Leader of the Autobots

Things will never be the same size again

2020-08-20T19:11:32Z

It has been a long year. Not just because it's 2020. For me the long year has been going on since March 2019 when my mother became sick. I haven't done much online since her illness started . Earlier in the year, I had hoped for improvement but sadly that didn't happen. My mother passed away in April and I haven't known how to say that publicly. I'm still dealing with her affairs and its hard to have to constantly say "my mother passed away . . ." when having to explain things to people.

Corona has made things really difficult, in that all the usually ways I would cope with emotional distress or depression aren't available to me. My mother lived with me and I'm now surrounded by her things that I have to pack up for donation. I wasn't even able to have a memorial service for her. I had hoped to be able to have one in the fall but that isn't possible.

I've been home since March 2020 and the only time I get out of the house other then to go grocery shopping is to take evening walks on the empty college campus behind me house (they were smart and stayed closed). I didn't start going for walks until July when I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. Sometimes when your depressed you can hit a point where you are just annoyed with yourself. Working from Home has kept me busy and so has packing up my mom's things but I'm at a point where I need to get back into the world in some form or other.

Being around people makes me anxious now. I'm sure a lot of people are having the same issue. I plan my shopping trips like military missions so I go to as few places as possible. I forego bargains and just hit one store for everything and go home. I'm someone who use to love window shopping and going to places like Panera or Starbucks to sit, have something warm, nibble something sweet and write. I miss writing. I haven't written much other than journaling in a very long time. I've been listening to more music and that has been inspiring me so my hope is start writing and get something creative happening for myself as a outlet . I drive around and listen to music; window shopping the world. I think if you home is like a space ship then your car is your shuttle craft.

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Happy 2020!!

2020-02-04T16:00:31Z

*Waves*

I hope 2020 is treating you all well so far. My mom is doing better but we still have a ways to go. She's been out of the hospital and rehab for a while and getting outpatient home therapy. I'm hopeful this year she'll continue to improve mobility-wise.

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Checking in on my west coast friends

2019-07-05T02:10:08Z

I just want make sure you all are okay over there after the quake and the aftershocks. Please stay safe.

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Attending Shoreleave

2019-06-27T00:30:39Z

Is anyone attending Shoreleave leave this year? If you are please let me know.

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These are the days

2019-04-26T00:19:42Z

Today is a hard day. As of today, my mom has been in the hospital for a month. Right now, she is going through something called "ICU Delirium" it comes from a combination of coming of off sedation post-surgery and the noise/activity the hospital( especially the ICU) prohibiting a regular sleep cycle.

I think the delirium has been the worst part of this experience because keeping my mother calm through her delusions has been work. I haven't been telling her things aren't real, just that whatever she's imagining that she's anxious over is fine.

The doggies aren't dying; they're sleeping in the sunny spot. The bunnies are okay;they'll come back when they're done playing.We can walk the people in people in the park, etc. I've even briefed the nurses.

My job has been amazing throughout all of this. As long as I can do a weekly check-in call/skype session with my supervisor and make the weekly team meeting they've been great. Most of my work is internet-based and I already work from home twice a week. It's nice that with all of this happening I don't have to worry about my job giving me a difficult time because before the delirium was fatigue and mom wasn't really aware but not tracking things like she normally could so I've been talking to staff and signing all the forms.

Tomorrow is Awesome Con. The one year I didn't buy the insurance option is the year I could use it. I've been coming to the hospital everyday for about 10 to 12 hours a day to sit with my mother. I was hoping to use the Con as not only as my normal fun time/self-care but also as a bit of a break from the hospital. I'm not sure if I should go our not. I've downloaded the program guide app and everything that interests me happens early in the day so there's that.

The sad thing is we aren't going to be able to see Avengers:Endgame in the theater together. Or the Godzilla movie as she'll be in a facility for physical rehab by that point. We were looking forward to doing both together.

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Stand back, I'm going in

2018-12-18T16:57:39Z

I haven't been on tumblr since the change. I'm morbidly curious to see what my dash looks like now.

Thing I am glad about through all of this is the level of coverage from mainstream media. The Washington Post has had some good in context articles on the issue. Hopefully, coverage will continue post policy change.

