look on my works ye mighty, and despair

The past week has been very full:

* We met up with friends on Monday for food (after some closed-restaurant shenanigans we all ended up at Burger King). Our local friends are lovely.

* Easter was a four-day weekend and for various reasons we decided to hold a wig sale. The combination meant we had a record-breaking amount of parcels to send out on Tuesday, but did actually manage to get them all packed just in time for the pick-up. When I say 'just in time' I mean that we'd nearly given up on getting the last twenty parcels done but the postman was a little late so we managed to get the last sack packed up, paid for and down to reception just as he was loading the van. Running up and down the corridors carrying heavy sacks of mail is a good workout, at least.

* On Wednesday we had a cakemeet down in London; we ended up at Maison Bertaux for cake/coffee and then on to Gerrard's corner for delicious foods. Most of the evening was spent listening to kahochan's woes over the new house; we were all very sympathetic between the jokes and usual Pete-mocking, honest.

Somehow I managed to write another chapter of my Last Remnant/Pretty Woman fic this week -- I actually bought a copy of the DVD on Friday so I could check scenes, and the CEX employee was very amused by my purchase -- and over this weekend I made a toile of a jacket for my Count Druitt costume for Kita (and Pez made a shield for my Dito costume and sourced a bunch of other bits for me, because she's wonderful like that), and played a bunch of Dragon Age. I also read several books this week, and even napped on a few days. I like it when I'm like this, and wish it happened more regularly; energy that isn't manic is such a blessing.

I'm actually making four costumes for Kita (Therius from The Last Story, Dito from Drakengard 3, Count Druitt from Kuroshitsuji and Susan Sto Helit from Hogfather); that's rather ambitious considering my usual lack of energy but I think it's doable. I would rather do these after losing more weight -- so I could be more appropriately sized for the costumes -- but if I keep putting stuff off until I get to a better weight then I'll never get around to all the costumes I want to do. Therius is probably the most awkward of this list because of the armoured boots and gloves. Count Druitt is 90% about the outer tailcoat and it's so blingy that I can probably get away with a lot of little mistakes as long as I drape enough braid and stuff on the top. Dito is... going to be more of a pain than you'd think at first glance, but I think it'll be worth the hassle to get those pieces looking right. Susan Sto Helit I could in theory entirely assemble from bought separates (apart from the wig), and I probably will if time gets short.

Hooray for having multiple costumes I'm genuinely excited to get to make and wear!

Right, happy things! Things I am looking forward to:

( Busy times ahead )

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Also, since everyone is doing this at the moment, I am currently excited about three kickstarter game projects:

Ice-Bound: A Novel of Reconfiguration. This looks amazing and the page will sell it to you better than I can; all I can add is that the people involved have produced excellent and interesting games in the past, and the augmented reality stuff looks like it's going to make this an incredible experience to play. It's fully funded already, too, and there's at least one stretch goal to be announced yet.

Elegy for a Dead World: A Game About Writing Fiction. I think that title probably makes or breaks it for you: if that sounds interesting, this is exactly the game for you, and if it makes you roll your eyes then it really isn't. The art for this looks gorgeous, the concept looks like it will work to me, and it's nearly funded with 10 days to go so I think it's going to make it.

Battle Chef Brigade. This has made nearly double its target already, and you can see (a large part of) why with just one glance at the page: look at that art gosh. I think this game is going to make me very happy.

Eee! Things! Things I am going to forget I've backed and then be surprised by when I get updates!

Ahhh again not posting for ages, dammit.

The Ayacon Cosplay Ball was on Saturday! ( Comments )

Anyway, that's the big event we were readying ourselves for done with, and now we can relax. If we go to Expo we'll do costume rewears or wear some of our taobao purchases, so there are no impending deadlines to fret over.

( Medical things )

I put WK on hold over the weekend, but just aced ~100 reviews so clearly the break did me no harm.

And yesterday I spent a big chunk of time playing the Sims 2 university expansion. ( Babblings )

...See, this is why I need to update more often. It's the only way to avoid this level of word vomit.

Well, on my birthday we worked because it was a weekday and so we had to -- but not for long, it was thankfully a very light day of packing. Then we got food/cake in Colchester (and avoided the sudden rain) before travelling into London. For my birthday dinner a big bunch of us went for dinner in Chinatown -- kahochan arranged the restaurant, bless him -- and then for dessert at the Candy Cafe afterwards. It was pretty much perfect from my point of view; food and conversation and happiness.

