Everyone and their cousin has asked me, "So, how was Katsucon?" After telling the complete story to my roommate (taking about 3.5 hours total...), and about 1/3 of the story to my folks, I decided that it would just be the most efficient use of my time to simply write it down in one place so anyone interested could come read the story. I'm not normally one to rant or vent in public, and I'm not really trying to rant or vent now, it's just that, well... it was a very bad week. -_-'

The backstory...
Everybody I talk to regularly knew how much I had riding on Katsucon weekend. Not just financially, but for my mental well-being as well. It's the first convention of the season for me, and a first chance to get to look at what's new with the cosplayers, what new anime and manga are becoming popular, which new music games are out, etc. Basically, I hibernate all Autumn and Winter, barely ever leaving the house, and I totally lose touch with the outside world except to send folks email or make my runs to the post office to deliver wigs.

I have absolutely no social life, don't watch TV or read the news, and do nothing but work, answer email or message board posts, work, feed the pets, work, have lunch with my parents on weekends, work, work, work, sleep, and work. All of my friends (except my roommate) live very far away, and even when they do get a chance to visit, I'm normally so busy with work that I can't even make time to go see a movie. I get up at 10am, work solid until 4pm, go to the post office, get back at 5pm, eat dinner with my roommate (notice I don't have breakfast or lunch?), continue to work until 4 am (possibly taking a shower at 3am), then go to sleep. Repeat.

Conventions are really the only chance I have to socialize at all, since I'm forced to not work by being taken out of my office for a few days. (Of course, anyone who's seen me at a convention knows I still end up working there too.)

It's really kind of a pathetic existance when you think about it, and it might seem like it would be easier if I just gave myself less to do, but that's completely ignoring the consequences of what happens if I'm not working myself to death.

Let's do some math, shall we?

I make $450 per issue of NHS, and, at most, about $200 a month from wigs. That's $650 for about 480 hours of work. That's $1.35 per hour. There are child laborers in Bangladesh who make more than I do, but if I raise my wig rates, everyone complains that I'm charging too much. (Silly me, I thought my work I was actually worth minimum wage..) If I try to take on freelance work that cuts into my NHS schedule, my publisher complains that I'm not working fast enough. Then there are the bills... rent, power, cable modem, phone: $775. That leaves -$125 to buy groceries for the month. God forbid one of my pets gets sick, coz I can't float a vet bill.

I am very fortunate that my parents are willing to help me out while I try to get this all sorted out. Before I started working on NHS, I was easily able to support myself through freelance work. I had a lot more time (as evidenced by being able to do things like my Shiva costume!), and although I wasn't "rich", I wasn't starving either. Basically, comics can't pay the bills, so only do them if you want to tell a story.

Anyhow, back to this whole Katsucon thing. Besides being a chance to get out of the house and talk to people, conventions are also a good way for me to make some money. I normally sell prints of my work, and comics, and draw commissions, and I usually end up making at least as much in one weekend in Artist Alley as I normally would in two weeks at home.

However, I faced a bit of a dilemna this year. There are certain restrictions on what you can and cannot sell in Artist Alley, and mass-produced items are considered a no-no. Since my mangas are published, and not fan-works, I didn't want to get in trouble for selling them in Artist Alley, so I'd have to get space in the Dealer's Room. The only problem is, two tables (we always end up needing two...) in Artist Alley is $60, but two tables in the Dealer's Room is $550! o_o!!

Not one to be discouraged, I payed the hefty fee, rationalizing that I was also paying for an increase in potential customers, and the added security of the room being locked down at night. In addition, without the restrictions, I would be able to sell other stuff too, like wig dye, and Cosplay Emergency Supplies.

I think Bobo would have rather been buried in a flowerpot, but he'd already been sitting in his plastic wrap coffin for over a week before the funeral. (It was a great advertisement for Glad Wrap though, no stinky dead fish smell at all!)

My first costume for 2004 is my Water Diva. I had planned to premier her at Katsucon.

