I so totally rock.  Really.  I do.

I decided on a whim to take Charlotte up to Toronto to see a concert.  Beachfest, a huge free concert event that happens every Labor Day, sponsored by a local Toronto radio station.  It's fun, but it's a little inaccessible because they hold it at a city waterfront beach park that's on the Metro line and really doesn't have any parking.  So, I went online and found us a hotel room for the night that was within walking distance of Sunnyside Park.  It was a little pricey (because it was a Sheraton right on the waterfront) but I figured it'd be a fun treat.



So, now Charlotte's home and today was her first day back at school.  The real world closes back in.  Soon she'll be sick of me asking her if her homework is done, and is she ready for that test, and clean your room already.  But for now I'm the best mom in the world.  ;-)   That's good enough for me.


Oh!  And!  My mom gave me an early birthday present...a Dyson vacuum cleaner!  OMG I've always wanted one...my Kirby is an antique and I vacuum every day, sometimes twice, because of the dog and the cat.  Anyway I've been sucking hair up all over my house all day and playing with the attachments and it is SO NEAT.  It doesn't smell like dust at all when I use it and it's so easy to empty...no more bags!  And the hepa filter totally does the job.  Usually I sneeze my ass off when I vacuum but not with the Dyson!  That thing is made of awesome.  Am I getting old because I plotz over vacuums?  Ah heck, I don't care.  It's very very cool.   :-)

And the Chinese Lantern Festival has completely tweaked my dragon plaque idea muse yet again...sketches are happening at an incredible rate!  I'll share soon.
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I just went on the BUGGIEST bike ride ever. SO many bugs. It was like an infestation of fruit flies or something, or maybe they were migrating? 80 degrees with 85% humidity and no wind, so every one of those suckers were sticking to me 'cause I was sticky!! A couple hit the jackpot and went up my nose, and I think a handful of them were camping out in my sport bra...at least that's what I thought when I went to take my shower. Eww! Grr! Anyway, it was gross.

So I'm sitting here trying to recover, eating hommus and pita chips. I'll pay later, 'cause garlic does bad things to my body, but for right now all things are good and crunchy and bug-free. *sigh*

My sister and her boyfriend flew back to Daytona Beach today. Just in time for a hurricane, maybe! What luck. Anyway, like I've said before, she and I have a deep-seated love of all things badly translated and Asian. In the past I've sent these things to her, among other stuff:


Oh, too funny.  :-)

And!  I'd better share this fanart while it's still topical...before Takahashi kills/resurrects anyone else or something like that.  It's still in my sketchbook (note the spiral binder) so you KNOW it's fresh!

Poor Rin!  Waaah!   Sess broke his little girl!

That's enough randomness for one day.  My leather finally came yesterday and I have no excuse for not working (except for my own exquisite sense of ennui)...I'm such a malcontent! 

Oh!   And [profile] moko_moko is in town this week!  We'll be getting together for lunch, hopefully (I already know where to take her...fun little microbrewery/bistro.  She's gonna love it!!). 


Well!  I have a new futon couch/bed.  The sales lady talked me into an upgrade so it's the super-delux extra-thick nicest one!  The kind boys from City Mattress delivered it yesterday.  It's shiny.  Unfortunately it's also black...and my cat loves it.  Break out the pet-hair-tape-roller-thingy, sez I.

Because everything in this house is just an elaborate cat-toy.  I should know that by now.

When I was away at Pennsic I got a chance to catch up with friends.  It was SO nice...exactly what I was craving.  Greg couldn't stay with me the whole week, and I thought I'd be terribly alone, but I had friends with me every minute and it was really nice!  Also, a pleasant surprise:  I'm not socially inept!  Apparently!  Hmm!  Everyone kept telling me how much fun they were having, and how glad they were that my merchant space was a pleasant oasis of friendly normal in a sea of goofy.  It went right to my head. 

So I'm making an effort to be friendlier on a daily basis, instead of just once a year.  So far it's going very well.

Yesterday Char and I went back to that long lovely trail in Canada (I get a secret kick out of producing the passports at the border...because the border guards on the US side can be real pills but there is no argument when the little blue books come out.  "The Power of PASSPORTS compell you!!").  We went a lot further than we usually go, and my legs are sort of killing me today.  We're going to do it again today though, because summer vacation will soon be over and these half-day bike trips will only be a weekend thing once school starts.

