the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever had. Seriously, they are that good. Over the years I've tried a good many number of recipes trying to find one that was just right. According to the recipe book I got this recipe out of these are supposedly the Mrs. Field's recipe cookies. I can't vouch for that, nor can I even say if they actually taste like Mrs. Field's cookies. They are, however, awesome.

Oven: 350

1 cup softened butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups flour
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 package Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chips

- cream together the butter, sugars, egg and vanilla
- sift together flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder
- combine the wet and dry ingredients then mix in the chocolate chips
- spoon the dough onto a prepared baking sheet (I use one covered with parchment paper to cut down on the mess)
- bake for 9 minutes (yes, exactly 9 minutes even if they don't look cooked; as long as you didn't heap the dough too much they will be cooked)

These come out wonderfully crispy on the edges and deliciously soft in the middle.

Random life related mutterings

I didn't really want to clog up my costume progress post with this stuff, so it gets it's own post. (Although I was almost tempted to wait a couple of days before posting just so that way I wouldn't be doing a flood of posts all on one day. XD)

So, I finally had my interview for the D20 Girls and got my contract in. I am, however, rather scrambling to figure out what outfits to use since I had intended to have my cherry print halter dress made by now but had to put it off due to the usual issue, money. I've got plenty of everyday/casual wear, and I might be able to scrounge up something business and costume (I say might for costume only because I'm really not sure which costume I want to use) but I am at a complete loss for "eyecandy." And I really want an eyecandy outfit dammit. So I've been trying and trying to find something to use that is also within my budget but to no avail. I definitely want to get the pics done soon, even if my hair will by stupid for them since I'm not getting it cut again until closer to ECCC.

Which brings me to ECCC. I am pretty psyched about it since Adam Baldwin hasn't cancelled yet lol (anybody who has ever hoped to meet him at D*Con, like me, will get it). I just need his to finish my collection of the major 3 autographs I want from Firefly actors (already have Nathan's and Alan's). I may stop at Wil Wheaton's table again in armor since I know Pere has some more stuff he wants to get Wil to sign. Also, there's a super special awesome thing happening that is planned to happen there that I can't talk about yet other than to say there's a super special awesome thing. Trust me, I will be talking about it later lol. Pere and I went ahead and got a hotel room at the Red Lion since he'll have some more money from some jobs with his dad by then, and it saves us having to go back and forth on the ferry with our costumes every single day. We're also both working as official volunteers for the convention, so that should be fun or interesting at least.

After ECCC we're going back home for a week to visit my parents and go up to St. Louis with them to see the Star Trek Exhibition at the science center (also, I miss the zoo and art museum there so we're definitely visiting those). The break will be a much welcome moment for my brain to destress some like it did while I was there after D*Con.

Things will settle back into a more normal pattern after that with us working where/when we can, organizing donations for the non-profit, and generally killing time until Celebration 6. We keep hoping we'll have some sort of paycheck from the non-profit by then, but nobody really knows. Right now we're waiting on the IRS to give us a tax ID number so we can actually start collection donations. The Board of Directors still has to be sorted completely out, because, while some of us have been placed there are more people needed for other spots. At least the business plan is finished lol. At some point during the summer we hope to be moving back into the carriage house since, in theory, the people there now are moving out. So we should be able to get my stuff out of storage and be able to have people over to visit (in small numbers since it's more like a small one bedroom apartment only with no additional parking space so maybe one additional car can fit here otherwise we have to pick people up ourselves). I'm kind of looking forward to that since I really miss having my stuff not in storage, and frankly really hate having my parent's have to pay for that on top of everything else. (I always sort of have a mini panic attack whenever I go that I'm going to open the storage unit to find all my stuff gone.)

I guess that's most of the "real life" stuff for now. Most days are the same old same old. lol I hope, after ECCC and the April trip, that I'm able to get more costuming stuff out of the way.

Costume progress!

I swear I really have been doing costume work. I've also been really bad and kept lacking the motivation to update here, in large part because I haven't gotten as much work done as I really feel like I should have. Though scrolling back through my old posts I realize that I was a LOT further behind in updating here than I thought. My bad guys.

So, for the Early Crusader Beast Master. The large horns have been attached to the helmet, and I'm looking at some different ideas for the smaller horns and bone ridges (because I suck at sculpting). It is more progressed than the picture I have because I was trying to hold off on another picture until I had at least started the bone ridges and small horns.

I've gotten a new patchwork kama done for this one, which involved a small addition to the old kama half plus the new longer kama half. (A loin cloth has also been finished and all I need to do is attach the velcro so I can pull it all on and off as one unit.) It still need some weathering, but is assembled other than that. The new capelet I have no pictures of since I'm trying out the idea of having a fur collar on it but haven't gotten out to Joanns yet to buy the faux fur I need (also, holy crap it's $15 a yard so I need to really figure out just how small of an amount I can get away with).

I've gotten some of the misc. decorative baubles partially finished. The beads are going on more feather/bead danglies either for the belt or for the spear, but I need more shell/bone/wood beads to finish assembling them. I repainted an old resin claw since I'm looking at making that part of some sort of collar decoration. The beads and the claw have all been repainted with nail polish, a trick I learned from some over on the Twi'lek Celebration forums because it's not even remotely something I would have thought to do myself. (The round beads were painted with a deep metallic blue; the long beads were split between a mother of pearl and an opalescent purple/pink; the claw with black though the picture is before it was completely painted.)