(I also got a bunch of presents because people are lovely, bless them all <3.)

( for my own recollection purposes )

Today I've mostly been lazing about -- very extreme laziness, really I haven't done much of anything except finally hit lvl 14 on Wanikani. There's been a lot of chatting on twitter (I woke up to more amazing art involving Qubine) and watching Pez play TLR and chatting on Skype and thinking about fic ideas. I had an absurdly coherent D1-friendship dream this morning which I will write up into a ficlet because oh student council president Yagyuu in flirt mode is fun for my brain.

So that's my weekend, hooray hooray. Happiness all around. Being 34 is great so far!

Last night we had a cakemeet, except that it was a burgermeet for a change! We went to a place called Meatliquor (near Bond St) and had juicy burgers and interesting cocktails. And then went for generous and delicious desserts nearby at Kula. It was lovely.

And then our train home was hideously delayed (and very busy) due to a fatality at Chelmsford. I spent quite a lot of the journey back discussing british colonial history with the guy next to me, which did at least pass the time. But I'm exhausted today, sigh.

(Also, WaniKani level 12 now! I have some 60 lessons I haven't actually unlocked because I have enough reviews to handle for now, but still, yay, level 12!)

It has been a ridiculously busy week! We've been working very hard in the shop and I've had very little energy left over to do much except watch Pez blitz her way to the end of Drakengard 3. Words are a bit hard, this won't be a very substantial update.

(Somehow I found time and energy to write a crossover Persona 4/Prince of Tennis fic though. Well. It's really just Niou/Yosuke, not anything more substantial in terms of plot or universe crossover. But I had fun writing it.)

We had a cakemeet on Wednesday, which was a good excuse to have big milkshakes and ice cream and catch up with friends. kahochan bought me green tea kitkats, so he wins at life at the moment.

We have absolutely nothing planned for this weekend except sleep. I can't wait.

A good weekend, and I keep forgetting to post.

Pez and I went down to London on Friday and bought groceries at the Japan Centre outlet in Westfield Stratford, and then went to kahochan's to eat food and inflict the Persona 4 Visualives on him. And to collect all the things he purchased for us in Hong Kong, bless him (including the Levi-from-SnK figure Pez was wanting a while back). Amongst other things, I have an entire suitcase of green tea-based snacks to try not to binge on. And we borrowed a PS3, too. Muahaha.

On Saturday Pete fed us vast quantities of pork (again) and then Pez and I made it back up to Colchester in time to take out a local friend for a birthday dinner and cake in the evening. I wore a dress and drank cocktails, what madness is this.

Yesterday we watched the first episode of Kamigami no Asobi (AKA Ludere Deorum), an anime based on a dating sim where the lead character is thrown into a school with various gods from different pantheons and, well, dating ensues. I adore it so far: the girl character is intelligent and tall and skilled in kendo, making her way more interesting that 90% of dating sim heroines. The boys have magical transformation sequences of sparkly hilarity, and frankly any series which has Thoth and Hades and Loki and Susano-o all rubbing shoulders as pretty schoolboys has to be worth a punt. I'm going to give it a few more episodes but I suspect I'll end up importing the game (and struggling through it in Japanese with Pez's help yay). And I already want to cosplay Loki, predictably.

And I spent most of the rest of the day playing the HD remaster of Final Fantasy X, which is nostalgic if not quite as fully remastered as I'd expected (the character models are less HD than I thought they'd be, for a start). I am enjoying it a lot and it has already made me cry. Hooray?

Off to Kitacon today! Wonderful friends are taking our luggage for us in a van, so our train journey will be haulage-free again. I like this trend.

I cut all the wigs yesterday (god I love wig styling, I can't even explain why it's so much fun) and we finished up pretty much everything we need to do apart from some small bits of hand-sewing onto Pez's Cherche, which can be done at the con anyway. I kind of can't wait for the con to be over; it feels like the last month has been non-stop cons and con prep, and maybe Pez and I can both relax a bit once Kita's over.

We have booked a trip to New York!

We're flying out right at the end of May (after MCM expo, so the usual big sales rush will be over) and we'll be staying for about a week. Hooray for wonderful friends who said YES instantly when I asked if we could crash with them, too (kizlj and David). I'm super-thrilled; it's been probably about 6 years since I last visited the US, and even longer since I went to NYC (and Pez has never been there). I forsee lots of happy ambling and hanging out with friends and eating things I've never been able to eat due to being a vegetarian on prior US visits.

