The sekrit revealed!

Okay, so now that my friends are married and their big reveal has happened, I can share with you the sekrit project that I talked about a bit. They asked me to make a blue shell from Mario Kart for them to toss in lieu of a garter at their wedding reception. And, as you can see, I did.

Of course, when they first asked me to make this, I had no idea what a blue shell from Mario Kart was. Console video games are not part of my geek universe. But they were able to find pictures, and I just guessed on the parts I couldn't see in said pictures. :)

The finished plushie is pretty sizable. The body is probably around the same size as a football. (When I asked the bride how big to make it, her point of reference was a standard size Quaffle. Geek girls rule. :) ) I don't have any pictures of me holding it for scale, but the wings alone are far bigger than my hands.

The wings also took the longest to design and put together. Each wing had eleven individual tubes of varying sizes, which I then stitched together in clusters to make up the wing shape. I only ended up stuffing the body portion, in an attempt to keep it from being too top heavy. The wings are heavy enough just with yarn content, so they didn't need any more weight!

I wrote down most of the pattern for this as I went, but I haven't typed it up to make it pretty yet. I've got some folks who have offered to beta test it for me, but I'm anxious about figuring out how to describe exactly how I did those wings. It makes sense to me, and I could reproduce them. I just don't know if my explanation will be clear or not.

Anyway, voila! Marvel in the awesome. (And as a shameless plug, when I say I can crochet pretty much anything, I mean it. Please feel free to contact me about weird crochet projects. I like the challenge!)

Blergh...

It's Monday, but it feels like I'm due another weekend already. The weekend wasn't entirely non-stop, but it was enough so that I still could use another few days to feel like I'm well rested.

Stayed in on Friday night and got some crocheting done, which I continued on Saturday. Now if I only had managed to take some pictures, I'd be getting somewhere... :) Saturday night I was also at home, but did silly things like laundry and playing Rock Band 2. That is actually what most of my Saturday nights look like when Jeremy is at D&D. :)

Sunday was another One Hit Wonder game, this time Mutants and Masterminds, run by Jeremy. We had to make our characters in advance, because character creation is difficult. Then on Sunday morning, I realized something neat that I could do with my character, but it involved building a second character. Luckily, I just tweaked one of the book templates, but even the tweaking took longer than I wanted it to. The game was fun, though the rules did tend to bog things down. And the three of us playing really didn't make particularly compatible super heroes, as Craig and I were totally fine with just letting things go, while Thaddeus was more of the true hero type. :) Still, the game was fun, and I didn't get too much crap for not reading superhero comics. :)

Oh, also on Saturday, Jeremy made the mistake of showing me Katamari Damacy. I had heard about this game, and it seemed like the type of game I might enjoy, but no one ever let me play it before. I think I know why. It's addictive. While we were eating lunch on Sunday, Jeremy told me that he was going to play a quick game and then finish working on the Mutants and Masterminds game. My response: "Not if I get to the PS2 before you do." :) The game is thoroughly pointless, but totally fun. It also led to us looking online for action figures from the game, me thinking I could crochet one, and then realizing that Jeremy wanted a version that was about 2 1/2 inches tall. I had to say no then. There ARE some things I can't crochet. :)

The newest toy

Jerome has been wanting an XBox 360 for a while now, and he asked me about it on Friday, when I was sitting at the computer and looking at the program that tracks our finances. It took me a little while to respond to him (not solely because I could barely hear on Friday night, due to issues with landing in Seattle and having sinus troubles), but since he sweetened the deal by promising to give up the XBox and GameCube, I said yes.

So yeah, I brought the XBox to his work on Sunday when I picked him up, and we came home with a 360. (The GameCube went to another of his co-workers yesterday.) So far, I'm not as excited about it as he is, but he did find me a free demo of PacMan. After he played one game, I told him I'd show him how it was done. I couldn't beat the first level either. :)

So yeah, we now have two of the current generation of game systems, with no desire whatsoever for a Wii. Anyway, if we want Nintendo, we can kick it old school. We still have his NES (and like 3 games). :)

Rock gods live here now... :)

So yeah, I picked up Jerome from work yesterday, we picked up Rock Band 2 and dinner, and then went home to rock out. :) Oddly enough, we're pretty darn good at this game so far. It's mainly been me singing and him playing instruments, with an occasional switch to him singing and me playing guitar. I think I need to practice with the guitar though, as I was having a lot of trouble with it. I can consistently get high 90% (if not 100%) on singing, but I was like 50-something percent on guitar. *sigh*

Of course, now this means we have to play like EVERY spare moment, cuz it's new and exciting. So I'd best get some housework done before Jerome gets home from work, or it'll never get done... :)

Right, I'm back.

I was back last night, too, but totally exhausted. I'm also pretty tired now, but I'm alive. :) Couple of super busy busy work days, and running around after work as well.

And Jerome's Game Cube is back... there goes that other alleged free time... :)

Hmmm...

