Happy Halloween!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

This is me and my work team as Ms. Pac-Man and the four ghosts, Blinky (Red), Pinky (Pink), Inky (Blue) and Clyde (Orange). I'm Blinky! I made all 4 ghosts and Ms. Pac-man.

RandomFandom will be at Syracuse Heroes Expo 2008!

I got in touch with Jeff Watkin's the founder of Syracuse Heroes Expo, and managed to squeeze myself in.Yay!

Jeff is a great guy, and he's going all out to make a neat event for people in the upstate and central New York regions (and anyone who wants to travel in). Check out the Syracuse Heroes Expo website to see all he's got going on.

It's primarily Comic con, but it's got all sorts of stuff for fans of anime like a costume contest and anime screenings. They're showing Ghost Hunt, which gives them high marks in my book!

Of course because I just managed to get in touch with Jeff today (a bit of email and phone tag and a lot of procrastination on my part) that means I only have 2-3 days of prep time. EEK! I've already designed on button specifically for the con. We'll see if I have time to actually make it. I'm debating bringing my 3 inch and 1 inch press along to make custom buttons on the fly for people. Any opinions?

I also have to make my and my co-worker's Halloween costumes. I've convinced three of my co-workers to be Pac-man ghosts with me and my boss to be Pac-man. There will be pictures, oh yes, there will. Besides that I have to make another costume for a Halloween party I'm going to on Friday.

So of course, what did I spend my time doing today? Marking my manga "read" or "not read" in my book database. According to my notes so far I have 130 volumes of manga that are unread. -_- I think there are more too, because I also noticed, again, that it's missing a lot of my books. When I pack my books up to move I'll have to do a thorough inventory. According to my database stats I'm still skating just under 2,000 manga. I wonder how much it will go up after an inventory?

Technorati Tags: syracuse heroes expo, comic cons, anime cons, buttons, manga

I do live. I think.

I went to NYAF last weekend and am still exhausted. I have some pictures to put up (like the Ronald Mcdonald Sephroth and Colonel Sanders Cloud) and I want to talk about the trip but I'm too tired.

I spent most of the weekend exhausted because for various reasons I didn't get much sleep, and had to get up early each morning. One of the various reasons was a toothache that woke me up at four am on Saturday night/Sunday morning. I called my dentist and moved up my appointment from next Tuesday to today.

I thought I was just going to get some x-rays and maybe some pain medicine. Instead I got a root canal! ugh. Monday I go get a crown, because they had to file down my tooth to do the canal. (Which, by the way, sounds horrible when it's being done.)

What a Day! NYAF & House

I feel like I lived a whole week today! It actually started on Sunday night when Mindy messaged me for details on our booth at the 2008 New York Anime Festival. Since it's coming up this weekend she thought we might want to firm up our plans. I've been so distracted with my house purchase that I haven't been paying too much attention to it. She also pointed out that she didn't see us on the Vendor list. I assured her they'd cashed my check and we had booth 330.

Of course once we finished our conversation I decided to wander over to the NYAF website to check. It's not like I haven't had my check cashed and not gotten a table before. And what do I see? Booth 330 is registered to another vendor! EEP. Plus, I realize looking over the vendor packet that I don't have my DTF-17 Sales Tax form that I need to open up my booth. Cruising over to the IRS.gov website I see the requirements are that the form be sent 20 days prior to the event. The event is four days away.

Did I mention it's past Midnight on Sunday when I realize all this? Of course brain goes into full panic and worry mode and I didn't get much sleep. I did manage to come up with a few plans and solutions, but since I couldn't act on any of them the rolling thoughts didn't help too much.

So I was very sleepy when I got into work the this Monday morning and started to making phone calls. First call was to Mark at NYAF, my contact in the sales office. He confirmed that the website was wrong and that Mindy and I did have booth 330. Also that we could set up Friday morning since we're going to miss the Thursday check in. Next I called my father since he does a retail business in NY state, he probably has a sales tax form. He's out of state on a golf trip but I was hoping he'd be able to tell me where it was.

No such luck, though I did put in a call to his accountant on his okay to ask for a copy. Which I did multiple times, and which they said they faxed, but never arrived. My mother's friend owns a hat shop, so I wanted to ask her how she'd gotten hers. Mom said she'd ask, and I called the IRS to see how quickly a form could be gotten, if I could possibly rush a request through for a fee or something. According to the very nice lady I could submit a form online, and in two days if it had been approved they could fax me a copy of the form and that was the fastest way to get it done.

That would mean I'd be in limbo until Wednesday when I'd find out if I could get a form. Thank goodness for my mother's friend who produced a number for the Syracuse office of Taxation. A quick call there and I got a form to fill out. And my boss let me leave early to deliver it and pick up my sales tax cert. Whew! Crisis averted!

