The weather is messing with my resolve – if it doesn’t decide to fall one way or another, I will be up in arms. I had been planning on scooting to Victoria some time this week to take advantage of my vacation (and also because I’m a terrible daughter who hasn’t been home in 6 months), but I don’t want to a) scoot in the rain or b) take the car. I’ll decide tomorrow – I can still get in some Quality Time with mom (and hopefully come out sane on the other end) if I leave tomorrow and return Friday. If I don’t end up going, I’ll have to come up with some other kind of Adventure so I don’t feel as though I wasted my vacation – that would make me sad.

I can’t believe it’s already September. I’m happy about it because I love the fall, but it seems as though the summer just flew by without much stuff happening. I’m fairly certain I have enough Fun Things planned to get me through the rest of the year – I have a really hard time coping with the 9-5 when I don’t have anything to look forward to – but it’s weird to realize that fall is here. On the other hand, it’s time for boots and sweaters. Hooray!

Day One of my vacation is going to be exciting: groceries. We have no food in the house that isn’t a biohazard, so I’m going to take advantage of the weekday to buy food and Diet Coke because I’m totally out again. YEAH! EXCITING! WOOOO!

happy slime is happy and slimy

We’re back in one piece and (so far) disease free, just as promised.

We opted to skip the last day of PAX for a casserole of reasons, all of which turned out to be the best idea ever when we heard reports of 3+ hour border waits and epic downpours later. As it was, it took us exactly three hours from door to door and we were home just after 2pm after a fantastic weekend of nerdy goodness and excellent friends. We were a little sad to be missing out on the last day, but at the same time we were PAX’d out – we spent the ENTIRE day there on Saturday, and had seen (almost) everything we wanted to see. Heading downtown sounded good, until the logistics of it all came up – $25 to park, massive crowds of people, then a really long drive home when you factor in everyone ELSE trying to get back to Canada – ugh.

So, how was it? Completely awesome. We had a total blast, and got to see and touch and play so many things. Some of the highlights for us:

• Seeing Derek at the Dragon Age II booth! Derek has worked for Bioware forEVER, and is the main reason Ed and I met in the first place – he organized Fragapalooza ’97, and I stayed at his house for the event. We hadn’t seen him in years, and it was completely awesome to catch up and see him doing so well.
• Ed got to sit in on the D&D panel he was drooling over – he was first in line to get in, and he had a great time
• Getting to play Fallout: New Vegas, Little Big Planet 2, Super Scribblenauts and Kirby’s Epic Yarn
• Spending all my money at the Scott Pilgrim booth
• Spending some quality time with the Suttles family
• The successful stalking of MC Frontalot
• The Plants vs. Zombies section
• My Bionic Moustache
• Coming up with the World’s Most Awesome Idea with Ali – details to come later

No con could ever be perfect, though:

• A recession-caused noticeable lack of swag (we still got a lot, but last year I ended up with enough to do 8 or 9 giveaways)
• No booths for Jet Set Radio Futurer or The World Ends With You Again
• We sat in on the Rage 3 demo panel, and while it looked awesome, it also looked an awful lot like Fallout 3
• The Haunted Cafe
• We didn’t get wristbands for the Frontalot/Coulton show – all 2500 wristbands were given out before 8:30 that morning
• I wasn’t the only Ramona there! I suck at cosplay.
• No chance to play/see Portal 2, Duke Nukem Forever, Guild Wars 2 or Dragon Age 2 – the lines wrapped around the booth and if I didn’t stand in line for the Olympics, I’m not going to stand in line for a t-shirt.
• This booth. Seriously? You’re marketing your company like this on PURPOSE? The guy at the booth saw me taking pictures of his banner, so he gave me a poster. Um, thanks. You’re a fucking idiot, and I’m glad your booth was on the hidden level that didn’t get as much traffic.