Getting ready for the con...
Once again, I would be sharing the booth with my friends from Ryuhana Press. (Even though we just shut down the RP site...) Jodon was our con manager, and as always, did a wonderful job of making sure everything was in order as far as hotel, travel, payments, and coordinating with the Katsucon staff was concerned. All I had to do on my end was to make sure all the stuff for the booth was ready and shipped out in time.

As usual, I was incredibly busy, and could only work on the con stuff at weird hours, or while doing other things. (Like waiting for glue to dry on a wig, or waiting for a manga page to scan.) However, unlike all of last year's conventions, I wouldn't just be selling the stuff I already had printed up, and not only needed to prepare the actual goods, but all the related signage, documentation, and paraphenalia as well, so I had four times my normal pre-con workload. The biggest hassle was the wig dye.

Now, quite a few of you out there don't realize what a big deal this is, so I'll try to give you the quick explanation. Basically, until November of last year, there was no such thing as wig dye for synthetic wigs, much to the dismay of thousands of cosplayers and costumers. Regardless of the veritable rainbow of colors that character designers use in their palletes, there were only twelve "cartoon" shades available to work with in wigs. In the search of a more accurate Rei Ayanami or Sailor Neptune, I started researching different ways to color wig fiber.

Somewhere in the middle of my preparations were several issues of NHS. Even though December was s'posed to be my month off from wigs, and my time to catch up on NHS, that didn't end up being the case. I didn't get any breaks in December, except for when I got trapped at my parents house over X-mas weekend due to:

1. A flat tire with a leaky valve stem...
2. A car battery with a dead cell...
3. A sudden blizzard shutting down the only road out of town...

Remember that car accident I got in? Well, that was the beginning of November, and it took until only a few days before Xmas to get Superchamp fixed and back to me. So among all the other preparations was the hassle of dealing with that whole situation, including the rental car, the repair shop, the other driver's not-so-scrupulous agent, etc. Although I must give props to USAA for doing a spanking job of getting that all squared away.

Unfortunately, they couldn't do much about the place that actually managed the repair work. Besides the owner personally admitting that he didn't much care for "those Japanese imports", they had other questionable practices... like swapping my Honda battery with some expired AC Delco piece of crap, and "overlooking" the tire damage that caused the leaky stem.

I digress. The point is, my schedule was very tight, and while I was squeezing in as much NHS worktime as I could, my overall time had significantly decreased due to the extra activities I'd normally not have. That's when my tendonitis started acting up again. My NHS schedule was already pretty messed up due to all the craziness from this summer, so I didn't have any wiggle room either; I just had to buckle down and work through the pain.

Then a few minor problems turned into a few not-so-minor problems, including running out of comic paper, my computer taking a header, having to deal with stalkerish emails, Zeus getting some mystery illness, and the on again/off again nature of one of our potential hotel-roommate's ability to attend the con. (This made a big difference since she was the deciding factor between two rooms or one, and therefore, reservations and potential extra payments hung in the balance.) I also had to abandon one of the costumes I had intended to complete before the convention in order to work on NHS, since the time I'd normally have set aside to work on NHS was being occupied by computer repairs and last minute "nickel and dime" time-wasters.

Not to be discouraged by the delays, I still was fully confident that even if I couldn't get the book done a week early, I could at least get it in on time. I'd have to use non-standard bristol, but I'd fix the sizing in the computer. I carefully copied all my finished pages onto a CD (I was nearly done at that point, but still needed to finish some of the lettering and toning...), put duplicate copies on my server just in case something happened to my CD, made sure to pack all of my art supplies, including some of the ones I rarely use (just in case!), and told my editor about my "plan". Everything should have worked out nicely, as I allowed myself plenty of free time before the convention "just in case" something came up last minute, and I had everything outlined and ready to go. Everything.

The first thing I saw when I unzipped the bag was a TSA (Travel Security Agency) notice. My bag had been "randomly selected" for inspection, and they hadn't done a very good job of repacking. In fact, they managed to do such a bad job that they also hadn't made sure all my possesions were returned to the bag either. Specifically the Lokki doll. They stole my doll.

