Author: Laura Highcove

Otakon 2008

Laura Highcove

It was that time of year once again, when Otakon came around. We left on Thursday, got our badges early, (as Otakon has been allowing for a few years now) and then went home to chill. (We being me, Matthew, and friend Matt from Tech.)

Friday we headed in, got the hotel room early, and puttered around the con. By that night we were joined by Chris (from Tech), Shawn (Chris’ friend), Brian (Matthew’s coworker), Brian’s sister (never did get her name), and Kelsey (Matthew’s sister). Nothing much of note in the AMVs unfortunately sans the Otakon legal department pulling some videos that were anime set to American movie trailer audio for obvious legal reasons.

I was very happy with my purchases this year, which I will now show off:

First picture! Stuff from Artist Alley. These are all prints of art done by fans. Aeris continues to be one of my favorite characters, along with Saber from Fate/Stay Night. Then one mustn’t forget Sora and Riku from Kingdom Hearts, and Hitsugaya from Bleach. I got two of him, a nice looking bust picture, as well as a beautifully rendered piece of him Bankai mode. Also there are fun little bitty prints of Saber, Near from Death Note, Kurama from Yu Yu Hakusho, and Gaara from Naruto.

Next are the figures that I seem to be getting more and more interested in. I spent the entirely of the weekend looking for Saber figures, and these are the two I ended up coming home with. The larger one cost me quite a bit, the smaller not so much. I’m also one for keeping things as near mint as possible, as such everything is staying in the boxes. (This also makes dusting much easier.)

Next picture, more figures. Vincent and Aeris from FFVII. These figures are from an entire set. The company also put out Kingdom Hearts figures (all of which I passed over, mostly cause I didn’t find Riku.) but these two are the ones I got.

And this year I was able to find two nice wallscrolls. Code Geass (for which I need to find and download the second season) and Tsubasa. We put these wallscrolls in the back window as we were driving home and the plastic at the top and bottom warped into not straight patterns. I’m unhappy about that, and plan to sometime try and warp them back (don’t even know if it’d be possible) but until then, yay wallscrolls.

Two “official” posters. One of my new favorite game of all time: Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth. It’s actually a picture of some figures that were put out. I tried looking for the Lenneth one, but surprise surprise, after two years it seems to be quite rare. (I found 3/5 on ebay.) The Inuyasha pic, even though I don’t watch the show / follow it in any way anymore, had all of the main characters in a nice poster and so I decided to grab it for old time’s sake.

And last picture is two pencil boards I found that I really liked. (I’m not usually much of a pencil board fan.) The soundtrack for Macross Frontier which I am currently watching, and a “How to draw” book. As usual, any time I am exposed to large amounts of fabulous artwork, I have that urge to draw yet again. Also, we had Arby’s for lunch.

I also got Ann’s birthday present, but I won’t spoil what it is. She’ll get it in due time.

I got everything from the con that I wanted except a Kowaru (from Evangelion) figure that I saw at the first place we went to in the dealer’s room. I told myself I would look for it cheaper elsewhere, and then totally forgot about it. And now I can’t find it on ebay or anywhere else. Ahh well, life happens.

All in all I had a fabulous Otakon, and we’ll see whether I get an update out tonight, or if you have to wait until Thursday.

Neil Diamond Concert /w details

Laura Highcove

So getting the tickets was an adventure in itself. Anyway, we headed out a bit early to catch the metro into DC. Got there with plenty of time, but I’d never been to this metro station and after some very confusing (and very illegal) turns we found that we had to part across the street and then walk over. We got down to the machine where you buy your metro pass, only for me to remember the only cash I have on me is two dollar bills, so we had to go around and beg for bills the machine would accept in order to me to get my pass. (Who carries cash anymore, I mean really?) Pass in hand we go down the longest escalator in the world, get on the metro and zoom into DC, getting off at the metro station that comes out underneath the Verizon Center.

In we go and find our seats. We’re pretty early, and neither Mom nor I had our cell phones so we had no idea what time it was. The concert started a little late, but it wasn’t that big a deal, and out he comes, and everyone’s screaming and clapping. He does two songs and then turns around and sings to the part of the crowd that is behind him, saying they deserve something for paying for those tickets. Then he introduced his band members, and sang so many of his old songs, and some of his new ones.

Now I’m a weird concert goer. I actually don’t like to jump up and down and dance and scream and whatever. I like to sit, listen to the music, and maybe tap my feet. People never seem to understand that. Everyone around me was like that, but either way I was enjoying myself, and Mom was too.

But my most favorite thing about the show was just how happy he seemed to be on stage. He’s pretty old by now (don’t know how old exactly.) but he was dancing around and laughing and all that sort of thing. It’s my first real experience seeing someone who simply oozed charisma, and I loved it.

It’s August

Laura Highcove

Well tomorrow anyway, but not a posting day. In all honesty, I was planning on having a post ready to go today, but when I actually sat down and write it, it came out horribly. I mean just painful to look at bad. This chapter is another one of those ‘I just have to get through it’. I have most of chapter 9 already written, it’s just getting to it.

In the past, my writing has been when I want to, and writing on whatever story I felt like at the time. That’s all well and good, but I’ve moved to the point where I’m making it a more serious hobby, and sometimes that means working on it even when I don’t want to. I’m sure that all those people putting up webcomics don’t always feel like working on a strip, even if they have the time to do so. But they do it anyway, and the comic continues.

