archmage

Day 30 - Saddest character death

Man, what a way to end the TV meme. Tasha's death was too early to be all that sad, it was more shocking. Jadzia's death in DS9 was probably the most sad death in Star Trek - at least in the TV shows. There isn't a whole lot of other death in the shows I watch.

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The girls and I dropped off the foster pig this morning, and then I spent the rest of the morning and well into the afternoon working on my school stuff. Then it was some cooking, Psych, a tiny bit of grocery shopping, more Psych, return of the pig, and a little DS9 to wrap things up. All in all a good rainy Sunday.

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Tomorrow begins the music meme!

Day 28 - First t.v show obsession

Really? You need to ask that question? Ok, fine. It's Star Trek The Next Generation. Do you now feel like you know something that you didn't already?

I didn't think so.

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The Jo-Ann Fabric store near us just remodeled, and they sent out a huge number of coupons. Tonight Tigs and I took advantage of them and picked up a number of things. Unfortunately things aren't quite running at 100%. The girls at the cutting counter had all sorts of issues, which caused issues at checkout. Ah well.

I also went to my barber today. I haven't had a barber since I was 10. I have to say that I actually like the feel of a straight razor, and I'm having some crazy thoughts about getting one for myself to shave with.

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Here are some work in progress pictures of my current Haloween projects.

First up we have the Cthulhu statue.
In these pictures you can see that I've built up the cheek bones, smoothed out some of the rough spots, and bulked up the tentacles.


Then I started to covered it with a coat of monster mud. It took a few stages to do the whole figure. I made the mud too thick, and it was really difficult to work with a brush. I gave up eventually, donned a couple of rubber gloves, and just smeared it on by hand. That actually worked pretty well, though in the future I'm going to make it thinner.


You can see here how I built up around the eyes with the mud. Once that was all done and dry I brought it outside.




Then I spray painted it green.

That's where it's at now. I'm trying to decide if I want to go and make it a greenish gray or black with green coming through it, and some dark gray highlights.

The other project I'm working on are a series of creepy books. This one is on werewolves. I started by drawing and cutting out a pattern on thick card, and then gluing it to the book.


Here I've added the paper mache paper towel to the cover, and painted it with brown while it was still wet.


Here's one without flash.


Since the pattern didn't show up well enough I decided to paint it.


These are two other books that are in progress.


One of my purchases at Jo-Ann fabrics was a ghastly fur for a monster book. That one's going to be fun!

Day 26 - OMG WTF? Season finale

As far as season finales go, Star Trek has had numerous OMG! WTF? moments. The first and most stunning time they did it was the end of season 3 The Best of Both Worlds, and did that make for an unbearable summer for me, and I’m pretty sure for my mom, who I insisted on going over all my theories with. All. Summer. Long.

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Alice’s last puppy agility class was yesterday and tonight was the club’s summer general meeting. Between them I did manage to squeeze in a few minutes of time to work on my statue, and do a little reading. I also got a gift from work – an old rusty horseshoe. Why is this exciting? Because it’s going to become yet another Halloween prop! This one will be a quick and easy one too.

In non-Halloween related news, I should be finishing up the banister this weekend. The weather looks like it'll cooperate, and I should be able to get it cleaned and stained Friday evening and Saturday, and hung on Sunday, between the various activities that are going on.

Also, next week is the primary election, and once again I'm serving as an election judge. So everyone in Maryland (and any other state with a primary coming up) go vote! Unless you've already done your absentee ballot or taken advantage of early voting.

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Afraid of spiders? Would you blow yourself up to kill a spider? This man did!

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Lucy thought that it should be pointed out that she is in fact awesomer than awesome.

Just in case you weren't aware.

Day 23 - Most annoying character

I had a visceral hatred of Darla, a minor vampire character from the first season of Buffy and then Angel. I’m not sure why exactly, and I haven’t re-watched it to see if I’d still hate her, but man. I’m glad she got staked.

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The Halloween decorations are starting to appear in stores! Last night we had to make an emergency run to Jo-Ann Fabrics, and just inside the door was the first of the Halloween stuff! Unfortunately they were out of the awesomely awful green tiger stripe fake fur that I was thinking of getting for the Monster Book of Monsters that I wanted to make. Oh well.

Tonight I worked on my various creepy books, but didn't get around to the statue. Tomorrow. I also need to do a 50 book challenge post, and do some more school work. But for now, bed.

Day 21 - Favorite ship

I’ve been waiting for this question. Not that the answer will surprise anyone who knows me at all.

The USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D.