Talking to the TSA guys, the cops, and the folks at United Airlines ws useless. They all searched their "lost and found" piles, but I knew she wasn't "lost". (Come, fly the friendly skies while minimum wage thugs rifle through your possessions in the name of "security"!) I'd rather take my chances with the terrorists. At least they don't pretend to be protecting you while violating your rights.

I chalked it up to my curse, and tried to get on with my night. I had bought some pink hair color to kind of "ring in the con season". I'd been a brunette all winter, and wanted something more fun now that I'd be showing my face in public again. Plus, now that I had my "personal stylist", I knew I didn't need to worry about spotty bleach jobs or incomplete coloring. (No offense to the folks who have colored my hair with less-than-admirable results. It's much harder than it looks, so don't take it personally.)

Jodon bleached my hair while I watched "Daredevil", which, by the way, wasn't as bad as people had told me it was. I think the only part that seemed lame was the fact that the chick playing Elektra looked completely unconvincing as a martial artist.

It was obvious when I walked into Michaels that I was back in Maryland. With Pod-People like syncronycity, all the patrons and employees turned to stare at me. This happened when I first moved to Maryland back in 1999 too (even with brown hair...), but I had just learned to ignore it after a while. They don't really stare with malice, but they do stare shamelessly.

I went straight to the rubber stamp section looking for a "Love" kanji stamp that I remembered seeing many times before. Alas, as it was only a few days before Valentine's Day, they were sold out. Just out of morbid curiousity, I then inspected the entire rest of the display. Yep. Only the one I was there for was sold out. Once again, I have come to expect this, and decided to just go get the stuff I needed at Home Depot. A quick glance at my cell phone showed that I had 25 minutes to get back to the Kung Fu school, and since it was only about a mile away, this was no big deal.

More stares, and this time a few comments as well. I picked up the materials to build a wig display, and a few other odds and ends I would need for the booth construction the following night, and headed back out to the parking lot. When I got in the car and looked at the clock, it appeared as though I had ended up spending 35 minutes in Home Depot, but I hadn't got a call from Jodon, so I figured the performance must have been running a little late. I drove back to the school to wait in the parking lot. 40 minutes became an hour, which became and hour and a half. I tried calling Jodon a couple of times, but kept getting his voice mail, so I figured they must have still been performing. I decided that since I couldn't go anywhere, I'd just take a nap.

After another 15 minutes, Jodon tapped on the car window to wake me up. It seems that although the performance only took half an hour, most of the team fled immediately after it ended, leaving Jodon and a handful of other people to clean up after the kids the performance had been scheduled for.

We had a couple of hours before I needed to take him to his meeting, so we went back to the house, and although I still needed to complete the signage for the booth before our trip to Kinko's that night, I tried getting the last of my NHS pages done instead. Tried. Yeah, Jodon lives with his father's side of the family, which includes four additional siblings and two large dogs. Not to mention the fact that they happened to be remodelling the bathroom the week I was there, so there were also a couple of contractors, lots of noise and no water. Needless to say, these were not optimum drawing conditions, even if my arm had been feeling better, so I only ended up getting a page and a half done before we had to leave again.

I looked at the time, and I still had another half hour to kill, so I went into Petsmart and wandered around looking at the animals for awhile. It's kinda like being at the zoo, and I feel like singing to the birds or puckering at the fish makes them a little bit happier, but maybe it just makes me happier.

Team Iron Artist, vs Team Shadow Faction... We didn't have matching hats, but we did have much cooler hair! Although they were working with a handicap, since Fred Perry is as bald as a baby... (Love you Fred!) ~___^

Thursday, D-day.
The con started on Friday, so Thursday was our absolute last chance to get everything done that needed to be done. This included drawing/toning/lettering the last of my few NHS pages, preparing the signage, Jodon's homework, picking up the van, loading the van, another Kinko's run to make up for the failed run the previous night, getting the foam heads, assembling the wig stands, making sure to get change for the cash box, and about 15 other things that I can't remember right now.

