Distracted By Something Shiny

Dismal Halloween this year. So cold, like 35F, windy af, wet. And then halfway through trick-or-treats, around 7, it started snowing. Ugh. Last year we had 150-200 kids. This year was 15-20 kids. And for some reason Sis bought a bag of candy where half continued nuts - which isn’t a good idea anyways since something like 40% of kids these days have nut allergies - but I hate things with nuts in them (I like nuts, I hate biting into something & having pieces of something else inside, idk, I’m weird about it) & Sis is watching her sugar intake, so like half the giant bag of candy ended up going into her office even though everyone there was like, “No don’t bring candy into the office,” a policy I think Sis actually started! Anyways I sat in the big picture windows in my outfit, but only one person noticed and it was a dad, though at least he thought I looked cool. Bummer night.




Though my costume was sweet!

But...the weekend before Sis, BFF & I had taken The Niece to her first convention! (Her brother is mad she got to a con before he did, even though his first con will be a comic con and this was just a family Halloween convention, there were lots of cosplayers there though). There was a Killer Car Show, which I was psyched about. There was free candy at every booth almost, which TN was psyched about. I ran into an awesome cool vendor I met this summer at the Festival of Oddities (you may need pics from that at some point to fully understand the crowd and the fare at something called Fesival of Oddities). I may be nursing a small crush on her, plus her art is amazing. The League of Justice cosplayers were there, a charity group that cosplays at events & runs to raise money for various things, and does children’s hospital visits etc. Their Joker let the children kill him over and over and was just as dramatic about it as Joker would be. Though TN was way more blown away that she met Poison Ivy and then Ivy saw her later and called her by name, “Hi, Jojo!” and waved as she walked past. No, that’s not TN’s name but the night before we took her to Target and she got a JoJo Siwa costume, some kids’ popstar I’ve never heard of. But a couple other kids there noticed her costume and shouted, “She’s Jojo Siwa!” and TN was maybe the proudest she’s ever been in her life. “They might think I’m the real Jojo Siwa!” She made everyone call her Jojo all day. They also had a simulation of the Monsters Inc scare training room, that TN & Sis did together to practice scaring kids in their beds like the MInc characters. They had a recreation of the Greedo scene from Star Wars where you played Han Solo’s role...I am forbidden from showing you the video of Sis doing it. There was a magician that had all the kids gathered around his booth while he did tricks. There was a creature creator creating on the spot.

It was lots of fun. I dressed as a creepy little ghost girl with her creepy little doll, and this zombie lady, who was one of the heads for the zombie walk taking place the next day, literally, I mean literally, begged me to come back for the walk. “We need you and this costume tomorrow!” I mean, look at her makeup and outfit? I was honored someone with this skill level liked my outfit. I didn’t wanna kill her buzz by telling her we couldn’t come back because we had my uncle’s memorial the next day.

( Pics of the Halloween con under the cut. )

Anyways, it was an all around fun Halloween convention. I heard about it on FB last year after the fact, so I’d been waiting all year for it. It was worth the wait and even better for taking TN. Hope your Halloweens had better weather than mine, or at least that you got to a fun convention!

I have not even posted about it yet, but in April, just a few weeks ago, I got to go to Disney’s annual blowout Star Wars Celebration convention. It was pretty expensive for any autographs & photo ops, so aside from the group photo w my girls & Greg Grunberg, I selected just one person to meet. And it was Peter Mayhew, the original Chewbacca himself. And I am so glad I did. Because Peter Mayhew has passed away.

He had had a stroke or something, before, it seemed like. But he seemed so pleased to be there, goofing it up for the cameras, intently listening to his fans tell him what he & Chewbacca mean to them, messing around with the Chewie replica head they set out on his table. I hope he was glad to have gotten to participate in one last celebration of an icon. *I* am sure glad he was able to be there. It fulfilled a lifetime dream of mine, to meet him.

Star Wars was the beginning of a world of imagination & possibilities for me. It showed me the stars. It taught me loyalty & friendship & courage & hope. And at the center of that, drawing me in, was my first love, Chewbacca. I was gonna marry him, you know. I was five - I thought marriage would be holding his furry hand while we walked, laying on him like a warm fuzzy mattress & blankie all in one, and having him carry me around when my knees hurt. In hindsight, I think I had a pretty good grasp on what marriage should be. And to meet the man behind my Chewie? Well, that was truly amazing. It’s a bittersweet thing I’m feeling.




