The Return of Mothra

Yep, the moths weren't as dead as we thought. Around the end of September I found moths in my dresser and moths in the pantry/kitchen. The bug guys were called (thanks Val) and came out to fog our house. For this to be really effective we had to empty out all the cuboards in the kitchen so they could be properly fogged. I emptied out my dresser as well.

They came, they fogged, moths died. Then the cleaning began. All the cabinets had to be scrubbed, all the dishes washed and everything needed to be wiped down to get rid of the poison. It was kind of nice to weed out the dishes in the kitchen, we found a bunch of stuff that didn't belong to anyone living there anymore!

Since then I've been working on a room a weekend, cleaning everything I can think of to clean because I'm also allergic to the poison at the moment. For the 2nd time I've also had to wash every piece of clothing or anything else fabric-like that can go in a washing machine. Because I couldn't stand the thought of haveing to go through this a 3rd time, my dresser became the casualtiy this time around (the bed is safe!). I went to clean it out after the fogging and found webbing all up in the cracks and creavisis. Everything should be dead...but I couldn't be certain I could get everything out and the little niggling "what if" kept running through my head. Peace of mind was totally worth scrounging up the price of a new Ikea dresser!

Vacation

In August I was able to go home to NorCal for vacation. It was great! With only 5 1/2 days home I was still able to visit everyone, have a day to relax, work on my website a bit and devote the weekend to fun with my parents. This fun involved excellent food, some wineries and a concert.

I always talk about wine tasting when I go home so this time a 'membered to snap a few shots of one of my favorite wineries, Brassfield.

This is the driveway up to the winery.


I had to put in a shot of the parking lot cause though the picture doesn't do it justice, it's pretty cool. That's not just a grass field for a parking lot, its paved in brick or stone with honeycomb like openings that they then planted grass in.


Here is the main building.


And this is one of the cave openings. For those who may not know, almost all Wineries have a cave in which they store the barrels of wine. Again it doesn't look like much right now, but when the winery is completed they plan to have a waterfall coming down that you have to walk behind in order to enter the cave. They'll also have a full banquet hall inside eventually.


My parents enjoying wine on the veranda of the winery. Mom doesn't know I snapped this shot and would probably be mad if she knew I put it up, so shhhhhh don't tell ^_^

I was also able to go to a Toby Kieth concert while I was home. He's a country singer...and yes I like country!

Fun with streamer cannons...I gotta get me one of those.


And a shot of Toby Kieth on stage.

CCAS

Two days in and I already fail at my self imposed catch up deadline because I was too busy playing Mafia Wars on Facebook to remember to post. Oops.

Well I realized in my last post that I may not have told everyone about my involvement with the Christian Comic Art Society (CCAS). I discovered that this organization existed at last year's Comic Con (2008) and have been going to the monthly meetings ever since. As one friend (I totally forget which friend) commented about himself, "I'm too geeky for my Christian friends and too Christian for my geeky friends", and this is often true in my life as well so it was fun and uplifting to find a whole group of fellow Christians who were into the same geeky things I was. And simply amazing to connect with fellow christian artists.

Many use the group to get critiques, bounce ideas off peers, find others to work on projects and discuss God. CCAS works not just as a networking group, but also but as an outreach to the comic/Industry scene. They man booths at many different conventions selling Christian comics and giving out comic book tracts. They also organize various panels at these conventions like the ones mentioned in my previous post.

Conventions 2009

I've attended a whopping 5 conventions so far in 2009, a new record for me!

For the 2 anime conventions (Fanime and Anime Expo) I cosplayed Kraehe from the show Princess Tutu. I've already posted pics of the wig making process, so here is the completed costume that I pranced around in ^_^


This was my favorite picture taken by D.Anderson at Conpix.com



And here is a very nice group shot of people dressed up from the same show, taken by the photographer from asianschoolboy.com

For Comic Con I've never dressed up...partially cause I'm often sort of on my own at this con, but mostly cause it's so darn crowded.


Crowd wise this picture is totally deceiving. Apparently I managed to snap a shot of the floor during the 10 seconds when an open space miraculously appeared.