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Hidden Past treasure

2018-12-08T05:06:02Z

I've been lucky in that through the various internet purges of various platforms my fic has survived. In light of the tumblr highjinx I'm in the process of putting all my old stories on my AO3. It’s something I’ve been hemming and hawing about for ages.

A little backstory, early 2000’s I was in my last year of college and swimming in writers block like you wouldn't believe. I was writing but not finishing any stories; I have Ideas, snippets, scenes some original, some fanfic. At the time I'm in anime fandoms like inu-yasha, Slayers, Yu Yu Hakoshu a few others. I hadn’t yet gotten into my first live action fandom online.

I get an idea for a Slayers fic and I start writing and writing and writing. And I'm excited because I'm producing something long form and I put on my geocities page. I wasn't even thinking anyone was going to look at it, hell I didn't care I was glad to be writing. When the troubles started on geocities and we all started moving to fortunecities/tripod/angelcities etc.

I but up a notice I would be making the move soon and I started getting e-mails from people and that's when I discovered people were reading "Slayers in Dreamland" I was able to finish out the story their before that platform died too and during that time I've given people permission to archive and translate it (I know I had spanish & italian readers thanks to translation). After Fortunecites I had my own site for a while and eventually, moved everything to fanfiction.net where it has remained.

Recently I discovered that FFN may have eaten part of a chapter of my story and I'm trying to see if I can find it in one of places I gave permission to archive it years back. I still have my the notebooks I wrote the original story in so worse comes to worse I can retype it. (I have files but I don’t go through boxes)

What I didn't know was shear number of people who were reading my story. What I'm finding is old forum posts of people talking about my story and how much that liked it, appreciated the slow build and character development. There is criticism of course but overwhelmingly a lot of people liked my work. I won a few a awards back in the day and got the jpegs to put on my site. But apparently, I won others I might not have been aware of ??? There are folks who even remember there was sequel planned for Slayers in Dreamland. People wondered why I didn't respond to comments (I did when people e-mailed me but I wasn't on a lot of forums, some people even noticed that too). And its all very amazing and touching even though this is like a decade and a half later.

My writing has grown a lot since those days but I've been wrestling with my motivation as a writer and where I see myself going with my work etc. so unearthing these old little gems is happy treat for me.

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Alternative thoughts

2018-12-07T02:56:14Z

The other thing that annoys me about the whole tumblr situation is that I've been in the early planning stages of starting a new blog 2019. I've been doing a lot of sewing this year and I wanted to start a sewing blog to be a pictorial library of my old projects and to chronicle the process of making new projects.

I had hoped to just create another tumblr since I had an account already and with the app it would be easy to take pictures and make entries and I progressed with my projects. However, with the way things are being flagged my dress form could be dubbed explict. Or even worse, I could come back and find the whole blog disappear overnight.

I've been looking some of the Tumblr alternatives that have been thrown out there. I think really depends on what your interest/ fandom is on where people are going to land. Though for people in multiple fandoms like myself its going to be hard.

I've been thinking about instagram to keep up with artists from tumblr I like there as well as hockey players too. My only hangup is its owned by Facebook, I don't have a facebook account and I've never been interested in being part of that machine. That being said I've gladly welcomed Google as my evil overlord some years past.

Speaking of my overlord, I'm looking into Blooger for my sewing blog. The thing I lie about tumblr was the app which made it easy to use. The other thing I'm looking into is and app for managing all my social media like IFTTT (IF This Then That) or Tweetdeck so I have one place were I can manage different accounts.

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Special Snowflakes

2018-12-05T01:23:48Z

The thing I'm most concerned about with the tumblr implosion is the fandoms I came into through tumblr. I'm a hockey fan and irl I don't have anyone to share that with. It's something I was able to nuture and grow through tumblr because I could see there were other people (women)who enjoyed hockey they way I did. From watching the sport, geeking out over stats and their team of choice and drooling over the hot guys and naturally shipping them.

As a fandom it kinda reminds me of Due South but switch out the Ray Wars for team rivalries that are way friendlier due to team trade possibilities. We squee at the pretty boys and act like animals when our teams are doing well and make it to the playoffs. There is a lot of gif sets from promo vids and game play to enjoy and the fic on AO3 is fun (lots of AUs).

