I know you’re all just dying to hear about all the crazy adventures Jodi and I have gotten ourselves into over the past few weeks. I don’t know that I can recall all of our wacky exploits, but I’ll take a stab at it.
My vacation was, unfortunately, a working vacation, but I had every intention of getting as much leisure and project-completion in as possible. There were no major emergencies that required I go to the office, luckily, so I had a good deal of opportunity to get that which I wanted to do, done. The back door’s sill has been re-caulked at least partially — at least, where you could see clear under the sill straight to the wood. Amazing bit of engineering on the part of Prestige Homes. We’ll need to pull the siding off and make sure it’s fully sealed now, once the weather warms enough that we won’t destroy said siding. The mildew is removed, the drywall replaced and re-spackled. It needs to be sanded and the trim replaced, and we hope to eventually repaint the kitchen anyway, so I’m not sure if I want to paint that hideous yellow back onto the repaired section of wall, though it could be a problem if that makes that section of the wall look weird once we repaint.
We also worked a considerable amount on Jodi’s snake cage — we need to get shower board for the inside lining, then we have to build a door for it and stain it all before the final assembly. It’s in Mark and Sara’s basement (since they have one) at the moment, with all the trim installed and looking a considerable bit like a good piece of furniture — somewhat to my surprise.
Jodi and I saw Avatar in 3D at the theatres, which was epic, and I hope to put up a complete post about it soon. We’ve also just finished watching Star Trek (the original series) in its entirety (a project started about two months ago I think), have watched a season of Big Bang Theory, and sampled a few episodes of The Mentalist.
We’ve worked on wedding souveniers as well — we’ll be re-labelling tiny corked vials of whiskey with fake Victorian-era poison labels. And we obtained pants to go with my shirt and fedora (yes, fedora), which will serve not only as my wedding outfit, but also as a part of the costume I’ll be wearing to CONvergence. A friend of Jodi’s is taking care of the vest, made out of material to match the corset she’s making for Jodi. The whole thing will be pretty epic.
And I’ve been blogging not nearly as much as I should. They say practice makes perfect… and I’m feeling out of practice. That, and I had a stretch of time when I could barely bring myself to write anything. I know this is entirely a self-driven motivation, so I shouldn’t get down on myself for failing to live up to my own self-imposed post-a-day schedules, but we are all our own worst critics.
I’ll try to write something proper up on Avatar tomorrow, as time permits.
So how was your holiday period? How did you celebrate, and how did you spend your vacation time (if any)?
We did the normal holiday stuff over a couple of days, I already wrote up what we do over on my own blog (http://bitchspot.jadedragononline.com/2009/12/21/have-a-merry-secular-christmas/), so I won’t repeat myself.
Hope you two have fun at CONvergence. For the first time in about 30 years, we’re not going to hit San Diego Comicon this year, it’s just too much of a zoo and not fun anymore, we’re probably going to take a run to Westercon, since it’s reasonably local and my wife and kids have never been. That’s not until July though, so it’s a long time until we get in our vacation, but still, the holidays have been fun.
This’ll be our first convention together, my first ever; Jodi’s been to a Star Trek convention a while back though. So it’s still relatively fresh for both of us. Fresh enough to serve as our honeymoon, anyway. 😀
Watching MST3k for Christmas = win, by the way.
The Star Trek convention was back when I was …. I don’t even remember how old I was maybe 7? maybe.
I was young enough to not really understand the concept of ‘Original Trek’ because I had only known TNG. As a result, when I had my turn to sit in the ‘Original Captain’s chair that they used on set!!!’ I was both disappointed that it looked nothing like Captain Picard’s chair and highly confused. Of course, now I think it’s totally cool that I got to sit in that chair.
We’ve been going to conventions forever, I’ve been doing it probably since I was 7, my wife maybe around the same, I’m not sure. Both of our kids have been going since they were 5-6 and they love it. So long as you have a good time, conventions can be fantastic. The reason we’re no longer going to SDCC is because it’s no longer fun, it’s frustrating.
My advice, just go and have fun, don’t get overwhelmed, don’t think you have to see or do everything, pick out the things you want to do most and go for it. At a good convention, there’s no excuse for downtime if you don’t want it, there are things to do 24 hours a day and by the end, you’ll be exhausted, but it’s a good exhaustion and you’ll be ready to go back again next year.