Just as I got into the car, relaxed and assured that all details had been covered for my trip, when my cellphone rang. It was my home inspector, with what I thought was my radon test results. It was the last portion of the home inspection that was started on Saturday. But actually it was to let me know that the owner of the house had apparently been furious that the radon testing equipment was there and she'd locked him out of the house and was holding his equipment hostage! She's not only kept him from his equipment, but is threatening to throw it out! This is bizarre because she was fully informed about the inspection and the testing. This causes a flurry of phone calls between me, my realtor, the listing agent, the home inspector and the home owner. The final resolution was that she surrendered the equipment to the listing agent who will give to the home inspector tomorrow. Then we'll find out what the radon test results were or if they were compromised.

Then I went home and hid under a blanket for a few hours.

Doll Pictures!

I collect BJD's (ball-jointed dolls) but I vary rarely take pictures. I'm not very good at it. But I've recently started selling these uber-cute Japanese erasers when I go into a dealer's room instead of an artist alley at a con. I've been meaning to add them to my shop, but I needed to take pictures first. I decided to photograph them with one of my dolls for scale. And what do you know, some turned out decent. (I think I figured out how to work my camera. Now I have to figure out how to get better lighting.)

The doll is a Bambicrony Slate-Gray Pepe. I call her Rune.

Rune is fond of sweets, like ice cream.

Kogepan (sweet pastry with custard) though she's never sure which end to eat it from.

And she especially likes anything strawberry flavored!

And who doesn't enjoy some ramen?

She likes quite a bit of Asian food actually.

She likes tea over coffee. She likes milk in it too.

And she likes her friend Mr. Penguin.

She especially likes to take tea with Mr. Penguin.

It makes her feel sophisticated.

As Seen on Funimation Quickie 8/18!

Margaret spotted one of my buttons in Funimation's latest video podcasts! Check out the "Funimation Update: Quickie 8/18". They did a feature on Ball Jointed Dolls, and at time code 1:32 you can see one doll wearing my "Yes, I will KILL You In Your Sleep" Button. Hee!

It's fun to see how far it traveled! I wasn't even selling at that con. ^_^ That button was actually inspired by the reactions my dolls got at cons. "They're pretty neat, but creepy. I'd be afraid it was going to kill my in my sleep."

Technorati Tags: bjd, ball jointed dolls, buttons, anime cons, otakon, funimation quickie, funimation

RandomFandom Forum updated and MOVED!

The forum that was located at:

http://www.randomfandom.com/phpBB2/

Has been updated and moved to forum.randomfandom.com

I had planned to move it next week, but a test run I did this weekend came out perfect so I decided to move up the date. (Also I was afraid I wouldn't be able to do it again. ^^; )

The forum software changed so much that required a new install, and then conversion. The good news is that means that if something went wrong, the old forum is there with no changes. The bad news is that the new install, even though all the users, posts, topics and pms have been copied over, had to be moved to a new location.

I'd actually wanted to do that anyway because the old location was spambait. Now the forum has it's very own spiffy subdomain. Old links to the forum are semi-broken, as any link will take you to the message that the domain has moved. I hope to find a solution to that soon (I've heard you can do something with your .htaccess file, but it sounds all very complicated...I will have to do some more studying.)

Feelin' All Kinds of Accomplished!

I've switched over from using Blogger to maintain my blog to Wordpress. Blogger is great...easy to use, but not very flexible. Or rather, not easily flexible if you host it yourself. I've seen people do amazing things on Blogger, but I could never get my blog looking and acting the way I wanted and have it hosted on my domain, Randomfandom.com.

In less than one week I managed to import all my posts from blogger, got everything organized into categories, gave every post a title, made it searchable, subscribe-able and with a simple downloaded theme, pretty. I wasn't able to do that in years on Blogger! My site was always functional, but not very attractive and finding past posts on a topic you might be interested was more or less impossible. (If you're reading this post through my livejournal or facebook mirror, take a glance at the website version of my blog @ blog.randomfandom.com)

Of course, there is still room for improvement. I want to make it look more like the rest of my site. More and more bits of my site don't have the same look, or even connected. But before I work on image I think I need to focus on posting more, and more good content. Did you know I've been posting in my blog since 2002? You know what I learned as I went through each post, marking categories and adding titles? Over half my posts mention I wish I was posting more. That's six years of regret!

I know I can do it. Take a look at my "Manga-A-Day" posts. I did a month's worth of posts. I need to decide on a goal and keep it. Right now I've got a list of notes about what I liked about my past posts, and what I disliked. I think I know what I want to do more of, and am working on a plan. I'm always interested in feedback. So if there is something you'd like to see more posts on, feel free to chime in.

Among other tasks that I've accomplished are boxing up all my VHS tapes and clearing off two bookcases for more manga. Yay! This also lead me to finishing up getting all my VHS and DVDs into my Movie Collector database. I also updated my manga collection in Book Collector, so now:

anime.randomfandom.com
manga.randomfandom.com

are both completely up-to-date. You can also see that they also don't look anything like the rest of the website, or each other. Oh, well, it's mostly used by friends so they can send in request for what to borrow. And if I can figure out to make a template for one, I should be able to use it for both.

