I hope everyone's had a good week! I got back last night from Comic Con, where I shared a hotel room with the lovely aelora and family. Comic Con really should have been held in late May, when I was going through an insomniac phase, as I'm currently in a "sleep all the time" phase and spent most of the weekend wanting to curl up under a table and nap. It was still fun, though. I think I prefer the warmer, closer feeling of regional cons, though, and I'm actually fired up to go to Diversicon this weekend, especially since it's being held on the West Bank, a 10-minute drive from my house. (If I can afford the $40 entrance fee...)

At Comic Con, I got to talk to Rod Roddenberry, got things signed by the guy who draws XKCD and the guys who draw Penny Arcade, bought a bunch of birthday and Christmas presents for fellow geeks, bought Gris Grimly Christmas cards for myself, got free stuff for Kingdom of Loathing, saw Wil Wheaton (who is actually rather hot in person. SHUT UP), watched an advance screening of Tropic Thunder which is miraculously funny, and...did a lot of other things that aren't coming immediately to mind because I'm still a zombie despite getting 7 hours of sleep last night.

And, since my flist is Heroes-centric: I did get to see the premiere episode at the Heroes panel - I actually wound up being in line right next to piping_hot , and also met icalynn , which was cool. I'm...cautiously optimistic. I'm not happy with Mohinder's story line, but Sylar staggered me with creepy insane awesomeness, and the other plots at least have potential. I think my biggest issue at the moment is that the events of the first ep seem to take place right after the events of the S2 finale, and unless there's been a hell of a lot of time-traveling or teleporting going on, the timelines just don't seem to work right. I'm not talking alternate futures, I'm talking "how did Character X manage to get from one side of the country to the other, in the time it took the paramedics to get the wounded Nathan to the hospital?" So I'm definitely willing to give the show another chance, but I'm still nervous about the huge cans of WTF?!? that they opened up in the season premiere. I actually wrote up almost 4 pages of snarky spoileriffic opinion on the action that I'll try to post later on today, if anyone's interested or would just like to find out what the plot is.

And now, I need to go do some work, since I've been out of the office since the 22nd...

(edited because I can't remember user names to save my life...)

So it turns out that not changing to an earlier flight for Comic Con was a very good thing, as there is something not-good going on at work, which does not involve me in a personal work-performance manner but is not-good for the entire company, so I need to be available tomorrow morning in case there are issues and they need me to come in for a while before my flight. And I'm probably going to have to monitor my work email while I'm gone, just in case. And yes, I know that's incredibly non-specific, but it would take two pages of explanation, and I don't want to bore you.

I did, however, brighten up my day by getting a lovely new Sam Tyler mood theme, which you can pick up here at oh_darling if you're interested. (Just heard that the American remake of Life on Mars is undergoing...um..."creative restructuring", or whatever euphemism they use for "we just realized this show sucks, so we're going to recast almost all the actors and change producers and move the action to a different city". Hey, it worked for Moonlight. Kind of. Except for the whole getting-unexpectedly-cancelled-in-a-really-dicky-way thing.)

At any rate, I'll be leaving for Comic Con tomorrow afternoon. I'm still more nervous about it than anything because waiting is not my strong suit - I have been known to get up at 7 am on Saturday in order to be at the DMV or USPS the instant they open, so that I don't have to stand in line. But I'm going to be doing an interview in the booth area which will be a nice change of venue, and which I'm looking forward to. I'll post links to anything that I get up online, so you can see how I write when I'm not fangirling or complaining about real life. :0)

So have a good week, everyone! And if you're going to CC as well...if you see a fat chick with short hair and blue glasses, with a big black denim manpurse slung over her shoulder, wearing this or this, come on over and ask if it's me. And if it's not me, get her contact info, because I will definitely want to talk to my doppelganger...

Wow. I am completely absent from online life nowadays. I miss you all, but real life continues to demand all my time. And...well, to be honest, Boyfriend kisses me much more frequently than you guys do. ;0)

I want to look through the Comic Con schedule, but after spending most of the weekend with Boyfriend, and then cleaning house frantically, my BFF rolled into town late last night and will be here for a week. Also, we have a big data goal that we have to meet by Friday, and if I meet it, I get a $2000 bonus. So...again...I love all y'all, but since Comic Con is going to cost me well over $1000, I kinda need to spend my time at work actually working. Life is so unfair.