Tumblr and AO3 are where I get my Hockey fandom fix and it's such a unique thing that I don't see it anyplace else. It really keeps me going in the summer during the off season kind of like when you're waiting for a new season of a show to start. And the the algorithm is flagging hockey stuff too.

Here's a sample of what's on my Dashboard right now in reblogs flagged as explicit.
a wonder woman promo shot, This American Gods gif set (not any of the ones you're thinking) and the final is Jamie Benn in the penalty box (he's fully dressed).

All of these posts meet the new community guidelines so at some point I figure even though my tumblr is in compliance it may disappear. I haven't done overly long posts so if my account disappears I'll be bummed but okay with it.

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Man overboard!!!!

2018-12-03T20:21:31Z

Tumblr just announced it's banning all porn as of 12/17. So I'm counting down and backing up any entries i want to keep on my dreamwidth.

My tumblr is mostly my hockey blog/ pretty picture reblog place but I have a few words of merit there too it'd like to save. Seriously though, they should have listened to people years back when they complained about the pornbots on that site. A whole lot of content creators are jumping ship in the coming days.

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Cross posting

2018-08-03T16:17:35Z

Stand Back I'm going to take a crack at cross-posting!!!

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Looking at old stuff

2018-08-03T15:42:31Z

I'm not much into spring cleaning, I prefer to do my cleaning in the summer of the winter since the fall is my favorite time of the year. I think of Fall like porridge, not too hot, not too cold; just right.

So I'm going through my back room and sorting through old papers for recycling and guess what I find. Old fanfic. Not just any old fanfic, oh no! I found my one and only (as of this post) piece of The O.C fanfiction I wrote in 2003. That's right 2003. It's handwritten following S1 ep11 Summer POV. (I looked the details up, there is an OC wikia, who knew¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

The fact that I can read it at all is amazing. My handwriting is a thing of legend it is so bad especially when I'm on a writing tier. See I write as fast as I think and generally once I get the thought down on paper I have a 24-48 hour window to recopy/type it before I have a problem reading it. There are a few words I'm having trouble with but a majority of it works. I'm just tickled I found it and that I'm actually liking how it reads. I think I'm going to type it up and post it on my AO3 page for giggles. I'm thinking maybe as a writing exercise I might do a sequel. I mean for me it's a 15 year old meta post ep character POV but for everyone else it's brand new and I've been wanting to do more writing exercises.

But honestly, it's not like I needed another fandom, though this makes me wonder if I have other bits of fic hidden in places in my house.

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Cleaning out my fanzine closet

2017-10-04T02:36:10Z

My Highlander zine collection is small but mighty. Post Kiscon, which I had a fantastic time at. I'm going through and making a google sheet of my zine collection. I'm rediscovering things and I'm building a pile I call "Iowa".

Some of you may know this but for those of you who don't the University of Iowa has a special collections department that preserves fanzines and other aspects of pre-internet fan culture. Open Doors at AO3 has more information. I thought it would be cool to investigate how to donate the more interesting aspects of my fanzine collection to the project. I've enjoyed all my zines but I have selection of them I return to often while others I read them when I first got them and haven't gone back to them. I love the idea of the zines being given the same respect as other books and journals. Often the muggles mock fannish things so its lovely when they're given the kind of care that fans put into them.

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Cosplay and Sewing

2017-05-06T00:49:12Z

I figured this is the year the world ended so I might as well get off of my butt an cosplay. I’ve wanted to cosplay for years but confidence in my sewing skills and never being able to make up my mind about a character/costume have always held me back.

Well I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years working on my sewing skills and my ability to alter and draft patterns and I’m in a place where I’m really happy with the clothes I’m making.

This year I have two cosplay’s planned; Clara from Doctor Who and Ryuko from Kill La Kill.

For Clara this is the waitress outfit she wore in Season 9 episode 12 “Hellbent. The Ryuko look is her street wear look from the series. I figured both would be a good places to start my cosplaying journey. The have easy silohuettes and I have patterns I can use to create the looks I want.