Next is to focus on fic.randomfandom.com. I realized I never uploaded some of my chapter updates, and there are other things I wanted to add.

Is there anything I'm forgetting in my update roundup?

Fruits Basket Discussion Chapter 77 Posted!

Just a quick note to say that the next chapter discussion is up on the RandomFandom forums. Come and discuss chapter 77, the last chapter of Volume 13!

Follow the magic link... to cute deer, erotic videos, and souvenirs of all types.

As someone who was raised Catholic...

...I should feel guilty at finding this so funny. But I don't. The fact that it's possible to make a manga called "Let's Bible!" that casts Jesus as a blond chick in that wanders around in nothing but a men's shirt and Satan is either Mexican or an evil Italian Gondolier is fabulous. I love even more the comments on it. I want to draw the Super Jesus Senshin too, which probably means I'm going to hell. 

Anime North... Baby Steps!

I was finally able to talk to the Dealer's room head. In the email I got from the con chair about having a table for me, he gave me her email address and asked for my phone number so she could call to set things up. I replied back with my phone number, letting her know I have free international dialing if she wanted me to call her. She waited a week to reply to that email with her number and a note saying she works nights, so any time after 11pm would be good to call. Took a short bout of phone tag to get a hold of her, but we were able to talk. All she needed from me was my business name. "I only know you as the Button Lady." This is becoming too common, perhaps I should change my business name to "Button Lady." (Except there is already a buttonlady.com, and thebuttonlady.com =/) Anyway... I should be seeing a contract and such in a day or two, along with my official table assignment. Yay! Now I have to figure out where I'm going to stay. Since the table, plus work permit is going to cost me upwards of $500 I don't think I can afford a con-hotel room by myself again, especially since I'd like to stay between Thurs-Monday. Not when hotwire.com can promise me a 3 1/2 star hotel in the airport area for $69 a night as opposed to $115-130 at the con hotels. The problem is the Doubletree... All my friends stay there and I'd like to be able to visit them, and with their weird rules that would be a problem. So my sooper-sneaky thought is this... book Thursday night at the Doubletree and then Friday-Monday at El Cheapo Hotel. If I don't turn in my hotel room key card (easily done if you check out via the phone), then I've got my "pass" to visit friends. This is a bit complex, and probably silly... but what do you all think? Most of the people who read this are the ones I'd be trying to visit. I'm really looking forward to AN this year. YAY Dealer's room hours! I'll actually be able to go do stuff and talk to people!

I Got Into the Dealer's Room!

Anime North FINALLY got back to me! They say they have a table for me! *Dances* *Dances some more* *Does the Snoopy Dance* It's still not a 100% certain. I haven't signed a contract or paid or anything, but still! Progress!

Off to Anime Boston!

Rather excited even with the unpleasantness from the forums at AB. A friend gave me a list of good restaurants to try, and I made 15 brand new button designs for this con. More then I've made in a long time! Seven of these were new Fruits Basket zodiac pins... I only meant to update the Kisa - Tiger button because it was the last hold out of my very first FB zodiac pins that consisted only of the head. But once I started drawing fruits basket it snowballed. I ended up with not only a new Kisa Tiger, but a new Ritsu Monkey, Kureno Sparrow, Kagura Boar, Ayame Snake, Hatori Seahorse and a new Haru Cow. This makes the third Haru I've made. Why is Haru-cow so much fun to draw? There was only one other "fanart" drawing, a D.Gray-man Allen button. Besides that it's all random cute stuff. For some reason I had fruit on the brain and drew a sad blueberry, a happy strawberry and a banana peel. Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking either... it will be interesting to see if they sell. The other stuff I made is even more random and wouldn't make sense if I tried to explain it. I'll try to scan in pictures when I come back. I'm hoping for a fun and drama-free weekend, and hopefully people will like the fruit and randomness well enough that I can afford Anime North! (Still haven't heard on the dealer's room table... sigh.)

Well... Hmmm....

So, for the first year in... I'm not really sure how many... I didn't get an artist alley table for Anime North. They sold out, and filled up their waiting list before they got my email. The alley reservations started at 8pm yesterday, and since I was going to be out, my friend Margaret sent in my email. The message in her outbox says it was sent at 8:00 exactly. The returned message saying the alley and waiting list is full says they received the message at 8:59. Stupid internet.

So what does this mean? I'm still waiting to hear if I'm going to be able to get a table in the dealer's room. It's what I really wanted, but no one responded to my emails. Now the website says that the dealer's room is full. But I emailed Donald Simmons, the con chair, and reminded him how last year when the same thing happened (no response to emails) he promised they'd do something for me this year. He says he's looking into it.

I have hopes. If I don't get in, it's going to depend on how well I do at Anime Boston if I can afford to go to Anime North. Grumble. I hate when things are up in the air.

NY was fun!

