The Goldfish's Logbook

I've just five days left here in Canada. Looking back, my time up here wasn't as bad as I'd feared but I'm still chomping at the bit to get out of here.
When I get back I'll use my accumulated vacation time to stretch my time-off to last until the Texas Renaissance Festival in two weeks. I hadn't planned on spending my vacation time this way but if I report back into the office I'm certain that I'll get plugged into another out-of-town that will conflict with TRF. So I'll just fly under the radar until I'm ready to go back to work.
The career counseling is going well. We're just about done with the self-analysis phase. Next time I go we'll be able to start narrowing the already short list of prime career choices for me. Whatever I choose I'll most likely have to go back to school for a bit since I'm leaving the engineering field entirely. That wouldn't be happening till the spring semester at the ABSOLUTE earliest so I'll finish up the year with my company. It's kinda inconvenient that my lease renews in October, which is too soon for me to know where I'm going or what my money situation will be. I'll have to see if my landlord would offer an abbreviated lease. Of all the places I've lived in Austin, this is the first place I'd like to stay put in. Only now that I'm changing my career plan I don't want to be anchored to a specific place for an entire year. Ha ha. Great timing.
Serious stuff aside, I'm undecided on how I want to fill my ten-day break between my return and TRF. The responsible hobbyist in me says I should focus on the half-finished cosplays I've neglected all year, to finally get them DONE so I can be proud and satisfied and still retain my status as an 'active' cosplayer, not just in past tense.
But my strongest urge currently is to ignore cosplay and work on TRF projects. I want to make a new costume since I've worn Skittles for the past two years already. When I drink at the Renn Fest, I always seem to want to do pratfalls and tumbles and other physical nonsense. Don't ask me why. I just get an urge to do a barrel roll and then . . . Yeah. In addition to the costume, I really want to upgrade the Man Cave. It's been fun and popular the last four times I've done it but I always see how it can be improved. It looks so much better in my imagination. (Think of King Xerxes' tent of a thousand delights from '300'.) I don't just want a Man Cave made of tarps like some Hobo Hut, I want a MAN VOLCANO. I want a legit tent worthy of our drunken shenanigans. Other 'party' tents cost around a grand, from what I've found on the internet. I know I could make one myself for much less. I like this idea alot since it would benefit the most people, but it might put a strain on ole Iron Horse. Hmm.
So I've got three competing options, each of which I could easily spend my block of free time on. Dunno what I'm gonna do yet.

I feel like crap right now so I'll keep this short so that I can take some Tylenol and go to bed.
So, I had to work on Saturday and didn't get to go camping at the Ren Faire (Camp Bob Saget), which was probably for the best. Better safe than sorry. I had my Plan B all ready to go for the weekend when I found out that JB and her guy were going to go to the faire on Sunday. Even though it'd be the last day of the last weekend of the faire, it was worth a shot, I figured. So I worked on my costume all night Saturday to get it wearable. Even though I didn't have much left to do on the costume, it was far from complete by the time I headed out Sunday morning.
Everybody looked pretty good in their gypsy/musketeer/etc outfits. I thought they'd be half-assing their costumes since it was just a ren faire and they'd been here all weekend, but no, they had solid costumes. I kinda felt like the ugly duckling with my last-minute costume, but I didn't let that bug me; I'd told myself this was just a field test to work the bugs out of the costume before con-time. Though I wish I'd brought a girdle or duct tape or something. The whole day I kept thinking, "You're a super villain. You can't have chubble. Suck it in!"
We split into smaller groups since we couldn't reach a consensus on what to do. I stuck with JB's group since they were gonna go shoot stuff and I wanted to see how good/bad I could shoot with just my left eye. We did archery, crossbows, throwing knives and axes. Of course I couldn't hit any of the targets (except with the throwing knives, somehow), but I showed that ground who was boss. Planted a lot of arrows in the dirt, yessiree.
Then we rejoined the main group at the falconry show (that african vulture was pretty dang scary). I got a bottle of mead at that point and that's when things picked up (running on no sleep and an empty stomach, it got to work quick). We happened to be sitting in the raptors' main flightpath, that was pretty cool. One time, I thought for sure the bird was gonna snatch PF's feathered beret right off her head.
Then we went and took some photos at a fountain. By then I was mainly concerned with enjoying my mead, so I didn't really try to take any pics. We went to some shows after that, blah blah. Dead Bob was fun. He has a real eye for "talent" After that we split up for the last time, then did a little shopping, and that was it.
( snip )
Things got kinda weird for me after I took my helmet off. After only being able to see out of one eye all day, when I had two of them again, my eyes would not cooperate. It was as if my brain was still ignoring what had been my blind eye, even though it could see now. I was like, "Oh crap, did I break my eyes?" Eventually they sorted themselves out. Phew. And even though I made my helmet two weeks ago, once I started wearing it in the warm sun it started exuding fumes. So all day I was sucking down that crap and when I took the helmet off, I guess I went into withdrawal or something 'cause a weird headache came on and and hasn't left since. Hopefully I'll shake this funk and fatigue in time for work tomorrow. But even if I don't, the trip was fun. Thanks to everyone involved.

Click for pics