My sister is in town but I've only seen her once.  She's very busy.  :-(

I'm working on a Sess + Rin,Naraku + Kanna piece of fanart.  The IY manga dictates that I must hurry, as poor little Rin may be going the way of the dodo soon (oh but I really hope not!!).  I'm arranging them in a yin/yang kind of pose, with the guys' hair being the dark and light fields and the little girls' faces being the contrasting color "dots"...can you see it?  I have to draw it so it makes sense, probably.

And that's all I've got.  Thunderstorms today maybe, I hope.

Busy busy!  First of all, I've been working tonight on the fish-mask idea [profile] golden_meliades gave me *pats self on back for not having to look up exact spelling of "meliades"*, which it turns out is a VERY GOOD and fun idea!  I have two designs; one with koi and one with male betta (Siamese fighting fish).  The bettas were easy because I have some of those.  No shortage of models there.  :-)  The koi though...those were something I wanted to research.  As an artist I find that it's one thing to think you know what something looks like, and an entirely different thing to know  what it looks like.  



*pouts*



Yeah!  Aside from stupid tv and various Middle East woes,  not much else penetrates my shell of indifference these days.  I took a lovely ride along the banks of the Niagara River with Char yesterday.  Really, a VERY neat bike trail that we have hardly ever used (largely because one has to cross the border...which these days involves showing a passport and getting quizzed by sceptical-looking border agents...yuk).  We'll have to start making that a regular trip though, because PRETTY.  Everything's just greener and lovelier and nicer-looking from the Canadian shore.

Back to work!  When in doubt, make stuff.  That's MY motto.
 

merimask: (Default)
( Jul. 20th, 2006 03:52 am)
Ok...I REALLY want to share pictures of my very cool new designs...but I CAN'T because my husband has neglected to load my pics!  *foot tapping impatiently*   I don't dare try it myself because he has some kind of weird system...I've even tried to learn by watching him do it but he just seems to randomly click things as FAST as he can and I don't know what the hell he does.  

Grr...

So instead I'll tell you about going to Canal Days with my daughter and her friend yesterday.  We played a few games of chance, (which I am secretly addicted to but you never heard it from me!).  We played the coolest carny game ever...mouse roulette!  It was so WEIRD.  There was a central turntable that looked like a roulette wheel but horizontal.  The wedges, instead of being red and black with numbers, had colorful, innocuous pictures of watermelons or rainbows...you get the idea.  It had plexiglas all around the outside of the wheel and holes at the end of each wedge.  We all placed quarter bets on the table...you could pick symbols that corresponded to the ones on the wheel.  The barker spun it (not too fast, just enough to turn it slowly) and lifted up a lid in the center and out runs a little brown mouse!   The mouse sniffs around and eventually dives into a hole, and someone (sometimes a few people) wins a prize!  Then the barker pulls a drawer out, snags the mouse and the whole thing starts again.  The mice got rotated out every few spins, so it didn't seem particularly cruel, and we had fun cheering for the mousie to pick our symbols.  I only blew five bucks there and Char's friend actually won once, so it was all good.

We also went on a few fair rides.  I LOVE Tilt-A-Whirl...it's just my favorite little spinny ride.  The carny folks they hired to run Canal Fest this year had really nice, well kept, liberally greased rides.  I did not take this into account.  I was spun within an inch of my life.  Char and her friend in the next car over, were hysterically laughing at me because every time my car flashed past them I was pressed firmly against the back of it screaming "OH CRAP MAKE IT STOP!!!".  Apparently that's pretty funny.  I needed help getting off...couldn't walk straight for about a half-hour.  But you know, I secretly loved that too.  :-)

Of course there was funnel cake.  The only thing better than fresh funnel cake is fresh funnel cake sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.  Oh my, yes.

Anyway it was a good time even though I felt like the carny folks had taken me by the ankles and given me a good shaking, so as to dislodge every last cent I had on my person.  

