hymnia

-Students are back to school tomorrow, so I've been preping all week and have been v. busy. Open House was Thursday and I got to meet pretty much all my new students and their families. They were all very nice and I'm now totally psyched about the new school year.

-Anime Festival Orlando was last weekend. I had a FANTASTIC time and let me tell you, I needed it so badly! Friday night was a talent competition called Orlandia's Got Talent and I actually won! It was such a rush and on top of that I got a cash award and a great photo book called Cosplay in America. Then, to continue the winning streak, I also won the door prize at a panel on learning Japanese. It was a book called Japanese the Manga Way, which I've had on my Amazon wishlist for ages--score!! Also, I helped out at two panels on Sunday--one was a parody of What Not to Wear that my friends and I put together, dressed as the Ouran High School Host Club and giving advice on cosplay. I dressed as Kyoya. The other was a Victorian/Steam Punk tea room that my friend heavenscribe put together and we helped her set up and entertain the guests a bit (most of us were still dressed as the Host Club.) Besides Kyoya, my other costumes were Hotaru from Gakuen Alice, and my still-incomplete Gina from Porco Rosso that I wore to the photo shoot in St. Augustine last month. Which I just realized I still haven't posted pics of here, although I've posted some on Facebook. I will try to post pics of both the photoshoot and the con, as well as video of the talent show some time soon.

-Preliminary tests show that dad's cancer does not seem to have spread. We are still waiting on an MRI to confirm that some "hot spots" on the bone scan are arthritis, but the doctor was almost certain they were. Now the main thing is dad has to decide what kind of treatment he's going to try.

-Tonight was my third attempt at making miso soup and this is the first time it actually tasted right, so I'm v. excited about that.

-I'm glad to be posting mostly good news today. I'm realizing more and more that nothing is certain in this life, so I'm trying to just take things one day at a time. "Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself...".

'Kay. Going to go serve myself another helping of miso soup now...

<3
Joie

So it occurred to me today that I never posted pics of Anime Festival Orlando, which is really a shame, because, well…I think my costumes turned out really well this year and I want to show them off!

In the pics that follow, I am dressed as Mai from Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Arisa Uotani from Fruits Basket. I worked hard on the costume for Mai, and I feel this costume shows how far my sewing skills have come. The Uo costume was simpler in terms of what I had to sew, since I just modified store-bought items, but I'm pleased with how it turned out, too. (I think I make a pretty good Uo in terms of facial expressions/body language, too.) Well, see what you think:

( Avatar: The Dangerous Ladies + Suki )

( Fruits Basket: The Class 1-D Gang )

What am I up to? WAY TOO MUCH. But. One thing I've been working on recently was an entry in the "Animusical Idol" competition at JACON 2008. Check it out:



And some more pics from the weekend under the cut:

( Kawaii girls in costumes )

Joie

First, here's the video of the fan film we entered in the AFOscars:



Second, I present various pics from the con:

( AFO pics: Travis and Vic and cosplay galore )

Man, I need to go to bed. Why, why, WHY do picture posts always take so long?!

Joie

( Princess Bride quiz results )

And some pictures of yet another anime convention. There're a few of me in a different costume, this time of Kagura from Fruits Basket. That costume was made be the mother of one of my friends, who wore the same costume on Sunday, when I was in my Sango get up.

( More fangirl craziness )

And now I have to retire the Sango costume for a while. I can no longer pull off the hairdo. Yesterday I chopped my hair off and gave it to Locks of Love again. Yay! Short hair for summer! I have no pics of the new do yet, but for those of you who haven't seen me with short hair before, I'll say that I look a little like the Love Interest in Real Genius, except that my hair's a bit longer in the front: ( Short hair! )

Well, this post was supposed to be drive by. Somehow, posts with pics always end up taking me a long time, mainly because photobucket is slow as a beast. There must be a faster way to do this. Any advice?

Joie

*happy sigh* I wasn't even looking forward to this birthday. With my teens and my early twenties now behind me, I am starting to drag my heels about the idea of being another year older. But it's good to have an excuse to celebrate. My sis-in-law's (Vanessa, aka nessabutterfly) birthday is today, and since our birthdays are so close, the last two years we have been celebrating in tandem. This year's dual celebration turned out to be really fun.