And this is me being a photo sniper from the mezzanine. It's the Christian Comics Art Society (CCAS) booth manned by several of my friends. CCAS put on several different panels at the con that were really awesome. One was a "spiritual themes in comics" panel that had representatives from different beliefs fielding questions. There was a "secret" (as in is it didn't make it into the printed program, oops!) meet and greet to get to know different Christians who are into comics, fans or professionals. And then on Sunday they hosted a mini worship service followed by a short message and a discussion. The turn out for all of the panels, even the secret meet and greet, was really good!

And then my other highlight of Comic Con was my awesome celebrity sighting.


Nathan Fillion, shiny!

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures from D23 Expo (the Disney convention). It was a lot of fun, very pretty and had the politest staff ever as they were all trained at Disneyland and had the Empire looking over their shoulder. A couple highlights: a life size Wall-e remote control robot, plans for the Hong Kong Haunted Mansion, a mock up of the up coming Cars land, and a talking trash can.

Con # 5 was the brand new Long Beach Comic Con. It was small, but not bad for a new con. I liked it cause it was practically right down the street from me, but aside from the much more managable size and lines it was like a mini Comic Con, so nothing new.

Beware of Mothra

I know I'm very behind on my blogging, but I've got several things I've been meaning to blog about. Instead of doing one huge catch up blog I'm going to space things out and put up a blog a weekday until I'm caught up. Without further ado I give you Beware of Mothra, circa May 2009.

So I was having an allergic reaction around the house, specifically in my room. I went searching under the bed (a potentially very scary place) expecting to find something along the lines of toxic mold. Instead I found moths. Lots of moths. They ate my bed. That's right ate my bed. A colony of moths had moved into my box spring (yuck!) forcing me to throw out my mattress and clean everything. In the cleaning process moths were also found to be in my dresser, in the closet and under my bookshelf. I was forced to wash everything piece of clothing I owned. To this end I went to the laundry matt to get it all done in one fell swoop. The problem with this? Most of my clothes are hang dry only (it's a tall thing...shrinkage is our enemy). I ran out of room to hang things rather quickly.

The result:


My four post bed frame became my lovely new drying rack. The old saying is true, necessity is the mother of invention.

A Hair Raising Experience

Most of you ought to know by now that I'm a bit of a geek. What many of you may not know is the actual depths of my geekyness. Warning: you are now about to find out.

I am currently in the process of making a costume to wear at a convention on Memorial Day weekend. This costume requires a wig. The wig had to be pulled into a pony tail and styled in a very interesting gravity defying fashion. This was a fun new experience for me as I've never tackled a wig before.

So first I had to sew on more hair 'cause most wigs have gaping holes when put into an up do without extra hair. But before that all the hair had to be sprayed with detangler and left to dry.


Hence our bathroom breifly became a bit hairy.

Then I had to make some sort of support structure...


...which made for interesting viewing in the dining room.

After finally getting the pony tail up (I learned that a wig is much more difficult to pull into a normal ponytail than your own hair is) it was time for fun with curlers, hot water and more waiting for hair to dry.


This time the kitchen sink/counter became the area with odd decor.

And finally a successful hair raising experience!



Thank goodness for understanding housemates ^_^

How Fashionable

A few weekends ago I finally took a trip to the LA Fashion District.

I was inspired to go to see if I could find fabric for a project. So off Michelle and I went to witness the strangeness first hand. The fabric section was fun, but a bit overwhelming. Bolts of fabric taller than Michelle were stacked every which way and there were paths almost as wide as game trails meandering through them.

Unfortunatly I didn't get a pic of the store interiors, but here's a sidewalk display that really needs an animal crossing sign.


And this display just amused me too much to not take a picture ^_^



After wandering the fabric section and the famed Santee Alley we continued our fashionable day with a trip to Ulta where Michelle taught me about make-up brushes and I made my mother proud by spending money on girly things like good make-up. All in all a very fun day on the town. Oh, and no I didn't end up buying any fabric, but didn't really mind.