Nazgrrls were a success. Nine of us dressed up in custom black velvet dresses, crowns and cloaks and wondered the con. We looked good. Some people were clued into the Lord of the Rings enough when they saw we were Nine in cloaks, they made the leap themselves from Nazguls (Ring Wraiths) to Nazgrrls and then cracked up laughing. Others needed to be told “Nazgrrls” before they folded in half from laughter. Others needed to be taken from Lord of the Rings-Ring Wraiths also known as Nazguls-Nazgrrls before the light dawned in their eyes.

One woman found eight of us in the Cafe and said that we were the best group costume she has seen in 12 years. There was some wonderful feed back. Once we found a hall costume judge (we think they were in hiding), we even got a hall costume award.

I also wore my Goth tennis outfit with a little red racket, very very short leather-like skirt and hello kitty skull and cross bones spanky pants. That suck a hit with one friend he told me to be sure I bring it to Comic Con.

Later that night I wore my new black chiffon skirt which is very short in front and goes to the floor in the back. It frames my legs nicely. I think it is probably the most complementary style for my frame possible. I wore it with a black strapless top and the chiffon sleeves from the Nazgrrls outfit. I got a lot of wonderful attention including two guys that were my height in my tallest heels.

I got to see many people that I enjoy seeing. The energy at the con was low. Not much happened. That was fine for me because that allowed me room to make my own fun. I made it to one and a half panels and spent the rest of the time talking with people.

I am finding now that I am sticking my head out of my hermit mode, life is trying to take off at full tilt. There have only been a few things I have minded missing for the last couple of months, but starting last week, there is so much. I want start slowly, not enter at a full tilt.

Squeeee
My shipments from Amazon have arrived. I now own the First Season of Joan of Arcadia, two Track Adkins cds, and a Trace Adkins video DVD. My DVD collection now has multiples of DVD types. But it is worth it for Joan and to get a copy of my favorite Trace Adkins video (Rough & Ready)

It is that time again. Time for a science fiction survey. This is for this years Fannish Family Feud and the developer needs a multitude of people to take the survey. Those of you that have, thank you. Those of you that haven’t, care to play?

The plan is for this game will be presented at Silicon this year.

I have decided to tender my resignation this week, hopefully monday. I don’t have another job lined up but I am tired of being sick all the time. Going to work results in actual physical discomfort that has kept me out of work a few times over the last couple of weeks. Once I made this decision and have taken steps towards actually doing it, my life has gotten so much better. Things I just couldn’t face for weeks, like washing dishes, working on costumes, cleaning up my apt… have started to seem like no big deal and are in the process on getting accomplished. For weeks, I haven’t had the energy to do much in a day. I have done more this weekend than I have probably in the last three weeks combined.

Since I haven’t found another job yet, I am figuring on doing the temp agency route. I have found that the library would love to have me drop in to shelve books when I have a free day. My big problem now is finding a way to get me out of bed in the morning. I don’t do well without external structure. I am able to blow off my own plans easily.

Financially and intellectually, I have my ducks in a row. Emotionally, there are a lot of holes in my safety net. I am trying to figure out ways to take care of that. It is not something easy for me to do or to ask for. I reached out in Dec and Jan and found out I had a lot more holes than I thought I did and now I hardly reach out at all. This is probably the thing that bothers me the most about leaving my job. But then again, it has been one of the things that had damaged me so removing it is a step in a good direction and worth losing the positive things.

My costume is almost finished for Baycon. I just have three things to hem. Then it is time to work on ComicCon and next year’s World con costumes. I think it is about the only thing I am interested in enough to actually work on. I have a lot of cool clothes and costumes and very few places to wear them. Hopefully, as time passes, I will come out of my hermit shell and start attending things again.

I need ideas for drop-in volunteer possibilities. Places that if I have some free time, I can just show up and help and don’t need to commit to a particular day or time in the future.

The biggest problem with places that use volunteers is that they need some kind of way to schedule them so they have everything covered. I am about to go into a situation that I won’t know if I have free time until the morning of the free day.

I am thinking that the library might appreciate someone that would come in an shelve books.
Food kitchens, for homeless shelters and delivery to home bound people, could use some prep cook help.
A local animal shelter may be interested in drop in help to socialize the cats and walk dogs.

I still need to research and contact these places and see if it is possible.

I was wondering if anyone else had ideas of other things/places to look into.

(time is a little tight so I can’t do a full Gina-verse update right now, but I wanted to get this out there to collect as many ideas as possible as soon as possible.)

I went to a great concert last night, Trace Adkins at the Saddle Rack in Fremont. I took a half day of vacation to make it on time and a day off for the day after so I could recover.

There was a lot of waiting around doing nothing because I went on my own and didn’t really get a chance to talk with anyone until after the opening act got off the stage. There is only so much people watching that I can do, 2 hours is over that limit. The country radio station that can reach Berkeley on a regular basis and was sponsoring the show switched formats at noon yesterday and no one had any idea what was up. That was the topic of conversation, what happened, when, why and all that. It was a bit of a pisser that the format changed, I miss it but I am glad to have found out what happened from others.