So much fun. Will definitely be doing PAX11. Will continue to try to convince friends to come along – seriously, people. PAX is a total blast. Why do you keep fighting me on this?

click to view my pax10 pictures

Great. I’m left to my own devices for 4 measly hours, and I managed to find a ghost cafe and eat haunted – likely poisonous – fish and chips. I couldn’t just go for the burger – no, I had to be adventurous and get the 7-Year Fish special, served with undead fries and Diet Coke of Lies. Not even the ketchup was safe: “Fancy Ketchup” appears to be American code for “tastes like red ass oh god get this out of my mouth I want my mommy”.

Ed and I parted company around noon because he wanted to watch men play Dungeons and Dragons and I .. did not. I sat on my rear for a bit, playing on my DS (don’t tell my iPhone) and stalking MC Frontalot, which i did successfully. I saw Scott Kurtz and Wil Wheaton, but am faaaaaar too cool to stand in line for autographs so I had dirty nerd thoughts from afar and went on my way. After my aforementioned haunted lunch, I spent some money and played my games and tried to count the nerds gawking at my tits. There weren’t many, and I don’t really blame them – sure, my rack is mighty, but dude there’s Portal 2 and Fallout: New Vegas and Little Big Planet 2 and and and. My boobs can’t compete with that, and I’m silly to have tried (but i sure am comfortable).

So, haunted lunch. I was famished and without an emergency pocket sandwich, so I stumbled upon a cafe with a relatively small line in a place where I swear no cafe was earlier. Still, I ignored the warning signs because i was too excited to see that the cafe had Diet Coke for not all my money – I waited in line and ordered.

My second clue that something was wrong came from the instantaneous fish n’ chips they gave me. See, everyone else had to wait 5 or 10 minutes for their food but mine was ready before I walked two feet to the condiment area. It seems my fish was destined for me, but had been awaiting my arrival in the deep fryer for 7 years – it was very overcooked and sad. I was too hungry to argue though, so I loaded myself up with tartar sauce (the scary kind that doesn’t require refrigeration) and horrible ketchup and crossed the huge empty room to sit on the floor. I settled in against a soft wall, tucked into my expensive and questionable convention lunch, and relaxed.

Until i looked up and saw nothing across the room.

No line of people. No cafe. No tables filled with lunching nerds. There was NOTHING across from me; nothing where, a few short minutes ago, I had stood in line with a few others to collect the goods I was presently chewing on.

Obviously, everything is haunted. My otherworldly theory only solidified when the contents of my stomach did the exact opposite a short time later. Man, all I want is one good uncursed meal. Is that so much to ask?

This year, I’m armed with anti-bacterial hand goo. I hate both goo and anti-bacterial things, but I hate being sick even more. It strengthens my resolve that every time Ed goes to the bathroom, he regales me with stories about large hulking nerds who aren’t washing their hands on the way out. Ewwwww.

Day One was short but fun. We opted to return to suburbia a little early so we could take turns going to a movie -Ali and I went to the early showing of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (what? She hadn’t seen it, and this was only my third time) while the boys babysat; then we met in the parking lot to trade vehicles and children so the menfolk could go to the late showing. Hooray for figuring things out so everyone gets to have fun!

It is early and we are off to PAX again. Sadly, it is not quite early enough – I do not know if we’ll be able to get tickets for tonight’s nerd rock show. I will be sad, but I am old and shouldn’t be out past 9pm anyway what with my oldness and all.

Today is all about boobs and comfort.

To the nerd emporium!

I’m on vacation. You know what that means: NO PANTS! More so than usual, even! I packed for PAX last night, and only added a pair of emergency jeans as an afterthought. Since I won’t be on my scooter all weekend, I am not going to wear any pants and I’m going to put things in my hair. Look for me on the exhibition floor – I’ll the the one either totally-not-cosplaying as Ramona Flowers, or without pants and covered in merit badges.

Excited! A little ridiculous! Hooray!

This was in my shoe this morning:

this is somewhat unusual, even for me

Yeah, I don’t know either.

So. On Monday, I went to the dentist (again – I should just move in) to deal with the last of my cavities. While I was there, I asked if something could be done about the shards of tooth that were causing me untold grief – they didn’t necessarily hurt, but I couldn’t stop poking at them and it was cutting my mouth up pretty badly. I was hoping they could either file the pointy bits down, or yank them out until we dealt with the whole thing.

