mercurialsunshine

Did you know that all it takes to trace a number that comes up as "unavailable" is one simple phone call to my service provider? All they need is the time and date of the call to hand me a name and number.

Did you also know that you can press charges for harassment about repeated calls? All _that_ takes is one call to the police.

Sometimes all it takes is 30 seconds of googling to make you feel a lot better about something :D

I realized today that I haven't made a real update since before we moved into the new house *headpalm* I'll try to make this brief and still hit the main points.
We got moved in (thank to Gus, Celestine, and Steven) the day after Thanksgiving. At that point, there was still a lot of work to be done, so we mostly lived out of boxes. I managed to get the kitchen and dining room put together decently quick and within he first week we got the family room carpeted and thus moved/unpacked all that. Since then I've been mostly working upstairs, trying to get everything up there painted. All that's left now is the room and closet doors which should get done this week. We still have no carpet up here because that is waiting for the handy 1st time home buyer's stimulus check (which takes _forever_). That is one of the few downsides to having bought an enormous house; carpeting costs a lot for this much floor.
Thanks to the constant (but fun!) interruptions of the holidays and other such things, the house working slowed significantly for a few weeks, but I did manage to get some stuff done. The library is now mostly finished. There are now _6_ matching shelves all assembled and filled with fanatically organized books. Mind you, those 6 still don't fit the gaming books, 3 boxes of comics, or the graphic novels, lol. We're nerds and it's awesome. Also, this last weekend, I completely stripped and redid the 1/2 bath. The idiots had wallpapered over another of layer of wallpaper that they had attempted to strip off. This meant I was dealing with everything from 2 full layers to gouges in the wall board and everything imaginable in between. It took a ton of spackle, lots of sanding, and an entire day to smooth everything out, but you can't even tell what a mess it was now! At this point I'm now working on painting doors and trim downstairs which is gonna take up this entire week I expect.
I non-house stuff, I've been a lot more social lately than normal and I'm oddly not feeling the urge to slink away and hide for a few weeks afterwords. I used to be with people all the time in Ohio and I think my enjoyment of that is possibly finally coming back. You know, now that I've moved even farther from everyone I know, lol.
I'm also now hardcore looking for a job. This had unfortunate timing what with the holidays since no one that can hire was anywhere to be found, nor was my career service guy from school. I've applied for 2 jobs (technically 5, since there was 2 locations for 1 and 3 for the other!) and feel like either of them would be do-able and would have a good chance at my getting them. Hell, I wouldn't even mind taking them both since the one is part time and they wouldn't conflict ever, but that's wishful thinking since neither has called back yet, lol. Pastry chefs just aren't in high demand right now with this economy. We cost a lot and nasty frozen desserts shipped in from some company don't. I've always said I'd work retail before I work hot food. I stick to that. I'm also trying to not panic cause it's really only been 1 day since people were back in office after the holidays. I just feel back and like I'm this big bum now cause I just hang around our house all day. Charles tells me it's ok cause I spend all day working on the house and still cook him dinner when he gets home, lol.
So there ya go, a real update. Look for another in a few months when I remember again -_- ha.

Bought my fridge today. Found out it was an unadvertised 10% off. Score. Sadly, they were out of black, so it's being delivered Monday. Will have to continue to live off snacks and no real food while working until then. Tuesday I will take all kinds of things with me :)
Finally finished the family room and kitchen. Like completely. All the painting, even the trim, is done and everything is cleaned. Woo.
Tomorrow I will start on the upstairs. The plan is to get all the carpet ripped up and paint all the ceilings up there. Time to figure out my tricky new ladder so I can set it up on the stairs to reach the super high ceiling there. Kinda scary.
After that, my goal is to knock out one bedroom per every 2 days. In theory that would mean in a week and a half I should be getting carpet! This genius plan will of course be thwarted by finding random WTF's. I already know one... one of the bedroom doors is missing it's strike plate door jamb. That will be interesting to replace ;p.
Going to crash now. Can't believe I'm up this late anyways.