There is something fundamentally hilarious about allowing vermin to determine your gambling success or failure.  I say, one more election like the last two and we should permanently switch to a mouse-generated voting system.  Couldn't possibly be more irritating (or less random) than the currently accepted way of getting the job done. 
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Finally!  I'm ready to do my epic Costa Rica entry.  I'm sort of dreading this...especially with the new picture hosting thingy and all.  *fears change AND technology...so, is terrorized twice over*

Anyhoo!  Costa Rica!  It's the skinny part of Central America.  It connects North America to South America like a little third world balloon string.  My sister-in-law, Marya, kind of fell in love with it, so guess where 60 members of family and friends had to go for Marya's wedding?  Yep.  Costa Rica.

This is what I saw from my balcony, every day.  Jungle and Pacific ocean.  It was really easy to get used to.  The breakers started oh, about a MILE from the shore.  Which meant there was no soft "plash, ebb, plash" but a big freaking ocean roar that sounded like a jet engine.  It was heavenly!

That's just a teaser.   Here's my story.


Oh!  And "Pura Vida" is something just EVERYONE says in Costa Rica.  It means "The pure life".
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Ahh, I'm bad.  Bad bad LJ user, bad LJ friend.  Just plain bad.  I've been busy working and recovering from my trip and filling surprise HUGE orders...  Too freakin' busy to update or be entertaining in any way, shape, or form.  My bad.  

I have yet to load my Costa Rica pictures because I suspect I'm going to finally have to break down and upgrade my photobucket membership to an actual ~paying~ membership.  Likewise for LJ.  The days of cheapo freebies are drawing to a close for me...I apparently have too much to say (and too many pictures to show) to continue on in this manner.  *shrug*

The weather here is intense and freaky.  Not unlike Costa Rica, we've been getting some fast moving thunderstorms that pop up in the afternoon heat and they're playing havoc with my evening bike rides.  I found myself racing home last night in a bit of a panic, with one eye on the sky as it went all Steven Spielberg-y on me (you know...the kind of black cloud alien invasions are launched from all the time.  Just check out Close Encounters Of The Third Kind or War Of The Worlds and you'll see what I mean).  This was completely understandable as there was a TORNADO here on Friday.  An actual tornado.  !!   Last time that happened was 1987.  It flipped a truck over on the thruway and it tore some roofs off...nothing too major.  But it DID freak everyone out and the local news was all over it for hours and hours.  You'd think Jesus had landed on the thruway, the way everyone was going on and on.   It was kind of sweet.  Stuff like that makes me love Buffalo.  We have it good here in many ways.

In spite of the occasional boomy noises coming from the sky, I've been really productive!  Usually, storms make me go all dreamy and I sit and stare out the window for hours and watch the light show.  I got more than my fill of "wrath of god" thunderstorms on vacation, however, so I'm just workin' right through all the distractions.  Doing some really good stuff...ambitious things.  I'll put pics up when I pay for the right to have more than a hundred pics on photobucket.  :-)

Back to work!

Edit:  Doh!  I'm such a monkey I forgot to mention the ONE thing I really wanted to talk about...   Char and I went to the free concert downtown on Thursday (Buffalo's free concert series, Thursday In the Square) and saw The Trews and 54/40.  The Trews were AWESOME and really tore the place up.  I have their newest import CD and it was fun knowing how cool they were even before they started playing (everyone was blown away...no one really knew who they were except for myself, Charlotte, and the Canadians).  54/40 is OLD and they made me feel old.  I remember when "Baby Ran" came out and CFNY was playing it all the time...turns out that was twenty years ago!  I told this to my sister on the phone today and she screamed "WHAT??!" at me...apparently she's old too.  It comes as a terrible shock to us both.
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merimask: (Default)
( Jun. 12th, 2006 01:01 am)
I'm feeling much better now.  Much, much better.  Today was the first time in a week that I actually felt well enough to go for on of my bike rides.  I picked a short-ish trail (seven miles round trip) but I probably would have been fine on a longer trail because I hardly got heated up.   Better safe than sorry.  *shrug*




Bad dog!  )

*sigh*  Back to work!
Oh boy...not much to say that won't sound all "poor me"...

Poor me. )
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First things first... I know I'm jumping the gun here but I want to send a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to rumdiculous, who is a sweetheart and deserves to have nice things happen to her all day on Sunday. :-) (I'm makin' something extra-special for you...it'll be a bit late but it's coming soon! Shock and awe, baby.)

*ahem*

I FINALLY got around to loading the pictures from my trip to Vegas last weekend. Damn, they're pretty. :-) Makes me want to shove mini marshmallows into my Nikon Coolpix 5200 ('cept, that probably would be a bad thing to do).

