GenCon ReCap - Better Late Than Never

GenCon was a blast. If you've never been and are a dork/nerd/geek and live in North America, you should reserve a room now. Every year, I meet new awesome people and do new awesome things. Every year I play in the Chameleon Games 7th Sea Larp and this year, though I bought a ticket, I missed the game. My cell phone was stolen the day before we left (major suckage!) and... I'm lame? It was such a crazy time and there were so many other awesome things to do that I figured it would be ok. I will have to play next year though!

Now, to the good part. Costumes. As I mentioned in a previous post, I made two costumes for GenCon this year. The first was a Steam Punk get up from random things I found in my closet and an awesome pocket watch.

The gloves were a thrift store find many years ago, the bracelet was a gift from my ex-step-mother, the pin was my great grandmothers, the hat was made as a gag gift (!!!) by local artist and milliner Miriam Wiegand, the top is from Target (I wear it with a jacket to work all the time). I've also got a black under-bust corset and full black skirt as well as a cameo necklace. The awesome watch? I wore it on a super long chain around my waist. The costume was comfortable enough to wear all day and I received a fair number of compliments. Not too shabby for $13.

The other costume I wore was The Wraith from the amazing Sentinels of the Multiverse cooperative card game. I got a black leotard and sewed on strapping material and clasps across the belly - this was harder than I thought it would be. It turns out that stretchy material stretches. Whoa. I then made a cape and distressed it with scissors and a grater. I wore tights and bandages up and down my legs.

Not a great picture of my costume, but you can see from left to right, Tachyon, Citizen Dawn, The Wraith (complete with impromptu invention - my favorite card in her deck!) and Tempest. We had a blast! The Sentinels team will be releasing an expansion this April and it includes a new look for The Wraith! They haven't officially leaked the art but I got to see a sneak peak and all I can say is Infrared Eye Piece! :P

Ok. So maybe I'm a fan-girl...

Movies! (some spoilers)

One of the best parts of summer is that most of the movies I want to see come out in May, June and July - ridiculous, high budget action/adventures! Most recently Boybee and I saw Captain America and Harry Potter.

So far, Thor has been my favorite of the Marvel Avengers films. Iron Man is a really close second, but when it comes down to it, I prefer a female lead who gets to have a personality other than 'I have breasts, wear high heels and dither about.' In fact, the lame-ization of Pepper Potts sours an otherwise hilariously wonderful movie. I mean... they made her a love interest for gods' sakes. Really. I mean. The whole point of Tony Stark is that people in their right minds are vaguely repulsed by him.

Thor on the other hand had Natalie Portman as an awesome scientist with a goofy friend assistant. (Also, Chris Hemsworth. Yum.) The big difference is, in the comics Pepper is so cool and even gets her own mechsuit and flies around saving the day while in the movie... breasts and heels and swooning, whereas in comics Jane Foster is a nurse who works for Thor's alter-ego (who let the Norse God of Thunder get a medical license????) and in the movie she's an astrophysicist who runs around being awesome. No contest in terms of movies. 

Captain America had the benefit of starring Hugo Weaving, who may just be my favorite actor currently working. I am not a fan of the character but this movie made me love it. I'm not so excited for the inevitable adjusting to life in the 21st century plot line in the Avenegers movie, but... I'm going to see it and probably love it anyway. :)

GenCon!

This year Boybee and I, along with a mess of friends will be attending GenCon Indy (Aug 4-7). I am more than pumped! This will be my 5th GenCon and Boybee's 70 Billionth - or there about.

GenCon is a gaming convention - board games, video games, RPGs both online and on-table, and just about any other type of game you can imagine. It features an awesome costume contest, anime stuff, fiction writing seminars, and all sorts of other awesome activities (they even have yoga!). I will be participating for the 4th time in a 7th Sea Live Action Role Playing (LARP) game run by the folks at Plaid Chameleon Games. I have put together a rather standard pirate costume for the event (pics will come, I assure you!). In addition to the annual 7th Sea LARP, they're also going to be running one for Girl Genius so I am in the process of putting together my *very first* steampunk costume. I scored this pocket watch at the local Cheap Costume Jewelry Store (tm):

Steampunk = pocket watch

Then, just for shits and giggles, I am also going to Cosplay my favorite character from a new comic book game Sentinels of the Multiverse, The Wraith. (http://www.facebook.com/sentinelsOTM)

Totally Sweet

I'm planning on wearing nude tights on my legs and arms and whip stitching bandages onto them to get  the look right. I also need to find a wig... any good sources for relatively cheap costume wigs? 

In conclusion, I owe you a giant picture full post detailing my costuming adventures. Stay tuned!

Posting Infrequently!

Boybee wanted to know when I would again post in this venue, and since I like him, I am again posting! Whooooooo!