So since the last time I posted, I haven't made a ton of progress on anything Dragon*Con related. That's cause I was busy bein' in a movie. It wasn't a big deal, I was just a random extra which means I'll mostly just be a fuzzy blob in the background, but that's ok. I mostly did it cause, well, they were paying me! :) The long and short of it is that I was there somewhere between 12-16 hours a day, I got injured pretty badly thanks to some other extra who wasn't paying attention, and it took me 2 days of sleep after wrap to feel normal again. My leg is finally almost healed and my cold is getting better, so it's time to kick things into high gear again.
And that basically means that I'm just about to freak out. I have so many other peoples costumes that I'm working on that I haven't had a chance to 1. practice for the 2 shows 2. really think through my panel or the costume contest 3. work on my own costumes 4. exercise so I actually fit in my costumes :(  I can't even imagine if I had a permanent steady job how anything would have gotten done. That does not bode well for next year. I think next year I may have to call a moratorium on commissions for costumes. Like for everyone not me. Otherwise I don't see how I could pull this off ever again (unless somehow I become rich and never need to work again. ha).
Luckily I'm seeing light at the end of the tunnel on everyone else's stuff. The only things not done are Zig's Graverobber coat and Meg's 2 dresses and all 3 of those are close. Meg tried stuff on and all I have left is to hem stuff, add in zippers, velcro, and hooks and eyes on both of those. Ziggy's coat is all stitched together as of tonight and just needs her to try it on before I can hem it and add the giant fur lapels of doom. Ah, and then it's on to all the stuff I'm actually doing as staff, lol.
Why is there less than 2 weeks to D*C? WHY?

Finished:

• BHPS Pink Willow outfit
• BHPS Purple Willow outfit- fixed!
• Dr. H. Penny Freeze Ray outfit
• Dr. H. Penny My Eyes outfit
• Dr. H. Penny Penny's Song outfit
• Dr. H Penny Caring Hands outfit- (decided not to rip up the jeans... cheapskateyness won over accuracy, lol)
• Dr. H. Penny Everyone's a Hero outfit
• Fluffy Willow
• Vamp Willow (except the bottom hem since the pants don't fit quite yet so I don't know where to hem the shirt...)

Not finished

• Meg's BHPS Princess Dawn dress- can't finish til she comes back, but just needs hems and velcro
• Meg's Repo! Shilo dress- Not even started yet. That is this weekend's project
• Ziggy's Repo! GraveRobber coat- Waiting for the fabric to show up in the mail. Also waiting on a fur sample.
• Possible costume for me that I'm looking into that isn't even planned, let alone started

Props I need to make/find/remember to take

• Ziggy and Terry's Zydrate gun- waiting on the plastic test tubes to show up... want them now! I could finish them today!
• Make bloody plastic shrapnel for Dr. H Penny costume to stick to my stomach
• Sparkly streamers for magic in BHPS?
• Dr. H- Laundry basket and laundry, clipboard and papers, frozen yogurt containers and sporks

The good news is I will have no problem finishing almost all of this up next week. Charles will be out of state from this sat. to next sun. and I will be sitting around with nothing to distract me.

We ended up owning the first 4 seasons of House thanks to Charles' parents and a co-worker who gifted it to them. When I am not stuck staring at a freeze frame of one screen while working on a costume, I watch House to keep me from going insane sitting around all day sewing, painting, measuring, etc. I have discovered that although I have watched House on t.v. a ton, I have missed a lot of episodes. The other things that's neat is seeing who the sick person of the day is. I remember getting all excited for the episode that it was Felecia Day, but watching the older ones you discover people you know in episodes you had already seen.
For instance the episode I watched today featured Harry Lennix, also known as Boyd Langton, Echo's handler in Dollhouse. It also had the main guy from Ghost Whisperer (which I watch sometimes if I'm bored) as a kinda douchey dr. from L.A. The very 1st ep of House has the bitchy chick agent from the Mentalist as the sick person of the week. I look forward to finding more people that I didn't know then and do now.
Also, as a related aside, how the _hell_ did I miss the fact that Harry Lennix was Lock in the Matrix trilogy?!? I couldn't stand his character, but still, for my mind to completely blank him out is just weird. I always fail so hard at recognizing people. It just makes me feel like I need to IMDB every single character in everything I watch.