At 8am, only 4 hours after I finally made it to bed, I was awoken by what I swore was the Guns of Navarone. It was such a loud and sudden sound, even with my earplugs in, that it jolted me awake with my heart pounding hard enough to make me dizzy. Then it happened again. Dust from the ceiling began to rain down on me as my brain woke up enough to remember that the bathroom they were remodelling was right above the basement couch. I sat up just as Jodon came downstairs with an apologetic look on his face. "I guess it must be time for me to get up."

I stumbled my way upstairs to learn that the contractors were having difficulty removing the tub, and had resorted to whacking it with a giant sledgehammer. (Large heavy object traveling at high velocity + large hollow metal object = very loud noise) The water was off again, so I couldn't take a shower or have breakfast, so I just sat down at the kitchen table and tried to get the rest of the book done. Jodon brought his laptop to the table to do his homework at the same time, so *hopefully* we could motivate each other despite the lack of sleep and food.

I started in on my first page, and got about halfway through pencilling it before my arm completely gave out. Even the slightest wiggle of my finger would send pain shooting up to my neck. It was a very familiar feeling from back when I first was diagnosed with tendonitis, so I knew not to try to push it for fear of causing more damage, but that wasn't going to get the book drawn. So I put an icepack on my arm for an hour while looking at an art anthology Jodon's dad had. (I can't remember what it's called right now, but it's apparently a pretty big deal in the art world, and I'd never heard of it before...) Jodon's dad (a classical painter who regularly does covers for Sci-Fi novels...) kept suggesting that I should submit something to the anthology. "There's comic stuff in there." I looked. There were classical style paintings of comicbook characters (Captain America, Thor, Spiderman), but no sequential art. I know he was trying to make conversation and to seem interested in my work (although not very convincingly...), but I don't think he understands that I'm a sequential artist, not a classical or portrait artist, and that I certainly don't work in a Western style, which every piece in that anthology was in. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I deal with enough negative input from people complaining that I'm a caucasian mangaka, without voluntarily subjecting myself to traditional art snobbery as well. I draw because it makes me happy, and makes my fans happy. Not to impress other artists. o_0'

Regardless, drawing was not going to be on the agenda that day. Even after icing my arm, and taking some aspirin, I still could barely move it, and now the pain had spread all the way across my back and down to my waist on my right side. Jodon saw me trying to continue with tears rolling down my cheeks, and made me go lay on the couch with my ice pack. Now horizontal, with no loud tub-bashing, I quickly fell asleep.

I woke up three hours later when Jodon finished his homework, and was trying to get ahold of our three roommates to organize our setup trip for the night. Shannon had been free all day, but no one had called her, Justin was going to be at work until 7pm, and Ed said he couldn't make it at all since he had to stay at work even later than that. Jodon also had Kung-Fu that night, so we needed to squeeze that in between the shuttling back and forth to his mom's house to pick up Betty. (The van.)

Here's how the schedule was supposed to go. (Keep in mind, I didn't have a car, all of the con stuff was at Jodon's dad's house, the van was at his mom's, which is half an hour away from his dad's, and Shannon and Justin live 30 minutes from either point.)

• 5pm - Leave Dad's house in Jodon's car while Shannon drives to Mom's house to meet us.
• 5:30-6pm - Pick up and clean out Betty at Mom's house.
• 6-6:30pm - Shannon leaves her car at Mom's house, Jodon drives to Kung Fu in Betty, and I take Shannon in his car to pick up Justin.
• 7-7:30pm - Shannon, Justin, and I drive back to Dad's to prepare to load the van as soon as Jodon returns from Kung Fu.
• 7:30-8:30pm - Load the van.
• 8:30-9pm - We all drive to Katsucon hotel in Betty.
• 9pm-12am - Setup Booth according to pre-drawn up schematics.
• 12-12:30am - Drive back to Maryland.
• 12:30-1:30am - Kinko's run.
• 2am - We take Justin home so he can go to class the next morning.
• 3am - Jodon, Shannon, and I go back to Dad's to finish last minute preparations and sleep.

