I listen to slacker radio quite a bit when I am putzing around the internet or cleaning the house. I listen to the exact same station every time. (Which happens to be the alternative chill radio station.) In all the time I have listened to this station I can not really remember hearing the same song twice, I am sure they repeat stuff but it's not so frequent that I mentally noted the song. However this week I have heard the Kid A version of "Idiotque" by Radiohead 4 times and "It's Too Late" by The Streets 3 times. Crazy thing is that is two of my favorite songs.  Odd, no?

pika_loli made a bodyline order and our goodies arrived while I was still in the DFW. Oh. Em. Gee. I am so in slub with my new loli jumper and my Haruhi Suzumiya cosplay! I plan on wearing the cosplay as my halloween costume at Voodoo this year. SQUEEE!

As usual I misplaced my iphone. It is just not a day if I don't lose my phone in my house, the mini, I have left it in bathroom stalls or even in the case of AKon this year on a public transportation system. One would think that with a long history of misplacing my phone I would have learned from my mistakes. Clearly not. 

I had it with me in the kitchen while I was making breakfast tea since I was ON the phone with stepladder so clearly NOT in the kitchen. I had gone into my bathroom to brush teef and braid my hair. Nope. Not in there either. Yes at this point I could try calling the wretched device but this house is like 4000 square feet. What fucking good is calling the damn thing if it is on vibrate. :sigh: I head to the bedroom to see Voodoo pug pouting by the bed. I place his double stuffed pug butt on the bed and proceed the iphone hunt. Nothing. I give up. I decide to enjoy my breakfast tea and play on Mac Attack for a bit. Then I hear the muffled tones of "Nikopol" and I am giddy because my iphone is in my bedroom! But where?! I am looking on the night stand. On the book shelf. Seemingly every where. You know where it was? Voodoo was laying on top of it, and I might add he was not the least bit bothered by the vibrating and music emitting from his belly. It seems I had tossed the phone on the bed at some point and could not find it when I looked because a pug was zzzzzing on top of it. Typical AJ. 

New rule when I lose my phone. Check under the pug. 

Dear LJ, 

I am sorry I forget you for months at a time. I will try and not treat you so poorly in the future. 

Love, 
AJ

 I am procrastinating. I need to be washing the mini. The weather is nice and it won't take long yet here I sit NOT washing the mini. Maybe after lunch. 

Have mechacon tomorrow. Yay! I will be driving a little under an hour to Lafayette. I got the camera and lenses packed and I am ready to get my nerd on tomorrow. Of course there will be shopping. There is always shopping. There are a few panels I would like to sit in on, so I am going to have to roll out around 9:30am. Not early by any means, but I still hope there is a drive-thru Starbucks somewhere along my route. Not sure if I will drive out again on Sunday. I got a weekend pass (well worth the extra money to not wait in a line) but I might get all my anime nerd fix in one day. I will be sure to upload all my pictures to flickr and post the link. 

Okay. That's it. I am going to wash mini now. As soon as I am done with that I can shower, get mani/pedi and then come home and play with all my new floss/thread before work. Hobby Lobby has thread on sale for .35. I bought 18 bucks worth. It's so pretty! 

 Yay! I finished my pillows. Well I finished them 3 or 4 days ago, but today I am posting pictures. 

As I said in my last post I picked a simple pattern from Sublime Stitching for my inagerual project. Of course it helped it was a sweet little kokeshi doll pattern. She looks so cute how could I not want to put her on a pillow!?

I had to go to both Hancock and Michael's to get everything I needed. Yom had most everything in the craft boxes but I needed a water soluble pen to trace the pattern on to the fabric. Thanks to the help from pika_loli  I was able to navigate the confusing (to me) waters of getting pattern from computer to paper to fabric. 



First pillow. You can see I had some trouble tracing the pattern. I'm awesome. 



All done! There are some differences between the pillows. The first one I was working out what type of stitching I was comfy with and how much thread to use for the ni ni part. Yes they should be uniform but I am still learning so pppffffffftttt. I feel like they turned out pretty good. The best part is that I made something with my own hands and I am going to use them on my bed. I don't like the idea of making something and shoving it in a box. 


Next up is some smiling sushi kitchen towels and cocktail napkins for some friends. 


 

 After digging through Yom's craft boxes (there was 4 and they were not small!) I found basically everything I need to start my first embroidery project. I downloaded a free pattern from Sublime Stitching and figured it was something for my skill level. 