Much has changed in the past year, specifically Job of Doom (tm) became overwhelmingly stressful. Yeah, you could probably tell that from reading the two prior posts. So, I left! You see, around a year ago someone introduced me to A Very Important Person in my field. And he decided to introduce me to the CEO of one of the organizations I have had a work-crush on for a number of years. I spammed her my resume and shared a Groupon with one of the people who works there and one thing led to another. Long story short, I'm in what is damn near close to my dream job.

More good news! Long time readers (or those who just skip to posts from November 2008) will know that my house had an old ugly kitchen. This is no longer the case! We tore out the cabinets, made the jail-cell window in the corner bigger and centered on the back North facing wall, patched the sub-floor where the plumbing had leaked, replaced the plumbing, and put in porcelain tile. We hung the oak faced cabinets ourselves and installed all new appliances and granite counter-tops. We now have a true TINK* sub-urban home, complete with cats, semi-exoctic pet, two masters degrees and stainless steel appliances.

While I was busy finding a new job, Boybee started a gaming company. Check out www.sentinelsofthemultiverse.com for an awesome cooperative comic book style card game. It's way sweet. For extra points, try and figure which character I'm planning to cosplay at GenCon Indy this year. :)

In but moments** friends from afar will arrive at our home for a local SCA event and gaming. It will be a good weekend.


*Two Incomes No Kids
**Moments of the butt, of course

Catch Up

So, they gave me one of the new jobs and then gave me a raise... well, I wont look a gift horse in the mouth. The exciting part is that since last I posted, I have had a double assignment everyday - twice up to quadruple. Also, since last post 10 of the people in my 14 person department quit or retired (which is probably why I still have a job...). It's been crazy.

My late winter saga

In December, I started to get desperate about finding a job. Housewifery was just *not* working out for me. Since we only had the one car (my beloved Sylvia) and with the weather so cold and yucky, I basically was not getting out of the house at all. It was very bad. So I started to look for jobs in places I had originally ruled out - not because I didn't want to work for these organizations but because I was sure that they would not want me. See the afore mentioned Clinic was a women's health clinic and most Catholic organizations don't look too kindly on them (go to any clinic that provides birth control during lent and you'll see what I mean). I started looking at Catholic Hospitals and Clinics thinking that they'd never call me back, but at least I had tried. When I got the call, St. Hospital wanted me in for an interview! I was so excited.

The interview went well until the secretary knocked on the door looking for me. "Is this Ms. Bee?" "Uh, Yeah" "Good. Security wants to see you right away!" I ran downstairs coming up with hundreds of scenarios for why security would need to see me during a job interview, each more ridiculous than the first. I got down stairs to find that an employee had driven right into my parked car, then immediately called security and the police. She happened to have amazing car insurance which even paid for me to have a rental car while they fixed Sylvia up! After talking to the cops, I went back upstairs and completed the interview. It went well and a week later they offered me a job. This was early January.

I told them when they offered me the gig that I had a family trip scheduled in February and they assured me that I could take the time (unpaid) off. Perfect. I started orientation and met my coworkers and everything was great. After three weeks I left for my week long camping trip to Arizona (I had a blast!) and came back tanned and relaxed Monday morning. I went up to my nurses and said hi and they said "Did you hear about Boss?" "huh?" It turns out that while I was gone my immediate supervisor was fired and now my 'break-in' period during which I was to have a designated 'peer-helper' to ask questions of and no extra work until I got a handle on my regular duties was over 6 weeks early. It has been a rough month since then with many overtime hours logged.

This week, two months to the day since I started, they called a meeting. I knew nothing good would come of it but I thought they would just explain to us that they wouldn't be hiring a replacement for Boss or a replacement for the coworker who left just as I started to be a stay at home mom. But no. Instead they explained that they were laying us all off and creating a new position which we'd have first dibs at but with the knowledge that there will probably not be enough jobs to go around. Shit.

Now, just two months after starting this job (which I was really enjoying, I have amazing coworkers and I love the work I do) I feel like I am back to the drawing board. I will apply for one of these new positions, but I'm low woman on the totem pole and if they're going to cut anyone, it will be me. The best part is that I haven't even worked there long enough to get unemployment benefits.

Moving right along

Still no definite news on the job hunt front. I am more comfortable with my housewifeness now though than I was a month ago (not that I want it to continue, but at least I will be able to look back at this time in my life fondly).

I have really thrown myself into my hobbies which is a good thing, but I'm less productive by far when I have infinite free time than when I am on a schedule. Luckily though all my big projects right now have deadlines. I also broke down and joined twitter as of tonight - oy! I have been dragged kicking and screaming into the aughts with only two weeks to spare. So, all in all, I have been keeping busy.