The Goldfish's Logbook

Really I'm just writing this post to test some internet-y stuff out. Buuuuuuut I hate to post in vain so I'll slap together a semblance of a real entry.
So yeah, I got back home from Japan Friday evening. Didn't sleep at all on the plane of course so when I got home I passed out for 18 hours straight. I pretty much spent all weekend in a weird zombie-hibernating state. I didn't have the mental acuity or physical energy to leave the house (even though I desperately wanted to hang with friends), so the only productive thing I did all weekend was some very slow house-cleaning. I still had a mess from All-con and the pre-Japan packing frenzy. Oh, and a multi-colored science experiment growing in my fridge. I threw some powdered Clorox at it and I think I heard it laugh.
Monday I went into work expecting (hoping for?) a slow day, only to be shipped off to Kerrville for the next ten days. Blah. I know I just got back from a long vacation, but if you think about it, I was ALONE for those two weeks. I want need to spend time with my friends; not sit in a hotel alone for another two weeks.
. . . Oh well. Whatever.
All I've got to say is there better be something damned fun to do on the weekend of the 16th. Someone better have a birthday or a BBQ or there needs to be a con or a river float or SOMETHING, dammit. I need friends and fun!

Ooo, it’s been a totally unplanned (but fun) weekend so far. It all started once upon a time . . . *cue twinkly SFX and wavy blur*
I needed to go back to Wichita Falls to do some reconnaissance for work. Overall it meant I’d be doing 12 hours of driving and 2 hours of hiking. That would’ve added up to one very long workday so I planned instead to drive partway there on Thursday, spend the night at my brother’s in Carrollton, and then knock out the rest of the job Friday so I could get back to Austin at a decent hour. Easy peasy, right?
It didn’t quite work out that way. On the drive up, I started seeing snow about Hillsboro and thought, "Is this what everyone is complaining about? This is nothing! There isn’t even enough ice to make a dirt raspa. These people are babies!" Then I hit the Dallas city limits and boom! Ice on the highway. My windshield soon got covered with mud and slush and of course I had no washer fluid to clear it away with. So I was driving blind, on ice, through the Dallas MixMaster. That was not fun. But I called upon all my training from Canada and amazing driving reflexes from my pizza delivery days and my knowledge of physics, biology, and engineering and I triumphed.
By the time I got to Cameron’s place I’d decided I wasn’t doing any more driving. I’d gotten in, but I wouldn’t be getting out. He and his wife had been home-bound for four days and in pajamas for nearly as long. (At least the cold kept the smell down.) I hadn’t brought any supplies with me so the big question was what to do for food?
Somehow or another we managed to make plans to go get dinner with Cat & Kevin. They were even worse off than us. Their apartment gate was literally frozen solid so they could only eat within walking distance of their apartment. At least we could drive, albeit very slowly. I wasn’t too sure how this would turn out, I’ve never mixed my family with cosplay friends before. But it turns out that nerds are nerds are nerds, just in different flavors. LOLcats was the perfect universally understood ice-breaker. I felt it was a fun dinner.
Overnight we got about 4 inches of new snow. It was pretty, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to try driving in it. Work would have to wait till the thaw. Katherine was actually "work" working from home so Cameron and I went outside to play around for awhile and buried her car in snow. Then we got bored enough to risk a drive to the supermarket for booze and steak. It was fun to watch people slipping and falling on their asses in the parking lot. Back at the apartment, we set up a little man camp on the balcony, set the beers in the snow, barbecued our meat, and had some quality bro time.
After steak and beers I exercised some poor judgment. I decided I’d accept Stephanie’s invitation to meet for drinks. Slightly tipsy + driving at night + on ice + in a COMPANY vehicle + with bad tires = not very smart. I fishtailed once and that sobered me up INSTANTLY. But even with my recovered stats, it was still a suck-ass drive. 80 minutes to drive 30 miles. Ridiculous. But I would not admit defeat!
Our mutual cosplay friends didn’t show, just a few of Stephanie’s law school buds. There was me, Steph, Lorraine/Lauren?, Amy, and Amy’s cleavage. I only mention the fifth guest because the groundhog had seen his shadow, meaning that there would be six more weeks of turtlenecks. So this unexpected, but welcome glimpse of bosom was telling me, "Yes Cody, Spring WILL come. Keep the faith!" "Okay boobs, I’ll stay strong." MMmmm, boobs . . .
The girls were cool. I learned a lot about Law, mostly that 1) I could never hack it in the law profession, and 2) I need to watch more Law & Order marathons if I’m going to go drinking with them again. Nah, we talked about all sorts of crap. Stephanie had kept her cosplay past a secret from them so when they asked how we knew each other, I had to make up some story about our days at the Austin soup kitchen. I thought it was a good story.
I was surprised that one of them actually knew what a civil engineer was. In my 6 years of being one, I’ve NEVER met a non-engineer who knew that. Furthermore, she was quite familiar with the client I was working for this very weekend. I was like, “Shit, you know my job better than me. Who are you?” Cool gals, we had fun. Next thing I knew it was one a.m. and time to depart. It was definitely worth the hassle of the being an ice-road trucker.
I slept in this morning, giving the sun plenty of time to melt the snow and clear the roads. I went up to the job site and slopped around in the meltwater mud for a couple hours then turned around and headed back to Austin. As I drove south, the snow disappeared from the landscape bit by bit until there wasn’t a speck of white to be seen. As if the snow and ice had just been an unpleasant dream. That was fine by me. I’d had my fill of the stuff.