• 5pm - Leave Dad's house in Jodon's car while Shannon drives to Mom's house to meet us.
• 5:30-7pm - Wait around while Mom drives to the auto parts store to buy special "rearview mirror" glue to reattach the rearview mirror to Betty.
• 7-8pm - Shannon leaves her car at Mom's house, Jodon drives to gas station then to Dad's house, and I take Shannon to GoodGuys to buy some CDRs because she didn't make a copy of her files for Kinko's since the CD she gave us the previous night wouldn't read.
• 8:30-8:45pm - I drop off Shannon at her house to burn a new CD while I go to pick up Justin.
• 8:45-9pm - Justin and I return to Shannon's house to find that her CD still hasn't finished burning.
• 9:30-10pm - Justin, Shannon, and I drive back to Dad's house.
• 10-10:45pm - Load the van.
• 10:45-11:30pm - We all drive to Katsucon hotel in Betty
• 11:30pm-12am - Realize that the dimensions I was given by the Katsucon Dealers Room coordinator were completely wrong (see Diagram A), so our booth setup up area was far more cramped than previously planned for. Partially Setup Booth, but are kicked out by Katsucon personel at midnight.
• 12:30-2am - Start to drive back to Maryland, but become hopelessly lost on confusing DC roadways as result of ambiguious highway signs.
• 2:15-2:45am - Find the highway, and take Justin home so he can get 4 hours of sleep for his test the next day.
• 3:00-3:45am - Drive to Kinko's, where Shannon's brand new CD still doesn't work.
• 4:15-4:45:am - Jodon, Shannon, and I go back to Dad's, where Shannon collapses from exhaustion within minutes (she's a morning person), Jodon discovers that his computer can successfully read Shannon's CD, and makes a new copy.
• 4:45-5:30 - Jodon and I stay up with what meager final preparations we can make considering that all of the things that needed to be assembled are in the dealer's room, and I still hadn't had time to finish any of the signage.
• 5:30-9am - Sleep.

Diagram A
The light blue lines show the setup arrangement I had based on the dimensions I was told by the coordinator. (Who I suspect cannot operate a tape measure...) I was told that we had 9 feet of space from the wall, when infact, we only had about 7. He also forgot to mention the 3 foot by 1 foot PILLAR jutting out of the wall. ("I'm the boss. Need the info.")

So, in summary. The booth was too small and not even close to set up, I was still missing the signage (which is very important!), I had only made half a page of progress on the comic, had no wigs to display, no sleep, and only one functioning arm by the end of Thursday. My nightmares were starting to come true.

Friday
So much went wrong on Friday, that I'll just give you the summary instead of trying to detail the horror...

1. Jodon had to get the hotel room sorted out while Shannon and I tried to finish setting up the booth by ourselves, and since I couldn't use my right hand, that meant Shannon ended up doing a lot by herself.
2. We were still setting up by the time the Dealers Room opened, and continued to set up for two additional hours before eventually just giving up at "set up enough". (The booth looked horrible, and most of it never got unpacked.)
3. Even though we paid to have electricity, they didn't actually successfully hook it up until about an hour and a half before the room closed. (No, we didn't get a partial refund.)
4. I left all my drawing supplies at Jodon's dad's house, so we couldn't do any commissions or valentines (not that I could have drawn much with my messed up hand anyhow, but neither could Shannon.) Even though Jodon went to go get them, the traffic was so bad at that he had to turn around empty-handed.
5. Justin and Ed showed up, but had to be quickly told to go meander around because there just wasn't enough room behind the table.
6. Jodon made a second attempt to get my art supplies, since I still needed to work on NHS, but only returned with some of them shortly before the room closed.
7. We had a total of 5 customers all day, and we only made $42.

After the Dealers Room closed, we just threw a tarp over our table and shambled to our hotel room with our tails between our legs. None of us had eaten all day, and we needed to rethink our approach to the booth. Only 5 customers all day, was very, very bad news. Ed left to go spend the night with his girlfriend, Justin was too tired to go to dinner and just crashed (but requested some hot wings...), and the rest of us went to Chili's for a "Strategy Meeting".

