iron_shade

So I had a birthday two days ago. I'm twenty seven now. Twenty seven, unmarried, and jobless. I feel that somewhere along the way I seem to have gotten off society's path. I mean, I've always been a little off pace with society anyway, but running into old friends who have kids going into first grade, a job, and a decent family life really makes me feel out of sync with the world sometimes.

Anyway, today is Liz's birthday. She'll be twenty two today. She'll be graduating from college in a few weeks and her future is as up in the air as it ever can be. The Librarian Masters Degree program turned her down, she doesn't get to spend those weeks in Japan this summer that she has been yearning for all year, and she needs to secure some full-time work so that she can afford a place to live that isn't her parents' house.

On the plus side, we're going to ACen. We'll be there all weekend, trying to escape reality for a time. For those others that are going, we hope to see you there. For those that aren't, you will be missed.

It's roll-call time again lurkers. Viewpoints gave me a pretty little test for you all to take. Have fun with it and make my journal feel less empty.


1. Name:
2. Birthday:
3. Where do you live:
4: What are you studying/What are you working as:
5. What makes you happy:
6. What are you listening to now/have listened to last:
7. What is particularly good/bad about my LJ:
8. An interesting fact about you:
9. Are you in love/have a crush at the moment:
10. Favorite place to be:
11. Favorite lyric:
12. Best time of the year:
13. Weirdest food you like:

RECOMMEND
1. A film:
2. A book:
3. A song:
4: A band:

FANDOM
1. Favorite Fandom:
2. OTP/OT3:
3. Icon/Fic Journal (so I can follow) or your DA if you have one:
4. Cosplay.com (Or ACP or whatever) ID (if applicable)

PLUS
1. One thing you like about me:
2. Two things you like about yourself:
3. Put this in your LJ so I can tell you what I think of you?

Several years back I remember writing an entertaining little imagining of the inner workings of my brain. I saw this today and it made me smile.

Welcome friends to the year 2011. I know I'm a little late to the party, at least I'm a little late to speak up anyway. You know we ninja are not known for revealing ourselves within your midst until we feel like it after all. So far it's been quite an interesting new year. I've been quite busy juggling all the changes in my life that ushered in with the close of 2010. Here are the highlights...

We've moved!
Due to funding constraints and a massive job location change, Tim and I have moved back to J-ville. We're settling in quite nicely back into our old domain. The apartment we have acquired is right smack in the middle of my old stomping grounds and I'm pretty happy about the building itself. It has no windows....only doors. Aside from the front door, our apartment has not one, not two, not even three.....but four sliding glass doors that serve as portals to the outside. The doors in the kitchen and living room lead out to a decent sized personal patio with a privacy fence and the doors in both the upstairs bedrooms lead to mini-balconies that look down onto said patio. I picture our next Virgin Sacrifice and Barbecue this summer to be quite entertaining indeed.

I'm in between jobs!
Back in June, as I may or may not have reported, I lost my job over at Comcast. In an effort to "consolidate and streamline" the dispatch departments, all of the dispatching jobs went north to Chicago. With the laughable offering of a fifteen cents an hour raise to move to Chicago....I chose not to follow my job and as such was laid off. Strangely enough my relationship with Comcast didn't end there. After a month or so of vacation, I was called back by a supervisor friend of mine who needed some temp help that she didn't have to train. Seeings as I fit the bill, I was employed as a temp doing about the same thing I was doing before for less money, no sick time, and no holiday pay. Anyway, as December came to a close my temp contract ran up. I am now unemployed again, but with some very good prospects. It seems that our moving back to J-ville coincided with the retirement of an office person at the local Mediacom building. I've got some friends that work there and I'm basically a shoe-in for the job with the amount of experience I have in the cable industry. At this point I'm just waiting for their out-of-town human resources person to get on the ball and hire me. It'll be nice having a job again.