Call off the search party, cancel the candlelight vigil; I'm alive and well. Two weeks pass without a single post from me and it's understandable that my adoring fans would be worried.
Not much has happened since my last post. In good news: my Wichita Falls job has been postponed indefinitely, meaning that I get to stay in town for the next few weeks. While I'll miss the extra $1000/month that comes with an out-of-town job, living at HOME is priceless in it's own way.
As soon as I got back home that itch returned. You know the one. Then kinomotou told me that Golden D'or was having a sale. Well that settled it. I'd be going to Dallas this weekend. I went to all the stores in the fabric district and was disappointed that I only found one fabric that was merely "pretty close" to what I needed. The whole point of going to Dallas is to get the PERFECT fabric. But once I found out it was only $1/yard, it was instantly promoted to "perfect" status. Hell, you can't even get muslin for that cheap. Honestly, I was expecting to run into some cosplayers at Golden D'or, with those kinda prices. Later, I met catspaws and bonpantaloons at Babe's, the place where I'm destined to eat myself to death one day. We had a long lunch and I got a small taste of all the krazee drama and shenanigans that go on behind the scenes of conventions. Often I lament that I'm so out-of-the-loop, but in this case it seems that Ignorance is truly bliss.
After lunch I stopped by the outlet malls and picked up a few essential items for my Japan trip. Then I headed over to my brother's place. Katherine's niece and nephew were there. That meant booze-times were out of the picture, but playing with them was equally fun. Them kids really bring out my hyper 8-year-old. We went to dinner at some Brazilian steakhouse in Addison. The kind of place where if you have to ask how much it costs, you shouldn't be eating there. (I did not know this until after I offered to pick up the tab. Ouch. >_<) The place was swank. I parked one restaurant over to avoid the valet and I'm sure I didn't meet their dress code, but I had a tyke on each arm so I think that earned me some leniency.
The gauchos, or "meat fairies" as I call them, brought meat after meat after orgasmic meat to our table, skewered on their swords. I lost count after seven different types. Each one was delicious but the sirloin was my favorite. I cursed myself for visiting the salad bar before the meat arrived. What a fool I was! After the meal I was too meat-drunk to wince at the bill. My brain said it was a waste of money but my mouth and stomach overruled him.
We dropped off the little people at their dad's place after dinner. While I was trying in vain to pry Faye off my leg Cameron was introducing me to her dad. He interrupted, "Oh I remember him from your wedding. Mr. Catbus." That nickname distracted me for a moment, allowing Faye a chance to clamp down harder. I was 99% certain that I'd never spoken to him about my cosplay hobby, but how else could he know about the Catbus? For an ego-inflating second I thought, "Maybe I'm just such a famous cosplayer that even the general public knows about me?" Then he explained how he'd seen the photo I'd taken of his daughter's drawing of Catbus some months back. Oh. That burst my bubble. Ha ha.

( Talk about Japan trip )

I’ve been meaning to write an LJ entry all week but every evening when I get in, I’m too tired to care. I’ve got a fistful of half-formed entries and I figure if I roll them all up together like gum taken from underneath many tables, they’ll form one awesome, delicious gumball. Dare you try it?

