Went to a rather interesting talk today on the nature and possible manifestations of dark matter, which was pretty awesome~ Cosmology is fantastic, and I think I will always love it. :D (Especially when you get to go to talks featuring WIMPs, MACHOs, and the all-new WIMPZILLAs!) I have also achieved IRAC color-color diagrams of my galaxy clusters, which made me feel rather accomplished. Alas, I have to wait 'till next week to get ACIS-Extract and its associated programs installed, but that gives me a chance to ignore X-rays for yet another few days~

This evening I set to work getting Penny ready for this weekend, which I am happy to say only took about an hour to an hour and a half total. I love easy costumes! (Granted, I had the black shirt already, and I bought the pink shirt and black shorts from Goodwill. All I had to do was make the pink shirt smaller and cannibalize two pairs of leggings into one pair of stripey ones. Dude, I measured those stripes and made them proportional! Cosplay math FTW.)



( Two more here! )

I don't think I'm going to wear anything horribly costume-y for the race, mostly because I don't have anything. (I could always run in Videl, but that's so obscure it's not worth it. XD) Maybe I'll come up with something I already have before Saturday. In the meantime, I just have to make sure I remember to bring Bolt this weekend, along with a lightsaber for Frank. And I need to tape Venture Bros!

You know... I haven't gone to bed yet, and neither have my upstairs neighbors. The difference is I think this is normal for them. I'm beginning to think they really are just noise-making robots up there. Time to go running so at least the only noise I'll be able to hear is my own!

At least I got a lot of costume progress done, plus I cleaned up the sewing room and took out the trash and recycling. All that's left to do are a few odds and ends (like finishing construction of Lewis' epic hat and taking in my CHB shirt), and painting the headtails. Hopefully with the four or five layers of Mod Podge I have on there, the paper mache coating won't crack anymore. ::shakes finger at it!::

Woo, here's hoping I'll actually be back on a normal sleep schedule, tonight. XD; Because sleeping until 3 or 4pm is just not okay, self.

Also, today's PhD comic? Like many others, so true. XD

( Woo, Star Trek uniform is mostly done! )

Also costuming-related, I Model Magic'd the triangles on Ahsoka's headtails (I should take pictures) and velcro'd up the bootcovers, and put the second coat of paint on the buckles. OMG, this costume may actually get done on time. o.o; Also, toaster and gun for Lewis' hat, GET! (Ahaha, I so had to exert massive willpower at Toys R Us because THEY HAVE SECRET SATURDAYS TOYS. Waaaaaaaaaant~ I don't care if I accidentally spoiled myself for the ending of that show, it sounds so cool and I really need to find the end of it so I can see it.

Still lots to do, but it's actually getting done! Though I think I'm going to spend the last bit of time I have before bed working on PJO stuff. Still plenty left to copy out of the notebook from Rio! I really should be working on Ben 10 stuff, but I'm holding out for an extension on that. Otherwise I'll do it this weekend. Really!

So! I suppose an update is maybe in order. XD The wedding was nice~ Warm, but such is the nature of August weddings in Boston. The church was lovely (as were the bride and groom~ <3) and the reception was made of awesome and win and glowsticks towards the end of the night, which was the coolest thing ever. Plus I met the awesome minkrose (who was nice enough to let me tag along with her and significant other for most of the time) and gnine, yay more cool friends. :D

Sunday was filled with fangirling with skuldchan and asphodel, who even fed us and took us to this extremely yummy Taiwanese restaurant <3. There was much discussion of not only Harry Potter (ahaha, I hope we didn't bore Yang to death with Alby and Scorp XD) and Dynasty Warriors, but we came up with the awesomest idea for a video game EVER. I mean, come on. You all know you'd want to play American Civil Warriors. Who doesn't want to slash Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant? XDD (Oh man, it was the funniest conversation ever. I miss fangirling in person.) Somebody needs to send me her iPhone voice messages of win. ;D

Then today I slept in late (oops) but I did at least get a somewhat decent amount of cosplay work done: I pretty much finished Anakin and at least got the sleeves of the Star Trek uniform attached, which wasn't too hard but took a bit of work because it had to be done in so many steps. I think I really need the serger to do the sides of that, though, since the fabric frays like crazy, so I will do that tomorrow. And I will do Ahsoka's bootcovers and finish model-magic-ing the headtails tomorrow when I get home. REALLY. Ack. I need more time before Dragon*Con. ;_; I just hope everything I ordered will arrive in time and work, eek.

