>:3

So I've been doodling in my notes on the Golden Age of Spanish Theatre, instead of actually filling in the blanks. Oh well. I can copy off someone later.

( I thought I would share them with people (and by people, I mean Cat). )

Kinda pissed that I missed my Linguistics class this morning, but I should be able to make it up and figure out what's going on. I don't think the professor has a super-strict attendance policy, so I don't think I'll end up with my grade dropped because of it.

Argh. I want to dress up and be girly sometimes, but I don't know anything about it so I always end up not doing it. I wish people still wore corsets (as bad for health as they were) and giant dresses, so I would be able to know what to wear. Fashion these days is baffling. I have some money so I can go out and buy some clothes... but I don't know what to buy with it. I should probably have more in my wardrobe than free t-shirts and one pair of jeans. It works, but not for all occasions.

Then it comes down to my not really understanding what "church clothes" or "Sunday best" are. I grew up atheist. My "Sunday best" was, and still is, my pajamas (though I know better than to wear pajamas if for some reason I have to go to a church). Also, what do people wear to weddings? Argh. I have never been to one, so I don't know.

*possibly marginally related*
I want this pattern: http://www.butterick.com/item/B4954.htm?tab=costumes&page=2
It needs a bustle, but I love the jacket. I would make it in a russet or green velvet. Oooo~

Note to self: Learn how to make hats out of buckram.

Note to Cat: I can probably make a hat like that for you :0

Note to self: NO! Stop adding extra costumes at the last minute! Just because the one is made of stuff you already have doesn't mean you can add more and still finish Britt's dress.

Crap. First week of school, lots of work Monday-Wednesday, driving to FW to pick up new contacts, and a bunch of cosplay stuff to finish. I also have to go to the theatre department and schedule a bunch of hours where I have to work for them for free. >___>

First: hahahaha TwiCon.

Disappointed about driving an hour to Plano for no reason. I was hoping to meet with everyone to make plans for San Japan. Had to buy gas again, and the plastic over our messed-up window decided it didn't want to stick anymore. When I finally got back to Denton I took it to the place over on University and they managed to duct-tape it back up temporarily. While in Plano, I did go to a very nice Japanese store (sold some frozen food, rice, household stuff, spices/sauces and snacks), where the two ladies working there greeted everyone entering the store with いらっしゃいませ！

I randomly started playing Rune Factory again, and I might even complete a year! Usually I start playing Harvest Moon games and then forget about them, especially the ones where there are multiple generations. I used to barely get to the point where my character had a kid, much less long enough to watch that kid grow up.

I'm hoping to get at least one cosplay put together so I don't feel awkward at San Japan. I have a feeling that it may very well be a Pokémon. I actually have some ideas that I'd like to go with for next year's conventions, but I don't know of any I have time to do this year. I just haven't seen many anime characters I'm interested in cosplaying lately, it's all been from video games. I'd love to make something more detailed than what I have been lately. I know I can do more, I just don't get around to it.

Need to start planning art stuff for AFest. Hopefully I'll get started this week when I'm not working, so I'm at least making an effort. XD

Most of you guys know I went to Florida so I'll spare you XD

1. People in Florida complain about the heat even though it's only 90 degrees.
2. They have a bit of a point, the humidity is ungodly.
3. Malls are ridiculously upscale and fancy, to the point of having valet parking.
4. Hotels are giving ridiculous discounts to try and get people to go on vacation despite the economy.
5. If presented with a Sanrio store (or two!) I will spend too much money on phone charms.
6. Food is delicious.

I have a lot on my plate nowadays, but that's not going to stop me. Upper level English classes, acting, free labor for theatre, more free labor "designing" for theatre, MEK Vice President, Treasurer and Historian, cosplay and more cons that I've gone to in a year previously. I have ideas for MEK and want to perform and teach more Parapara wherever I can.

I have to get ready for these conventions. Sadly, my life revolves around them D:

TEXAS WHY ARE YOU SO HOT

Blagh way too much blinding sun and concrete. Parking lots suck in the summer, and I hate the feeling when your face is getting burned and it's like a million degrees in the car so you just want the AC on your face but you also need to see.

Snow cones are tasty, though. I like coconut, but I think next time I will get something obscenely sour. It reminds me of eating Crybabies, those super-sour gumballs, in elementary school. Once I had three or four in a row and my tongue started bleeding. That's some awesome sourness. :D

For some reason I'm tempted to do a giant robot cosplay for real. I kinda want to do Getter 2 (ゲッター　ドリル！), but I don't even know how recognizable that shit is anymore. I guess the only characters I want to cosplay are from new series, a year ahead of everyone, or from series so far behind the new fans it becomes unrecognizable once again. At least older fans and mecha fans will get it? I don't need those new kids. XP

In my head, everything is solved with fabric-covered foam. I shall see how viable of a construction material this is.