Award trip to NY ended up being fun, even with it's shaky start. I left here around 2:00, and found that the head of global corporate trust was on the same flight. There are only two people above him in the whole international bank, and he was the one I (and 7 of my fellow award winners) were supposed to have dinner with that night. He asked me why I was leaving so late, since he thought people would go early to do some sight-seeing or visit the NYC offices (we've got two, one on Wall St and one on Barclay). I explained that I was told to book my flight late so I could work in the morning. He looked at me like I'd grown a second head. He asked if we were really that busy that they couldn't do without me for a couple hours. I shrugged and said I wasn't positive on the volumes we were getting, but that my manager thought we were busy enough to remind me today that I was still expected to try to work 3-4 hours of overtime this week too. He said he thought I was more on special projects and data management (wow, he knows what I do!), which shouldn't require such rigidly scheduled overtime... or required overtime at all. Before I could say anything he said he'd look into it, because he wanted me on a couple of bank-wide projects he was working on. That'd be good for me as he believes in the management style that if you can't do it in the 8 hours, you're doing it wrong. Let's hope he actually follows up Besides that, the dinner was nice. It was a little restaurant, but fancy and right around the corner from the Millenium Hilton. The hotel was extremely ritzy, and had a tv the size of the wall. It was directly across the street from the Ground Zero World Trade Center site, so there was some construction noise but nothing horrible. Though it was eerie to look down from my 35th floor and just stare at the site of where the tower was. The luncheon the next day wasn't as horrible as we thought. They webcast the things to the whole bank. During past ones, sitting in conference rooms staring at a phone on speaker, I and many of my co-workers usually nodded off. It's very different sitting at a table, actually there. When it came time to present the awards the head of global trust described me as "our 'Fixer,' she handles all the problems. She's like the Michael Clayton of bondholder relations." Now I have to see Michael Clayton to know what he was talking about. In other news, I had my follow up visit to the doctor about the fainting incident. According to him all my tests are too normal so it makes it hard to diagnose what happened. So now I have to do a bunch of other tests to widen the sample to see if any irregularities pop up. This week is blood testing for sugars. I have to prick my finger twice a day and use a testing machine to record the results. It didn't hurt as much as I thought it would. Let's see how I feel after the week of testing is up. I feel fine, so I think we're going to find at the end of this it was just the dehydration and nothing else.

Going to NYC...

Trip to NYC is actually happening. Got the OK from my doctor, and so plans progress. Of course, my manager is so afraid to do without me that instead of getting the day off like everyone else who won this award and traveling to NYC this morning, I'm here at work. For three hours (almost up in the next 30 minutes), then I fly off to NYC to have dinner with the head of global operations tonight and then the award luncheon tomorrow. Of course, everyone else gets to have a day in NYC to sight-see, but I'm so very necessary that I have to work just long enough to make it completely impossible to do anything today, and they booked my flight back right after the awards luncheon so no chance to do anything tomorrow either. I wasn't too upset by this until I got a reminder email from my manager today reminding me that we're still trying for 4 hours of overtime each week...and I still need to make up most of it even if I am out of town for two days of the week. For goodness sake! The place will not shut down if I'm not here!

I took a trip to the hospital today! (in an ambulance)

I was feeling a bit off this morning, just a bit of grumbly guts, but decided to go into work. I had won an "Above and Beyond Award" (one of my co-workers nominated me for going out of my way on a project). Part of the prize is a trip to NYC for a dinner with the head of global operations and an award luncheon the next day. It's this Monday and Tuesday, and I hadn't made my travel plans yet. So I went to work, feeling a little crampy, but not really sick or anything. I had a meeting on another project at about 8:30. At around 9 it turned around to my turn to give progress on my portion. I'd gotten pretty far, so I flipped open my folder and started to talk. All of the sudden I had a wave of nausea and my vision went a bit sparklly. "Excuse me," I said. Next thing I knew I was on the floor and there was a crowd around me. One of my co-workers has a nursing degree so they called her in. Apparently I crumpled, hit my head on the table and was out cold for about a minute. I woke up feeling a little shaky, but I didn't even feel where I hit my head (I still don't, but I have a little bruise on my forehead.) I was white as a sheet, until I sat up and my coloring came back. I felt fine, but I let them talk me into going to the hospital in the ambulance to the ER to get checked out. I was poked and prodded for a couple of hours. They drew blood, hooked my up to machines, kept asking me if I could possibly be pregnant (nope, nope, nope...not a possibility), ran tests. I didn't get to leave until around 3:30. The final verdict? I fainted. Everything else is normal. Most likely I fainted because I was dehydrated. My stomach was off the night before, and I'd eaten lunch late, so I skipped dinner. I hadn't eaten breakfast and apparently the bagel I had at the start of the meeting and the couple sips of my bottle of water wasn't enough. I also hadn't slept well. So eating regularly and sleeping are pretty important. Good to know. I've got to call my regular doctor to follow up and see if he wants to do any follow up tests. It's unlikely because my heart, breathing and blood sugars were all fine. I also have to make sure that it's still okay for my to fly to NYC. It will be so unfair if I win an award and can't get two days off from work to collect it. Because for sure they're not going to let me just stay home instead.

