Life ain't so bad at all...

I don't even know if I can express how I'm feeling right now about the passing of Michael Jackson. As someone that grew up listening to his music and other artists who were influenced by him, his work served as the background music to many of my memories. Regardless of what happened in his personal life, I hope that people remember him for his talent and his ability to unite people regardless of race, age or language through his music.

I will be tearing up a dance floor tonight in celebration of his life and I know I will not be the only one.

Rest In Peace, Michael Jackson!

Maker Faire was pretty awesome. Robots! Steampunk! Motorized cupcake bikes! Life-sized Mousetrap! Am I going back next year? Hell yeah!

More Maker Faire pictures

Last weekend I went to Yosemite with Judy, AJ, Aimee, Mitch, Ben and Wei-Ling. Realized two things: 1. The only thing preventing me from being more of a hardcore camper is my inability to function properly without a daily shower. (I paid $5 for on the second day we were there and jumped into one the moment I got home on Sunday.) 2. Judy's planning/organizing skills are second to none!

Besides being slightly damp all weekend due to the rain, Yosemite was beautiful and it was pretty awesome to get out of the norm with a group of people I'm usually indoors with (as in sewing or cosplaying). I hadn't been there since I was 6 or 7, so everything was entirely new to me. We rode bikes around the main valley floor, hiked up to a couple different waterfalls, had a picnic by a stream and had two different meals in the rain. Judy also revealed the wonders of a Dutch Oven with apple cobbler, cherry cobbler and this uber-omlette breakfast thing!

I'll be the first to admit I'm a concrete jungle kind of girl, but this whole outdoors thing on occasion is pretty sweet.

More Yosemite photos

Originally posted on elel.vox.com

HCC at Fanime 2009

By the way, you should really get on over to mognetcentral's LJ to see the photoshoot we did with her in our Le Chevalier D'Eon costumes.

Originally posted on elel.vox.com

In more ways than one.

Aw yeah.

Originally posted on elel.vox.com

Take a picture

Yesterday the Zigster and I headed out to the old hometown to stomp around Mare Island Naval Shipyard, one of the victims of the widespread base closures that happened during the early/mid-90s.

Since it's been closed they've gotten several businesses and agencies to move in and even developed a chunk of area for residential use. However, a large majority is home to several decaying buildings that used to be filled with the hustle and bustle of a busy naval base.

The area brought back a lot of memories for me. My Dad worked there for the majority of my life growing up and it was always kind of this nebulous place in my imagination. It's where my Dad would disappear to early every weekday and was the cause of him not being able to talk about work much. Mare Island did a lot stuff with nuclear submarines for a time, so there were a lot of projects my Dad was involved in that were top secret.

Accompanied by my Obaa-chan, I learned how to swim there in its overchlorinated pool (and almost drowned once... ha). I went to birthday parties at its bowling alley. I spent many a Sunday morning grumbling along while my parents went grocery shopping at the Commissary. Later on after it had closed, I used its empty streets to learn how to drive with my Dad.

So Zignormous and I wandered around and did our first jaunt in "urban exploration". We took pictures like tourists of everything and anything we thought was interesting, climbed up precarious ramps and stairs, wandered through a burned building, left footprints through dust covered floors, stepped on broken glass and braved strong gusts of wind on rooftops. Needless to say, it was hella fun!

Zigizzle took some awesome photos which you can see here. I seemed to keep up a theme of empty chairs and/or texture with mine. Here's some favorites:

Originally posted on elel.vox.com

New Arrival

Nevermind the fact that I feel like I just got run over by a dump truck, or that at one point while waiting for the inauguration to start I lost feeling in both of my feet because of the cold, or that I didn't have enough time to pore over the exhibits at the Newseum...

Just being there, within arm's reach of millions of people all celebrating a historic event, made this an amazing trip. I laughed, I cried, I shivered (a lot) and it was worth every penny, every mouth-gaping yawn of exhaustion, every sore-foot step.

Thankfully, my gloves did not prevent me from taking a ton of photos which you can check out on my Flickr. Once I figure out how to edit some of the video I took I'll upload that as well.

It was amazing and I would do it all over again in a heartbeat!

Originally posted on elel.vox.com

Barack is the Future

Originally posted on elel.vox.com

Instead of packing for Washington D.C., my roommates and one of my friends are doing this:

HALP.

Originally posted on elel.vox.com

New year coming up, so I'd like to leave you all with a few wise words on how to bring in 2009. Now, most of you are already familiar with the phrase, "Rock out with your cock out." But I've found this to be a hard thing to really own because, obviously, I'm missing a key part to rock out with. Inserting "imaginary" before "cock", while useful, totally brings the punch of the phrase down a few notches.

