Overdo Update

“So Pyro,” you may be thinking. “What happened with that whole wedding thing you mentioned?”

Oh that wedding? It happened. I am now happily married to SD (aka Matthew) and we’re living life much as we did before. Well with a slightly fuller kitchen. Lots of wedding gifts were things to take up space on the counter I don’t have. It’ll be so nice when we get that house in Blacksburg.

Which brings up that point, if you haven’t heard it yet, that we are planning on buying a house and moving back to Blacksburg, Virginia (You know, where VA Tech is?) sometime at the beginning of next year. That is of course assuming finances stay as they are and job things…but still, it’s “The Plan”(tm).

There’s also the cat. Nickel, whose picture you saw a while ago when he would still run from us every chance he got. He’s quite the opposite now. He has attached himself to us, and is quite the lap cat. He’s very curious and gets into *everything*. Anything that isn’t nailed down has been knocked over or around, often multiple times. I always thought of cats as more mellow than dogs, but on the contrary, they’re more effort. You might not have to clean up their bodily functions as often as with a puppy, but you’re cleaning up everything else. I may have to take more drastic action soon to keep my plants and anime figures out of reach, and to keep things from falling over when he jumps on them with more weight. Sounds like a mission for tomorrow.

And things should be picking up again soon in Shifting Winds. I’ll be working on that tomorrow as well.

I will…

post tomorrow, even if it kills me. I finished writing the post, but in lieu of the poor quality I’ve been putting up, I wanted to actually spend more time proofreading this section. Thanks for your patience.

In other news, Wrath of the Lich King has a release date of Nov 13. Collector’s Edition announced but amazon’s not taking orders for it yet. I’d go elsewhere except I know they’ll have it on my doorstep that morning, so I’m willing to give them a day or so to get their tails in gear. If not I’ll be going out to a local store to place my order. (Bah, and I have to buy two…)

Nickel picture!

So getting a new cat is like having a baby. It’s small, cute, and you just want to hug it and kiss it, and you’re worried about every little thing because even though there’s a million books and people tell you what to expect, you still stress out that you’re doing something wrong. Sleep is lost as he cries throughout the night, and every time you get close he hisses and makes a break for the safety which is under the bed…

Nickel

So I just spent the better part of the day in my bedroom with our new kitten. Claudia came right about 11, and we put Nickel in the bedroom while we worked out the paperwork and I asked her a few questions. When she had gone, I went back in and was unable to find Nickel anywhere. Only after several minutes of ‘could he possibly gotten out of the room’ did I finally realize that one of the dressers was actually open in the back and he had climbed under there.

I scooted the dresser out, and eventually got him out. He hissed at me and did some growling but never actually lashed out or bit me. Once I was holding him he seemed pretty okay, so I petted him for a while and then let him go about his business which (once I had made it so he couldn’t get behind the dresser anymore) consisted of under the bed and inside the litter box.

So the rest of the day consisted of holding him for a bit, and then leaving him alone while I read. Eventually he got to the point where he would no longer cower or hiss when I came to hold him for a while. When Matthew came home I pulled him out once again, and he settled into the crook of my arm. He hissed at Matthew once, but pretty much just chilled next to me until I had to move due to my neck hurting from the position.

He’s now in the litter box again, and Matthew is in the room playing his game boy. I’m going to make dinner and then we might give him some completely alone time for the evening. I have some pictures, but they’re not great so I might wait a bit until I actually post them.

Otakon 2008

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

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

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.