Going to the place the kokeshi doll pattern on a pillow with the words "nini time" below her. I am going to use hot pink, red and black. WIll post pics of progress. 

 I have started to learn how to use a sewing machine. It's been a on/off thing between school and work. Once I start I like to sit at the machine for a few hours, but it seems I can't find hours in a row to set aside time. Except at night. I keep the whole house up with the machine so it's been making me a sad pug. 

However after having a craft chat with Yom I thought maybe I can work on my stitching/embroidery skills. Yom can help because she is pretty damn good at it herself. I have some epic hand embroidered baby blankets and x-mas stockings she has made me. It's crafting I can do while in bed and is quiet. I can also take it with me to work on between classes this fall. Plus I would love to be able to give everyone handmade gifts this Christmas, and this will add to my short but growing list of things I can make. 

Sublime Stitching has some very fun and not so traditional patterns. I have some stuff to take care of before I start on this, but I already have my heart set on the sushi bar and the julie west series 3. I think I might get one of the starter kits here in a few weeks.  Urbanthreads has tons of stuff that seem to be on my skill level and I can just download a few for a dollar to try. 

I would like to find some funky simple bumble bee patterns to do some pillows for myself. So I am on the lookout for that.  

And in the future I would love to be able to put something like  this or this on Voodoo's or Bourbons' dog bed pillow. I have been trying to find very gothic or skull orientated fabric for the pugs beds so this might be the solution and good practice since you know it's a dog bed and I am not going to be super picky about how it turns out. 

 Ugh. I am suffering from a mild case of teh plague. I am eating vitamin C like it is candy and drinking loads of water. I have to be 100% for next weekend. It is the mega epic awesome NOLA weekend with some of my friends.

Heck I am not even working out because I don't want to chance wearing myself out. Which is kinda a drag because I just stared getting back into the workout routine. I was up to 5-6 times a week then after the Memorial Day/A-Kon trip I really turned into a slug pug. 

However the plus side of getting teh plague is I can lay in bed with the pugs and no one thinks me lazy. They just consider it an important part of me getting better. I am trying to decide if I want to start Darker Than Black disc 1 or watch Tokyo Zombie. I guess I should ask the pugs. 

Both bootleg dvd's are courtesy of bigpikachica 

Voodoo Experience line-up was announced today.  I almost wept for joy when I saw The Flaming Lips were going to be there! While I am excited and pretty pumped about a number of the artists that will be there I am no where near the level of insane that I was over last year line-up. Hard to beat getting to see NIN, Ghostland Observatory, The Old 97's, Mars Volta and  Thievery Corporation in one weekend. 

I swear if you know where to look you can see myself and Shanna in the front row rocking our sunglasses and feathers.  My god Aaron Behrens can move. I want to be his jeans during this song. 

 I am the crankiest I have ever been today. I feel so massively MEH. It is just one of those days where I feel like a big ass bucket of fail sauce. 
/rant & self pity

Tomorrow I leave for DFW for the weekend. Every year around this time I backstage manage a music festival for one of my most favorite people. I will be spending all day Saturday with a headset glued to my ear and trying not to die from heat exhaustion.  It pays decent and I love that every year I get to watch fireworks with Ace. This trip I hope to get in a few of my fixes.

I have a Baja Grill date with Lolo & Dixie. Of course with Dixie means I get to slub on the cub! Best. Baby. Ever. Ninja noms with bigpikachica  and we get to squeal and plan our Lolita outfits and new cosplay ideas!! I am planning on running by animepop if I get a chance. I have to drive in the general direction to get to hotel and South Fork so I might as well right?! I thought so. Staff meeting. Bleck! Then a noodle bean-goo date with the Bootleg Panda. Lots to do in a very short amount of time. Saturday will be noisy and hot, but there is free ice cream so I will cope. 

So now I will try and crank out a paper for class and pack for the trip. 

Started summer classes this week. As much as I dread driving into Baton Rouge 4 days a week I just could not bring myself to take an entire summer away from school. After all my goal is to finish as quick as possible and get back to DFW. 

iPhone update is being installed on my phone as I type. To be honest I have no idea what is new for 3.0, but I will gladly let iTunes install it for me. 

Bought weekend pass to mechacon today. Won't be dressing up this time. Not nearly as much fun without Pika. 

New Orleans weekend with DFW friends is coming up in a less than a month! It will be extreme debauchery and there is potential for both nudity and jail time. Same time perhaps?