I did also get a little bit of work done today on my as-yet-unnamed PJO fic (and holy crap I did a lot of writing in Rio - or, at least, there are a lot of notebook pages to transcribe). The lack of a title is really starting to bug me. I have NO IDEA what to call this one. There are a million songs that I could associate with it, but none have good lyrics that I can use for a title. Argh. I wish I didn't fail at titling things. Or that the only thing I have actually written and posted in the past week has been my totally random Sam/Mikaela/Bee thing. ::dies:: And now I have a Ben 10 fic exchange thing to get working on, too. At least the deadline for that should be after D*C, and I'm not even going to think about starting to post the PJO fic until after then, too.

Other things I need to do in the near future include:

- Get tickets to Mitchel Musso
- Call Stacie
- Get oil changed
- Write up that horribly awkward awesome Alby/Hawk conversation for ass_tea

Okay, off to be lazy some more before making myself go to bed before 4am because I think I have to get up at 8 or 9 or something to get to the airport in time to catch my flight. I should probably check that.

So! Now it's time for a Boston update~ Starting with my arrival on Wednesday afternoon, after a two-hour nap from 3-5am Tuesday night/Wednesday morning before driving to the Orlando airport. I really need to fly JetBlue more often - they are AWESOME. Tons of legroom (well, more than the usual, anyway XD) and FREE SNACKS and COKE ZERO and TV. Woo!

( Anyhoo, after a pretty uneventful flight, I get to Jennie's. )

This morning - er, well, afternoon, I got up around 12:30 and headed over to Harvard Square to pick up some presents and a frozen matcha from Tealuxe, yum~ Then I stopped at Star Market on the way back for some food for the rest of the week and managed to get it back here without too much trouble. Then there was dinner and more Enterprise, and a nice long phone conversation with noctaval. :D And then I actually got most of Anakin's tunic put together (I'm aiming to have all of that plus the belt done before I leave for the wedding tomorrow, we'll see if I can get up IN THE AM PLEASE, SELF.

And randomly, someone's puppy is home alone or something and it has been whining loudly since I got here. Now, I feel somewhat bad for the poor thing, but it's also really started to get on my nerves. :x Said person needs to come home and pay attention to their dog! It kept waking me up last night. Thankfully it appears to have stopped this evening. I hope it stays stopped, as it means both a happy dog and a happy Ali-chan.

Okay, off to pin the band on Anakin's tunic (maybe) and (more likely) read some more SamxBee~ XD

I know, just what you want to see - another update from me when I claim to have a million things to do (except I really do...) Today was pretty interesting, though, and apparently I feel the need to chronicle it or something. XD;

I ran a whole bunch of errands, though just before leaving I discovered my air conditioner is leaking into my closet again. That hasn't happened in a few years, but is certainly annoying and required the moving around of many items which are now sitting in my already-cramped hallway. I guess I'll just have to report it tomorrow and hope they do something about it sooner rather than later. And give Scott the heads-up.

I went shorts-hunting for Lewis and Penny; apparently I've missed shorts season and all the pants are out now, great. I think I may have to do some Old Navy online hunting, because I'd really rather not make Lewis' shorts if I don't have to. That's just one more thing I totally don't have time to do. Anyway, I got a bunch of random stuff I probably don't need, but at least I got the rest of the stuff I need for the Anakin costume; they didn't have the exact stuff I wanted, but there was something close enough and I had a 40% off coupon, which really helped~ Now to get to work on that! I think it'll be coming to Boston with me, along with the Ahsoka boots and the Star Trek uniform... I'm totally going to have to check a bag with all the sewing supplies I want to bring. I don't think you can carry on glue guns and pins and needles... XD

I also stopped at the grocery store and picked up like a ton of slightly-ripe bananas for fifty cents... the guy working in produce really wanted to get rid of them, and for fifty cents I'm sure I'll eat at least my money's worth. XD I guess I won't be missing Brazil overly much at least food-wise, even if bananas do taste different down there. (Especially in pizza form. XD)

Anyway, I picked up Transformers at Wal-Mart while I was there for $13 because, um, why not. I also picked up The Red Badge of Courage for $5, because come on, how could it be bad for $5? I love that book~ Not as much as All Quiet on the Western Front - which I probably would also have gotten for $5 except it was the color remake, and that's no fun. I want the original black-and-white 1930's version. One day I swear I will get it!