I am supposed to be working....

But I'd rather relive my vacation. Plus, it's almost been a week since I've been back and I never posted about my second week in Mexico! I did rally and manage to put most of my cold behind me. My nose still ran, and even now I've got a bit of a cough and my voice has gone all funny. I also passed it along to Shelly, which is not at all nice as a hostess gift. (Sorry!) So, what I did... the short version! (HA! I think I'm incapable of keeping it short in anything but height.) Saturday, did not go to market... as the market only happens on Sunday. Instead read "Luck in Darkness." Sunday (Super Bowl Sunday), went to the Jardin Del Arte (Garden of Art) market. It's like a Mexican Artist Alley! Every Sunday they take over a park in the La Contessa (I think that's how it's spelled) section of the city and all the artist set up their paintings. It's supposedly only open until 2, but when we left at 2 it was still going strong. I bought two tiny peices of art, a pair of giraffes for my mother and an elephant for my sister. They were darling little dimensonal water colors. I also bought a Lucha Libre mask for my nephew and two mini ones for my dolls. After the park, we went back to Shelly's apartment building. Almost everyone in the apartment building works at the embassy, so they all decided to have a cookout and super bowl party. Allan made burbon and brown sugar marinated steaks (YUM), and Shelly and I made garlic and parmisian mashed potatoes. The cookout was fun and Shelly and I made it halfway through the superbowl before we decided to ditch and go watch some of the Miyazaki movies from the boxset I bought her for Christmas. (We watched My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away before catching the last five minutes of the game.) Monday was a Mexican Holiday (Constitution Day) so Shelly had the day off. We decided to take a tour offered by a local hotel to Cuernavaca and Taxaco. We saw a pretty and old church in Cuernavaca, and then went to Taxaco. Taxaco is where they mine silver and all the silver shops are. We stopped at a place where they explained how to identify silver types (plated, mixed with copper, mixed with zinc) and gave us speech about how their silver was so much better then everyone else's we'd find in town. They also tried liquoring us up with a lime, honey and tequila drink. They gave us a little to sample, and I decided to try it when they said it had only "seven drops of Tequila in it." Of course, as I was drinking it they qualified that with "Seven Mexican drops." My throat closes up when I drink alcohol in any quantity, though I'm okay if I took my medicine in the morning. Lucky I had, instead I just lost my voice for about a half hour due to those "Mexican drops." I spent way too much money on silver. I got gifts for my Mother, my sister, my grandmother, Shelly... and a few things for myself. The tour guide took us to an awful Best Western for lunch, where I had the worst enchiladas ever, and Shelly had a horrible thing they called a steak. (We had our doubts.) Because of the holdiay, the tour van got stuck in traffic on the way home. Our driver and guide decided to leave the highway to get on the freeway in the hopes of less traffic...we got lost, and when we found the freeway, found the traffic. It took us nearly 5 hours to get home. Despite the lunch and traffic we had a great time. Tuesday, Wedensday and Thursday I spent on the Turibus around Mexico city. The Turibus is a double-decker bus that drives around the city to the various landmarks, museums and points of interest. For a day it's $10 (100 pesos), for three days it was only $19. It's like getting a day free! The first day I just rode it around listening to the audio tour. The second day I got off at La Reforma and walked over to the embassy for lunch with Shelly. After some very good tacos I took the bus to the Anthropology museum. It's huge! I spent hours and only managed to get through most of the first floor. The third day I made friends with a fellow turibus rider, Maria from Spain, and we got off and walked around the La Contessa neighborhood, and then rode the south route that shows the other side of the city. We got off at only one stop, the Frida Kahlo museum. It was very neat, it is the house where she and Diego Rivera lived and had little of her finished artwork. But there was a lot of her sketches, correspondence, her workspace and belongings. Very cool. Thursday night Shelly's Mother and her boyfriend came into town. Alan made dinner again (very good). Shelly had heard that her belongings were finally going to arrive on Saturday, so Friday the Embassy was going to haul out all of their borrowed stuff. To get us out of the way (well, me mostly), Alan and I went to the Pyramids. I climbed the moon pyramid! I was too chicken to climb the sun pyramid, which is taller and allows you to go all the way to the top. We also went to place that makes onyx scuptures and they showed us both how they make the sculptures and how to make tequila. I did not drink the tequila. Saturday I went with Shelly's parents to Xochimilco, where there is a series of canals and bright colorful boats, poled by a single man, that can carry up to thirty people. We had lunch and went on a boat ride. There were floating mariachi bands! That night, Shelly, Allan, Jean (Shelly's Mom), OB, and I went out again to the Argentian Steak house where we had another excellent dinner. Alan had flaming coffee, and for desert Shelly and I had flaming apple crepe. Any night that ends in flaming dessert is a good one. Sunday, I had to go home. =( I went from 75 F tempuratures to below 6. That's just not right. Most of this week I've just been recovering. SO tired!