I enjoy playing the Sims 3, and the first sim I made wanted to be James Bond - so he became an International Super Spy. According to Raymond, this sim is apparently an out gay clone of Chris? O__o He enjoys cooking, trying new recipes and working out a lot. Also watching TV and ogling guys. I should dress him in a sweater vest and be done with it.

So. Cell phone decided I live in a different time zone, so I was late to work. Phone continued this asinine behaviour even after multiple restarts, taking the battery out, and even looking at the built-in World Clock. Managed to show the clock BS to my coworker so they don't just think I'm pulling insane excuses out of my ass. The problem seems to have fixed itself, but I will be distrustful of it for a while.

Finally bought the Sims 3, after going to the store and not buying it for $50, going to work and buying it online for $40, and finally going to pick it up at the same store 2 hours later on my break. However, it doesn't want to play nicely with my video drivers, and keeps making my computer crash randomly. Hopefully I can get this sorted out - video cards are expensive and my built-in graphics card should work, according to the game manual. I like a lot of the new personality things, as well as the fact that you can give them individual voices. My first character wants to be James Bond, which is funny considering I may or may not have been influenced by Dee in his character design.

Also you can give them weird skin tones, like blue, green and red. I am tempted to make a family of Andorians. XD

At any rate, it is a good break after last semester.

So I think I have a couple cosplays planned for AFest at this point. They will likely change.

I've been organizing my collection of ParaPara videos; hopefully I'll use this as an opportunity to learn more and pick some I can teach. I'd like it if Britt and/or Becky would learn some dances with me. I'd extend the invitation to anyone else in Kappa House, but the likelihood of any of the guys being willing to join in is extremely low.

I shouldn't drink Mountain Dew, with the possible exception of Sundays. I'm out of the habit of drinking very much caffeine, so the extra caffeine in Mountain Dew makes me a little too excited about everything. Fortunately, this puts me right in-character.

I almost forgot again. HPB comes out on July 15 (finally), and Cat and I will more than likely be dressing up for a midnight showing.

So I really want to tell this guy what I think of him, but I don't want to be horribly unprofessional and sully the renewed reputation of A-Kon cosplay staff. I vow not to start any drama in related forums.

Aw, I had some really, really terrible photos of girls imitating ganguro fashion that I found in galleries from the con, but when the power went out they got erased. I guess it's for the best, I don't have to look at them and cringe anymore.

Starting up a new D&D campaign this weekend, hopefully everyone else's characters won't be dumb and get themselves killed again. My last character said "this is ridiculous, you are all idiots" and left. I had to drop out because I was extremely busy with Rocky Horror and with A-Kon, but still. DUMB. I'm trying out a new character style that may or may not work with my inherent shyness and general inability/unwillingness to roleplay. Last time I played the whole campaign, I was a sniper who didn't talk a lot. I have the unfortunate tendency of falling asleep during other people's turns if they take a long time. This time, I'm trying out being an easily excitable, overeager swashbuckler. She is REALLY EXCITED about treasure, let me tell you.

Also, I am growing accustomed to wearing shorts. Neat! I eagerly await my vacation in 3 weeks.

Note to self: when finished with a new cosplay, get decent photos.

I think I'm relaxed enough to make an A-Kon post. I cried some, I laughed a lot, I met up with old friends and made some new ones. That weekend was ridiculously hectic, but on Sunday, I felt that I had fun. For the first time, I did not experience post-con blues.

( forgive me if shit looks out of order, I can hardly remember it now )

So, I just got the A-Kon schedule. IT IS APPALLING. There are so many typos it hurts to read it.

"MU Kappa Espilon Gathering" != "Mu Epsilon Kappa Gathering"

Also, some of the worse ones:

Indepentant Film Making

Elegant Gothic Lolitavs Stenciling Workshop

Manga Goes Digitala

Possing In Photograph

Sleepng Samauri

Exhbts

Firefox is even telling me I have 9 typos.... SO HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?!

Edit: Go go human spell check? I said that it was riddled with typos and the guy that uploaded it was like O_O and fixed most of them. I then sent him a big list of shit that was wrong (and probably wrong) so the schedule should look coherent soon.

I hate making petticoats. Net has a mind of its own, and this one I've had to redo twice is infuriatingly fluffy. It's way too fluffy for what I need it for, which means I have to take it apart, re-gather the appropriate lengths of net, and reattach them to the underskirt. BAH. I would just say screw it if the current configuration didn't look like panniers. x___x Far too much work. I may just say fuck it to this costume AGAIN. I hate how you can see through the light yellow fabric I have, even when it is layered over white.

That leaves me with something really simple, and something actually kind of boring. Ugh. I wish I at least had something nice for the masquerade, but I won't be able to make anything like that. I'm kind of annoyed that I have to go out of town for the next two days and can't really work on anything then. It's really inconvenient, but part of life.