My dentist is much more ambitious than I would have thought. He decided that the tooth needed to come out, and it needed to come out now – so we’d be taking care of that while we did the fillings. I had virtually no time to psyche myself up for this, but it was too late to turn back: a tooth would be coming out, whether I was fully on board with the idea or not. Bring on the Novocain!

And, they did. Nine shots of it. It might have been more; I actually lost count of how many times they jabbed me with that goddamn needle. It took a considerable amount of time, effort and horrible nightmare-inducing implements of torture to yank the offending tooth out of my head, and I bled into soggy gauze for about 6 hours afterward. I was woozy as hell and completely frozen on the left side of my head – that much Novocain might SOUND fun, but I’m pretty sure it held all my logic and reasoning abilities hostage because it sounded like a REALLY GOOD idea to buy some lottery tickets and send my banking information to that nice Nigerian prince who will give me a large sum of money in exchange for my help.

The dentist helpfully gave me a prescription for some T3s, and I toddled off towards the office so I could collect my gear and go home. There, I passed out until Ed arrived, and he went to collect my drugs for me. I slept some more, exchange the disgusting gauze for some more, and woke up in a considerable amount of pain: something about having my face fucked by surprise dental surgery and being propped open for two hours while people diddled inside my mouth for fun.

It’s been two days since the extraction, and it’s both better and worse than I feared. The good: I’m not in agonizing pain; it’s just tender and sore and I can’t open my mouth fully. The bad: It still hurts (but I won’t take the T3s unless it’s bedtime), and it feels GROSS – the spot where my tooth used to be feels like an overripe melon and it’s horrible. I’m not supposed to be poking at it, but every time my tongue wanders over in that area I shudder a little. I’m trying to avoid having a grand old time because it hurts a little to laugh and smile, but I assume that’ll get better soon. Advil helps; as does ice cream (but mostly because it’s delicious).

In conclusion, I do not recommend breaking a tooth to such a degree that it requires an emergency extraction and I am ready for my mouth to stop hurting now.

I never received “The Talk” from my parents. I mean, I did, but I was 22 at the time and had been Doing It for 6 years at that point, and had gotten pretty good at it. You don’t learn about sex from a Penthouse magazine without learning a thing or two, especially as a curious and precocious 8 year old who was often grounded and banished to the basement where all the smut was hidden.

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that sex has gotten more complicated over the years. It used to be so simple – come home from school, take off clothes, wait for boyfriend to come over. Now there’s rules and taboos and diseases and toys and other people, and it’s so hard to remember all the nuances. There ought to be .. a guide, or something. A walkthrough, or a flow chart (flow charts fix everything). Or a manual! Yeah, that’s it – a manual, maybe written by a technical writer? One with a dirty mind and too much time on her hands? One who just had an emergency tooth extraction and is currently wasted on T3s?

Continue reading →

T-minus three days until I’m on VACATION!

We’re leaving for PAX sometime on Thursday, and it will be Good Times. I’m looking forward to seeing Ali and family too; we should be able to get in some good visiting time with them amidst the nerd orgies (both figurative and literal). It’s a long weekend thanks to Labour Day, and I have all of next week off for No Good Reason – I’ve long been envious of Heather’s random vacation time, so I’m taking a week off for myself. I might go to Victoria, I might sleep the entire time, I might start crafting for December’s Got Craft .. I might do NOTHING. My options are endless! How delightful for me!

zzzzzzz

I had an unusually busy weekend that I’m still reveling in; the (shortened) workweek be damned. We had our company picnic on Friday, which was a lot of fun if exhausting – I was on the organizing committee, and spent much of the day running around and eating shrimp. Afterwards, I was stuck with the leftover cake – about 15 pounds of it – so I demanded that the gang come over and eat cake, which they did. They did not eat nearly enough; there’s STILL a terrifying amount of cake in my fridge – but a small dent was made, which I’ll have to live with. Note to self: find more ravenous friends; current crew has dainty, lady-like appetites for free cake.

gastowns!