My First Week in Mexico ~Sick~

So that cold that was fine with a packet of tissues and a cough drop? Not so fine. On the Sunday after I arrived Shelly, and three friends from the embassy (Dan, Mike, and a guy whom I've forgotten) went to see the churches devoted to the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe. We decided to metro, safe because it was day, Sunday (less crowded) and we were with four men. (Women are targeted for pickpockets, purse snatching and groping when unescorted on busy days). Dan knew where we were going, and he was tall and easy to follow. At almost 6 feet, he had a good foot on most of the population (and me). I am "to scale" in Mexico I've found. Most men and women are my height or a little shorter. With my black hair and apparently Mexican fashion sense I blend way more then any of my blond companions. Pink is a very in color apparently. This is blending is great because it keeps me from looking like a tourist, until someone tries to speak to me in Spanish. The churches at the devotion site to the Virgin of Guadalupe were beautiful, surrounded by large courtyards all built into a hill. The further you go up, the older the churches. We spent hours wandering through them, taking pictures of the continual masses and watching people go through their devotions. It was good people watching and almost as good at the lovely architecture and view. I saw the devoted crawling into the first church on their knees in prayer for others, In the second the worshipful seated in prayer and carrying huge bouquets to the alter already overflowing with a riotous display of color. In the fourth there were pendants and small banners of all the people who donate to restore it (it was mostly covered in scaffolds with work suspended for Sunday). And in the last, up a tall hill with ornate stone staircases, and past the gift shop selling plastic Virgins and more religious medals than should exist, people rubbed candles against the person they were going to pray for as they listened to the miracle of the Virgin. It was a long trek up through the churches (plus a museum devoted to an Italian man who had gathered so much of the information on the phenomenon of the Virgin... who might or might not be a Aztec goddess under a new name.) And Shelly and I were glad we bought water before we went. The boys kept outdistancing us, which we blamed on my cold and the fact I still hadn't acclimated yet. (After all, it was only two days that I'd been here.) The stone steps were the worst, and its when you feel the difference in the altitude and the thinness of the air. But in a lot of ways, they were the best too as there were lots of picturesque places to stop and look at the beautiful smog covered Mexico City. Such a pretty city, coated in clouds of pollution. Once I borrow a USB cord from Alan I'll upload my pictures. After the museum, which looked like a tiny one-room place when we went in and turned out to be a mansion of paintings and information, we decided to go home. I was glad as I was starting to feel out of breath and warm in a pretty uncomfortable way, even though I was still having fun. I had finished my water and assumed the sun and dehydration was getting to me. After a metro ride with a old, old lady with a pigeon on her lap (that only I noticed, but it was there. There were empty seed shells when she stood up.) Shelly and I were back at her place. I collapsed on the couch and almost slept through dinner. Ate, and then slept until morning. I thought the sun and activity had done me in. That was probably part of it, but a big chunk was my cold saying "Ha! Think you're getting around me, well think again!!" The next day I had planned to ride the Turibus around Mexico but decided to delay it because Sunday had so wiped me out. Good thing as I slept through all of Monday. People who know me, know this is rare because I never, never, never sleep more than four hours at a time. Tuesday I put off the Turibus again because I still felt awful, coughing, dripping nose and bleh. I spent most of the day napping, reading a Cliff Janeway mystery, playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, and blowing my nose. That night I took the Mexican equivalent of Nyquil, something called Tabcin Noche. I don't remember much of Wednesday. I hardly ever take that kind of medication, and should have known to take half a dose. It really knocked me for a loop. I finally woke up around 5 pm on Wednesday and when Shelly asked if I felt well enough to go out to dinner I thought I did. I napped the few hours before we went to dinner (dinner hour doesn't start until 8 at the earliest) and it was the longest five minute walk to the restaurant ever. I kept leaving the table to blow my nose, because it was that thick wet honking blowing that just disgusts everyone. However the actual food at Casa Maria was wonderful, and the waiters practically fought to keep our water glasses full. I had the most artfully presented steak baguette sandwiches, with guacamole, refried beans and onions. It sounds like a horrible combination, but it was wonderful. I only made it through one. There was also roving Mariachi bands, which sounds equally as horrible but was really fun and entertaining. But, by the time we walked home I was sweaty and light headed and practically collapsed into bed. Thursday I felt much better, and actually stayed awake for much of the day. Everyone who heard me said I sounded much better too (my voice had disappeared into this weird croaking womans, and while it didn't hurt it was a great deal of effort to speak.) My nose still dripped and I had no energy, but I spent the day reading (I finished one Cliff Janeway mystery and started and finished the next) and playing more Phoenix Wright. Shelly and I hung out, the first time we really had a chance to just sit and talk when she got home. We ate hotdogs and talked about stories we thought would make good mangas, Today I woke up and just felt better. My nose is dripping a lot less and I didn't nap at all. I read the book "Blood and Chocolate," and when I finished, completed Phoenix Wright. I managed to make it through only using a walkthrough twice. And both times, I found I did have the right evidence I just wasn't presenting it at exactly the right time. I can see why these games are so popular. The "chapter" stories are simple, characters are engaging, and the puzzles just difficult enough to be entertaining without being annoying. I also like the quirky sense of humor. I think it was Sean Gaffney who mentioned something about Gumshoe's man-crush on Edgeworth, and every time he popped up I couldn't help saying "Maaan-cruuuush!" At least until Alan, who works from home, told me it was a little disturbing to hear that drifting croak-aly through the guest bedroom door. Then I just kind of whispered it, "Maaaan-cruuuush!" Luckily just as I finished Shelly called and asked if I felt more like Potpies for dinner or Steak? Well, steak! So we went out to an Argentinian Steak house and had one of the most fabulous meals I've ever had. I'd describe it, but it'd be a massive description. Lets just say the food was marvelous, I was feeling much better (and only had to blow my nose twice). Ben came along to round out the table and the conversation was light and colorful. I told family and bank stories, Shelly and Ben told embassy stories. Ben whistled the popeye theme expertly, and we all had a lot of fun. Ben had me laughing so hard at one point I actually got a cramp. He thought the way Shelly and I half say something and then break into hysterics because we get the joke no one else does funny and laughed almost as much as we did. (Shelly and I tend to have conversations that go like, "Hey remember-? Oh, him! Yeah that! AHAHAHAAHA!) So what did I do in my first week in Mexico? One touristy thing, slept for almost a week, read "Bookman's Promise," "Sign of the Book," "Blood and Chocolate," and played Phoenix Wright. I had hoped to do more touristy things but, knock on wood, I feel myself rallying. Tomorrow Shelly and I plan to hit the a local art market, and maybe I'll actually buy some souvenirs. I'm depressed I more or less missed out on my first week here, but I bet I can pack in a ton of things into next week.

