More Costumes from ComicCon

Old school Cylons. They wouldn't let me take a photo of my niece with them, and went into the exhibit hall right after I asked. I'm sure that it was just a coincidence and they had important business.










Bat-villains. Lots of those, actually, including an awesome Ceasar Romero style Joker with an fabulous purple brocade suit. Who I didn't manage to get with my camera.











Four huddling Indianas, with one Willi and one Marion.

















Power Girl posing with my niece, who shall remain anonymous, but was dressed as film X-Man, Rogue.

Costumes from ComicCon

Many people dressed in costumes. An astonishing range of subjects too. The most numerous, The Joker. Next most, Indiana Jones. Also lots of manga/anime characters.

Here's a few:


I'm guessing some dude from 300, though I've still not seen the movie.




















I have no idea, but I'm loving the detail on this costume.





















Ash, how we love you.


















Is the skirt the correct Wonder Woman bottom? I remember Linda Carter's outfit wasn't a skirt, but almost all of the Wonder Women at the Con wore a skirt.

Love the Phoenix costume, too. I guess the middle one is Alice from Resident Evil? Not sure, but if you know please tell.

San Diego Convention Center

San Diego Convention Center is 'uge! I took a panorama of it, and here's one of those photos. This is from the first full day, Thursday.













This second image is from the last day of the Con, Sunday, as we waited for the trolley.

One of the days, Saturday, the trolley was so full that we had to ride on the steps at the door, which technically you're not supposed to do.

Sea World Part Two

On the second day for Sea World, we left the house quite a bit earlier, but we still (sniff) missed the flamingo parade. The first show we saw was Shamu "Believe," which, while slightly cheesy with its inspirational message, still had some good tricks. In the best trick, the trainer rides the Orca's nose while it jumps many feet out of the water, at which point the trainer leaps off and into the water right before the whale does.










They also did a few beaching tricks, and one time they had a small boy feed the whale some fish and scratch it. We sat in the "soak zone" but too far up to get wet, even through the "shamu, shamu" chanting.

After the "Believe" show, we went to see the dolphin show. I kept my camera in my purse, unfortunately, because only my feet got wet and the the dolphins did some really good tricks.


During one of the tricks, a helper from the audience "fell" into the tank and got the dolphins to carry her around. She's a trainer, but it was still pretty funny and I wish I'd gotten photos.

Apologies

We had a wonderful trip to San Diego, but not much free time, especially after the Con started. I'm sorry for not posting some of the wonderful (and occasionally scary) costumes. Also, I met Joss Whedon.

Sea World Part One

Did you know that going to Sea World at 1 in the afternoon probably isn't the best plan? And that not only do you pay from $51-80 for a ticket, depending on the options that you choose, but that parking costs an additional $12?

We saw the sea lion show first, and it was okay. A little tamer than I would have liked, but cute. This shot is of Clyde and his trainer goofing off while they're supposed to be marching. I didn't get a photo of the most awesome part of the show. The trainer says she's thirsty, and a trained river otter comes out from backstage walking on it's hind feet and gives her a soft drink.











We decided to get a two-day pass (even though we only planned to go one day) because it included a behind the scenes tour. Only seven people showed up for that tour, so our guide didn't even use her microphone. Her name was Keleigh.* Keleigh took us to see the newest dolphin of the park and her mom. I didn't get a good photo of them, unfortunately. According to our guide, the little dolphin hasn't learned how to stop swimming yet, but she has advance to the turning while swimming phase.

The moray eels here are in a tank covered with an acrylic plate so you can take a photo that looks like you're touching them.









Also, Sea World rescues all kinds of animals. They frequently rehabilitate seals, sea lions, elephant seals, birds like macaws and parrots, dolphins and whales, and also turtles.

This is, I think, a seal. Any of the animals that can be released back into the wild are released. One exception to this is manatees, because they are, according to Keleigh, dumber than a box of rocks. They will get themselves tangled in a net seven days in a row without remembering that they maybe shouldn't go near the stringy thing with holes.











Every day when the park opens, the staff allow some of the flamingos to walk around the park. They call it the Flamingo Parade. Unfortunately we were too late and missed the parade this morning, but we got to see those flamingos in their pen yesterday.

While we were there two or five of the birds started squabbling, hitting each other with their beaks and making really loud noises. Sort of like brothers and sisters.








*Like SanDeE*, no one will ever spell her name right.

More Zoo Photos

This giraffe family has a relatively new member there in the back. I think our tour guide said he's only a few months old.
They stayed together while we looked at them as another larger giraffe chewed on the metal of their enclosure.

















We saw both Timon here and Pumbaa while at the zoo. The warthogs and other pigs were the animals not hiding in caves. Only Timon of his group stayed above ground.

















We had already been at the zoo for a while and so didn't go see the apes, but this guy got the closest to the glass of any of the monkeys that we saw. I tried to take a video on my camera but apparently I don't know how to do that. Oh well.

At the Zoo

We spent five hours at the San Diego Zoo on Monday. It's bloody 'uge! We didn't get there until around noon, so a lot of the animals had already gone through their active period.