The stars will shine a little brighter tonight, now that Peter has joined Carrie in lighting up the galaxy. The one here and the one far, far away.

My obligatory I Voted selfies! I usually don’t have one of these pics because I tend to vote absentee. But there was a clerical error/kerfuffle with both mine & Sis’ absentee ballots not coming for some reason, so by the time we got it sorted, it was too late. We ended up squeezing in our votes in-person between the drs & the dentist. Upside, I got a sticker this way and like, James Marsters (of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is offering a personalized reply over on Twitter, to anyone who tweets their voting sticker selfie at him. I mean, I’ve met the man, that should be enough, but I don’t care, I’m tweeting my selfie at him anyways! Also, I could not have been representing the nerd & geek communities any harder, because I showed up to vote carrying my Rogue One bag and wearing my Jayne Cobb ‘Fighting Elves” shirt & my Gryffindor hat!




Sadly, I’m not wearing the hat here, you can’t see my bag, and you can’t tell that is my Fighting Elves shirt

( A convo with one young adult I know who didn’t vote. )

Anyways, that was my Election Day ramble. Excuse me while I go see if James has gotten to my tweet yet!

A few of my favs from Motor City Comic Con 2018 thus far. Sis said, “I always knew Rey & Supergirl we’re friends!” Negan had the voice down pat, “Well shit, Rick, I’m having a damn good time!” Was surreal just chatting in line with Pennywise - everything except the boots was handmade by this cosplayer, count me impressed.

Just let Groot chill while engulfing our heads with his hands! Sweetums may have been the coolest one I saw all day!

And Michael Rosenbaum enthusiastically yelled, “OMG, you’re the shit!” when he saw that I was dressed as Kaylee from Firefly & had decorated my wheelchair with a stuffed Serenity and a bunch of plastic toy tools. That made my day!

( Pics under the cut! )

See you nerds tomorrow for Day 2!

I can barely contain myself for Saturday, you guys. Because…I am going on a cruise! Just me & Sis. No, no kids! Just 2 middle-aged nerds. It’s my first cruise. And it’s a doozy. A Disney Star Wars 7-night Caribbean cruise!

In case you don’t know what that entails, we start our first day setting sea and then doing a safety presentation followed by like 20 minutes of song & dance with all the Disney characters.

( Under the cut for spaceage. )

And, of course, we got a room with a balcony over the ocean, so downtime will be wonderful too! Like I said, I can barely stand to wait! This vacation has been 2 years in the making - we decided on it a few months after Mom’s heart attack in Fall 2015, thinking we deserved a sister-vacation after several months dealing with so much stress. But between Mom’s health & unexpected financial things, we never quite made it. So now, here at last, we will be setting sail. Sister-vacation is a go!

Star Wars: The Last Jedi spoiler free thoughts...
Brothers & Sisters in the rebellion: No one is really a nobody. Anyone - and I mean *anyone* - can be the spark that lights the fire. Don’t give up. Rebellions are built on hope, after all. And the fire is coming.

Because I have not had the time or energy to sit at my desktop computer and make a proper tribute graphic to Carrie Fisher, I went ahead and did a quick sketch on my IPad the other night while in bed. I am still learning with the new drawing pad app, as well as the Apple Pencil, but I have gotten a few of the kinks worked out. This is not my preferred style, but I conveyed what I was going for here, certainly.

There was something, many things, small wonders and light inside Carrie Fisher, much like The Force was inside of Princess Leia. And in this piece, The Force is in her, around her, and she is floating in it...for always now.

May The Force be with you, Princess. And may you be one with The Force, Carrie Fisher.

And may you rest in peace.

Art by me. 12/28/2016

Carrie Fisher, October 21, 1956 - December 27, 2016

So, we had The Niece and Nephew this weekend and The BFF came down to give them their Christmas presents. She spoils them, you know. Her nephews live in Australia, so she adopted our niblings years ago.