So, pictures. I'll try to keep the exposition to a minimum, here. )

Wahh! I need to get back there as soon as possible. All the bright sunlight and family love was good for my soul. :-)
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Tonight, I'm thinking about Scrabble. I love that game. It's a social equalizer, you know? Every time I get a little full of myself I play a good game of Scrabble with my husband, and it either validates my opinion of myself or reminds me why I love him so (he's a very clever hominid).

Fun personal Scrabble facts:

We kick ass. Our combined scores often top 800. If I score less than 320 I feel like an illiterate failure.

Greg usually beats me by about twenty points...usually. He's twenty smarter than me.

There are "Q" words that don't need a "U" to follow, like "qaid" and "qanat". Tonight Greg used "qindar" and it made me a little horny.

Once, I was so befrazzled while playing Scrabble (because I was losing, I suspect) that I forgot the word for "dictionary" and asked Greg to "Hand me that...cucumber.". So now we call all dictionaries Cucumbers. It hurts.

The highest score I ever got was 497. It was like some kind of holy miracle. We left the board up for a little while, so we could revisit the power and the glory. It remains unbeaten by either of us.

Wa, te, po, mo, and ni are not legal Scrabble words. Bo, jo, mi, fa, and et are. Go figure.


Tonight's word, by the way, is "glyph". It's worth a ton of points!
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MUAHAAHAA! It lives!
Also... Gotta have a blackmail pic of the husband playing with the dog. All the cool people are doing it. :-) See? I told you he has long stoopid pretty hair.

Public humiliation is fun! Eh, Greg?

Oh, I noticed that for some perverse reason my picture of Sango failed to load properly when I did my last entry. Which was especially cruel since I mentioned spandex and all... :::shrugs::: Anyway hopefully this time you can see her. SANGO!

And! Mild Twelve Kingdoms spoilage... )
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Hey.  Back from I-Con (which was hugely successful...but more on that later).  Just a quick update and a couple of cute pics from Char's B-day last week.  She got SO much cool swag from my trip to I-Con too (Gravitation music cds, anime plushies, Evangelion pvc figures, FMA tee shirt, etc...), the kid is one spoiled fledgling teenager.  Anyway, this is the really cool cake I got her...


(That's an awful picture of it...but you get the idea).  There was not ONE scrap of it left when I got home...not one.  Which is too bad because it was the yummiest cake ever.  Here she is, goofing off, sniffing the cake in question.

She also got DVDs of "Howls Moving Castle" and "Millenium Actress" and a $100 gift certificate for Hollister (I freaking hate that store and their fakey-overpriced-surfer-girls-gone-wild clothing line...but part of having a teen is respecting their sense of fashion and personal taste, and she covets those damn trendy clothes :::shrug:::).

Busy busy...I just uploaded my pics from I-Con (I have a couple dozen really fun cosplay pics to share...everyone looked SO cute!), but that entry will have to wait as I MUST get to the bank and deposit mo' money.

I kicked ass, by the way.  ;-)
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Well, I'm a bit unhappy with myself, since I failed to re-stock effectively after last week's show.  I'm woefully underprepared for I-Con this weekend.  Still, I'm going there with two new Anubis masks...

...so that's something.  No belts or headbands to speak of, whatsoever.  Ren-faire-type costuming stuff usually does pretty well, so I shot myself in the foot, there.

On the other hand, every time I have to make utilitarian crap I feel like a total sell-out...so at least THIS show is pure art, baby.  If you don't need it, I've got it.  Woo!

In other news my daughter is thirteen today...I'm officially the mom of a (gasp) teenager!  Eeek!  To commemorate the event, I plan to surprise her by cleaning her room.  She won't mind, since as a fledgling teen she has nothing to hide from me yet.  Also, it NEEDS to be done since her room looks like someone "tossed" it looking for the secret files or something...not one thing is on a shelf or in a drawer, it's strewn across the floor like some TV show crime scene.  :::sigh:::  

I'm not allowed to get angry about it, since it's her birthday and all.  :-)

I ordered the COOLEST CAKE EVER!!!  for her from "The Dessert Deli", the same place that made my wedding cake.  It's little and round and blue with big sculpted vanilla frosting daisies all over it, and says "Happy 13th, Charlotte!"  Golden cake with chocolate buttercream frosting layers and vanilla buttercream on top...just like the wedding cake (but smaller).  Char's going to flip when she sees it.  I'll have to take pictures, since this place makes AMAZING cakes that are edible works of art.  I usually make all the birthday cakes in my family (since I'm pretty darn good at it if I do say so myself) but I thought "lucky 13" deserved something truly spectacular.