I did make some kickass steampunk-ish boots, though. If I could slap together a costume to go with them, it would be awesome.

I'm really tired and out of sorts today for various reasons, mostly residual fatigue/injury from Arlac this Sunday. Arlac was a lot of fun, but I took a blow from a sword right to the tip of my thumb that bent my nail back twice and jammed the first joint. That sucked, but I tied it up and kept fighting. Later, I chased a bandit (the same guy that hit my thumb) into a thorn bush, which proceeded to tear into my hand. Luckily, it didn't cut him to ribbons as well. I ended up with this inch-long gash in the heel of my hand, and a couple of smaller cuts. I think there is still a bit of thorn embedded in the middle of my hand. But yeah, it was still fun. I just couldn't attack anyone and they couldn't attack me.

I got my grades, and they were better than I thought. Up to this point, Barbara has only given me Bs, even when I worked my ass off and I thought I deserved a better grade. However, this semester I declared myself as a double English and Theatre major, and received four As and a C. I got an A in History of Costume and Decor (unsurprising), an A in Makeup (surprising, as I didn't get to execute one of the makeups), an A in Shakespeare, and a C in Japanese. What most surprises me, though, is the two credit hours of a class I took with Barbara last semester (I only got credit for one hour, these were added on this semester). I made a B in the first hour, and figured I would get those two other hours as Bs when she put my grade in again. However, she put the grade in as an A. So for that class I got like a 3.67 instead of a 3 or 4. O_o Not that I'm complaining, it's just odd. I can tell that there is a definite bias toward majors, though.

There's a sale Friday at Golden d'Or, which I might go to. I work Friday afternoon, so it'll have to be in the morning. Not that it means much, but if somebody wants to go let me know.

Gotta start on cosplay stuff >___>
I've been looking for a while now and the wig I want for Tsuriko has been out of stock. I think because there is no info on the parade that I will not stress out to make her for A-Kon. I'll do that after the con, hopefully when wigs are back in stock. I would just dye my hair that color, it's a decent length, but I don't really feel like damaging my hair that badly to bleach it white and then dye it purple.

I hate how people just assume they can do whatever they want and ignore written instructions. I'm talking about anything, really. I just had someone apply to be in the contest a MONTH after the deadline. The worst part is, the form they filled out and sent to me HAD THE DEADLINE on it. People ask questions that they could easily answer themselves by reading the first page of the thread. Some people ask questions about a form they had to read to send to us! How does one get so self-centered that they don't take at least a passing interest in things going on around them?

This is baffling to me (though wholly unsurprising) because usually I am so paranoid about doing something properly and without upsetting/insulting anyone I spend more time researching than I actually spend doing whatever it was I was looking up.

Of course, I am used to it by now. It is still annoying as hell.

I am excited for various things. Namely, the end of school. Hopefully my advisors will stop being LAME and SLOW and actually get back to me about important shit. I have a good chance of passing Japanese, if I can get my shit together this week and study (and I will, dammit).

Makeup is going to be interesting - all next week will be turning in designs and worksheets and then doing NINE makeup executions in the next four days of class, including the two final days.

I have to do my corrective, first off, which shouldn't be much work. Hopefully I can do this shit Thursday if there is time.
My four youthful makeups shouldn't be too bad except for all the hair changes, the two middle age makeups will be kind of annoying with two wigs (ACTUALLY I will make them use the same wig), and I don't even know what my paint old age hair will look like. Perhaps some kind of bastardized traditional Japanese thing.
The paint old age shouldn't be bad, as I have somewhat decent reference pictures.
The old age 3D is going to be the biggest bitch ever. The thing is, it's this really old witch. Not only is she an old witch, but she came from a pine tree. Her skin has to look like tree bark, and still show old age like a person. Not only that, but Barbara is requiring me to include hands in old age makeup. I was rather excited about making scary-looking nails, but GAH. I'm sure all that crap will take at least a full class period, JUST FOR THE ONE MAKEUP. I guess I have to pick a wig and style it (by style I mean fluff it up and jam pine needles in) sometime next week, or something. Then, after all that, I have to do my final. Actually, we are having two "finals", as our class takes up enough time to encompass two finals sessions - one on Tuesday and one on Thursday. Somehow, I think it would be more fitting for the witch to be my final, as it is intended to be a summation of all the shit we were supposed to learn in that class. So I will suffer through the witch and then play it cool with Hecate on the last day of finals. Maybe if we are involved with the Costume I final I will even make up a costume. :| It will probably be a chiton as rectangles = easy.

Gah, A-Kon is coming up too soon. I have to start actually working on my own cosplay stuff. I hope to have at least Tsuriko and Fujiko done for A-Kon.