She got The Nephew - who is 10 ½ now - a remote control flying Millennium Falcon. IKR?! The ship itself is made from styrofoam, but it was still a big present for him. He got really good at flying it too. We let The Niece try flying it, but that was a mistake - she got it all the way up to the top of my bookcase and then knocked my Dr. Malcolm picture over and broke the frame. Oops. We also took it in my room to see what the lights looked like in the dark and we tried putting a Lego guy on top of it and it totally flew with him on there!

( Under the cut for spaceage. )

It was a way busy, but fun weekend. Basically on Saturday they went Christmas shopping with my sister and to see Moana and then got presents and had that epic Pony play. Afterwards The Nephew told me, “This was kind of like the best day.” Awww.

So, if you’ve been following this journal for a year or more, you probably know that Halloween is a big deal to me and my sister. We started buying things to go in the yard as soon as we moved in together - a sound activated creepy bat/ghost/witch/light up eyes in the front bushes, giant spider and cobwebs, light up zombie/skeletons coming out of the ground, tombstones - we just go wild. Then we (along with The BFF) always dress as something scary and do a sort of Larping in the big front windows, acting out things to scare the kids who come to our door. We’ve gotten a bit of a reputation in the neighborhood and on a good year, we can get 150 kids. On our best year, we got approx 250.

But this year…we aren’t doing it. The tombstones fall over all the time from wind and rain and Sis just didn’t have it in her to set them back up over and over again all month. We didn’t have time to carve pumpkins. I even totally forgot to send out my traditional Halloween cards. Plus, Sis is on a new schedule of four 10hr work-days, to have Wednesdays off to take Mom and myself to appointments, so she won’t be home until 6:30, in costume until 7. And The BFF is working (yay for permanent job!) and can’t come to town on a weekday. I’m sad about the lack of Halloween around here.

But I am still dressing up! As Ballerina Batgirl! Which is basically just Batgirl, but in a yellow tutu and with glittery makeup. And I have two friends stopping over for dinner and to see my costume - they’ve joined us three years now, and they love to watch our zany Halloween antics. And when she gets home, Sis is putting on her Darth Vader outfit and Winston’s R2D2 outfit and taking him for a walk amongst the trick-or-treats, which will delight them.

At any rate, since I’m more comfortable posting photos here of myself, I thought I’d share some of my costumes from years past. The first year we did the Larping, we did zombies. We stood in the big front windows and acted like we were trying to get out of the house. Sis would throw herself against the window and growl. One little boy dressed as a soldier ‘killed’ her repeatedly with his toy gun. The next year we were Reapers and BFF and I stood in the windows and held very still. Many kids thought we were holograms. Until we started to turn our heads, very, very slowly. One girl, about 9, screamed and ran away at full speed. The next year it rained and BFF had the flu, so Sis and I took what were going to be Scary Witches and turned them into Good Witch outfits. Then the next year, we did Scary Witches. BFF brought a cauldron and fog machine and there was a lot of cackling. I sat in the rocking chair, positioned so you could see me once BFF opened the door to hand out the candy. I would start rocking very slowly once I knew I was in view and I got a lot of, “What is THAT?!” from the kids. The following year we were Steampunk Vampires. I sat in the front windows with my face in my baby doll’s stomach. Sis would signal me when to lift my head and I would and my mouth was covered in blood and guts and the kids would scream, “She’s eating her baby!”. Also K brought his then-tweenaged son over and wanted a picture of us and right before he clicked it, I turned and tried to rip the kid’s throat out with my vampire teeth. The look on his face clearly says, “I hate my dad’s friends.” Last year we went for Scary Fairies, though they turned out a bit more Victorian Fairy than anything. It was a slow year last year, so I just sat in the windows and sort of growled and screeched at kids.

( Photos under the cut! )

This year I’ll just politely handout candy like any good ballerina superhero should!

As kids, we had our sandbox pushed up against the fence line in our backyard. We spent many days there playing with our Star Wars action figures, building Tatooine in the sand and burying our dead when they fell. Yes, we buried our dead. Sometimes so deep, we couldn't find them again. Poor Yoda, being as small as he was, had to be replaced at least three times because he'd get lost, never to be found again. And that happened at least once with R2D2, based on the fact that my little brother, now 33 years old, has been ripping up the old fence and laying in a new one for my dad and came across this gem, buried along the fence line.



But as The Force Awakens taught us, R2, you will awaken again when the time is right. Until then, know you served us well, in the summers of our youth.