The monkey comment, by the way, is based on something my husband said the other day.  I noticed he was driving with a singularly blank expression...
Me:  "What are you thinking?  You...look funny."
Him:  *startled*  "Oh, I was just zoning...taking a nap."
Me: "...While you're driving?  Isn't that terribly unsafe?"
Him:  "It's okay.  My monkey knows the way home."

He went on to explain that his "monkey" is his hind brain...when all higher thought functions shut off and you find yourself on auto-pilot, that's just your monkey taking over. 

This is why I still love him.  Well, that and the long pretty hair.  :-)

I'm about to be terribly busy, what with road trips and goofy-ass sci-fi/fantasy conventions (Mark Singer will be there!  From "Beastmaster"  Woo!!  And George Takai (Sulu from Star Trek)!!  Live long and prosper!  And Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark (she must be, like, 65)!! It's geektastic!) ...and whatnot.  Wish me luck! 
merimask: (Default)
( Mar. 6th, 2006 01:23 am)
Today was Not A Bad Day. That's pretty good.

I went for a long walk in a beautiful field with my daughter and my dog. My daughter and I laughed a lot, and my dog ran around like a wild thing (which is a wonderful thing to behold). I let him off lead and he didn't run away too far, always looked back at me for instructions if he raced more than 100 yards away or so, came back every time I called, and sat nicely when I put the leash back on. That equals phenomenally obedient behavior, in husky terms. I got a sunburn on my face...it's kind of cute.

My husband spent the entire weekend doing very little and wearing various pajama pants. We refer to these as "comfy pants" or more frequently "jams". We like to play word games, and I like to tease him about his jams. This led to one of my all-time BEST play on words.
Me: "You've been Jamtastic all weekend."
Him: "Jamtacular."
Me: "Jamriffic."
Him: "Jama-lama-ding-dong."
Me: "Jamular."
Him: "Jamsome."
Me: "Jammityville Horror."
*Both of us die*

John Stewart did a pretty good job hosting the Oscars. He looked awesome in his very nice tux, his jokes were okay (not as edgy as usual, but then it wasn't exactly cable tv either), and he didn't mess up even once. Me likey.

My word this week, the one lodged in my head, is "perfidy". Another fun noun, means a deliberate breach of faith. Perfidy. It doesn't sound like what it means.
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merimask: (Default)
( Feb. 14th, 2006 11:25 pm)

Today was Valentine's Day.  A day we set aside to remember the "special someone" in our lives...or perhaps it's the day we try to rectify the damage caused by a whole year of being neglectful and boogery.  I guess the answer depends on whether you're a nice person or an ass.

My husband is a nice person, so today was just another day but with flowers and a pretty card.  :-)  A dozen long stemmed roses...sweet!  I made him a card and bought him a big fat chocolate heart.  I sort of always buy him a chocolate heart.  I keep forgetting that the huge chocophile in the house is me,  so I'll probably end up eating half of it myself.  :::is ashamed:::

Then, we went to family councelling.  Because today was councelling day.  I guess I can't think of anything sadder to do on Val-Day than sit on a couch crying in front of virtual strangers.  :-(  Anyway, it was nice that Greg came along, at least.  Lately he's been the most stable person in the house.  Good thing too, because I have a "useless factor" of about ten these days.  That's pretty bad.

So now I have roses and a headache and I think I need to forget about working tonight and just go to bed, already.

Oh!  In other news, I bought a recumbent excercise bike yesterday.  I'm very proud of myself.  It's not the best model, but not the cheapest either, and I freaking love those things.  I'm so sick of missing my bike rides that I decided to do something about it.  I think, with my eyes closed and my I-Pod blasting, I can pretend I'm out there and it'll be better for me than sitting on the couch waiting for Spring to come.  This spare room is slowly filling up with useful stuff.  I think it's pretty neat. 

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