It’s a beautiful ship, and I fell in love at first sight. Now there are admittedly prettier designs out there – The Enterprise E is far more sporty, the 1701-A is classier, and then there are all the ships from other shows. The Serenity is a neat vessel, along the same lines as the Millennium Falcon, both tramp freighters, but neither captured my imagination like the 1701-D did.

...

What do you mean that's not what the question meant?

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Now I'm going to watch the Project Runway episode from 2 weeks ago!

Day 19 - Best t.v show cast

I’ve always been a big fan of larger ensemble casts, so there are a lot of good ones to choose from. The Star Treks of course, The West Wing, Firefly, Gilmore Girls, and of course Stargate SG1 all had fantastic casts.

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Yesterday morning around 10am I said goodbye to my small white Kia Rio. We donated it to the local NPR station. The process wasn’t too bad, and I’ll get more from the tax break than I would have in trade-in value. It was a little sad to see it being loaded up onto the dolly and taken away.

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I have Halloween on the brain. It’s always been my favorite holiday, even over Christmas. This year it’s kicking in HARD, and early too. Yesterday afternoon I went to Target to pick up a few items, and I ended up getting a bunch of things that hadn’t been on my original shopping list. 12 bottles of elmers glue (at $0.25 each) a couple of rolls of masking tape, a bucket, and 2 dragon figurines for $1 each that are perfect terrain items.

Tonight I applied the first layer of paper mache to the statue I started over the weekend.

The saga of the creepy neighbors continued tonight with a whole new chapter. Around 7:45 this evening, as I was cleaning out my car, the creepy neighbors were having a fight. She was trying to leave, and he wanted his lighter. She said it was inside. He punched their car a couple of times, they yelled at each other, and he charged inside. She cranked the car up, and pulled away from the curb.

Mind you their house is on a corner, the car was parked on the street beside the house. The street comes to a stop sign at the T intersection maybe 20 feet from where the car was parked. She pulled forward away from the curb, proceeded through the stop sign, without stopping, and at maybe 10mph crashed into the car parked on the other side of the intersection. She attempted to back up and sort of shuffled the car ineffectually.

The woman who lives at the house that the car was parked in front of, came out yelling at the driver to get out of the car as she dialed 911. A few minutes later the first of three cop cars arrived. The creepy neighbors had to push the car back to where it was parked, because (SHOCK!) they're all too drunk to drive it 15 feet.

It really is an amazing Saturday night.

Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show

I don't feel guilty about any of them! :-P

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This morning I made a most delicious breakfast burrito. I fried up half an onion, about a quarter of a large green pepper, and half of a small potato, then I whipped 3 eggs and a little milk together in a bowl, I poured the fried stuff into the mix with a little shredded cheese, let it cook, flipped it, put it into a warm burrito with some salt and pepper... YUM!

If you couldn't guess I'm off of work today, and doing stuff around the house. As usual the list of things to do is probably more than I'll be able to finish. Top of the list is getting my school work done! I also need to get a bunch of yard work taken care of, some treasurer stuff, cleaning the house, doing stuff with the dogs, etcetera.

Day 14 - Favorite male character

Garak, plain and simple.

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Took care of some personal paperwork this evening, and now I'm off to a board meeting for the dog club. It's probably going to go longer than I want it to.

Day 12 - An episode you have watched more than 5 times
Any episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, DS9, and probably half of Voyager and TOS.

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Things I want to do this week:
Play Neverwinter Nights
Start WoW
Be a couch potato and watch Monk, The West Wing, Star Trek, Jericho, etc.
Draw dungeons
Read fun books
Hirst Arts

Things I don’t have time to do this week:
Play Neverwinter Nights
Start WoW
Be a couch potato and watch Monk, The West Wing, Star Trek, Jericho, etc.
Draw dungeons
Read fun books
Hirst Arts

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It’s early, but I’m starting to think about Halloween, and what I want to do to celebrate. In particular I’ve been thinking about dog
costumes and yard decorations. For dog costumes, I’ve been thinking that Corgis are the steeds of the fairy court. Maybe for Halloween they can do that! One could serve the Seelie Court, and the other the Unseelie court.

My other dog costume idea is to make them Star Trek uniforms. This would probably be the simpler of the ideas.

As far as yard decorations go none of the trees in my front yard are big enough to put any decorations in yet. Sadly it’ll be years before they’re ready for that. We don’t have much of a porch either. I suppose something could be hung out the windows, but I’m not sure what.

A couple of the thoughts I’ve had include doing a graveyard with a bunch of headstones or making a giant paper-mâché monster – maybe a spider? Or maybe a couple of smaller monsters like giant rats? Say corgi sized giant rats?

Here is some paper-mâché inspiration