I didn't get to work on Ahsoka's headtails much today - just a little, trying to form them better to my head so I can get the real work done tomorrow. I also started making bootcover patterns, but I didn't get too far. I did at least try out the makeup I got, which gave mixed results: creme makeup will work just fine, I think, but the shades I got aren't quite right. So then I spent about an hour searching online for the right shade that was recommended to me, so here's hoping that'll work on my stupidly weird-colored skin. >>;

So anyway, I ate dinner and watched Transformers somewhere in there. It, uh, made so much more sense the second time around (which is sad - I only saw it for the first time less than a month ago XD). I think it also helped that I have read chapters and chapters of that awesome fic, though it did not help in the respect that I kept shipping Sam and Bee and can I just OT3 them with Mikaela? I think that works, right? XD Mikaela is actually pretty damn cool. Sam just kind of wibbles and babbles and she's all, "I'm gonna do this, help me." Then again, we already knew that. It must be why I like Sam so much - failtastic FTW~ (Though I think that's an oxymoron...) Now I want to see the second one again. :x Guess I'll have to wait for DVD, though.

Okay, that's enough. Oh God, I feel like it's just been one big long day since Saturday, which it kind of has. I really need to go to bed now. XD Goodnight everyone! <3

I was going to post this earlier, but then I called Tyler and got at least some packing done. (Until his phone died? Or something. D:)

But! ( I think the hard part is over? )

Spent pretty much all day at work today - had a 10am meeting (after staying at Nathan's until like 1:30 because not only did we watch the BEST DND MOVIES EVER, we also spontaneously watched Star Trek II) and then had to modify my poster to meet my advisor's approval for printing around 5pm. Finally left with posters in tow at 6:30ish, then I went running and showered and cleaned a bit while I talked to my mom. Then I worked on the monster up there and called Tyler and packed.

Thankfully I don't have to think too hard about what to bring. Nice clothes, check. Regular clothes, check. Pajamas, check. Bathing suit, check. The rest will get taken care of tomorrow, since I don't leave Gainesville until 4:30 or so (yay overnight flights). It turns out I'm on the same flight as Leah once I get to Miami, so at least I won't arrive alone; then we pick up Dan and Izaskun and figure out how to take a taxi to wherever it is we're staying. XD (Gee, I should write down that address... Not that I have any clue how Rio addresses work.)

My previous writing notebook seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth, which is sad. I mean, I wasn't writing anything currently in it (and I am now extra-glad I copied that beginning-of-a-Ben-10-fic out of it a while back) but it has sentimental value (and a whole lot of XP planning in it XD). Hopefully it will turn up; I'm pretty sure I didn't leave it in Europe, at least. I think I would have missed it between June and now... Ah well, I have a new notebook in my bag and we'll see how long this laptop battery will last... not long enough, if I want to do some serious writing on the plane, but one can always hope there will be outlets under the seats...

Anyway. For the record, I will be out of the country from tomorrow until the 16th, so those of you who might regularly call me probably don't want to do that. XD Email and LJ should be okay; we've got wireless where we're staying and I plan to plop on the internet at night since I don't want to get mugged or something alone in Brazil. Whee. XD And let's pretend I'm totally not bringing The Lightning Thief and The Battle of the Labyrinth to read over the next week...

Okay, off to possibly sleep. I was going to write but I think I'm too tired. D:

Dude, Nathan sends the best emails. XD Apparently we are going to watch some crazy D&D movies tomorrow in lieu of NGN; I am actually looking forward to a break from molding plastic. >>; I'm still hoping to have the headpiece at least fully sculpted by the time I leave, though it's definitely taking quite a while. Three and a half hours of work tonight, but at least it's mostly done! It was almost all the way done, but the back piece was a bit too small (why do I have so much HAIR? XD) so that needs redoing, but at least I have the pieces I used so I can cut out new ones a bit larger.

( Ahsoka progress pix )

In other news, I totally wiped out this afternoon in the astronomy building lobby and wow, I have the craziest bruise ever on my knee. It's giant and red and scary. D: Ah well. Flip flops have no traction when wet. Am I the only person that goes flying? I've never seen anyone else wipe out on flip flops nearly as much as I do...