Why is it that every single bathroom stall I chose to enter the latch is broken. No lie. Today I used bathroom at school and then later on while shopping. Both were busted. As a matter a fact I can not remember the last time I picked one that the door locked. By the time I notice I am committed to the stall so I have to lean on the door just right it won't open at some inopportune moment. At this rate I might as well pee in the drain on the floor. 

Sometimes I use the word epic lightly, perhaps on situations that are just simply great but I toss an epic on there. However this past week is not one of the occasions. This was one jam packed wonderful sometimes insane week. The drive there was not so bad, except for the 2 extra stops I had to make to ensure health of my live cargo. I truly hit the ground running. Arrived in the mid-cites in the late afternoon and checked Pika & Ed out on overnight crawfish care. Then off to the movies with my Pops. (We saw Star Trek. I was a mega fan girl.) I stayed the night with close friends Dixie & Chris. We watched the newest episodes of Bleach and I got to snuggle and slub on their baby. He really is the worlds coolest baby.

Next morning was crawfish time! Hooked up with Pops and we made the trek to the lake house and began to prepare the c-dads for comsumption.





No lie these were some big ass crawfish. I asked for meduim or boiling size, but I guess they gave me the "cajun meduim."



We ate till we could eat no more. I love a good crawfish boil and this was a great crawfish boil. We laughed, drank Abita Strawberry Lager, I taught a few people how to peel c-dads and there were also cupcakes so you know I was a happy pug.




We cruised the lake for a bit and enjoyed the view. The clouds were beautful that day. Amazing weather. After my Pops left things get a bit hazy. Let's just say there was a vodka watermelon, New Kids on the Block on the iPod, dancing, we recreated Mardi Gras, ( I tossed beads for the record), and there is a really strong possibility the game wardens saw a bunch of us naked. We think.

Rest of the week was filled with bartending, catching up with friends, another movie date with my Pops and eating Tex/Mex. (I have to get my fill when I visit Texas.) I laid on the floor of Shanna's house and watched movies and ate cupcakes. Next thing I knew it was time for A-kon. We SO got our nerd on. First day we just went and shopped and saw what there was to see. Had a blast, bought tons of loot. Then on one of the trains we on I lost my iPhone. I was on the edge of tears on public transportation and just had to accept it was gone. However through some sort of divine act I was able to get my phone back that night. I have some crazy luck let me tell you. The next day we went super sayian nerd and dressed in full cosplay. It was flipping great. I felt like a rock star and can not wait for the next time we all get to dress up again.



Me and some very cool looking Ikkaku from Bleach.



Just about my favorite picture taken from the weekend. It makes me laugh. All the rest of the pictures are up on my flickr page. Check them out!

So yup EPIC week. I got to get drunk and silly with some of my best friends. I laughed so hard at the lake my abs hurt the next day. I was able to om nom nom little Beckhams feet after his bath and hold him while he snoozed. I spent 2 days in a GIANT hotel full of people who "get me" and understood when why squealed when I saw Master Roshi. My Pops made me a peanut butter sandwich and played video games with me. It made me miss home more than I already do. However I am where I need to be right now and as soon as I get LSU done I am packing up the truck.

This weekend DFW comes to me. It seems shenanigans just follow me.

 Tomorrow on the bright I will be heading to DFW for a 10 day trip. And I am driving. Weird. I switched vehicles with my mom since I need to space for my precious cargo. Somehow I doubt I could fit 100 pounds of live crawfish in the boot of my mini cooper. So Yom gets to enjoy the mini for a week and I get to vroom in the hybrid Escape. As of this moment there are two 120 gallon ice chests, 2 cases of Abita Strawberry Harvest Lager, 8 pounds of crawfish boil and a boat paddle in the back of the Escape. Tomorrow will add the live mudbugs (in the cooler of course), 2 dozen cupcakes, and my luggage See now why the mini was not an option.

I get to dinner and a movie with my Pops tomorrow night as well as get some baby Beckham slubbing. Then crawfish boil on Saturday by the lake. Pool days with Shanna on Sunday and Monday. That is just this weekend. Next week is A-kon. I am going to get my mega nerd on with my favorites nerds Pika and Adam. 

I am waiting on the last load of clothes to dry and I will be finished (finally! ) with my packing. Packing for 10 days is insane. Plus being Texas it could snow next Wednesday. 

I need to honk shoo soon. 7am is going to come early. :groans:

Yeah we drank enough Miller High Life to make the "Naruto face" in the picture with MC Chris. What about it?