Mexico City, Day One

Today was nice and relaxed. Yesterday I felt the start of a cold coming on, which happens a lot when I travel and when I change temperatures rapidly. And since I went from snow on the ground to t-shirt weather I wasn't surprised when I woke up with a sore throat and head cold. But a cough drop, a hot shower and a packet of kleenex later and all was well. Shelly made waffles for breakfast, and we went for a walk in her neighborhood. It's very upscale, and her apartment complex has a little garden and a pool. The streets all have pretty trees and cars that zip along without looking where they're going. After our walk we came home and she and Alan (her husband) had "Christmas" via webcam with her family in NY. They're a pretty far flung bunch and today was the first opportunity they had to get a group together. But it worked out perfect as I hadn't given Shelly my Christmas gift either. I got her a box set of Miyazaki movies, an exclusive at Borders. It had Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Nausicca, Castle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle. She loved it. (Yay! and she didn't have any of the movies before that.) Then we went and walked to the huge supermarket, aptly named Gigante. We picked up food for the week while Shelly tried to orient me to her neighborhood. (It failed.) I did learn what to look for for the SITO taxis though. Those are the regulated "safe" taxis. Libre taxis, which are typically cute green and white vw bugs are apparently just an invitation to getting mugged, assaulted and/or kidnapped. Good to know. We came home and I was starting to feel the high altitude. We lazed around and watched Lucha Libre or Mexican masked wrestling. First we watched Mini-Lucha Libre, which is "small person" wrestling. Alan explained to me that most of the small wrestlers are made up to look like popular wrestlers, We watched Little Son of Satan wrestle Metaliquina (little metal man). Then we watched the Pequina Ultimate Dragon (little ultimate dragon) wrestle Mini Mr. Halloween. It was more entertaining then I thought it would be. The large wrestlers were fun too, they're really acrobatic and their costumes are quite extreme. I played a bit of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and then took a nap. Dinner is served late in Mexico City, and we'd decided to go out. Dinner hour doesn't start until 8:30-9:00. We tried to go to a place Shelly had heard about that is kind of fancy, but it was closed. I wore "nice" shoes that ripped up the back of my foot so bad it bled. So we ended up going to a sports bar type place called "Papa Bill's" I had a really good chicken fajitas. I ordered that because was the only thing I could read on the menu, LOL. But I was very happy with it. The waiters were good, and I was amused by the top hats they all wore. Alan was disappointed they didn't have them for sale in their merchandise section. It was 11:00 by the time we were done, and to save my poor bloody foot we took a cab home. (a SITOS not a Libre) Now, even though I napped earlier I'm exhausted and am going to bed. Tomorrow we're going to go to a open air art market. I'm wearing my sneakers!

Much Better!