Once we had some food in us and could think straight, we redesigned the booth to compensate for the new spacing info, and analyzed how we could try to get more than 5 customers on Saturday.

One of the things we didn't anticipate when we decided to move to the Dealers Room instead of Artist Alley was the fact that people don't expect to see original merchandise in the Dealers Room. What they expect to see is a bunch of people all selling the same mass-produced merchandise that they can get on Ebay for a third of the price, J-Pop, J-Rock, and Anime CDs, and the occassional costume and/or prop weapon merchant. When people walked past our booth, they always looked a little confused, as if they couldn't figure out what we were there for.

With a new plan, and a renewed sense of hope (and some hot wings...) we returned to the hotel room. This is when we fried the first key card. Jodon went to stick it into the reader, and a static shock went down his arm, through the card, to the metal of the reader. Luckily, we had two joined rooms, so Shannon just unlocked the other door instead. When we got inside, we noticed the complete lack of Justin. He had left us a little note, and his portion of the room charge (but not his badge...), and had been picked up by his parents while we were at dinner. Apparently he had become quite ill while we were out, and since none of us had our cell phones, had just called home for a ride. We tried to call him to ask how he was feeling, but we never heard back from him. In fact, we didn't hear from him for over a month! ("I guess this means he won't want his hot wings.")

Looming among all of this was still issue 114 of NHS. My editor had left a rather not-so-nice email on Jodon's account, saying that I needed to upload all the pages right away because the higher-ups didn't believe I had actually drawn anything, and thought I was just trying to stall. Well, that's all bloody well and good EXCEPT:

a.) We were in a hotel room, and only had Jodon's laptop and cellphone to use for an internet connection. (I couldn't afford the in-room ISP service.)

b.) We didn't have a scanner with us.

c.) We didn't have the FTP information for my publisher's server.

d.) STALLING?! +#4+5+#3b!@@#5+l04d0=bu!!5#!+1v33v3r#34r)!

So, we emailed my editor back and requested the FTP info so we could upload what we had, and then I had to conscript Shannon to draw one of the remaining pages. Then Jodon and I took Betty back to his dad's house to pick up everything that we'd forgotten that morning, make another Kinko's run with Shannon's new (and WORKING) CD, and upload the finished pages I had so far. Kinko's went without a hitch, and I even managed to get some quick custom con badges whipped up. But Comcast vetoed our email or uploading plans. When we finally got back to the hotel, there was no response from my editor, and Shannon was finishing up her page. Jodon zonked out (although he still talked to us in his sleep for a half an hour or so...), while Shannon and I continued to work until 4:30am.

Saturday Second Wind

Another con, another shot of the top of my head. As you can see, I wasn't exactly in the best of spirits on Saturday. Notice my wrist brace sitting on the brown box? Yeah. Ow.

Saturday morning, we hit the ground running, and reorganized the booth to be less cramped and more friendly. I also emptied out all the original inked pinups I had and put them up for sale, just as a few more potential things to sell. We did get a lot more people at the booth that day, greatly due to Shannon and I's "boobies are good" tactics. We did quote a few custom badges, although I barely was at the table since I got scheduled for a two hour panel right before the one hour long Iron Artist competition. Whenever I checked back at the booth, Shannon was busily drawing another badge, and the Cosplay Emergencies Supplies were a big hit. (Too bad we didn't bring very many of them.)

"We'd like to remind the audience that Katsucon is a family friendly convention, and does not necessarily endorse the views of the artists on stage."
-Richard "Pocky" Kim, MC of Iron Artist, and Con Chair for 2005

The second bright spot came in the form of an older gentlemen, who is apparently a long-time Ninja High School reader. He was looking at the copies of NHS I had on display and asked "Is she affiliated with you guys?"

Katie: "She?"

Man: "Yes, the lady who draws Ninja High School."

Katie: "I hope so, that's me!"

Man: "You're Miss Bair? Well, I'd like to shake your hand. You have saved Ninja High School."

