The Goldfish's Logbook

( cut for rambling )

I've spent today cleaning my house, clearing out the mess left behind by Christmas and cosplay. And getting ready to head out to West Texas tomorrow. I'd like to stay in town. I seem to be so much more productive when I'm here at home. But oh well. I had a great week of fun so I don't mind so much. I think the next weekend I'm back in town I'll head up to Dallas to get fabric for my next cosplay and also to enlist my brother's help in exploding the small mountain of fireworks in my living room.

I'm too lazy to upload all my photos just yet, but here's one from New Year's Eve. There was a lot of pink there, apparently.

As of 4:30 pm this afternoon, my schedule has turned on it's head! The weather forecast says it's gonna rain in Dallas Sunday afternoon. We've been working in the Trinity River floodplain, so we can't really work there after a rainstorm without drowning or sinking into quicksand. And the drillers want to get their rigs out of their at least a day before hand, so long story short, I've got the weekend off and I'm back in Austin! Woooo!
Yay!
I wanna go to Ikki-con tomorrow. I'd been telling myself and Liz that I wasn't interested in Ikki, but I got all excited about when I started hearing other cosplayers buzzing about their Ikki plans. Plus, this might be the only con of the year that I have a good chance of attending. So yeah, I'm going for tomorrow at least, just to say hi to old friends and hang out and take pics and stuff (and maybe some drinky-poos?). The irresponsible part of me also wants to take mini-GIR, since I've only ever worn him once (at AX), and only have ONE picture to show for it. But if I took GIR, I'd need assistance and I hadn't brought it up with Liz yet. We'll see.

Woof. What a weekend. Since I'm still tired, I think I'll make this an abridged con report.
( Con report GO! )

The funnest part of cosplay may be buying all the materials and such, I realized as I was driving home from Jo-Ann's with a truckful of stuff. 'Cause at that point, you've gone shopping, which is fun in itself, and you're all full of enthusiasm and optimism about what you're going to make with what you've just purchased. So the drive home was a nice afterglowy ride.
But then I get home and reality sets in and I look at the piles of stuff and realize there's a buttload of work to do. The honeymoon's over, it's time to work. Oye oye oye oye. With two weeks left till Ikki-con I've signed the necessary paperwork to authorize my apartment to become a disaster zone until the con. Yup, things are gonna get kinda crazy from now till then.

*gets fired up*

Ah, I can’t wait for Ikki-con to get here. I know we just got done with a whole boatload of holidays and vacation and such, but I’m already ready for another break. Three weeks to go. I guess I’m especially hungry for a con since I skipped Oni-con in October. I NEED MY FIX!
Fortunately, Pucca & Garu are coming along well. If they weren’t, I’d be panicking. Star and I did the rough work for Pucca’s face this weekend and I think we were both surprised how with just a couple minutes work, that blob of foam and pvc turned into the spitting image of Pucca. Now her ginormous head is on my kitchen table, watching everything we do. I’m pleased that my design for the heads is working out so well. I’m also glad that Star has agreed to suffer with me for this cosplay. I’ve done mascots and masked cosplay before, so I’m no stranger to being blind, deaf, and miserable inside a costume, but this will be her first. So for her sake I’ve installed fans and voice-activated walkie-talkies in the heads. With those we should be less uncomfortable and we’ll be able to talk to each other. We’ll still be blind though, there’s no way around that. I’d wanted to put eyeholes in Garu at least, but that’s complicated to do and I don’t want to risk screwing up the costume trying to upgrade it in time. We’re kinda thinking of entering the cosplay contest, but that all depends on how well the costumes turn out.
The only part I’m stumped on are her odangos. They need to be 12” wide and weigh next to nothing so I thought I’d buy a couple of those solid styrofoam balls that they sell at Hobby Lobby. But the biggest size they had was 10” and those cost around $12. Like heck I’m paying that much for something that’s not the right size. I could make them from scratch, but I don’t want to spend the time to do that. Hmm. That may be my only option if I can’t come up with some other idea in the next week or two.

I hope to get these costumes done before the con (which would be a first) so that I can spend some time preparing for my panel. Heck, maybe I should’ve asked for the whole week off right before Ikki. Oh well. The next three weekends will be pretty busy.

*happy dance*
Heh heh. I feel stuffed with smiles right now. All I need is Eduardo in the background yelling, "No explode! No explode!" I found out that the drillers are having delays on their current job, so that means this Austin job is getting pushed back a week. Which means that I’ll be getting my four-day weekend right on top of Ikki. I can go to Ikki! Weeee! Ha ha ha. I’m glad. I was getting pretty sour that I couldn’t go.

( continued . . . )