Today turned out pretty well and not at all boring after all. I slept in til almost noon, watched some Jack Hanna thing with tigers in it, and then got caught up in working on costumes. That lead me to actually watching Dr. Horrible on the DVD for only the 2nd time since I got it. It might seem weird, but I really only bought it to both support the project and get to watch "Commentary: The Musical" and I watch it on Hulu any time that I want to see it. The reason it's important that I watched it today is because first off I realized I had never watched it with the _actual_ commentary turned on, only the musical version, and it turns out they are completely unrelated and the commentary that is not sung is a real commentary. I felt dumb for missing that. I also found 2 out of 3 of the Easter Eggs on my own. I admit I cheated and looked up the 3rd one which turned out to be the most obvious one, which was why I overlooked it, lol. I won't post them up here unless someone asks, but I will you you these hints: 1. check out the subtitles 2. Pay attention to the names in the scene selection 3. Watch the "Making of" special all the way through the credits. If you haven't found them yet that will give you a good start, but it will be a multi-step process, even involving google, I warn you.
After that fun, Charles and I went and had a picnic at the Chattahoochie River park, fed a baby duck, and walked around a bit. Then we came home and watched the Sixth Sense. There were fireworks nearby somewhere that kept trying to drown out the movie.
On the topic of the 6th Sense, this is only the 2nd time I have watched it either. They did in fact do a good job with all their rules and stuff to make it beleivable that he was dead on 2nd watch through. However, I totally remember the ghosts being creepier and the movie in general being better. With that last atrocity of a movie M. Night made, and finally watching The Village a few weeks ago that got a "meh" from me since I completely figured out the twist like 15 minutes into the movie, and then this rewatching of one of the "classics" being kind of a nostalgia let down... makes me a bit concerned.  I don't know if I should watch Signs again. Hm.

----------EDIT---------------
I totally forgot to mention this: Holy crap, his wife is Adelle in Dollhouse. I love watching older movies and recognizing people like this.

I have amazingly whipped myself into a frenzy of costuming! This is despite the fact that I am halfway through finally playing Majora's Mask (the only Zelda I haven't beaten) now that I finally got my expansion pak from ebay so it would work on my system.
Yesterday I made my skirt for fluffy Willow, hemmed up the one shirt for Penny during Penny's Song, and made my stripey arm warmers for Penny during My Eyes. BTW, my arm warmers rock! I think that they are going to find their way into my normal wardrobe ^^
Today I sewed with stripey ribbon on the aforementioned Penny shirt, finally found correct looking butterfly patches to finish of the giant collection of patches that get sewn onto my fluffy Willow costume, and I'm just about to cut up and hem the sweater and pants for Penny My Eyes costume as well. The goal is to have at least that much done tonight and possibly to do a bit more even.
I think tomorrow is going to involve me coated up to my elbows in acrylic paint and textile medium as I have like 4 different pieces that need detailing done on them. The way I figure, most of these things I would never find appliques or anything even remotely close and I don't embroider and even if one of those two things were possible it would be too expensive or time consuming. Since I paint pretty well and am fairly quick at it, meh close enough.

And yes, I know I get kind of crazy about my costuming. It is in fact a point of pride to me that I do. Aside from food, costuming comes next in perfectionistic insanity. Yes, even though half of these costumes I'm slaving over will only be seen from out in a crowd while I'm on a stage with questionable spot light work for a matter of minutes. It doesn't matter to me. I want my costume to be accurate to every detail possible and have finished hems. I'm sure there's a normal people correlation somewhere for this. Like maybe those chicks who won't even run to the grocery store if they haven't put on make-up and checked their hair. I feel like my costumes reflect upon me somehow. Just hush and let me have my insanity ^_~

I'm working on my Fluffy Willow costume (see previous post if you don't know what I'm talking about) and let me tell you what, I am so pumped. I would never have thought I would get excited about this particular costume. It's so different from the type of costumes that I usually do. I mean, most people when they costume tend to wear things they couldn't in every day life and things that tend to make them look cooler/sexier/more badass/whatever than they can normally. And so here I am right now wearing a pink fuzzy sweater and a partially hemmed hot pink skirt, and I'm looking in the mirror trying to figure out how to make my boobs look smaller and I am loving the idea more than when I was just thinking about it.