Do vegetarians even have friends? (TMI?)
This is a little town we’re working in. Five “restaurants” total and one grocery store. It’s hard to eat well here. I can’t even shop at the grocery store because the town’s high school students work there and they won’t let you take your own bags to your car, they carry it for you and expect a tip. The first time I went there I was all, “Wait, you mean this cute high school girl is going to follow me back to my truck in the middle of a dark parking lot so she can make an easy few bucks? . . . Is this some kind of trap? Am I on hidden camera?” But I digress. As I was saying, it’s hard to eat properly. Breakfast = gas station breakfast tacos and Lunch is brown bag; no time to drive back into town for fast food. Trying to eat responsibly, I’ve been bringing tons of dried fruits and granola bars and eating that for lunch. I’ve never eaten nothing but fruit for an entire day. By the afternoon I’m Jupiter, the gas giant. I cannot stop breaking wind. Thank goodness we’re out in the middle of nowhere and I stay downwind of the drillers. But man I felt like I was gonna explode, that first day of the extra-fruity diet. If this is what you girls mean when you say you feel ‘bloated,’ I think I’m beginning to understand. I just wanted someone to stab me so I could deflate. How do vegetarians do this? If mega-gas and quintupled bowel movements are the price to pay for a healthier and longer lifestyle, I think I’ll remain a carnivore.

Waiting for the drillers to show up
Sure, it was fun playing on a swingset for the first time in years, but the abandoned elementary school (off-camera) was a bit depressing.

The episode where Cody remembers he likes dogs
Today while we were working, three dogs came out of nowhere and joined our crew. No barking or running around to herald their arrival; they just appeared. It was a bit scary, having a pack of dogs appear out of nowhere like that. Andrew was especially startled, but that may have been because this one was SO white.
The dogs seemed quite interested in what we were doing and who we were. They seemed to be saying, “Hey, we just met, but let’s be friends!” Joe the driller grumbled half-heartedly about them being in the way, but within a few minutes he’d given his lunch to the dogs. That might’ve been a bad idea because now they didn’t seem in any hurry to leave. They lounged around like this was their place, not at all noticing that we were trying to work. (Get out of my truck! You can't have my Lunchables!)
That’s when it hit me; Dogs are so much awesomer than cats. Whereas these random dogs had instantly given us their friendship without any prompting or coaxing, I cannot imagine a cat warming up to a human so readily. Cats are so temperamental and inscrutable, kinda like women. You never know what they’re thinking. But these dogs obviously wanted to be our buddies.
After an hour or so they moved on and I was a little sad to see them go. Adios boys. Have a fun adventure out there!

Adventure time gender swap
When I wore Finn at Ikki-con, Beauty didn’t know what it was. She looked some images up online and asked me if this was what I was cosplaying. No! That’s not Adventure Time! But then I started investigating and found out that Fiona and Cake are fan-art drawn by one of the series’ artists, so they’re legitimate characters, TECHNICALLY. Her mirror-universe is pretty cool, the more I look into it. And then I found out today that these spin-off characters are so popular that they’re actually gonna get their own episode sometime in the near future. Weird, huh? And I also found out that Thurop (the creator of Flapjack) is a writer on AT. Now I don’t feel like watching AT is such a betrayal of my Flapjack fandom. Phew! What a relief.
I didn’t really have a significant reason to write about Adventure Time. I’ve just been cruising the fan sites this evening so I had in on my mind I guess. Here, have a Fiona comic!

This morning, about 6:45 am, there’s a knock at my door. I open it and am irked to see that it’s Rick, a co-worker who interrupted my evening 3 times the night before. I forget what his official reason for interrupting my morning was, but he soon mentions that his girlfriend just surprised him with something. Huh? She’s here?, I think. No, but she’s pregnant. In half a second my brain sums up the situation. This guy, while fun to drink and hang out with, is best described by the word, “idiot.” He’s a part-time employee who’s always broke because he spends what little money he makes like a high school boy might, on video games and guns. Yes, he is dumb enough to bring guns to work; this ain’t show-and-tell! Idiot. They aren’t married, they aren’t engaged, they’re just boyfriend and girlfriend. And she’s pregnant.
My reflex response was, [You fucking idiot.]
But if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all, right? So all I can say at first is, “Wow . . . that’s serious.” He keeps talking about the news but not excited like an enthusiastic father might be. All I can think about is the poor kid. At the close of the conversation, Rick asks, “So we’re not starting work till 7:30, right?” Yeah, I reply. “Okay, that means I’ve got half an hour to play Call of Duty.”
I did a double-take. [How can you play video games when you’ve just found out you’re going to be a dad and you’re not ready for it?!? You should be doing a lot of deep thinking and soul-searching right now, not playing X-Box!] I thought.
On most topics, I’m pretty easy-going and mellow. Drugs, irresponsibility, intolerance, ignorance, etc; I think a person’s life is theirs to fuck up as they wish. But in this specific situation, a third person’s life is being fucked with and they have no way to prevent that. I have no pity or sympathy for adults who find themselves in this situation. This isn’t a third-world country; everyone knows where babies come from and they have the rights and access to control their reproductive abilities. There’s no excuse for bringing a person into this world by accident, without the planning or ability to raise them. That’s unforgivably irresponsible in my opinion.
It’s not really any of my business, I suppose. That conversation’s just been bouncing around in my head all day, pissing me off each time I recall it.