While it’s a little different when you don’t have time and have to call a break, I’m now realizing that instead of just hoping I feel like writing and throwing together a post the day before updates when I don’t, I need to actually start sitting myself down and writing whether I feel like it or not. Sure it’ll come out pretty bad at first, but I need to learn to be able to just sit down and write when it’s time to.

We’ll see how it goes, but there will be a post on Monday no matter what.

Links

Laura Highcove

I’ve used the same ftp program since…forever. I liked the layout, it was easy to use. But just about a month ago they decided that they just can’t afford to keep letting people just use it for free. Now I understand that. I mean it’s a good program, and they probably put a lot of work into it, but I’m still a cheepo and so I’ve tried some other ftp programs. I haven’t been impressed by any of them. As such those buttons I was planning to get up so the site looks less stupid hasn’t happened because I can’t get said ftp programs to connect. Now the program I have at work will connect, but I keep forgetting to bring the buttons with me. As such I’m just a lazy poopie head with ugly links. I’ll probably break down and actually buy the program I used in the past because…well my website is one of the main things in my life, and as much as we’re trying to save money and such, I need a stable and working ftp program. So in summary, there’s no buttons yet because I don’t have a working ftp program at home.

And on the note of being a lazy poopie head, next step in wedding (now that we’ve actually got the place and pastor for the ceremony itself, meaning the date is final) is sending out the wedding invitations that apparently should’ve gone out three months ago. I guess I’m just used to being a person who doesn’t normally have plans, as such two month is more than enough time. (I mean heck, it’s enough time for me to plan the wedding.) I’ve found places online, but I’m not exactly thrilled to either wait a week for them to come in the mail or pay way too much to have them shipped overnight, so now I have to see if some place like Kinko’s just has wedding invitations (You can tell how into this wedding thing I actually am.) that I can just buy and send out to all the people the parents have decided should be invited to the wedding.

It’s not as if I don’t like family. They’re cool enough, I’m just not much of one to make a big deal out of stuff like this. Everyone’s all like “YAY WEDDING!” and I see it more as a party that happens to be the same day as the legal ceremony society required in order for us to get tax breaks. It’s sort of the same as when I got a job. I’m positive my parents and siblings were more excited about it than I was. For me it kind of feels like business as usual. I’m more excited about going to Otakon than the wedding, though that could be biased a bit by the amount of work I have to put into the wedding. But then I always have been a bit of a freak.

Revolving Door?

Laura Highcove

I don’t really know what’s wrong with me. Perhaps I’m spoiled by the fact that I’ve been in OOB for my entire WoW career. Maybe I’m just spoiled in general, but once again I’m back in OOB, because I just couldn’t leave. Every now and then things just get back, and I’m convinced that things will be better elsewhere. And maybe raiding wise they would be. And I really, I kinda wanted to know that. I do want to know how other guilds run things. I want to know how things work when you don’t have an overpowered tank or a group of unbeatable healers (when we can get them all in the same raid at the same time that is.)

But at the same time, this guild is just too closely knit. Even as much as I hate people sometimes for not keeping themselves alive, or not keeping the tank alive, or not doing enough dps fast enough, there probably won’t ever be another guild I call home.

And that’s why people saying we won’t get to Kil’jaeden is just silly. Now we might run out of time, but I figure if LK doesn’t come out until after Christmas (like I’m assuming) we’ll probably make it. Barring unforseen…crap…like the Internet explodes.

I am a little sad. Kael’thas is limping along as always, but our choice of new initiates is poor to say the least. No one is going to come in with the gear we’d like to see. Which means more time wasted gearing people up.

Who knows how it’ll go. I’m conflicted, but I’m still here. And then soon I won’t be an officer anymore, so it won’t matter.

Uppy-date

Laura Highcove

And yesterday I started the wheels turning on two other of the changes in my life. I quit my job, and I took Nabith out of <OOB>.

Now to ride out the last few days of work…

…and see who my real friends are.

Psst, Andrea, you passed. 🙂

No new story posts!?

Laura Highcove

Life is happening. Hate that; but several life changing things are going to be happening soon, one of which is marriage. (Yes, yay me!) As such, the writing has simply not been flowing, or even coming out at a slow crawl. I’m currently more worried about the temperature in September and how much lilies cost than Angelica’s little magic lessons.

So…I’m putting story updates on hold until at least August, possibly later but let’s see how things go. I’ll try and throw up little updates to show how things are progressing, but I can’t promise anything.

Stress

Laura Highcove

So I’ve spent the last three or four days flat on my back for most of the day. My body has this annoying little habit of sometimes not letting me know when I’m extremely stressed, and instead just tightens up every muscle across my shoulders and neck. As a result I can not move and hardly sit without extreme pain. Drugs don’t seem to help, and heating pads (or the like) only provide minimal relief. As such I am left simply living with the pain until it fades away of its own accord.

I spent the last two days working from home so that I could go lay down whenever it became too much. Not pleasant to say the least. This most recent bout seems to have resulted from our final push to get down Kalecgos. I suppose when you’re not dying until a wipe has been called, and are constantly top three dps, there’s not much you can do about wipes except get stressed. Of course I did not realize I was so stressed until the stiffness settled in, which is another annoying thing about it, that most of the time I don’t even realize how stressed I am until I’m already in pain.

And speaking of stress, this weekend is The Lunch, so we’ll see how that goes.

ZOMG!!

Laura Highcove

Lookie, new site look. This is why there was no update on Monday. I spent that time coloring the picture of Angelica which I had drawn by an old friend Ajinryu. Still have little tweaks, such as making the links a bit more prominent, but at least I’m finally rid of that silly little temp banner.