On Saturday I was up at the asscrack of dawn – I had a SECRET DATE. I spent the morning wandering Granville Island with some awesome people before I had to return them to their place of origin all too soon. It was barely 1pm at that point, leaving me with three hours to kill before my haircut – time for a nap! I didn’t get nearly as much sleep as my body wanted, so I crashed out the instant I came home. Waking up to be on time for my appointment was brutally hard, but I managed to drag my woozy ass over there and got myself neatened up for September. A group dinner at La Casita finished out the Saturday, and Ed and I spent a quiet evening doing gobs of nothing. It was nice, even if we both had cranky headaches.

delicious juice?

On Sunday, Shan, Miranda and I wandered Chinatown and Gastown. We stopped in at the Blim Monthly Market, bought some Chinese bakery goodies, and hopped on a Big Bus for a Groupon tour with Stephanie. It was fun to be in a giant convertible bus, even if the guided tour portion was a little questionable – too much focus on shopping, and they skipped a lot of important Vancouver knowledge. Still, it was a nice way to spend a sunny afternoon and after the tour we ended up at Rogue Wet Bar for a late lunch. It was a busy afternoon, but at the end we were all exhausted so it was off to retire/do laundry/watch tv/prepare for the week ahead. And here we are. Goooo Monday!

I have another dentist appointment at 3 today, and it really can’t come fast enough: my broken tooth keeps breaking more, and shards of pointy ouchy things are sticking out and hurting me in places. The appointment is to deal with the last of my cavities/toxic fillings, but I’m really hoping he can just yank the shards out of my mouth already and be done with it. I’m still not decided on the route to take with my missing tooth, but I want the extraction done as soon as fucking possible because this kind of sucks all over. Tooth chunks are gross.

Vacation!

no YOU'RE weird

I’ve never been one for cosplay – let’s face it, there’s a reason video game characters don’t look like me – but that doesn’t mean I will do everything in my power to acknowledge my hardcore inner nerd at every opportunity. When you go to something like Comic-Con or PAX, I’ve always found it helpful to spell out your nerd flavour. I don’t want to be cornered and made to talk about WoW, but I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to conversations with nerds of a similar nature – so I try to make it clear just what kind of nerd I am. Last year I had an assortment of nods to my favourite video games on me, which was pretty nerdy but not nerdy enough. This year, I’m making it obvious:

i have a delicious nerd flavour

Bring it, bitches.

Some of these you’ve seen before, but as you can see I’ve found new and exciting sources for nerdy merit badge goodness and I aim to HAVE THEM ALL.

The outermost badges are from Fan Boy Scouts (top to bottom, left to right):

• Kessel Run: Awarded for the completion of the legendary run within a distance of less than 12 parsecs. A full cargo load of spice or similar material must be maintained for the entirety of the route.
• Tie Fighter: Awarded for the successful and certified completion of the minimum 300 hours in a T1200 flight simulator or 45 hours live fight time in any Tie class fighter.
• Away Team: Awarded for the successful completion and safe return of a landing party mission either to a planet’s surface or another starship for exploration, rescue, resource-finding or diplomatic reasons.
• Kobyashi Maru: Awarded for displaying bravery, composure, original thinking and extraordinary leadership qualities in the face of a no-win situation.
• Browncoat: Awarded for service to the Independent Faction and its armed opposition of the Anglo-Sino Alliance during the Unification War of 2506 to 2511.
• Mount Doom: Awarded for the safe climb and descent of the infamous Mount Doom, located in the heard of the black land of Mordor.
• Broom Jockey: Awarded for the proper demonstration of how to approach, mount, ride and store any Class 3 or higher Magical Broomstick.
• Speedster: Awarded for the display of any of the following speed-related attributes: Super Speed, Speed Control, Kinetic Energy Manipulation, Infinite Mass Punch, Time Travel or Hyper-Vibration.
• Danger Room: Awarded for the successful completion of advanced battle simulation training course held annually at the Westchester School for Gifted Youngsters.
• Super Soldier: Awarded for augmented service through the use of eugenics, genetic engineering, cybernetic implants, extreme training or any other scientific, magical or paranormal means. Bonus point if you survive being frozen in ice for more than one decade.