My birthday got off to a good start. The teacher I work most closely with at school brought a chocolate chip cookie cake and had all the kids sing to me before they were dismissed for their afternoon P.E. class. Better yet, my students behaved themselves better than usual all day. :D

( Friday Night: Dinner and Swing Dancing )

The next morning we went to MegaCon, a convention focused mainly on sci-fi/fantasy, comic books, and anime/manga. So. Much. Fun. For me, the main attraction was the anime/manga aspect of the convention, particularly the merchandise and the cosplay. (In case you don’t know that term: cosplay = “costume play”, or dressing up as characters from anime/manga/video games—or anything, really).

I really, really got a kick out of the cosplay. There were so many cool costumes, and it was neat to see the creative things people did, and to get a chance to chat with them and admire their costumes. I cosplayed as Sango from Inuyasha (see pic below--I did her traveling kimono, though it seems people who dress as Sango usually do her battle gear), and it was really fun to have people call out, "Hey, Sango" to me and ask to take my picture. I had fun locating other people at the convention dressed as Inuyasha characters and asking them to pose for pics with me. A guy dressed as Miroku (the character with whom Sango has a bickering proto-romance with) posed for one picture with me, and then offered to do a "lecherous" pose with me as well (Miroku is a very lustful character, and is always trying to grab Sango’s rear, usually getting slapped, elbowed, or at least yelled at as a result), but he didn't press it when Vanessa, who was taking the pic, declined on my behalf. I was actually pretty amused by the offer.

( Reference pics of Sango from Inuyasha )

I should add here that my late-night costume preparations before the con consisted of allowing Vanessa to cut me some bangs and faux-sideburns to match Sango’s hairstyle. A bit extreme, I know, to cut my hair for cosplaying, but I’m actually really pleased with the result. It’s been years since I’ve had bangs, and now that I’ve got them again, I have no idea why I didn’t cut them sooner. I look really good with bangs, if I do say so myself. ;) Anyway, if you want to see a pic of me in my Sango get up, Vanessa has posted the one of me with Miroku in her LJ here. Please ignore the one of her fixing my hair, as the lighting in that one makes me look awful. Just scroll on by to the one with Miroku, plz. I’ll post more pics from the weekend in a later post. BTW, I did 95% of the sewing of that costume myself. It was pretty simple, but I hadn't sewn anything since home ec class in middle school, so it was a big accomplishment for me. Vanessa, who also made her own costume, is an expert seamstress, and she helped me design the costume and figure out what the heck I was doing with the sewing machine. <333

( More about the Con )

The best part was the company, though. Some of you who have been on my flist a long time will remember that I once didn’t have many local friends here in Orlando. Well, that has begun to change. Last November or so, I got assigned to sing on the same rotation as a girl named Christie in my praise team at church, and we instantly hit it off, mainly because we share an obsessive interest in fantasy, anime, Star Wars, Harry Potter, etc., and—more importantly—we seem to like those things for some of the same reasons (not to mention our shared interest in music and theatre, and our shared religious beliefs). Anyway, last month she invited me to a Chinese New Year’s party at her house where we had Chinese food and watched lots of anime, and I got to meet several of her friends. I’ve seen them a few times since then, and now they are becoming my friends, too. Anyway, Christie herself wasn’t able to come to the con on Saturday (she went on Sunday), but I spent a large part of the day with friends that I made because of her, and it was really fun.

I also enjoyed talking to the other cosplayers, especially some teenage girls dressed as fellow Inuyasha characters. The teens I met at the con were really sweet, and chatting with these delightfully geeky, anime-obsessed teenagers just filled me with a warm feeling of nostalgia for my own geeky teen years. *sigh*

Saturday ended with a very late dinner at Doc Chey’s Asian Kitchen, which was really, really delicious—by far one of the best Asian restaurants I’ve been to.

Sunday, Christie and I had our turn to sing for church services, and in between the two services, we got to chat about anime and such. I also got several compliments on my new hair do from friends at church. After church, I did all the work I had put off all weekend (writing curriculum and cleaning my room) and got caught up on LJ. I enjoyed reading all of your birthday greetings. :)

All right, for months now I’ve been meaning to put up a poll like the one chicagoamy did a while back, to find out who on my flist shares an interest in the same TV shows that I like, and my current desire to find other Fruits Basket fans has prompted me to do it now, even though this post is already ridiculously ginormous. Please fill this poll out!

( Poll: Pinky, are you watching what I’m watching? )

Thanks for reading. Due to the million and one things going on in my life, I was offline for about 5 days in a row. I was having fun, but I did miss you guys. *hugs flist*

Joie