Man. I need more hours in the day. I know I owe people tags and whatnot, but I am too wiped out (yet again ><). Tomorrow. I swear. I hope. At least all I have to do at work (I think) is get approval of my last figure (which Scott gave me the code for because HE IS FREAKING AWESOME :D) and print out my poster at the engineering lab or whatever. Then I have to go to UPS and pick up my package because I've already missed them twice and I'm not risking a third time; they shortened their hours and now they're only open 4-7:30 in the afternoon, what's with that? Ugh. At least I can drop by Center Stage (first, they close early!), JoAnn's and Michael's as well before I head to Nathan's for the movie. I went running today so I wouldn't have to do it tomorrow. Ack. And I'm going to try for the Tower of Terror 13k in October; I'd better actually consider signing up for that. And reply to Frank; he sent me a nifty-looking training schedule that I'll only have to modify part of. XD;

Apparently, I am leaving the country in four days. I am so not prepared for this. XD

Okay, well, I kind of am. But there's still a lot to do. I'm waiting on my advisor to tell me if my poster is okay to print, and I don't really have a whole lot of work that needs to get done in the meantime (i.e., work with a major deadline) so I'm just trying to do what I can and finish preparing for my trip. And then I'm going to be working on costumes FOR THE REST OF FOREVER OMG. I've realized I have approximately two weeks (at best) at home before Dragon*Con, in which I need to finish Ahsoka and ejfuafiufhaiurwejdeOMG. I can do this, but it'll take some doing~ A lot of her stuff is done, but a lot isn't. Thankfully Jennie says I can use her sewing machine in Boston, so that helps alleviate a bit of stress. Plans are to finish Ahsoka while at home, and to put the Star Trek uniform, Anakin, and Obi-Wan together in Boston (along with possibly Ahsoka's bootcovers). Gwen is done for reals (pictures eventually) and Lewis is coming along and needs to be mostly bought anyway, so I'm going to be doing some internet surfing while in Brazil. I plan to stop in at Center Stage this week anyway to check on the Ahsoka makeup, so hopefully I can pick up some glasses and a safari hat for Lewis while I'm at it. Valerie's Franny is coming along amazingly, for the record~

So, this weekend! AFO was... well, we didn't really go to AFO. XD Friday afternoon I drove down to Carmax in Orlando and sold my Camry (yay!); then Diana picked me up and we got dinner and talked and watched some Venture Bros (finished season 2). Then around maybe 12 or 1 we got ready for bed, but we made the mistake of turning on the TV because AFO always shows anime and we wanted to see what was on. It turned out to be episode 2 or 3 of Macross Frontier, which Katie loves and wants us to watch but we'd never gotten around to it. We weren't incredibly impressed at first, but then suddenly it was 6am and episode 14 was over and we were falling asleep sitting up but OMG it was so good! So. XD We will be finishing that, eventually. (And there will be Ranka cosplay. Because she is SO CUTE and I want her backpack OMG. XD)

For the record: best moment ever was when we were watching Macross Frontier, and Ranka does something and Diana goes, "Woo, go her! She's such a Rachel! And Sheryl is such an Annabeth." Ahahaha. I have taught her well~ XDD

Then, since we didn't go to bed until almost sunrise, we didn't get up until 4-5 and so we got dressed and got lunch/dinner/etc.; then we came back and watched all of Children of Earth in one go (why yes, that was some rather amazing television o.o) and then it was bedtime again. XD Then Sunday we got up at 10 to check out at 11, went to McDonald's for lunch, and ended up sitting there talking until almost 5:30 when it was time to leave for the concert. ::dies:: XD Which was, of course, amazing~ I still think Demi Lovato is probably the most talented singer Disney has right now, and she put on an awesome show and she was so absolutely sincere and modest and awesome~ David Archuleta is almost better live than on his albums, but I think that's because I liked the rock feel of the music as played by a live band as opposed to the more synthesized pop sound on the album? Anyway, he's pretty amazing as well, and I think Jordan Pruitt went before either of them and even though we didn't know who she was or anything by her, she too has a very amazing voice. So all in all, like I said, it was a very amazing concert~

And so now here I am, sitting at work and if Vicki doesn't get back to me I may head out early so I can get all the errands I need to run done. I have to, in no particular order:

- Deposit bank draft from car sale
- Call credit card company about using my card in Brazil
- Go to JoAnn's, the grocery store (I have no food, not even for four days), Michael's, and Center Stage
- Mail off Bumblebee to Blanche because I didn't have time on Friday

AND FINALLY LAST BUT NOT LEAST: HAPPY BIRTHDAY cecilegrey! :D May you receive many Dracos on your birthday. ;D

Oh, oh! And I keep forgetting, but thank you so much for the letter, februaryfour. That stationary was SO CUTE! <3

Yes, it's me again. Look, I'm updating when I really should be writing. XD

( This turned into PJO!fic!babble, so I figured I'd cut it because no one wants to read that. XD )

Anyway; I'm tired and I should probably go to bed for obvious reasons, but I don't actually want to, just yet. I will be in bed within the hour, though. I swear. I just hope I'll be able to fall asleep. :x At least tomorrow is like Friday, since actual Friday I'm only working in the morning. Then it's Orlando time, to sell my car (yay!) and AFO it up~ I GET TO SEE DIANA OMG. :D :D :D Now if only I knew which costumes to bring, aside from Gwen... (Maybe I'll dig out Tenma! I love Tenma~ OMG I could be Annabeth ahahahaha. Where's my Yankees cap? I'll just say I stole Percy's shirt.)