I've spent a lot of time searching for boots for this version of the costume. The original version used black suede wedge heeled boots, which a lot of people apparently never noticed were wedge heeled until somebody asked about it. lol So, because I like the bit of extra height it gives me, I was trying to find some brown wedge heels that would work for this version (since I'm not doing the black undersuit like the original had). What I found instead, were these awesome boots at Goodwill:

Yeah, those are pretty much some internal wedge heeled leather boots. They are awesome. I seam ripped about in inch down the back of the calf of the boots so I could actually pull them all the way up (plus have them on over pants) so that part will be hidden with some armor on the back of the leg in addition to the shin armor. Because I didn't want white boots with the costume (especially not white boost with a random red stain on them) I looked into dying vs painting them and was talking into painting them by the guy I spoke with at MacPherson Leather. I have to say, I love this Angelus leather paint. The boots look 10 times better now, and I haven't even gotten around to the whole "armoring them up" part yet. :D

So, that's most of what I've been working on for costumes lately. I've made some half hearted attempts at starting the work on Kora's revamp, but a lot of my costume work is getting put on hold until after ECCC since I'll need to see how much money I'll have left that I can justify spending on costume parts. I've also been working on some scrap fabric card/dice/whatever bags that I'm now selling and have some more ideas for things to sell soon here. More bags will be up in a week or so once I get some more trim and ribbon from Joanns. Stuff for sale is currently only listed on my Bonanza page since I don't have the money to spare for an Etsy store anymore: http://www.bonanza.com/booths/Barghest1031

Event Report: "The Phantom Menace" 3D Premiere

Small event but worth noting anyway.

Kibiri and I hit up the Episode One 3D premiere at the Pacific Place AMC theater here in Seattle. Peregrinus was with us, but the outfit he was been sewing was just barely not finished in time (seriously, if he had had a couple more hours it would have been done >_<). So guess that just means he'll have to premiere it at ECCC.

Kibiri was there as THE Jodo Kast, and I just went in my force user's smuggler outfit (which will eventually just be a plain old smuggler but I didn't want to rush finishing the chest box or helmet). We had a lot of fun posing for pictures with other patrons and theater staff, plus talking with the other hardcore nerds who were there. Kibiri also had the crowning moment of actually having somebody see his costume and NOT say "Hey, Boba Fett" but instead go "Jodo Kast!?!" lol

Event Report: Ltd. Art Gallery Star Wars Exhibit Close and "Hughes the Force" Screening

Sadly, that's the only picture I have of the event. I was in such a rush to get all of my costume together and make it to the ferry on time that I completely spaced and forgot to grab my camera. So we had to make do with an Iphone. lol

Anyway, on Jan. 28 the Ltd. Art Gallery had the closing reception for it's Star Wars exhibit and had a screening of the fan film "Hughes the Force." This was Terentatek Clan's first real troop as a group, which was kinda awesome.

For those who haven't seen the fan film, you need to. I'm normally pretty picky about my fan films, but I loved this one, especially with it's references to other movies. Despite some technical difficulties, I'm pretty sure the screening was a hit with everybody present. I sadly had to dekit and leave shortly after that so I didn't have any time to spend talking with the creators or the actors, but they seemed nice. (My excuse - my hip had been acting up really bad the night before, so much so that I was worried about making it. It managed to last most of the night but was killing me by the time the movie started.)

Yes, I know this is a really short and kind of sparse report, but there's usually less to talk about when it's small things (no matter how much I enjoy them) than when it's conventions.

It's New Year's Eve Revolutionizing Time!

Well. Not quite. It's well past New Year's Eve, but I do so love Red vs Blue and have been wanting to quote that for a while now. This seemed like a good chance.

I think my biggest goal this year (aside from my usual job hunting which has just sort of become background noise for me it's been going on for so long) is to drop about 40-50 lbs by the end of the year. Not really looking to tone right now (though that would come in time if I had the money to pursue all the activities I used to do), just drop the fat I've gained. Would really like to lose about half that by Celebration 6 so I can look awesome in a mystery costume (no, not the ISB. . .that's long since no longer my mystery costume). I know it can be done; whether or not I achieve it is something else entirely.

I sort of ended this year researching another costume I've wanted to do for a while. The Flame Handmaiden from Episode One. I was curious to see if I could get it done in time for the 3D premiere. The good news is, I could. The bad news is, I could if I had several hundred dollar to throw away in about a months time. :/ The cheapest option for fabric (that looks good, not the crushed stuff that I've seen some use as a cheap way to do it. . .sorry, but I don't think it looks good at all) is about $17 a yard. And I'd need enough to make that whole gown. Plus two different colors of dye since I have to do the yellow fade then the orange fade. That's not even touching the red sash and undershirt/hood. So, it's still on my list, but is definitely not something that is going to get done before the 3D premiere. (On the bright side, I found some shoes that I think will work at Goodwill already.)

Costume work has been very sporadic. I fully admit I've had a hard time getting motivated as of late; I've been far more motivated to clean and sort my stuff (which I did get accomplished, mostly). Plus SWTOR came out, so I've been trying out all the classes. Have to say, I'm really enjoying it so far. It's enough like WoW that it's easy for me to pick up, but enough not like WoW that I can enjoy it without going "man. . this is like WoW" all the time. There are definitely some glitches still, though I'm lucky that all I've encountered are some cinematic glitches. I also keep meaning to get on my alts on other servers and level them for the guilds there, but without fail each time I get ready to get on those servers are either full or heavy. (This internet is tricky enough that I don't trust it on "heavy" servers.)

So, that's pretty much it for the end of the year. I promise I'll try better to keep things updated as we go into the new year.