Dude. Frank just sent me this, which he saw on the way to the airport. Stealing billboards is totally legal, right? Because if that's still there when I go home for Christmas... well, all I'm saying is that it might not be by the time I leave. ;D

Squee~

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!

Oh my God, WHY IS IT SO HOT. ;_; Seriously. Apparently Florida is the sole target of global warming, and I am not okay with this.

In an attempt to make myself feel better (well, okay, maybe not XD) I figured I would show some more Dragon*Con pictures, because valeriebean sent me a whole DVD of them and she took some fun shots~

( Lewis, Caramelldansen, and Tyler the Greek monster? )

Also, I wanted to share the latest addition to my bookshelf, thanks to the fantastic pergamond! (I will be trading her an English copy of The Lightning Thief in a completely innocent attempt to get her addicted...)

( Percy Jackson, Nihongo-style! )

Finally, this is totally what our Monday nights look like. They're so high tech. XD


(See, normally Tiffany Skypes in to watch Heroes. I took this last week, I think, after the show ended and we started babbling on our end and looked over to see she'd apparently wandered off to get something. I laughed?)

For the record, Heroes could totally hire me to write. I see all their storylines coming miles away. It's always entertaining to go, "Yeeeeah, I figured," and have Nathan and Scott go, "Uh... what?" XD

Okay, here are the pictures for that meme I did a couple days ago~

( Lots of pictures ahead! )

( Pictures and fangirling under the cut~ )

Tomorrow is work (woo) and Heroes (woo for real!) and I think Tuesday might be G.I. Joe because I haven't seen it yet and clearly that needs correcting.

Okay, so! The long-awaited (well, maybe) Dragon*Con report, complete with pictures! Oh man, this is going to take me quite a while to write. Guess I'd better get started.

( Dragon*Con 2009: Captains, costumes, and orange body paint. )

Anyway; I had an absolutely fantastic time at the con and I am so very sad it is over. But I have to admit, there is also something to be said for having nothing to do in the evenings. I mean, I can do stuff that's not D*C-related. Like write. Or watch Enterprise. Or make costumes at a leisurely pace. Wow. Imagine that!

( 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! 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

Clearly, there is only one icon I can use for this post. You guys had to know it was coming. Thankfully, I will only subject all of you to one picture before you can just scroll past the cut.



( OMG JONAS BROTHERS CONCERT AHAHAHA~ )

Getting out of there was fun (as in completely not), but I suppose that's what happens with massive amounts of people try to leave one place by only a few roads all at once. But we did, and I got home and finished packing and got about two hours of sleep before heading to the airport to fly to Boston...

And there are more fun stories involving that, but not right now, as I am tired and think I may just pass out. XD Flist and the rest of my in the morning, perhaps. G'night, all!

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;

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;

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

First off, a very Happy Birthday to link621! :D I am sure it will be awesome~

Second I would like to highlight the awesome photoshopping skillz of noctaval, who edited some lighsabers into one of our pictures from last weekend. XD ( Under here! )

Welcome to the first day of summer, which is hot enough to melt just about anything out there. ._.;; Oh, and also, watch Merlin tonight! NBC, 8pm Eastern~ YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO.

Well, I am getting closer to creating an X-ray exposure map. I'm not there yet - somehow I stalled out on the last step because I'm still missing keywords in my input files, but the awesome girl at the Chandra helpdesk who is so nicely walking me through this is out of the office today, so I guess it's back to inputting redshifts for today. And I thought being an astronomer didn't require secretarial levels of data entry; good thing I spent so much time working for my dad way back when (who, incidentally, is totally paying my sister a better hourly rate this summer than I get doing this, lucky girl~).

