Picc's Journal

Hello all! It's been a few months shy of a year, but I finally got around to resetting my password. I'll try to thumb through past entires, but if anyone had a baby or anything feel free to tell me here!

hay gais! I've been on vacation from work all this week, just staying at home, not doing too much other than growing a narsty beard. Kinda wanted to go visit one of my long distance friends, but most of you all are having issues just supporting yourselves and/or your significant other where applicable, so I did not want to intrude.

The coworker who was covering for me at work seems to be handling it okay with the info I gave him, as I haven't gotten any paniced calls. Did check my work e-mail though and it seems my presence has been missed though.

Actually, I did do some things on my break! Saturday I went to see Zombieland, which was hilarious, and the day after I went to the Maryland Renaissance Festival. That was a good bit of merriment and I got a few decent pictures of animals and chicks in leather and corsets, so I'll be uploading them in the near future. Today, I went out for a bit of shopping with my Mom, and we also got some Cold Stone, which tasted like heaven as always.

I've been wanting to dip my toes into driving some more, so as we got close to home we did just that - only about a minute or two's worth, but I think I did a decent job. Just have to keep doing a little bit of that every day to work my confidence back up, I think.

I finally go to be social yesterday~!! Hung out with Barbara and Susie all evening. We had a lot of fun, talking and catching up, showing off my various collections, and watching the veritable classic Project A-ko. It was like old times, I hadn't seen them in several years! And if you're reading this, thank you ladies for breaking my socializing drought XD;;

Had a pretty great work day. Had a fire drill, and I had to insist a couple people leave, which they did. Things were pretty smooth for most of the day, I was accomplishing a backlog of paperwork. But then one of our departments came down with an inventory crisis. They had thought some things of theirs were stolen, but using the powers of my deductive reasoning, I found them mixed in with another department's stuff, as they were the exact same model of items. Someone must have gotten confused as to who owned what. So in an attempt at Inventory for Dummies, with their permission, I wrote the respective department's names on the items in permanent marker. I saved everyone a lot of trouble, especially since the people who thought they were stolen was all ready to go fill out a police report without looking harder for it!! And then later in the day there was a birthday party for someone I barely know even though I see her every day, and I had some cake. X3

Other than that, things are generally looking on the up and up!

Well then! My dentist appointment went well. Just had a filling. It took a while to do as there was some more damage than we thought, and he thought he might have to do a crown, but it got filled just fine. It's sensitive to cold now though - eating cereal with cold milk and spoon is an ordeal - but I think that's because he had to remove some of the gumline. I'll get used to it.

Yesterday I cleaned out some of the car with the carpet cleaner. Turns out at some point water got splashed in somehow and it had a strong mildewy smell >__< But the water got dried out and I cleaned up the rest; hopefully it should smell better now.

My planned social life this weekend has not really come to fruition thus far. Saturday I was to go to Dave & Buster's with a friend from work, that didn't pan out. That makes me sad because I was looking forward to meeting some of his friends as well. Today I was supposed to get lunch with a friend who I haven't seen in years who is now living in DC, but his weekend got too busy with other stuff I guess as he had to postpone til next Saturday. Tomorrow I plan to hang out with my friend Barbara, whom I also haven't seen in years - if you're reading this, no pressure, but you're my only hope! ;^; (kidding~ if you can't we'll just try another day.)

Also, I finally am going to get a new computer~!! I ordered the parts last week and it should be here Tuesday. It's going to be quite a beast, and it'll be fun to be able to play new games on it again.

Hi kids! Been a little while. Work's been very easy... I finished my room survey and additions to the inventory database, cleaning out ones that weren't supposed to be in there and editing the descriptions to actually be useful. As far as I can see I am the only campus that has sone something like that. At home, I've been cleaning up my room, a mess from way back when we had the windows put in, in addition to the numerous additions eBay and various online stores have filled my room with so much plastic crap. Cue Weird Al song. But anyway, it looks much better now, but still not completely clean. Just a little more organized, so I'm not stepping on stuff when I get out of bed.

Past few days I put on various reproduction stickers on my various transformers; replacing worn out vintage G1 stickers from my childhood with shiny, crisp ones, and putting fan-made additions on newer Classics/Universe style figures to make them look like the older ones, and more pleasing to the eye in general with more detail where paint apps were otherwise plain.

So that put me in the mood to answer this Top Five Transformers thing, which may, or may not be a meme but perhaps we can make it one!