I have a planner that I developed specifically for sewing that includes swatches from my fabric stash with yardage and a listing of my pattern inventory. It’s really helpful when I go to the fabric store so that I don’t pick up duplicate patterns or when I look at patterns I can flip through my stash and see if I have anything I might want to make the pattern with that’s in my current fabric stash.

I find that with sewing projects there are certain prep steps that make a project go a lot smoother me and I’ll like the outcome of the garment if I do them from the outset. I’ve been really happen with my last couple of garments since I got my new iron. It steams better and has more surface area so I get a really good press on my seams.

I’ve found some great resources to help me in preparing and planning my cosplays here are the links for anyone who might be interested.

Resources
Cosplay 101: Budgeting For cosplay
A great video that talks about the early planning of cosplay. Mangosirene’s whole Cosplay 101 series is really interesting

Cosplanner
Is an app that can help you plan your cosplay by storing reference pictures, keeping lists for the cosplay you can check of as you finish parts of the costume.

Cosplay Planning Project sheets
From seamsgeeky.com for those who like physical planners. I found pages 3 and 4 of the PDF the most useful in my planner.

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The Luxury Of Books

2017-05-06T00:18:21Z

I’ve always wanted to be an old book lady. I had the dream of having 5,000 books in my house when I die. When I moved out on my own floor to ceiling height was the most important thing to me about a living space because of bookcase. I watch home improvement shows and I weep when the interior designers rip out built-in bookcases. I recently learned from my mother that the one of the larger Barnes & Nobles in my state will be closing. She was talking about this with the ladies at an art day retreat group she was at and they were wondering “don’t people read anymore”. When my mom was telling me this she was nodding her head in agreement and saying “most people are glued to their tablets now”. But that’s only part of the answer when you think about it.

“Physical books are a luxury,” I said. When you have a generation of people who got out college and hand to either move back home or a roommate situation with 2,3,4, or 5 people if they got in a house share; space is a premium. If you love to read, eBooks are you friend because a smart buy of a e-reader/tablet with good storage and you can have hundreds of books in a tiny space and buying them doesn’t require you going into a physical store to purchase them. If your housing situation isn’t the most stable you don’t have to worry about packing your library if it’s mostly electronic.

It was having this conversation I realized how much of a luxury my book dream is. Granted is has changed shape over the years to focus on quality and not quantity in my physical library. But I’ve tried to turn my dream in to a way to give back to my community by donating books to the library so others might enjoy them also.

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I have a lot of fanzines

2017-04-23T03:50:55Z

I'm making an effort to declutter my library and make it more of a library/maker space and I realized I have a lot of fanzines. I need to do a complete inventory of them and have a sale. I have a huge amount of sentinel and K/S zines but I have a some in other fandoms like Smallville, Due South and Stargate SG1 and Atlantis. But the number I have I taking up a lot ofspace and there are only a few that I reread because I enjoyed them so much.

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Adulting is hard and expensive

2017-04-09T03:16:03Z

So back in August the supply line of my upstairs bathroom broke and caused a flood that did some damage. The end result was my redoing the flooring of the first floor of my house pulling up the carpet and having to redrywall the kitchen ceiling. Insurance didn't pay out nearly as much as I had hoped but I know my way around drywall and joint compond like you wouldn't believe.

As a result of replacing the floor I got rid of my old couch, this weekend I got a new one along with an oven and over the range microwave from sears. The oven died two weeks ago. It's llike it could sense my income tax return check on the horizon. Even with me looking up what I wanted before going to the stores warranties, removal fees permits and delivery fees add up. I'm happy with my choices I just have this adversion to spending so much at one time.

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New Digs

2017-04-08T01:31:59Z

One of the things that I realized in making the move to dreamwidth is that the reason that I hadn't been blogging much was because I became annoyed with the LIvejournal as a platform. I have Tumblr and with the tumblr app its quick an easy to do quick posts and include pictures. Mostly I'm on tumblr to fuel my shameless hockey addiction (Dallas Stars Baby!) and love of art.

I'm going to use this move as a springboard to journal more. I have cosplays planned for this year and other sewing projects in the works that I want to take pictures of and post.

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