I wanted to write a rant yesterday about comic book to movie adaptations, and why no one can seem to get it right. They never can just stick with the plot, always got to diverge either a little or a lot. However, I wasn't feeling ranty enough to do it, and then in light of Heath Ledger's death yesterday afternoon, I definitely wasn't feeling up to the challenge. (For those who don't understand the connection, Heath Ledger will be The Joker in "The Dark Knight" (new Batman movie) which comes out this summer. They had already completed filming, so it will be his final role.)

So now the focus of my rant has shifted a little bit. There were some very early reports that this was a suicide, brought on by having played such a disturbing character (namely, The Joker). So the comic book genre suddenly is blamed for someone's death. Later reports seem to suggest that a) it may not have been a suicide, and b) that it wasn't just the role of The Joker that may have been preying on his mind. Heath Ledger also recently finished making a movie about Bob Dylan, and he was quoted as saying that the Dylan role had also been rough on him, to the point where he wasn't sleeping well.

I REALLY wish people would not try to blame things like this on comic books, however. That goes for any mass media, really. Movies, video games, music, whatever the case may be, generally speaking aren't going to make a normal average person do something crazy. Generally speaking, if someone does something crazy, they were probably not entirely stable to begin with. The influence of the mass media is not likely to have been the tipping point. Seriously.

I know this isn't the case for everything, but too often mass media becomes the scapegoat. While there are definitely portions of mass media that bother me, even those parts don't necessarily deserve the bad rap that they so often receive.

All this being said, I think that Heath Ledger's death, whatever the cause/impetus, is a tragic event, just as the death of any person would be a tragic event. We just see the tragedy up close and personal when it's a celebrity, whereas when a random person dies, we don't see it as much.

(*steps off soapbox*)

Wednesday is a good day... it means the week is halfway over... yay for Wednesday! :)

Nothing much to report... other than if you mix the "Cappucino" and "Milk Chocolate" flavors of Carnation Instant Breakfast, it tastes kinda like a cold mocha... yummy... but so bad for me... which is probably why it's so yummy! :)

The one game that Gabe has bought for his PS2 continues to amuse him... which is good, seeing as he beat it the day after he bought it. I, on the other hand, am avoiding buying The Sims: Superstar, because I'm afraid that some of the hacked objects that I've downloaded won't work with the game, and I'm not sure I want to play without the hacked objects... :) Cuz I'm lazy, and they make the game so much easier... :) Then again, even if I do get rid of the 4 (or so) blatantly hacked objects, I still can't be absolutely sure that some of the lesser hacked objects might not cause problems... so it's no good, cuz I don't want to give up all of my faerie stuff either! Or the countless skins I've got now... *sigh*...

Okay, back to work...

La la la... nothing exciting going on at the moment... I won my 3rd match now, and then lost my 4th match... *sigh*... I'm really crappy at putting... among other things...

I hate it when it starts getting really muggy and still, but not quite hot enough to turn on the AC... it seems ridiculous to me to turn on the AC before June... maybe even later... though that's probably because my dad was generally against EVER turning the AC on... we need to find an 18" box fan for the living room window... unfortunately, most box fans are 20"... but if we can find one, then we can have a fan in the living room, bedroom, and computer room, which should keep the place decently cool for the next month or so...

Well, I suppose I can accomplish a bit more work before lunch... :)

Yeah, I realized I hadn't posted today... I'm still not feeling well, though it doesn't seem to be allergies now... *sigh*...

Wrestling last night was better, mainly because my prediction was almost true... I knew that Bischoff screwing up so much wasn't going to go completely unnoticed... and, as a side note, Linda McMahon rocks... :) And the Hurricane Helms / Chief Morely match was definitely kewl... :)

For tonight, probably more PS2... I won my 2nd match with my character, and then Gabe stomped me when we played each other... 7 under par... ridiculous!

Too groggy for the Monday Mission... don't you just love spring, and all the allergens that come with it? Gabe has a sore throat, and I have a fuzzy head... I'm doing okay concentrating on my typing for work, but anything that requires much creative thought is pretty sad... it's taking a lot of concentration to type this entry right now... :(

At least it's approaching 2, already, so there's not much work left... still, I'd much rather be at home, playing PS2... this is actually the first video game system that I have ever (partially) had... (partially, cuz it's Gabe's b-day present, a couple of weeks early...) before this, it's all been computers... my dad was a firm believer in getting us to play computer games, rather than shelling out money for a video game system... oh, it sucked mightily when we were kids, but I guess it's okay, in the end... I probably know a lot more about computers than I would have otherwise... :)

But yeah... the funny part is that I play Tiger Woods Golf, of all things... I don't even like golf! But I did decently well when I played it against Gabe and his brother on Christmas, so I keep playing it... I played really awful last night, but at least I made a little money to up my character's stats... the characters you have to start with in the tournament mode SUCK... but somebody has to play it, so we can unlock Hamish for Gabe... so he can play golf in a kilt... :)