The Trace Adkins part of the concert was wonderful. The Saddle Rack is relatively small and there pretty much isn’t a bad seat in the house. It was interesting that everyone sat through the concert until the encore. Very civilized. I was at the front of the first rise near the middle. What I would call a great seat and comfy. Trace Adkins was absolutely dreamy; 6 ft 6 inchs, sleeveless shirt, tight black jeans, blond hair down his back, cowboy hat, strong hands, deep voice and that off-center smile…*sigh* And oh boy, he can move. Can I have one like him? Please? The music was great. By the end of the set I was rocking in my seat. I love Rough & Ready. The encore was Chrome and we all stood and I could not stop moving. It put so much energy into me, it felt like years dropped away. I was young again, I have energy to do things. Overall the sound was cranked up too loud but it did have a quality of vitality that is missing from the recorded music.

All in all, it was very much worth it. I am tempted to go up to the Lake county to catch another Trace Adkins show tonight or tomorrow night but I realize that is just too much.

I broke my DVD collection trend of only one of everything by buying Season one of Joan of Arcadia (the second TV show) from Amazon.com so I also bought volume 2 of Track Adkins videos and two of his cds. *sigh* Someday this infatuation will fade, but it doesn’t look like it is going to happen right now. I bought the tickets to the concert two months out and was worried that I would be uninterested by the time it came around. The concert just kicked it up a notch.

Earlier in the year, Trace Adkins was touring with Mongomery Gentry and Cleatus T Judd. I would have loved to see that line up. It was in the east and in the heartland but not out here. The downside would be that the venues would have been much larger and I am very grateful to have seen Trace Adkins at such an intimate show.

Since I need to be me and to also fit in, I was wearing my cowboy hat with a skull and crossbones on it, a country shirt with little skulls in lines in the pattern, and my black backpack with a read skull and crossbones. One person noticed and commented on it.

I was actually happy heading home. It has been awhile since I have felt that way.

News has gone out that there is another preview of the Serenity movie May 26th. Tickets are already sold out. I missed the first preview. I tried to buy 10 for this one so people could have tickets and my order didn’t go through. Now they are all gone.

Does anyone have an extra ticket I could buy off of them? It is hard when pretty much every single person I know that likes Firefly has seen the movie and I haven’t.

I just had a fun experience over my lunch break. The San Francisco Water Dept is doing a promotion for their tap water. They had a taste test against two bottled waters to see what people like better. My friend and I did it and we were given our three samples and after we tried them, we were asked if we could tell the difference. The water people seemed a little surprised when I said I could definitely tell the difference. I then proceed to tell them that sample #3 had a paper-like taste that sat on the tongue and was not quenching. Sort of cloudy, not clear tasting. It made me feel like I might be more thirsty. I did not like it. I could tell the difference between samples #1 and #2 but didn’t know which one I liked better. #2 had more of a chemical taste, more astringent, but it cleared the tongue and felt good. #1 had a very flat taste very close to tasteless which is what I look for in water but it didn’t do what I want water for. It did not clear the tongue and it wasn’t very quenching. I finally decided that I liked #2 better because I felt I got more of what I wanted out of it. There was a guy there from KGO that honed in on my friend and I and my babbling over the qualities of each of the samples. Someone was actually interested in my babbling so I just uncorked and let it all out. I was just standing there talking to the woman with the water and a mike appeared next to me. He started asking questions about if I drink tap water and if I would suggest that people are wasting their money on bottled water. I told him that I am very discriminating when it comes to water but that I always make sure I can drink the tap water because I need to be sure I have that source. The only reason bottled water is worth buying is for the bottle. I refill them over and over. More was said. He seemed very pleased by my comments. I wouldn’t be surprised if they get used somewhere. I am very tap water positive.

I left the event feeling very proud of myself for my sensitivities, very tickled, bouncy even. They can be a real pain but sometimes they can be fun. I realized that I was doing to the water what my friends do with wine when they go wine tasting. I always felt poorer because I would have no clue about wine and the things they described. This event made me realize that it is because I can’t/won’t drink wine. If I did, I would probably be as discriminating.

In telling this story around the office, I remembered another one from when I was a kid (some time before I was 7). There was very special water I liked. I didn’t like any other water besides this water. There was always a pitcher of it in the fridge. I would tell people proudly that I liked Tap Water because that was what was in the fridge. I honestly thought Tap Water was a type of water and had no idea it came out of the faucet.

The surprise at my ability to taste the differences in the water and describe them reminded me of another story from years ago. I was somewhere between 7 and 12. My dad wanted to stop spending the extra money on Mrs. Buttersworth syrup. He felt that it didn’t taste any different than log cabin and so the extra money was just a waste for nothing more than a fancy bottle. I said that it did taste different and that I liked Mrs. Buttersworth. Since I was in elementary school, I can see where my dad would think I was just protesting because I didn’t want to switch and not because I could really tell the difference. But he did set up a taste test. Probably to prove to me that I couldn’t tell the difference. He made pancakes one morning and buttered one and put on log cabin and put Mrs. Buttersworth on the other. I tried both and told him which one was Mrs. Buttersworth. We never switched. At another time, he also tried the plug your nose and try to tell the difference between a slice of apple and a slice of potato game. I could always tell the difference.

I have always been sensitive to taste, smell, and touch. Sometimes it is a good thing. Most of the time, it isn’t. Extra ability in hearing and sight serve me well more often than not. But tests are showing that my hearing and my sight are heading downhill. I figure it is the same for the others, just that they aren’t tested.