I was thinking for a while that I might trying to make myself a convincing looking tranq gun to carrying around so that that way I could walk around asking people if they had "seen anyone that looks like me, only evil and skanky?"
I don't think I'll have the time, so I think instead that I'm gonna carrying around a banana so I can yell "Lunch time be damned! I'm eating this banana!"

I actually meant to post stuff up about our vacation not long after we got back, but then there was craziness, which I will get into later.
The trip went very well. The 12 hour drive seems shorter every time we make it. We dropped off Mercury at Jenna's to be babysat for the week. He _hates_ the car. Phineas on the other hand got over it fast and spent the entire ride sleeping in his litter box of all the places. On the way home he whined at first, but got over it.
We got to do all the stuff we wanted, as well as other unexpected things, we did get in touch with everyone we wanted to and got to hang out with everyone at least once. (Link to pictures). We only had one unfortunate run-in with people we knew who we were not planning on letting know we were home, but it was mercifully short and had no fallout (well none that matters or got back to us... I'm sure there was some in theory).
One of the coolest things was that Monday morning we walked across the road to the high school just cause. We had been talking about who we hoped we would run into, teacher-wise. There were 3 teachers in the building that morning, and 2 of them were the 2 we wished we could see! Mr. Cantrell, our 11th and 12th grade AP English teacher gave us both a huge hug and told us he was excited when he got our wedding announcement and spent a good 15 minutes chatting before he remembered he was supposed to be doing stuff, lol. We also bumped into Mr. P, the art teacher. We also found Charles' senior art project on the wall still and discovered something eerie about the accompanying piece done by one of our friends.
Aside from that, it was just chilling we people and running around doing all the same stuff we used to do when we lived there. Not much has changed in 3 years (except my favorite Chinese restaurant going out of business. Damn you, economy!)

Anywho, there's been a plenty keeping me busy this last week. For one thing, I graduated. The ceremony was this Sat. and I got my tall hat, 2 different medals, my ACF certification cards which address me as "Chef Megan," and I found out I graduated Summa Cum Laude. woot.
The other thing that's been keeping me busy is that we are actually house shopping. We got preapproved for a rather sizable loan and started looking last week. We've been putting off bringing this up until now cause I felt like I wanted to be sure things were going to really happen before I started telling people. However until we get a bid accepted on a house, I probably won't bring it up again. The entire process is like a giant roller coaster of emotion. Having the money is such a tiny part of the process. Then wading through five billion houses and driving out 45 minutes to look at them, making bids, waiting to hear back, etc. is all very tiring work. You get really excited about a place and put in a bid only to find out that just that morning another bid was accepted while you were dotting the i's and crossing the t's on the paperwork. You get angry and depressed all at once until you find another house, only this one has _7_ bids on it already and despite it being exactly what you want you have to assume it won't happen, but you bid anyways and tell yourself "I will _not_ get my hopes up. There is no chance we have the highest offer" Except that you know that every house after this will just be disappointing because it's not the other one. Way too much emotion involved in this that we hadn't been prepared for. We thought, hey it's a buyer's market and there's billions of sellers out there desperate to make a deal. Except that Obama's stimulus is working too well and the market is now saturated with buyers, lol. Which is another reason we are in a hurry: now that we're in the market, it really looks like this thing is going to turn around soon. You know the cliche stories about the crazy brides at the wedding dress sample sales? It feels like that, but with houses.
But don't worry, one day we will actually win a bid and I will post. Unfortunately today is one of those "waiting to hear back" days which drive me nuts with the impotence of my position. I need to start doing something to take my mind off it, like work on my D*C costumes or something.