I can already see Comic Con conflicts coming up for me, though. Like...I skimmed Thursday's schedule and there's a Torchwood program in the early afternoon. And I love Torchwood. Even after what the bastards did in the S2 finale. However, there are some other really interesting things going on in the morning. And if I sit in the room all day to ensure I've got a seat for Torchwood, I'm gonna miss these other things. Plus...everyone and their mother is going to be writing about Torchwood, and 24, and Heroes, and The Hobbit, and Star Wars...and I feel like these other fun little things deserve some page time, too. Penny Arcade's going to have a panel! Lynda Barry will be there! There's going to be a panel discussion with production designers talking about how they created the looks of movies ranging from Iron Man to The Corpse Bride. There's a panel of s.f. children's authors. There's a panel called "Guerilla Warfare and Sneak Attacks: The Politics of Representing War in Film and Comics of the 1950s" which is exactly the kind of sh*t I earned a degree in. And...I could go on and on. And, heck, just the vendors could make a neat article - Kingdom of Loathing is going to have a booth there that I fully intend to hit up ASAP for free stuff, and the CBLDF will be selling autographed Neil Gaiman shirts. (As in, shirts formerly belonging to Neil Gaiman that he's getting rid of because he's got too many. Which is F*CKING AWESOME, if you ask me.)

Point is, I'm struggling internally between "you should just go to the popular panels, because more people will be interested in them" and "you should go to these little things that YOU are interested in, because you'll write much more passionately about those, and then readers will be much more into your articles. Plus you'll be the only person writing about them". 

Anyway.  On a final note: despite spending waaaaaaay too much money on travel the last few months, Audrey Kawasaki just announced a print sale for this weekend.  And I love Audrey Kawasaki's work.  Thing is, her prints are like trying to order tickets to hot concerts: you have to be sitting there online hitting "refresh" on your browser every 30 seconds, and then hope you're one of the lucky ones to snag the prize.  This is one of my all-time-favorite paintings by her, so I think I'm going to try to buy one despite the $$$cost$$$ (click on it to see a bigger version).

I just realized that I haven't posted in here in forever, and perhaps I should. The 4th of July weekend was spent going out of state to meet Boyfriend's parents. Which I was a little nervous about, but I figured they couldn't be that different from him, right? Turns out they aren't, and they seemed to like me just as much as I liked them. Which is a very, very good thing... Monday and Tuesday nights I also spent with Boyfriend. I quite like it, but as I said to him, "The neighbors are going to start thinking the house has been reposessed or something, because I'm never home and the yard is all overgrown!"

Tonight and tomorrow night I'm supposed to spend in work-related stuff because it's the big quarterly company meeting with Team Building Actitives and Corporate Retreat Functions, but...man, I do not want to go. I have SO MUCH TO DO. One of the evening activities (a boat ride on the Mississippi) is something I'd like to do, but with friends, not co-workers. Thursday night, though, is a trip to the modern art museum (which I do not like) and dinner at a downtown restaurant that I've only heard negative things about. 

Don't mind me - I'm just a bit whiny. This weekend is also TCFKAR, hosted by the lovely aelora , which I really really wanted to go to - I need some relaxing fangirl squeeing. However, the unexpected expense of two out-of-state trips when my grandfather died in May meant I couldn't afford a plane ticket. I'm trying to buy my ticket for ComicCon but of course, the affordable tickets are at inconvenient travel times. Plus I'm getting nervous about it, because I realized I'm more excited over hearing Neil Gaiman might be there for a panel on Coraline than I am at the thought of seeing Heroes promos. And Neil Gaiman actually lives in my neck of the woods, so I don't have to travel across the country to see him. Plus, my two favorite shows this past season, Moonlight and Jericho, are both gone. Oy. 

Maybe I'm just coming into a depressive time. Hopefully it will be over soon.  I think I need to pick up the Jericho season 2 DVDs and make Boyfriend watch them in a marathon this weekend.  That would cheer me up immensely.  I've already decided I'm going to order a t-shirt with a Ianto quote for ComicCon; I think I need to pick out a Hawkins quote as well...