In hindsight, I’d like to modify my title. If anyone I knew was in this situation, friend, family, or otherwise, were to come to me for help, I’d help them. But I’d do it for the kid’s sake, not theirs. I’d have no sympathy for them, but dammit, the kid will need all the help they can get.

Provided that my truck repairs don't cost too much, I think I'm going to go ahead with my plans for a Japan trip next year. I'd been considering the trip as a reward for surviving Canada and to use all the airline miles and vacation time that had accrued as a result of that job. It was only today though that I realized I need to do this soon. If When I get a new job sometime next year I probably won't be able to take any extended vacations for awhile. So if I going abroad, I need to do it while I'm still with this company and getting 3 weeks paid vacation a year. And the sooner I do it the better (like this spring), so it won't conflict with the job hunt and switch.
Perhaps most importantly, I feel that if I don't do it now when conditions are favorable, I probably won't do it ever.
So my homework assignment for the next few evenings is to 1) decide what I want to do/see there, 2) decide the length and budget of my trip, and 3) investigate travel packages and tour groups. I think that's a logical order to planning this. Oh, and can't forget 4) Get serious about practicing with that Rosetta Stone I've got.

Hell, maybe I'll go visit our Tokyo office and get a job there! Ha ha ha!

I went to that art exhibit this afternoon. The place was a little foo-foo fancy-pants for my taste, but the pieces were amazing. The gallery owner (?) girl was all enthusiastic about the pieces and she was cool about letting people touch and photograph them. I really wanted to see the Autumn Sunset kimono whose picture in the paper had caught my attention. She was sad to inform me that it had already been purchased and was gone. Man, it must've been an amazing piece to sell so quickly at it's debut showing. But I did get to see the Winter Twilight kimono, which was (some other word for "amazing") in it's own right. The iridescent glasses, the landscape, even the moon on the back panel glowed in the dark. So much detail and intricate work went into it. I was really impressed. The other smaller pieces were very pretty and I was surprised to discover that all this glass stuff felt soft and comfortable to the touch. Weird. The engineer/cosplayer in me kept studying the pieces, wondering, "How did they make it?" I could vaguely figure out the processes behind the 2-D pieces, but those 3-D sculptures, man, those were mysteries to me. The kimono and the huge dragonfly (the guy was 6 feet tall!) were easily the two main attractions.
I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that this exhibit comes back to Austin after the seasonal kimonos and insect series are done. That would be phenomenal.

The photos don't do the pieces justice, but *shrug* it's not like I could do a photoshoot with them. (Though I believe the kimono totally warrants one!)

( cut for a few photos )

That artsy jaunt will probably be the highlight of my weekend. In preparation for my trip to west Texas, I expect I'll be doing a lot of laundry and paperwork over the next couple of days. And I'll need to stockpile some decent booze too; all they sell out there is Bud Light and Coors. I'm not going to be drinking that piss-water every night for the next two weeks, hell naw. Tonight I'll probably throw some more logs on the fire and crack open a few drinks to enjoy my last evening here in Austin.

No food at the new house and (almost) no restaurants are open. I really should've planned this holiday a little better. Apparently my family will be visiting me this weekend and not T-Day itself, which is good. That gives me some more time to get my house into order. Hopefully the cable guy stops by today to hook things up; I'd really like to have something more entertaining to do than spy on my neighbors through the blinds.
I had to drive all the way down to the Drag to find both food and free internet. (Thanks Austin's Pizza for both!)
Tomorrow morning I've got to take my truck in to get an estimate done. Since I'll soon be out of town for a couple weeks I figure I'll leave it there and get a rental car for the weekend. Then I've got to finish moving out, then family time stuff, then check-out of the old house with my landlord, then get ready for the West Texas job, then head out Sunday afternoon. Bleh. So much to do. I think I've only got two more loads of stuff left at the old house. If I can get that taken care of I'll be able to take a break for awhile.

I'm stationed out in West Texas for the next few weeks. That means I won't have much of interest to write about. So it's a perfect time to crank out that music meme that I wanted to do a few months ago but couldn't. It's a lot shorter than that 30-day version because I don't have the patience for something that long.

So here it is! Day One of "My Musical Spectrum"

( Black [dark] )