I actually worked on my PJO story yesterday (woo!) and I even finished reading my geekiest book of all the geeky books ever so I can now finish The Demigod Files and probably actually start reading The Last Olympian this weekend. I think I keep putting it off because I don't want the series to be over. I have this problem with many things. It's why I still haven't finished Enterprise. D:

I also wrote almost 1,000 words for my Star Wars fic, but the thing seems to be in a constant state of flux. I keep flipping between wanting to make it just AU (as in, take everything up to mid-Clone Wars as canon and then veer off in my own direction) and trying to make things fit up through Revenge of the Sith. I still don't know what I want to do with it. I have all these ideas. There are too many of them! XD Ah, Star Wars. Why must you be difficult?

Speaking of, I think I'm going to treat myself to a trip to the bookstore tonight, because my $50 Borders rewards card came in so I can buy a book without actually paying for it! And there's a new Clone Wars book out by Karen Traviss, and it involves Ahsoka (actually, all the Rex/Ahsoka shippers will probably be happy with this one, reading the description...). Therefore I totally must own it. (Though clearly she needs to stop writing Clone Wars and get cracking on that next Omega Squad book! I NEED THAT THING. :O)

Merlin starts this weekend on NBC. Everyone should watch it~ :D

I think maybe it's time for an early lunch.

Oh, but first! ( Have a picture from Star Wars Weekends. To tide you over~ :D; )

I know this icon is a bit angry, but pretend it isn't. I already used the icon I wanted to use this time in the last post. :D;;

Anyway, I figured since I've been slaving from approximately five until just now (with a bit of time out for running and dinner) on this, I should post my pictures of the fastest-constructed Jedi costume ever!

( I'd say I did it in less than twelve parsecs, but... )

Also, I have finished Venture Bros Season 3. How long do I have to wait for more? D:

BEDTIME!

:D


(Lots) more to come... eventually.

( Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek Star Trek )

In totally completely unrelated news, I got a new shirt. :D Target boys' section FTW~

Okay, I really need to be in bed, because I have to be up in 6.5 hours. XD BUT FIRST.

( THE COOLEST HOODIE EVER :D )

Okay. I think I really am done packing and cleaning. It's so weird to have almost NOTHING in my bag, but I only need four days' worth of clothes and toiletries and stuff.

NTS: Get the Lexus VIN and buy Arch tour tickets! (As in: Jen~ I was going to email you but hopefully you'll see this? We can buy tickets for the Arch online ahead of time. Frank suggested getting tickets for 1:30 or so on Saturday; do you want me to just buy them and you can pay me back when you pay me for the hotel? :D)

Bedtime~!

Whew! Today was a bit insane; haircut (yay!) and then attempts at work (somewhat successful, though I did talk to people about that conference in Brazil and got a bit of that sorted out), and then I came home to run (since I can't go on Friday) and CLEAN (I needed to finish the vacuuming and do some laundry and wash off my deck furniture and clean the kitchen and bathroom). It meant I wouldn't have much time to sew but I figured actually getting things clean would be more worth it. I did finish up Nina's bow, which is officially my favorite part of the costume so far. XD The top is mostly done-ish (ignore the hoodie behind it XD) except for some refitting issues, and I do have the skirt and the white panel on the front made. Now it's time to play with foam! (Well, not now, but next time I sew...) I also BRUSHED THE CAT. This is no mean feat, believe me. XD

I still need to dust and clean off my kitchen table and my desk, and there's that whole packing thing, but thankfully I only need about four days' worth of clothes so it shouldn't be hard. I probably won't have time to sew tomorrow, since I want to go running before NGN; I've added about another mile onto my run, which not only takes longer but makes me slightly more tired, I think. XD Though I really need to up it again in the near future. Maybe my grandmother won't mind if I disappear for an hour every other day while she's here. :D;;

Ho-kay, I have two logs to respond to and possibly that dusting, but more likely just some reading or something before I collapse. I will not watch more Venture Bros...

And finally (but not least-ly!), a very, very happy birthday to pkstar. <3

Oh, and! To everyone who knows a bit about TNG, I got this in my dept. mail the other day. And I sporfled. XD