I had a bit of a personal issue regarding a convention I'm going to later in the year. I won't go into details, but I'm glad I have good friends. They all came through to distract me and keep me entertained while it worked itself out. Well, I donated over 9000 grains of rice (before a power outage lost my count! Thank you Hyminia), went through the archives of I can has cheeseburger and Cute Overload (thank you Ginny_t). I paid off the last of my car loan on Friday, and to celebrate my current 100% debt-free status, and to further destract me, I decided to spend money on something completely frivolous and get a DS lite. Of course once I decided that every DS lite in the cny area was immediately snatched up. I spent most of Saturday looking for one. I went to 3 gamestop stores (each one claimed the other had one), an EB Games, Target, and Best Buy with no luck. Then I called Walmart, K-Mart, Circut City and a couple of local stores. =/ No one had one. Then Sunday, I went to BJ's wholesale for something else and there it was, a DS lite bundle that came with two games. The games look pretty stupid, and the only color they had was pink, but I got one! I went back to gamestop and bought a Phoniex Wright game, Elite Beat Angels, Trace Memory and a Spanish Coach game. Then I hit up some craft stores while it was charging. I bought myself a soap-making kit, despite not needing yet another craft to do and played with some shrinky-dinks. I forgot how much fun those are. I'm going to get some more sheets. My cellphone doesn't have a cellphone charm thing, but the DS lite does. Maybe I'll make some zodiac charms to hang off it out of the shrinky-dinks. After it was done charging I played through Trace Memory in one sitting. I'm terrible at games, terrible, so this means it was a pretty easy game. But I enjoyed it and liked the story. Today I read some manga and then went to my friend Margaret's house. We had a good dinner, hung out and watched some anime.

Thank You Notes

My eight-year-old nephew sent me a thank you note for his Christmas and Birthday gifts (he's born dec 23rd). In an effort to preserve this so that I can torment him with it when he's 18, and to share the humor, I'm posting it up here. (I'm typing it exaclty as written.) "Dear Aunt Kate, Thank you for the Nintendo DS, I needed that LOL. Thank you for the Raveman video game, It's funny. FYI I finished all the yu-gi-oh books, I need number 7, I'm really not joking, I'm serious. Thank you once again." And then under a doodle of a circle with a smilie face and his initials on either side: "PS This is a funny pizza" I think I'm going shopping for Yu-Gi-Oh book seven tonight. In other news, I'm going to a con in Buffalo (NeoNohCon) and AnimeBoston. I still have to confirm Tekkoshocon and AnimeNorth. For the Canadian contingent, anyone know someone who might be able to work at my table for me in return for in to the con and a little money? Otherwise I have to buy a $150 work permit to work my table myself. Given the option, I'd rather pay an individual $100 plus get them into the con. Canadian goverments are weird. I can either pay to work, or watch someone sell my stuff for free. Also, did I mention I'm going to Mexico in about 10 days? I don't think I did. This puts me in a good mood. Several things do. One, the note from my nephew sends me into giggles every time I see it. Two, I get to go on vacation in ten days. Three, I found a local anime club. About twice a month they get together and watch anime and BS. They seem like a fun mix of people, even mostly my age. Four, a good friend got a job at Syracuse Stage and has already come through with free tickets and promises more. They are for a full dress rehersal the night before it opens, but FREE ENTERTAINMENT. I get to go see the The Lieutenant of Inishmore tonight, which they describe as "Monty Python meets Tarentino."

I'm in Mexico!

I made it! I'm in Mexico! It took me 11 hours to get here, 4 1/2 of which was a layover in NYC, but I got here. I was relatively painless. I played my DS SpanishCoach, and am now a second grader. This did not mean that I had any idea what anyone was saying around me. On the flight to Mexico City, I was surrounded on all sides by cute Englishmen. They all had absolutely wonderful accents, and they all assumed that I was flying home and kept trying to speak broken English accented Spanish to me. I wish I had got where they were staying, they were planning to just walk around Mexico city for the next couple of days which is exactly what I was planning to do. And they were cute, Cute with English accents. The Aussie I spoke with at the terminal in JFK was cuter, but harder to understand. Today was my day for cute foreign men. Lets hope this trend continues. In side news, I read Sand Chronicles, and the art looks super familiar, I'm hesitant to look up who wrote it because then I might have more of an idea where this is going. (Though I think I know already) Living in prime hunting area in upstate ny, I really laughed at the part where she freaks out about the hunting. I can't even imagine being upset about eating deer, duck or rabbit. (Though, if I saw the fuzzy rabbit first I might change my mind. Not deer though, those things are pests.)

Hippo Birdy To me!

I am old.

But I get to have dinner with friends tonight, then cake with my parents at some point. So that's compensation for aging I suppose. Plus, it was only October that I got carded to get in an R rated movie, so I don't look 32. (not that there is anything wrong with that, but I hope it means that when I'm 62 I'll look 32)

However it will be a long day today. First I have work, then I have dinner, then I have to do laundry and pack for Ohayocon. I'm leaving on Thursday for my first con of the year. However, I'm leaving right after work, so I've got to get everything packed up tomorrow. EEK!