The bottom five badges are Brooklyn Badges from Etsy:

• Tent Sex
• Attacked by a Squirrel
• Bacon Appreciation
• Drunk Texting
• Drinking Alone

And just in case you’ve forgotten how awesome the Nerd Merit Badges are (inner rows, top to bottom left to right):

• Homonyms
• Full Stack
• Shipped
• Been Boinged
• Foursquare: Local
• Foursquare: Crunked
• Super Special Elite Nerd
• Troop 202 “Skull Scouts” Badge
• Tikaro Gearxel
• Brownie “Sprite” Badge
• Family Tech Support
• Inbox Zero
• Open Source
• Foursquare: Superstar
• Foursquare: Super Mayor
• Foursquare: Jetsetter

I have two more badges on the way from Etsy: Black Mesa and Aperture Science. Plus, not all of my badges are on the bag – they don’t all fit. I still need to find a place for three more Foursquare badges (Gym Rat, Socialite, Douchebag), my “I Love Oregon” badge, and my Commando Nerd Patch.

Phew!

I am QUEEN NERD! If you’re going to PAX next week, find me and say hello!

Man, I love me some merit badges.

i am very pleased with my bag.

You’re gonna love my nuts.

After Josh had his accident, our entire motley crew realized that things like that can (and statistically will) happen to anyone, no matter how good a rider you are. Even more sobering was the knowledge that had Josh not been wearing his gear, his injuries could have been a LOT worse – and in fact, the only reason he was hurt at all was because he wasn’t wearing all his gear as usual. It made us all hyper aware of the importance of owning good gear and actually WEARING it; something I am horribly guilty of not going. Since then, we’ve all been on a mission to get our asses as safe as possible, regardless of what we ride. It’s something we should have all done years ago, but it was just so easy to think that we’d never get hurt so why bother gearing up – I’m only going down the street/to work/for a quick ride; what could possibly happen? Heh.

Between the six of us, we’ve purchased 3 new armoured jackets (likely soon to be 5), two pairs of armoured pants, four new helmets, and a new motorcycle. Our group motto should likely be “Safety Eventually!”, but at least we’re now protected. I got my new jacket yesterday afternoon, and it’s impossibly awesome – my biggest complaint about armour has always been the incredible discomfort and the fact that women’s armour is not built for us zaftig dames. The two jackets I owned were basically men’s gear in girlie colours, sized up for fatties. Our bodies don’t work that way, and most manufacturers don’t care enough to figure out what we need because lol fatties put down the fork am I right (hint: no). Until now!

Enter Arlene Battishill, founder of GoGo Gear – protective riding clothes made for women who don’t want to have to choose between safety and not looking like crap. I first heard about her line a couple years ago, and was eagerly awaiting the day when I could try her stuff out for realz – while it’s not available locally yet (get on it, Vancouver), the website now has a store for internet buying times. After Josh’s accident, I realized I needed to get some protection that I would actually WEAR, unlike the two armoured jackets sitting in my closet collecting cat hair and dirty looks – so I opted to order myself up a little something something. It arrived ridiculously quickly, and holy crap it is FULL OF AWESOME.

I ended up with the black trench coat (my first option, the Military Jacket, isn’t in stock in my size), and it’s a perfect fit. It looks great, is shiny and reflective in all the right places, is LONG enough so I don’t feel like a goddamn sausage, and will be completely perfect to wear in Vancouver during the fall and winter riding season. Seriously, I’m totally thrilled with this coat – Arlene managed to do exactly as promised, and delivers a fantastic armoured jacket made to fit real women and just happens to be a joy to wear (while riding – I’m quickly learning that I need to disrobe when done, or I will MELT INTO SWEAT because it’s still summer).

The armoured trench will serve me well in the upcoming months, but I plan on getting the lighter Cafe Jacket for spring and summer riding. It’s an investment in my own ass – I’ve been riding for years without gear because it’s uncomfortable/too hot/I’m in a hurry/I don’t wanna, but it’s time to wake up and smell the fact that I can’t control what other drivers do so maybe I should protect myself any way possible. I can be smart (eventually) when I have to, and besides – what would the internet do without me?