So, to my ladies in the building who are ready to make 2009 shine the like the brightest star, six key words for you:

Jam out with your clam out!

Let's do this shit right. Happy new year, folks!

Originally posted on elel.vox.com

A couple of weekends ago, in celebration of my girl Anne Marie's 30th birthday, a group of us headed out to Vegas for some drinkin', dancin', and foodin'. I'll refrain from writing much about it and just link you to our Flickr galleries. You'll notice that my gallery primarily consists of shots of inanimate objects. The roommate's gallery is a lot of cute in the club and we're drunk action. And the homeslice's gallery is lots of funny pictures of her sister on the dancefloor.

We stayed at the Wynn for ridiculously cheap and got to check out the new Encore hotel (the Wynn's offshoot) the day it opened. Pretty swank! The economic downturn is hitting Vegas pretty hard, so I'm still questioning the judgement of whomever decided to plow forward with the opening of the new spot. However, if any of you are thinking of Vegas in January the Wynn's rates drop even lower for the entire month. Seriously, I'll never want to stay at another hotel in Vegas again after the service we got there. Although I was a baller on a budget they made me feel like I was just...

BALLIN'!

Originally posted on elel.vox.com

We had our version of a white elephant gift exchange today at work. Guess what I stole from my coworker?

Not for Food Use

And this is what I contributed to the pile. Inflatable boobs, cat ear headband, fake pigtails and a really ugly sailor collar. I love Daiso.

Originally posted on elel.vox.com

Last weekend Zigariffic, Put-a-Lydia-on-It, Kimportant and I steampunked it up at the Dickens Fair in San Francisco. La Legion Fantastique declared it Steampunk Day at the fair and, of course, C.R.U.D. had to represent (even if it was only three of us).

The fair was pretty dope! Lots of things to see, eat, drink, buy and lots of people decked out in their period finery. Tons of folks in character, which meant a) all the gentlemen were tipping their hats to the ladies (awwww), b) all the chimney sweeps were wandering around drunk and reciting dirty limericks and c) the girls and I got hit on... a lot. I didn't catch it initially, but Lydiabolical said that one older gentlemen, after checking out my phonograph gun, stated "Deadly, but not as deadly as a lovely woman."

Seriously, guys, the most action I get nowadays is when I dress up in dorky clothes. This is my life.

Anyway, moving on...

La Legion Fantastique sponsored a costume contest with a bunch of awesome prizes. Lydiamante and I figured we'd give it a shot (they were giving out these pretty cool certificates to anyone that signed up) and what do you know... I won something!

A really cool something, actually! I figure it'll be a key element for my next steampunk costume.

It's a radio!

It was pretty awesome in that they "matched" a lot of their prizes with the characters that people were trying to portray. For instance, besides me getting this radio kit, a ship captain got a miniature brass replica of an underwater diver's helmet (the Nemo Award) and a mother/son explorer duo got two tickets to the Academy of Sciences.

None of us had a camera, but I yoinked these photos from one of the Legion's Flickrs, a fellow who went by the name Captain Robur. JoeJohnson has more photos from the day here as well.

They had us introduce ourselves in character on stage which thankfully wasn't so bad because we had all downed absinthe cocktails prior. I basically said I was Empress Elspeth Bustledomme's hired gun. Aw yeah.

Originally posted on elel.vox.com

It's a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 and it's basically awesome. I haven't figured everything out about it yet, but here's a few shots I took while geeking over it's crazy macro setting. Fair warning that thanks to this bad boy I'll be pic-spamming you all much more often than before!

The camera comes with a bunch of the usual scene modes that most point and shoots have nowadays with a few extras like Pin Hole, Film Grain and (MySpace) Self Portrait. Ha. Actually, those might be included in new point and shoots now, but since I haven't bought a new camera since...ohh... 2002, then I wouldn't know!

Big thanks to Zigadocious, my gadget guru extraordinaire and financial planner, for helping me acquire this awesome thing!

Originally posted on elel.vox.com

Excellent, excellent show

Taking a vacation day + round trip flight to LA + two tickets for the MUCC show at House of Blues = TOTALLY WORTH IT.

Bonus: I think they got some new fans out of my friends!

There's binkxy who graciously allowed me to crash at her place (again), Tim (in the "why do we look like a couple" picture), die_sama in a "Whoa, blast from the past!" moment, and fmousekawitz on a Pacquiao tip.

Originally posted on elel.vox.com

"We have one of those too!"

My cousin in the Philippines, who undoubtedly has heard from my visiting parents that I am a huge Obama supporter, just sent me pictures of this guy out there with an uncanny resemblance to #44.

This literally made me LOL.

Originally posted on elel.vox.com