(Booking directly via BA was half the price of any flights I could find via Expedia and similar sites, incidentally. Oh, internet.)

Yesterday was Pez's birthday (24 again, apparently)! We've been celebrating since Sunday; we had local friends over for a big meal (of various takeaway foods plus cake and brownies) on Sunday evening, and yesterday we met up with friends in London for more cake at the Urban Chocolatier followed by delicious (and unexpected) Japanese food.

It was also Chinese New Year, so we spent a chunk of Saturday having copious amounts of dim sum in Chinatown.

I have eaten much food, dear god.

Meanwhile, we move Coscraft out of the flat and into the office on Friday! We're so excited about this, seriously.

Today was our first official day of not-working yay!

We went shopping -- mostly for groceries and toiletries -- and got our eyebrows threaded and generally enjoyed a day of Not Working. Tomorrow we'll head into London for dinner with a big bunch of friends (and I have my secret santa gift for that now, yay). Christmas is approaching fast!

Yesterday we ventured down to London for MCM Expo. As has been pretty thoroughly discussed elsewhere by people more eloquent than I, the new queuing/entry system meant that the Excel centre was overcrowded and hard to navigate.

Thankfully, we didn't go even plan to go inside! We went to Straford first for dinner, then to a sushi place for more food and socialising, then to the Fox bar and saw a handful of friends (not as many as I'd like, but a lot nevertheless). It was a nice night, and as always it makes me wish some of our more distant friends were a lot less distant.

Pez and I have been discussing if we should try out some of the smaller London cons (like LFCC) at some point, because she's feeling cosplay-opportunity-starved. We'll certainly try and follow up on some group photoshoots that are being discussed, at least.

We had our wedding anniversary on Tuesday and it was wonderful; we went back to the Corinthia hotel in London and sat at the same table that I proposed at and were schmoopy for a while. And ate so many sandwiches and cakes that we were completely stuffed. Hooray.

Yesterday I mostly lost to feeling dreadful from a cold, and today I'm pretty muggy-headed still. I might have to cry off from going to the monthly cake meet at this point; everything aches.

A good time was had! I cosplayed 4 different things and didn't bother getting any photos in two of those outfits, whoops. The Crystal Chronicles shoot was fun, and Pez and I got a few pictures as Ib and Garry too. The other two (Neil (from To The Moon) and Niou) are both pretty easy costumes to throw on and do mini-shoots with locally some time, though, so I'm not particularly bothered -- and Niou was pretty ideal for running around in to help people at Cosplay HQ, it turned out. I think I spent most of the con in Cosplay HQ; it was a good place to hang out and see most people.

My literature panel went well: people seemed to enjoy me waffling on about books, even when it turned into ten minutes of 'no more questions? I will TALK ABOUT GENJI MORE THEN MUAHAHA'. I actually got some pretty tough questions, about how various historical events impacted trends in Japanese literature and about how much impact westernisation has made on modern Japanese literature and if I preferred the sort of themes in J-lit to western literary themes and so on. I did get asked about the most triggering-for-imposter-syndrome question I could have gotten asked ('what's your background in japanese literature? why did you decide to run this panel?') but that was clearly just curiosity and not a result of me fucking up horribly, and nobody seemed to care that the answer was just 'I like books!'. The person who asked it came up to ask me to write some articles for them about J-lit at the end, which was flattering. We'll see if that goes anywhere interesting.

The wig panel also went well; Pez turned up a little late due to judging responsibilities taking longer than expected, but I held the fort alone for that ten minutes and then we kind of sailed through the rest and covered pretty much everything we wanted to. Sometimes my advice was just 'don't do that' and sometimes it was 'go find some tutorials on youtube' and quite a lot of the time it was 'sew bits of wigs together for everything'.

At the closing ceremony, we sprang our little surprise on kahochan; he got pulled on stage in front of everyone to make a 'final speech' as chairman of Aya. As he took the microphone, a bunch of us ran on stage to wrestle him into a kigurumi of Pchan from Ranma. Mostly this meant that everyone else in the group lifted him up horizontally in the air and Rob and I shoved the thing onto him. He seemed really happy about this; I looked up at one point in the leg-wrangling to see Pete's cheerily grinning face as several people held his legs splayed open either side of me, and that's an image that's going to HAUNT ME FOR YEARS THANKS sigh.