Other random happenstances!
After practically falling off the face of the earth for several months, it seems the people running the Steamposium in St. Louis have finally emerged to announce that there in-fact is a convention-type-thing happening this weekend. Strangely it's only going to be a one day event on Saturday and not a weekend deal like it was last time, but we're going all the same.

I'm also getting back into the role-playing groove. As it stands, I'm playing in a rather entertaining "Mad Max" style game called Apocalypse World. It's actually a pretty good free-form system and even though my character seems to have been saddled with an almost incurable plague after only one gaming session, I think I'm going to enjoy it. Also I'm getting my Game Mastering back on with the launch of a new D&D game for my friends. Already the creative juices that lay dormant for so long are beginning to bubble their way to the surface.



Anyway, that's all the reporting I'll be doing for the moment. I'm off to go collect some trappings for Tim's Steamposium costume. Somehow he's managed to lose a tool from his little costume tool-belt at every convention he's gone to. Time to fill him back up!

All packed up and ready to see Chris and Crystal through their wedding on Saturday. I'd like to ask that you all join me in praying to whatever dark gods you have or sacrificing whatever small animals and plants that can't escape your grasp that there will be no rain that day. It's an outdoor wedding and I think we here in Illinois are set to get drenched from whatever the stray clouds from the tropical storms pounding the east coast are left with by the time they float over to us.

Thor, great Norse god of the thunderstorms, you owe me one. Don't mess this up. I will find you.

Actually, now that title has me thinking..."Steampunk Ninja!" Wouldn't that be fun to design as a costume? But anyway, on to the actual point of this post. A couple of weeks ago my roommate and I met up with some of our E'vil (Edwardsville) cohorts with cameras and had a little Steampunk photo shoot in the park. I've only got a few pictures from one of the photographers at the moment but I'm looking forward to picking through the other set as soon as it arrives.

( Here are some highlights of our little adventure. )

It was really not the best day to be out in several layers of clothing. The temperature was about a hundred with a heat index of at least a hundred and five. Still it was a good time. I've very glad for the creek. The cool air coming off the rushing water really helped. Let me know what you all think.

At least that's what most of my electronic organizational tools keep telling me anyway. It's funny how as a digital society we've been conditioned to not remember so much information just because we have machines to remind us from time to time. I used to know the phone numbers of all of my friends, their parents, and the Jimmy Johns down the street. Once I got a cell phone however, that information when right out the window. May the patron saint of digital information help me if I ever lose my phone and my computer at the same time. I'd lose the ability to contact whole swaths of people.

Anyway, happy birthday Sae. Even though we don't get to see each other often, you've still been a pretty awesome friend to have over the years. I hope this day finds you doing what you love.

There's nothing quite like a project to give me direction. I've got an October deadline to construct a Steampunk weapon for my character so that my costume will look like I've actually worked on it since the Steamposium in April. The plan is to finish requisitioning materials by the end of this month for my Tesla Canon. Basically a lightning rifle of sorts, I still do not know how I will get all the planned effects to operate at this juncture. Every time I imagine the various parts fitting together the design changes as a new concept or idea crashes into the model forever changing it and driving me on to find new and different things to add on. It's actually very disconcerting. I wish I could draw. Then I could just pen my plans onto the cold hard parchment, sealing my thoughts in reality.

Focus......I really have an issue with it. I blame the right side of my brain for pulling double duty. Us lefties lead an interesting life with the creative center of our brain juggling its own job with motor function and analytical thinking.

Anyway, I have a gun to construct out of this pile of candle holders, lamps, and wires. Hopefully it will be ready for Archon this year. Failing that I will hang my head in shame and work extra hard to have both it and my sidearm ready for the Steamposium in January. Now if only I could find a friend who loved to work with leather...

Apparently she's a publishing director with a keen eye for well written books. That I write like her is interesting.

Dinner ---> Movie ---> Stroll through the carnival downtown ---> Win an inflatable dolphin for the girl ---> Ice cream at Coldstone Creamery ---> A night of talking about various interests.

I'm so proud of Tim. You only see stuff like this in cheesy romance movies but tonight he lived it!