So! Yesterday was slightly more productive than the day before; I woke up at 1 or 2 or something (which is better than 3:30, trust me!) and hit up Goodwill for boots, though no luck there. But I think I might have found some black ones on a website for cheap - it looks like the Trek!Reboot! boots are only mid-calf, and not knee high? It's hard to tell; there are no full pictures of Uhura that I can find. :x Which is rather annoying. I suppose I could look at my Burger King glass? XD Still no idea what to do about Ahsoka's boots, but at least I have a while to figure that out, yet.

Anyway, during the three hours of Jonas on Disney Channel (XD) I finished the tabard-thing on the front of Ahsoka's skirt (I don't even know if that's really the right word for it...) and cut out pieces for my Trek uniform, though ironing them has proven difficult and I may just hang the thing in the bathroom while I shower for the next week. (Heck, I could probably just hang it outside - it's humid enough out there. D:)

I also finally saw both The DaVinci Code and V for Vendetta this weekend, as Scott owns them and I had never seen them so I borrowed them. Both were very good, though the ending of DaVinci Code I could see a mile away and I wasn't quite thrilled with, and the middle of V for Vendetta didn't quite... make sense to me (not in an "I don't know what's going on" sort of way, but more of an "I think they didn't need to do that in that manner" sort of way). And then yesterday night I realized that hey, I do own Iron Man (you'd think I'd know this XD) so I watched the first half of that~ Second half tonight. :D (Only because I ate dinner at 9:40 last night so I didn't want to watch the whole two-hour movie in one go.) There's still no chance Tony Stark graduated with honors from MIT, though. ;)

Then I finished my gigantic PJO fic #2 (seriously, 65,000 words? I NEED HELP) and started planning out the next one. XD ::dies:: I already have this whole big crazy conversation for it written on pages torn out of a notebook next to my bed, but it takes place halfway through the fic so it doesn't do me much good at the moment, now does it? XD I actually have most of the fic already planned out (gasp!) except for one plot point, but I suppose that will come as it's needed, as they tend to do. Unless anyone cares to be a sounding board~? I'm also trying to decide if it's worth actually putting this up in the new PJO comm or not, but then I'd have to tell everyone to go back and read my other two fics, and that's a rather major undertaking. XD; So I dunno about that.

Anyway. Enough dawdling - I need to get to the post office and then hopefully get something useful done by six o'clock. Apparently I'm alone this week in Extragalactic-ph - better get that paper read!

So! it has been a long, slightly-eventful week, whereby "slighty-eventful" I really mean "work-filled". I have a rough draft of my poster that I'm working on (which I am sure I will eventually be sending to valeriebean so she can tell me it sucks and has too many words, because where would I be without her to tell me that? XD <3) I've also discovered that two epochs is really crappy for figuring out variability (well, we knew this) and that I have no clue how to get X-ray luminosity from X-ray flux, provided I can even figure out the right task in CIAO to give me the proper X-ray flux. Buh. I know it involves a power-law... seriously, people. Why is there no online tutorial? (Well, probably because that would be ridiculous, but still...)

... Hm. And maybe I'm not as smart as I thought I was. Every time I open a new terminal, it tells me I have an undefined variable in my IDL_PATH. Oops. :x

[/astrobabble]

On the upside, I found fabric for my Star Trek uniform! I hit up the Jo-Anns that I don't usually go to yesterday, and there, right as I walked in the door, was the best fabric I've found so far so I decided to go for it. Plus it's their crazy coupon week so I had a billion coupons I could use. XD Anyway, that excited me greatly, as I was sure I'd never find anything even remotely close. It's not perfect, but it does have a slightly-raised diamond pattern on it that I think will work from far away. And now I shall proceed to share pictures for no good reason:

With a flash, so you can see the texture.

Without, so you can see the color.

In other news (as though it were actually important or something XD), I randomly go nominated for a number of Gen categories in excalibur_award, which is really kind of exciting! (Well, to me, anyway. :D;) Especially when one considers it's for a short little fic about Gwen and Arthur in episode 13. Eee, I feel all fuzzy. :D (Not warm, though. It's too cold in here for that. Thankfully I have a hoodie.)