TEXT TEXT TEXT man I type a lot.

Shit. I am way behind on like everything I have to do this semester.

( Bitching about school. )

I really have to catch up on life, but it doesn't look like this is the month to do it. >___>

ALSO. I was looking up patterns and discovered that Simplicity had added a couple of new ones.

It seems they are trying to appeal to the steampunk crowd.

And WTF is this? I was in class today and we were looking at slides of Tudor fashion, and we saw this painting of Jane Seymour. Then, I saw this pattern. Open them in different tabs. Same goddamn dress! Wtf?

Rocky looks awesome, except for the lighting/sound part (wtf) and the fact that we are running with about half a competent run crew. I definitely have favorite characters, but then I think about it and I like a lot more than just a couple. It's a lot different when the actors are near your own age. It makes the show a lot more effective, I think. It makes me want to get up and do the time warp with everyone and dress up in a crazy outfit to see the show. Even though we had to stay until 1am putting shit back in order and making sure everyone's concerns were addressed and put a fuckton of stuff on the worklist again, seeing the show run all the way through was almost worth it. I'm still enthusiastic even after all that.

Hah. In my Shakespeare class today we started studying Merchant of Venice. I forgot to look at the syllabus over the break and subsequently neglected to read yet another play for this class, and I forgot to bring my book. When I was looking in my purse for a pen, though, I found the program for the performance of Merchant that Raymond and I saw last semester.

We started discussing the play, and then the professor asked if any of us had noticed the homoerotic undertones of the relationship between Antonio and Bassanio. I was pretty much like >:3 teehee but the rest of the class (and it was mostly women!) was all like :|
I was disappointed in them, and thought of Ohno from Genshiken. But seriously, even Raymond had to agree with me that after seeing the play that those two characters are pretty gay. Especially Antonio, holy crap.

So, today was the first dress rehearsal for Rocky. Oh my god. The first hour and a half was spent thinking "oh my god what are they doing why is this shit on the floor why are they all out of order do you even know what we covered these tables for why are these costumes STILL on the floor where do you think you're putting that please mark where this stuff is going please spell the actors' names correctly oh my god we are never going to finish this." I frantically texted people to see if they could take the first hour of my closing shift, since I knew none of that shit was going to get done by 9. It got done by 10, which was a miracle in itself. I am so tired. Even though I'm not on the costume run crew, I still had to run errands and run upstairs and grab things that the crew couldn't find or that was missing in the first place. I got bitched at for sitting on Rocky's "slab" but I felt good about it because when this shit starts for real, I'm going to be in the AUDIENCE, not trying to find a damn chair somewhere backstage. I got to sit back and watch the last run-through they did of the first half of the show, and it was really good (even though the lighting people kept missing their cues XD).

I don't think I'll get bored watching it five times (including rehearsals), which is a good thing. I wonder if I should dress up at all, just to disturb people. I don't think I will, though, because the two times I'm going to see it for real my family will be there. Also the bones keep coming out of my corset and I'd want to remake the whole thing and hell if I'm doing that, I can't even have my homework done on time. >______>

Well, damn. I thought I would be able to go to the EKS-D meeting tomorrow, but I guess not. I'll be in Fort Worth celebrating my brother's and Raymond's birthdays, and my fake grandma is in town.

I guess I'll do some homework or something. Maybe. It's unlikely.

I'm surprised I actually have ideas this time - I always have to come up with stuff to cosplay at the last minute and it's usually stuff like five people have ever heard of.

So. Raymond is forming a Lupin III group, which has a Jigen, Lupin and POSSIBLY (hopefully) a Zenigata. I have to decide whether I'll suck it up and be Fujiko or bind myself to be Goemon. To me, either one is a horrible idea for one reason or another, either construction or comfort (or both!) but I'll do one of them, eventually.

Another thing I would like to cosplay is Neuro from Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro. I don't want to go completely nuts and make the whole demon form, but I want to make a mask of his demon-bird face when he goes to eat a mystery. A suit shouldn't be that hard to get, and I won't have to do too much other than binding because nobody will see my face. But will people recognize me? I don't know. Maybe if I found a Yako at the con or something...

I'm thinking of a Pokémon gijinka design for the masquerade that I can use at both A-Kon and AFest. Then again, I don't really want to make a big ball gown because a. it will cost a lot and b. where the hell will I keep it? I guess I'll figure it out, and make Raymond something to go along with it. I was thinking Ho-oh and Lugia, but we'll see. XD


-edit-

Gah I forgot some.

Seychelles from Hetalia which seems to be popular now - even though she's a minor character she has a cute simple dress and I'm already tan with long dark hair. XD

Maybe timeskip Kinon if it looks like enough people are going to be cosplaying from Gurren Lagann. I'd like to make her costume, but on her own she's not that recognizable.