07.07.07 @
12:00
After the Drought...
...comes the flood ^_^ Wow, half a year since I last posted -_-U Told you I was lousy at this 'journal' thing... Oh! And I just noticed I'm posing on 7/7/7 - lucky day! Not that I believe in that... Wow, so a lot has happened in all this time (not surprisingly) and hence the title! For months I bring you nothing, and now I shall flood you with information! In fact... I may have to post this in two parts (don't ask me why... possibly because it will make me feel better?). Anyway, among everything else that has happened in 2007 I quite my old job, was without work for three weeks, and started a new job. Monday through Friday, 8-5, never on weekend. Ahh! Life is good. That being said you might expect me to have more free time, but I've been spending it all sewing costumes for Anime Expo (which is now over and will be the subject of my second posting this weekend) and working on concept art/story/gamedesign for my brother's "video game company" - which can be great fun, but is also time consuming... Anyway, if you want to hear... errr... read about my life, including getting ready for the convention (but not including that weekend and the things following) just expand this entry.
So, I was so sick of customer service I wanted to hang myself (not really... but I was very tired of it) and I was looking for a new job, but it was going slow since I had no time for interviews working Monday through Saturday, opening to closing. Finally things got so bad that I could hardly do my job anymore (work issues that we won't get into) and I prayed and decided to quite without having a new job first. Afterwards I felt such peace that I knew it was God, because in myself I'd have been completely panicked. (I'm terrified of starving on the streets... it's the primary motivating factor in my life aside from God). For three weeks i searched and I ended up with an Accounting job. Monday through Friday, 8-5, weekends and holidays, and a few dollars more an hour than I was making at the Credit Union. I have to commute now, but my best friend works there, so we ride together. Of course, gas prices are so high that even with that I'm spending almost $150.00 a month. But it's worth it. For a few weeks I had no free-time, and way too much overtime, as I caught up on the things that hadn't been done while that position waited to be filled, but now I'm in a nice routine and I like it. That was in February that I quite, and March when I started the new job...
After that I immediately started to work on costumes for Anime Expo, the main So. Cal anime convention which is held every year on the weekend before the 4th of July. Last year we (my Dad, my best friend Josh, and myself) went and we took this girl josh and I met in a play we were in with us. She's cool and we were talking about cosplaying and we were going to try to do the Seven Deadly Sins (from Full Metal Alchemist). But then she moved to San Francisco and seemed to completely drop off the face of the planet... so we had given up on cosplaying all together. But then I thought that I might be able to pull off an anime with more traditional clothing. I started thinking of shows with three characters, two guys and one girl, for myself, Josh, and my brother Brian who was now going to come. I couldn't come up with an old, slightly balding, character for my dad... but I thought I could afford three costumes on my own. So I decided on Samurai Deeper Kyo - which isn't too well known, but I like it and the costumes are cool, but I thought they'd be simple enough.
Turns out they were more complicated than I thought, and I'm a perfectionist which makes it worse... I had to match the colors exactly (perfectionism and all...), so I had to dye a lot of it myself. The primary cloth for my costume had to be bought, bleached, and then dyed with three different colors... I spent every minute of free-time on those stupid costumes right up until two weeks before the expo, and after that I spent them out of town... plus, it cost me way too much money (almost six hundred dollars), but that's less to make three costumes than it probably would have cost to buy one of decent quality from a site or something. They turned out very well, I was proud. And since I'm so proud I shall put up some in progress pictures ^_^ But you must not laugh at how terrible I look in them...
On the left: Brian and I spend long hours cutting out yards and yards of material for a yukata, a kimono, an obi, and a modified karate GI and pants - as well as all the other little odds and ends we needed. Yes, that is TV with a DVD player screensaver in the background. We always watch TV when we're working, so I guess it's really that we 'listen' to TV. I think I do that more than sit down and watch... On the right: my best friend (and current carpool partner) Josh, and myself. He's gluing ragged stripe type patterns onto his pants and I'm... yes, slip covering his geta straps (GETA are traditional Japanese wooden sandals, and I ordered ours straight from Japan. Lucky Brian got to wear Zori instead, which are flat sandals, and his were tatami, so they were woven straw instead of wood). Traditionally mens' shows have black straps and women's have red, but Josh's character has green, so I had to sew green onto the black without actually attaching it to his very expensive sandals... It was an interesting experience to say the least. It took forever, so I was very glad Josh was there to work on the rest.
On the left: Josh sits patiently and reads a volume of Tsubasa while I literally sew his 'skullcap' to fit his head. Now THAT was interesting, and he was very well behaved, which surprised me - though the fact that I had sharp and dangerous objects so near his head may have had something to do with that... On the right: my dad sat not-so-patiently while I styled the bangs I bought for myself atop his head. I needed someone without real hair to get in the way! I think he had way too much fun with all that fake hair... the bangs turned out alright I suppose (not quite up to my perfectionist standards...) but by the end of the day that we wore them to the Expo they were a mess because it had been so windy...
I'll be posting an entry about the expo later today or tomorrow, with full explanation, the boring details of what we did, the exciting details (for anime/manga fans) of what we saw, and a whole lot of really cool cosplay pictures! Including the pictures of us in costume, of course. Yay for Anime Expo!
Current Mood:
cheerful