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Just kidding. It was a ton of fun! I spent three and a half days with my friends and enjoyed just about every minute. We didn't go to any panels and only really went to the con center - which was connected to our hotel via a skyway - only went to check out cosplayers, the dealer's room, and artist's alley.

Pictures are here. Click the links on the left for the categories. Some of them are Lola's; she borrowed my camera from time to time as hers got stolen at the concert. Some of my favorite cosplayers are the Miku, the Asuka, and the Kamen Rider.
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/…

Got there early Thursday morning via the commuter trains and there were already people lined up to get their badges o_o I was the first one there, and throughout the day I met up with Lola, Mitsu, Colin, El, and later that night, Kitsu. Even though we all brought tons of stuff, we spent too long in the hot weather looking for someplace to buy video and audio cables to hook our stuff up to the TV. XD; But we did get our badges early, about midday, thanks to our VAMPS concert tickets. Lola went on down to the venue where the concert was going to be, and managed to get Hyde's signature and shake the man's hand! Hopefully a moment she won't forget. After unwinding a bit in our hotel, we all went down to the market and got some delicious crabcakes.

Some time after, we went to concert venue and waited in line some more with some friendly ladies. I was glad I brought earplugs for everybody, because even before the concert started the music was pounding! And once the actual band came on, it was total chaos. Even though I had my earplugs in the whole time, I still had to put my hands over my ears and I could still hear and feel every note. It was a fairly small club, so most of us stayed in the bleachers or around the back where the DJ, bar, and food was. They had free water which was definitely appreciated. I mostly hung out around the back and appreciated the male:female ratio... there were even a couple Japanese chicks, one with dyed pink hair, who were dancing and headbanging the whole time. I'll admit I kept my eye on them just about as much as the show on stage! I didn't know any of the songs, so I didn't have any connection to them, and I didn't recognize Hyde until he started singing because of his poofy hairstyle. And to appease all the fangirls there, he took his shirt off for the encore.

We all got as much sleep as we could. We were pretty wiped out and the con hadn't even started! On Friday I wore my TF2 Medic cosplay. I didn't have any weapon, but what I did have were some big, thick red rubber gloves that looked just like they came from a cartoon. Also, with the dress shirt and tie, I felt I was one of the best dressed people in our group. XD; Got quite a few compliments on it, lots of "MEDIC!!", even got a polite hug from a chick cosplaying a Soldier. I jumped in to a random TF2 group here and there while people took pics which was a lot of fun! And of course Lola, the person who demanded I was a natural for the character, really liked it.

Later that day, we all watched Antique Bakery in our hotel, which I managed to fall asleep during despite it being quite entertaining and the hoots and hollers from my friends watching it. And that night, I put on some G1 Transformers episodes I brought from my new DVD set; this was a great idea as their general silliness really translated well to group MSTing and there were lots of laughs!

Saturday's highlight for me was the sushi restaurant we went to. I had never had non-california roll sushi before and it was a real treat. Plus, they played j-rock for the background muzak, how great is that. Later on I went to the dealer's room and got quite a few things! My favorite are the squishy vynil pac-man toys.. five bucks each, with the last free 'cause I bought the whole set. XD And that Kula statue is something I've wanted for years but the store that went out of business. Saturday night was really cool weather, we had dinner by the water. Oh, and we finally got to see Watchmen together that night!

Sunday was more than just sad goodbyes, we actually got to spend quite a bit of time together. Lola met one of her WoW buddies who sadly turned out to be a real creep. And on the way home, on a train stop at both Baltimore and DC, I met this cute raver girl who went to the con... we seemed to have quite a bit of our tastes in common in that we both didn't really watch anime anymore and just went to hang out with friends... but as we were hitting it off in conversation I found out she was too young for me. >____< Figures. Oh well, at least I'm not totally antisocial?

Took Monday off, which was a really good idea. Got lots of rest. Didn't have too much catching up to do at work, as the guy who covered for me did a good job. One of copiers did manage to break really bad, hopefully it has been repaired by now. I've got a meeting late tommorow morning at another campus, so that should be a little bit different.

As much as I don't like going back to the grind, at least I don't have to cram and prepare for this con anymore? :D That said, I'm still in a con going mood... I plan on going to Anime USA this year, it's only a few metro stops away. I plan to go by my lonesome and stay there for the weekend so I don't have to be on the train constantly. We'll see what hijinks ensue, but allready I'm fairly excited for it.