Sunday evening was mostly spent hanging out with friends and winding down, with some horrifying interludes of Jodie barking hypothetical sexual commands at Gemma as the rest of us backed away in fear. And then there was dancing and late-night lingering around socially outside, and then this morning we did more of that as everyone tried to put off leaving until the last moment. D'aww. Adieu, Aya. You were awesome.

Today was pretty awesome: lunch and Regent's Park noodlings with isquiesque, maga_dogg, emshort and Graham (there was much meandering, followed by some determined not-being-in-a-boatness on my part) followed by monthly cakemeet and then dinner at Shoryu.

I am too tired for much, but people are great and we have awesome friends.

August!

Our pile of costume stuff for Aya is reaching terrifying proportions - the Crystal Chronicles costumes plus Yurick means lots of fiddly bits and awkward shapes. Today I found the smart blue shirt and brown pants I wanted for Dr Neil (charity shops ftw), and I'm tempted to take Niou just as a backup to wear in case I get knackered of/bored of/overheated in something else (and so I don't feel horribly under-prepared next to Pez's costume selections), so that's even more stuff. Eesh. Thank god we're getting other people to take the wig panel stuff up there for us.

Tonight we're going over to a friend's place for a crafting evening. I'll probably take Neil's glasses to try sanding down the lenses (frosting just... didn't work well), and maybe some cross-stitch or latch-hook too. Something fiddly, I think.

We got a lift to London last night with our friend Taku (along with another friend, Chelsea); it meant getting to London rather later than we wanted but it was a fair bit cheaper than the train, and we could leave quite a lot later. The joy of being late is that we missed the first -- apparently dreadful -- meetup place, and instead caught up with everyone in one of the better cake places nearby. And then we went and had chinese food afterwards. A really lovely evening, even if I need to beat it into my head that ordering coffee in a Caffe Concerto is always going to get me a burnt-tasting cup.

The kitties seem to have decided they hate each other a lot at the moment; lots of hissing and random raised claws. Sigh.

We got our latest big delivery of wigs in; this one has character wigs for Attack on Titan and Dangan Ronpa as well as restocks of other things. Let's hope they'll be as popular as we think they'll be!

(And we're expecting our new mattress in the next few hours. So soon there'll be wig boxes *and* the old mattress cluttering up the space for a while, ho hum.)

Second birthdaymeet of the weekend went well! We went for bubble tea near Leicester Square (passing the World Naked Bike Ride Day parade!) then headed over to Wagamama for dinner. Fun, derpy conversations all around.

Before that, though, I went through (most of) the rest of my CD collection to de-jewel-case them. So that's that done: two fat wallets of CDs and four shoebox of liner notes/fancy cases/etc. The CDs still jewel-cased now are the movie soundtracks, the multi-artist compilations and the mix CDs from friends, which totals, I dunno, another 50 or 60 CDs at most. I'm not sure where I'm going to put those yet. We do have another big storage wallet here, so I could put them in there since I'll need the extra space at some point anyway. Or I could use that one to start de-casing the DVDs, which seems like a more efficient way to free up space *right now*. Hmm.

The plan was to move the rooms around today, but my back started really hurting yesterday evening (probably from hunching over as I shuffled CDs into the wallet) and I'm wary of doing myself an injury by straining it too much. I need to head out to get milk anyway; maybe I'll feel better after a shower and a walk.

Edit: de-cased the DVDs. Or most of them, at least; a few things are probably pretty efficiently space-squished just as they are, and there're a few things we wouldn't want to lose the boxes for. It cleared out a lot of space, even so. Hooray.

Kitties a bit grumpier at each other today. Possibly it's starting to dawn on them that this cohabition isn't temporary. Being woken at 3am and 5am by Ja crying outside our bedroom door means I'm a bit grumpier than usual too.

Tonight Pez and I are heading into London for a cakemeet (which is also doubling as a friends' birthday celebration). We're coming home (because we don't want to leave the kitties alone overnight at the moment) and then going back into London tomorrow for another birthday celebration. And then on Sunday we're going to start switching the rooms around, I think. It's going to be a busy weekend!

We watched Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of The Black Pearl last night, since it was on TV. Damn, that's still an excellent movie; so much absurd swashbuckling fun. Probably the last film I really liked Johnny Depp in, too. The sequels kind of spoiled the first one for me (and the CGI is starting to look distractingly dated, sigh) but maybe I should just try to pretend they don't exist.

Monthly cakemeet later today! Lots of people are away this month for various reasons but it'll still be nice to catch up with whoever can make it.