He went on to tell me that he had been reading the series since the beginning, and had even stayed through "the bad period", (there's a section, issues 75-99 or so, that is generally disliked by all the fans for various reasons...) but he loves the new story, and actually looks forward to each issue. That made me happy, because there are still a couple of the old fans who keep making a stink about the new story on message boards and in emails. I know they aren't actually reading it, but are just complaining that I'm not Ben Dunn. I'm glad I'm not Ben Dunn. I'd look horrible in my little pink bikini. o_0'

I got Dave Lister (Artist/Writer of Paradox Lost) to draw another page (which I turned into a two page spread...) for the comic, and I spent the whole night drawing as best I could under the circumstances. It was a long night.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday.
I had planned to wear my Water Diva costume on Sunday, but I had stayed up so late working that I didn't have the energy to properly get ready. ("Properly" getting ready involves a shower, 2 hours of make-up, and putting on the intricate pieces of the costume in the correct order.) The day was slow and short, but I did get to see my good friend Mike. (Who I only see for a few hours a year since he lives in Virginia.) While we were in the lobby talking, they had to evacuate everyone out into the cold because of a small fire someone had set in one of the elevators. (Way to go, guys...) Luckily, he had parked nearby, so we just went and sat in his car and tried to "catch-up" on a year of happenings.

They let us back in the hotel, and I got down to the booth about an hour before the Dealer's Room was suppoed to close. I drew a couple of badges, then we packed up. Pocky invited us to his after-con party, and I really wanted to go, but I needed to work on the comic. None of the pieces I put in the art show sold. (Which is a first.) Well, except the piece I did for Iron Artist... the proceeds of all those pieces went to charity.

That's all folks.
Monday was spent packing, trying to draw, and giving Bobo a proper funeral. We made a little over $200 all weekend, so not only was the affair a giant emotional and physical drain, but a financial bust as well. They say that everyone should experience total failure so they'll learn to better appreciate success. Well, if I ever see success, I'll appreciate it very much. I'm not one to dwell, so now that I've finally finished telling this damn story, I'm not going to bring it up again. I survived, and everything worked out eventually. That's what matters.

Picture Time!
Since so much has happened, and so much time has gone by since my last news update, I figured we'd try something new for a while. I don't really have as much time as I used to to write these things, but I do collect a LOT of pictures of the things that occur around here just in case I suddenly find myself with the opportunity to update. So, here's a little window into life with the Petting Zoo...

Awwwww. Hannah, Andrea, and Katie. Aren't we just the sweetest little cosplay judges ever?

HA! We fooled you! We are really hardcore rockers! We will ensnare you with our devil-hands!

Messing around at opening ceremonies with Luci Christian and Doug Smith.

On the left, is the shelf with hanging rod I installed last June to hold my meager collection of costumes. On the right is what happened about 6 seconds after I hung up my eleventh (Red Ridinghoode) costume a year later.

It was just like a sitcom. I hung the costume up, walked out of the room, then heard the crashing noise. All I could do was laugh. My roommate poked her head in my room, rolled her eyes, and went back to making dinner. This kind of thing happens around here all the time, so we're never really surprised.

As a bonus, this gave me a great excuse to upgrade to a larger, sturdier storage system, since my costume collection is getting quite meaty. (I have 14 now.)

Now this is just bizarre. I gave Ike an olive, just to see if she'd eat it or not. (This was the same way I discovered that Zeus likes pickles.) What Ike proceeded to do with the olive for the next 45 minutes was turn it into a tiny black combatant. She'd run at it, pick it up, throw it through the air, chase it, feign being counter-attacked, hide from it, and try to sneak up on it without making eye contact with it. ("IT DOESN'T HAVE EYES, IKE!!") Then, after it had finally been defeated, she tore it into tiny chunks and ate it very slowly.

One down, one to go. I love to cook... but I also love to wander away from the kitchen while leaving the stove on. I've destroyed two copper kettles by leaving them on the burner until the metal bottoms slagged. Here we have my prized "Spoontulas", one of which has assumed the shape of the pan it was sitting in when I left the burner on.

As always, comments are welcome.