I also finished From the Earth to the Moon last night, which as a whole was absolutely fabulous and everyone should watch it. And then Deke Slayton showed up in my dream, gee, I wonder why. XD Except I think my brain thought he had diabetes instead of a heart murmur, because in my dream some doctor was testing his blood and apparently had been every day and that was the reason he couldn't go into space? XD Who knows. At least Joe Jonas didn't show up. Although, Joe Jonas in a snoopy cap...

And finally: link621, I just got an email telling me to adopt kittens from the Humane Society of Boulder. (This actually isn't a new occurrence... long story, it's all your fault. <3) But then I started clicking and I think you should adopt him. LOOK HOW CUTE HE IS. :O You could name him... I don't know. Sanada or something. :D;

Guuuuuuys. There needs to stop being so many cool HP shirts! GAH. I'm almost ready to just pull $100 out of my savings account and buy all four or five shirts I want because they are ALL SO COOL. Someone tell me this is a bad idea. Or maybe a good one?

Also, let it be said that I hate UPS. I came home at 5:30 so I wouldn't miss them like I did yesterday when they came at 5:52, and it's 6:26 (by my VCR clock) and they still have not shown up with my package. I would really like that Wonderflex to play with over the weekend, but I have to go running and feed two cats and I would ideally like to do all of this before it either a) gets dark (in the case of the former) or b) I die of starvation (which is entirely likely, seriously). Boo on you, UPS. If you don't show up by 7 I'm going running and then I'm feeding the cats, and I'll just call and pick the stupid thing up myself on Monday morning. At least I found out the heat gun I need to get is only $25, yay?

Work was only kind of worky today, which is probably bad, but I've been putting in long days this week and I think my brain has already checked out for the weekend. I brought Exia home, though, and it is now happily chugging away on my IR data because I would really like to get that done asap. At least it doesn't require much thought to make IR mosaics; I'm just going to try to keep it running all weekend so hopefully I'll have stuff to reduce by Monday! Also to do this weekend is get a rough draft of my poster for the conference ready. WHY is August right around the corner? Seriously. It needs to go back into the Far Future where it belongs.

--

EDIT (6:53): Finally! Yay, I have my Wonderflex. Time to go running!

Last, but certainly not least!

For kashewmoo:

Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Prompt: Momo/Ryoma, popsicles on a warm day
Notes: 250 words; it somehow didn't want to be longer. I tried!
Title: ( Cherry-Flavored )

--

I was going to post pictures of my almost-finished Gwen, but none of them came out well. ::dies:: Alas; I'll just wait until it's completely done. All I have left to do are take in the skirt a bit and hem it, and find something for the tie closure on the red thing~ The lace on the font actually came out pretty well, at least! (Okay, you can have a picture of that.)

And speaking of pictures, I'd meant to post this forever ago. But I just wanted to share the particularly entertaining scene that greeted me on my desk when I got home from Europe last month:



The culprit knows who she is. ;D

Firstly, a very happy birthday to lavenderlilly! :D

I kept having dreams about astronauts last night. XD All I can really remember every time I woke up was all the radio chitchat and guys wearing spacesuits on the moon and I think this is entirely due to a certain HBO miniseries that I'm over halfway through with by now. (Aw, but last night was Apollo 11 and 12! All I could think was, "Man, Apollo 12 was a party! Al Bean is adorable!") Eesh, I remember learning all this stuff from books in junior high, but this is so much better than books. Sometimes I think I must be living my life backwards, fangirling astronauts in junior high and the Jonas Brothers in grad school...

Costume-wise, Gwen is almost done! Hoping to finish her tonight so I can start working on Ahsoka in earnest (Wonderflex ordered, $50 later...), and I still need to find fabric for the Trek!Reboot uniform. Plus I need to see if I really will be able to convince people to do Venture Bros cosplay or if this will just be a bust, because I can't walk around by myself as Dean Venture. That will not work. XD (Maybe I could be Triana? With a Dean plushie? XD) And someone needs to tell me that making Penny for AFO is probably a bad idea... even though I think I might do it. >>; NTS: take a look at her stuff tonight to see if this is even possible.

Okay, back to alternately watching MOPEX chug along and trying to get these flux maps made. Cutting the images down to just the area viewed by the ACS makes it much faster!

Brazil tourist visa, get! :D (Which is why I got to work at 11:15 - stupid downtown, being under construction and making me go the long way around to the already weirdly inconvenient post office. D:) But yep, there it was, taking up a whole page of my passport. Whew, one more thing to check off the list! (And to find the receipt for. I want reimbursement!)