Work went all right this week. I was going on only a few hours of sleep every night though, except for Friday. I got some big stuff out of the storeroom, only to get just as much stuff in. :X Sigh.

My shelves are holding up well, I like them a lot. I accessorized it with a few figures standing next to their respective games. XD;

I've been on something of an emotional roller coaster this week. My thanks again to those of you who put up with me. I think I'm feeling fairly stable now though... I hope.

Had a busy morning at work today catching up from my couple days off, but we had a power outage due to flooding and I got to go home an hour and a half early XD

I finished my shelves tonight!! The back of the shelves didn't line up perfectly, which made the panel backing out of whack, but I think it looks pretty good. I felt like an amateur all the times I messed up though. Here's a photo gallery of its construction - from me working on it outside through the finished product filled with all of my cased games!

So I got the wood backing panels for my shelves but it was an ordeal getting them home. After taking careful measurements at home, My mom and I went to the Home Depot and I picked out the style I wanted. These weren't expensive, at only $10 per board, and I only needed two. But they were far too large. So I had them cut there... once we were sure we had the measurements we wanted, I was embarrassed to be one of THOSE customers, that doesn't know what they want. XD; The giant rotary saw they used chewed through the panels in about two seconds.

But getting them into the car was the hard part. All fit into the trunk and back seat pretty snugly except for one... it was just too big. So we curved it up and stuck it about an inch in... it stuck about a foot out the back of the trunk, but it was in there snugly. So my mom and I tied the trunk down, but it was precarious as we didn't have a lot of rope. The drive home didn't take too long, but it was sprinkling rain. We got home safe thank goodness, I dried off the boards, and they're sitting on the floor now straightening back up. I'm too tired to actually install them today. Hopefully I won't be wiped out tomorrow after work and I can do it then!

Not really looking forward to going back to the grind, but at least it's a 4 day week. And I'm done updating my databases, so I can start fresh on other things I need to do.

Well then, the first half of my long weekend was very active, but on the other end it's been more low key. I've been building a shelf for more of my cased games and DVDs. I thought it would be a fun hands on experience and it pretty much has, except for some times when I had been working on it too long and got frustrated. Thursday after work I bought the lumber I needed. Friday afternoon and through the evening into the night I worked very hard on it. I made sure to measure several times so that I would have to cut as little as possible and not make any mistakes. At first I used the hand saw for my cutting, but eventually I got worn out from it and we got out a power jigsaw. It was very loud and had LOTS of vibrations; so I wore earplugs and two layers of leather work gloves, and of course goggles, to protect myself. Once I got a speed on the jigsaw I was fairly comfortable with, and learned to use some force to push it forward, I got the hang of it and it wasn't so bad. Then I got out the drill / power screwdriver. I measured and drilled holes for all my shelving brackets. This went pretty well, unfortunately, all the screws we had were old and random sizes so in the end a lot of the brackets didn't stay on. By this time it was dark so I came inside and had some nice homemade macaroni & cheese. I spent 10 hours out in my backyard... I don't think I spent that much time out since I was a kid! Good thing the weather was nice. But I felt totally exhausted and beat up by the time I went to bed.

We left the half completed frame of the shelves on the ground in the living room overnight. Saturday I regrouped and my mom and I went to home depot again to get a bunch of screws the proper size. This helped out a lot (We also did a bit of shopping and a trip to the grocery store while we were out). By the evening, I had screwed all the brackets in solid. We set it up on the wall. We tried using gorilla glue to hold the shelves on the brackets... but the glue was too old and seems to have dried in the bottle! So my mom's getting some wood glue at her craft store today. In the meantime, we clamped the shelves onto the brackets, and it seems to be fairly stable now. One last thing we decided I'd probably have to do is get some wood paneling for the back to make it as stable as possible. I'll also probably end up putting in some filler boards in the middle to make sure the shelves don't sag too much with the weight on them. And for dinner that night, in lieu of a real cookout, my mom made us some pretty good cheeseburgers. I've sure worked up an appetite these past few days!

So that's been my weekend so far. Today was the Indy 500, so my dad and I watched that as per ancient Craft clan tradition. I also managed to beat Punch-Out on the Wii. And my legs are really sore now when I try to stand up, so I took a couple Tylenol. I haven't been invited to any memorial day weekend movies or cookouts with my friends, but considering how busy I've been I don't mind it too much.

Edit: Gluing the wood down now. Looking more like a shelf!