Anyway, I think today is going to be a work until 6 o'clock day, but that's not unreasonable since I got in late (due to aforementioned picking up of passports at the post office). At least since it's summer, I can totally stay 'till six and have no problem with daylight for running afterwards. But! My advisor got an email from someone whose papers I have totally been using, so that's kind of exciting. Now I get to fangirl him in a totally non-fangirly way and tell him just how useful and awesome his work is!

Sooo I was browsing Amazon yesterday, and I realized that From the Earth to the Moon is $12. That's right - twelve dollars. For the whole thing - twelve or thirteen or whatever one-hour episodes of astronaut-y goodness~ So I might have bought that. I might also have bought the first season of Venture Bros because I needed to add something else to get the free shipping. I should perhaps not have bought these things, but this documentary is really quite amazing (and TWELVE DOLLARS!) and, well. Venture Bros. (They had the yard sale one on last night. XD I love the yard sale one~) This weekend I'm eBaying for Ahsoka's boots, and I have to order that Wonderflex for her headtails (why must it be expensive? D:) I'm going to check Center Stage for the makeup before I go about ordering and paying to ship it, though. I really wonder if I can't get this done for an AFO test run... That might be nice!

Also, Up? Was fantastic. I realize everyone knows this already, but. XD; Figured I'd add my two cents' worth of redundancy on that one~

Anyway, I... think that's all I have to report. This weekend will be made of writing PJO epic-ness, hopefully writing some original stuff to make some monies, and even more hopefully finishing the clothing aspects of Gwen and Ahsoka. We shall see~

Oh, but also? I discovered that they moved The Secret Saturdays to... well, Saturday. Secretly. Gee, Cartoon Network, thanks for NOT TELLING ME. D: Now I'm two or three episodes behind, and there are no torrents. Grar. This isn't a show in which I can miss episodes! Each one pretty much follows the last, by this point.

Okay, time to tape Exia to the plug again. I really need to look into fixing this. XD

EDIT: I just saw the headline "Canadian tornado kills 2 Oklahomans" on weather.com. Wait... what? XD; Well, okay, people dying sucks. But still.

I've (finally) started watching From the Earth to the Moon; Scott lent it to me ages ago, but it's sat on my table for quite some time. I actually started it on Saturday, but then I realized episode 2 was about Apollo 1 and it took me a couple days to work myself up to watching people die horribly in a fire. D: But now I am past that! It was sad, though. I mean, I really liked the way the episode dealt with it - from the contractor's point of view, which was really unique and interesting. It also just solidified my love for Frank Borman, but I already thought he was pretty damn cool before all of this. XD (Also? I don't think I knew that SOMEBODY LEFT A WRENCH LODGED IN THE SPACECRAFT SIDE. OOPS, GUYS. DON'T DO THAT. D:) Anyway, Scott says their take on Apollo 13 is really interesting too, so I'm looking forward to waching more of this as the week progresses. Probably not tomorrow, though; provided he's up for it, Jesse and I are going to see Up because I am horribly lame and haven't seen it yet.

But I did head home today right around 5, which is earlier than it's been the past few workdays, so I got to go running and eat dinner at a semi-reasonable hour while I watched TV (as mentioned above). It was rather nice. Note to self, though - Venture Bros appears to be on daily at 1AM on CN. WATCH IT. Because you can never, ever have too much Venture Bros. Next time I have forty bucks free I am so buying those DVDs.

I also put most of Gwen's under-dress together, so at least I was kind of productive? And I did lots of research for the next bit of PJO fic, so it will actually be accurate and whatnot. It may or may not involve zombies. Not zombie zombies, of course. But, well. When you've got the son of Hades, you need to make him use his awesome death powers. I'm sorry, that's just how it goes. XD Percy got to show off last, now it's so Nico's turn~ >D Regardless, I love Google Maps. :D

And speaking of writing, I have two more meme drabbles almost done. Maybe I'll finish them in a bit!

... Okay, you know, Transformers 2 might have been a terrible movie, but it sure does have a good soundtrack and score.

So I was all set to go to bed yesterday at a reasonable hour (2am is totally reasonable) but then I got suddenly inspired for the scene I was working on in my PJO fic and then it was 3:30. Oops. D: (This is what happens when you get Percy and Nico alone on the bottom of a river, I suppose... XD;) Ah well; it was actually okay since I'd been going to bed at 4 or so ever since Friday, and then since I managed to drag myself up reasonably on time this morning, I will hopefully be tired tonight. We'll see. I still wish it didn't take so absolutely little to throw off my sleep schedule. Anyway, I think I actually know (for real) how this story is going to end, and it still leaves room for a third (this is perhaps not a good thing, but XD). And it looks like the current thing at pjo_fic_battle is going to continue through the end of the month, so I will attempt to pick up more prompts there, as well. Oh, and there was a new Merlin prompt community I wanted to take a look at...

Speaking of, I was totally excited - one of my short little Gwen fics I wrote for the Gwen Winter Battle thing got nominated at excalibur_award! :D Whee~ Well, I mean, voting hasn't even started yet, but I was excited nonetheless. :D;

Anyway, I cut out the fabric for Gwen's under-dress (while watching Merlin, thank you NBC XD). I think I got fabric that was a little too off-white for it, but the white was just so see-through and I didn't want to double it. So, uh. Too bad. No one will care, I'm sure. I plan to at least cut out Ahsoka today. I also hope that the headpiece I'm using as a base will arrive in the mail today, otherwise I'll probably just call and pick it up at the UPS place tomorrow, even if it is alllll the way across town. :x

Anyway, other than that, it's just trying to finish up those exposure maps today so I can actually start some Spitzer analysis before Vicki talks to me next. Woo, mosaicking, here I come!

...Ahaha. If you pick the ninja theme in Gmail, there are little shuriken instead of stars! That is fantastic. XD

Okay, for serious, brain. I am not still in high school. And I definitely don't (nor did I ever) go to school with the Jonas Brothers. And yet you keep making me dream about this. It makes me feel kind of weird every time. XD In fact, it's almost weird to watch Jonas now because I have had so many dreams involving the Jonas Brothers that I feel like I actually know them when this is not at all the case. I fear I may have a problem. D: (Even weirder: in the dream, Nick burned all of TOS for me, and was totally nerding about Star Trek with me. XD Trippy. At least I appear to have moved from dream!dating Joe to dream!dating Kevin, which I consider an improvement.)

Anyway. Yesterday Scott, Nathan, and I went down to the Tampa Pitcher Show for dinner and Transformers 2, which was... well, maybe not great, but at the very least it was vaguely entertaining and spawned many interesting conversations in the car on the way back, some of which I probably should never ever repeat. XD (This seems to happen a lot, I've noticed. ::dies::) Today we met for a few episodes of TNG and then went to Sticky Fingers in Jacksonville for dinner (barbecue, yum!) before driving down to the riverfront and hiking over to plop into some lawn chairs for the fireworks. We did something right, because they shot them off right in front of us and it was a really nice show~ Then we drove home and had more interesting conversations involving South Park and why astronomers are crazy, which is a practically inexhaustible subject, let me tell you.

I am so seriously trying to convince them they want to do Venture Bros cosplay for Dragon*Con. I don't care if I don't have time. Nathan could be Brock and Scott could be Rusty and we'd build him a H.E.L.P.eR. and connect them at the kidneys. XD It would be fabulous, I tell you. Fabulous. And I'd so be Dean! It could happen, I tell you! It could! (Of course, Ahsoka will not happen unless I start sewing, so I swear I am going to cut out fabric and sew it together tomorow. I AM. D:)

You know, I think the more mortal peril Percy is in, the funnier he is. XD Just saying. I'm, like, terrified to keep turning pages, but every time I do I just keep cracking up out loud. XD Well, I mean, it's sad too, because people are dying. But Percy is still pretty hilarious. I also heard the Lightning Thief trailer might be showing before the Half-Blood Prince? That would be made of WIN. :DDD Though then I read that they might be scrapping one of my favorite scenes... I hope not, that would make me sad!

Brazil visa mailed, yay. $160 later, ugh. D: (Plus the $7 for the passport photos in which I look rather tired and unhappy because you are not allowed to smile.) Man, I wish I could get reimbursed before the conference. I didn't get my title transferred yet, but in my defense that's because I didn't fall asleep until at least 5:30 this morning. That was sad. I kept watching Adult Swim hoping Venture Bros would be on, but alas, no. Maybe it's only on on the weekends. In any case, I was tired but just couldn't sleep, so naturally I was not willing to get up at 7 this morning and opted for 9:40 instead. I'll aim for title-transferring tomorrow.

In the meantime, today is X-ray flux map day. :D And no NGN, so there will be running and writing and possibly Ahsoka-starting. I need to get working on costumes! I also need to go fabric-shopping, but I feel poor after dumping $1400 into Brazil that I won't get back until probably after D*C. Ah well.