Brad and Aldrea and I sat on the top of the double decker bus for a tour of the zoo, and Brad got sunburned. Through his shirt.

Aldrea and I got a tiny bit pink, even more so yesterday at Sea World.

This lynx had some friends in his cage, two of whom did some mutual grooming.










This is the last image that I took at the zoo. The stripes on these zebras were so clean looking, like the painter had just removed his tape.

We're off to Sea World to catch some of the stuff we missed yesterday, so more later.

Animals!

Going to the zoo! Photos later. That is all.

The Bay

My niece, who has chosen the name Aldrea for this blog, and I just went down to the water. Here is a photo of the house where we're staying:













Here is a view of the boats in the bay from the living room patio:




When she put her feet in the water to see how cold it is, she startled a ray and it swam a little bit away from her. It took me a long time to see it, and I would have taken a photo but it blended right into the sand. And, then it buried itself so neither of us could see it.





We're having a wonderful leisurely time so far. Though we did go out for a burger and hit two restaurants where we couldn't eat. The first, Sandbar, doesn't admit under 21, and the second, Pacific Beach Bar and Grill, doesn't serve burgers at 12:15, only brunch buffet until 1.




.







So, instead we went to Fatburger.

We're Here!

We're here in San Diego! It's beautiful, and the weather has been nothing but awesome. We arrived at our rental house and the bay is so peaceful. I think that choosing Mission Bay instead of Mission Beach was the right choice, it's calm and not nearly as loud and raucous as the beach, and it's only a short walk across the street to get to the beach.

I'll try to upload some photos later of both the bay, the beach and the house. I think we're going to go down the street and check out the amusement park called Belmont park. But first, lunch.

Bad Poetry

Want to read some really bad poetry? Come on, all the cool kids are doing it.
I've only gotten one submission, so I posted one of my poems from creative writing in high school.

Go and laugh, you know you'd love to laugh at a bad poem about fairies. I mean, faeries.
I was so proud of my ability to rhyme, too.

Leaving for San Diego Soon

We leave for San Diego on Saturday. So far, I don't really know what we'll be doing when not at ComicCon, but probably the zoo, and maybe Seaworld and maybe LegoLand.

I bought some touristy books and one of those awesome pop-out maps. I've bought those for almost every place that I've been. All the overseas ones anyway, except for Nice.

They've posted the entire schedule for the con finally, so if you're interested you can see it here.

I was pretty excited about the autograph area, too, because the first four people listed were:
Katey Sagal
Lindsey Wagner
Richard Hatch
Erik Estrada

Now, last year they had Kelli Moroney, who I would love to meet.

Here's a photo of the view from where we'll be staying:














I'll be trying to blog while we're there, so stay tuned. My brother Brad will be bringing his laptop, so if he's not using it I guess that I will be.

Saturday with Cletus and Chloe

I hope you had a Happy Fourth! Poor me, no fireworks this year.

Went to Useless* on Saturday to hang out by my sister Chloe's pool. It was DAMN HOT, so I spent a good deal of time on the couch inside, mostly because I didn't feel like swimming.

I forgot to bring a camera, so have no photos from this particular holiday. That kinda sucks, but I'll remember next time.

My sister's about 11 months pregnant with a girl. She's naming the baby after my mom, but with a rather unusual middle name. The baby's name will be Mary "I'll kick your Damn Ass" Smith, (or whatever I decide their last name is this month.)

Next week we'll have a baby shower. I'm in charge of the cake. Have I said that I hate baby showers lately? Wedding/bridal showers too. Not my thing, especially the pastel colors, stupid games and all about the childbirth experiences of each and every woman there. Which, don't get me wrong, I totally respect these women and their lives and their stories, but I'm not sure that I really need to know which of the women I know have had an episiotomy (since I've already heard about it four times.)


*AKA Euless, a suburb of Dallas that's usually grouped with its sister cities Hurst and Bedford in conversation.
As in, "Hey, I was in HEB this weekend visiting relatives."

Thursday's Cat

Pretty and with a sense of humor. How often does that happen?
Sadly, his brother has no sense of humor. This is why he gets all worked up running around the living room and bites me when I try to pet him.

Sketchblog

I was looking at blogger's Blogs of Note and from there went to Sketchblog, by Rob Sheridan. He's done a great and irreverent digital painting of cereal mascots, and also a really detailed how-to.

One of the reasons to love this series of tubes.

Same Bunny?

This might be the same bunny, but now he's in the front yard. The cats were fascinated with him all day, and wouldn't leave the window. The first photo that I tried with my mom's camera (a Nikon D50) had the flash bouncing off the window. That was a great photo. (sarcasm)









The next few I tried different settings but the camera wanted to focus on the leaves of the bush instead of the rabbit. Finally got a few, but only two good enough to post.

Anniversary

Today's the anniversary of my mom's death. She died in the hospital one year ago today. I remember it was pouring rain most of the days in June last year, and every day that we visited her in the hospital we brought our umbrellas.*

The day of the surgery they told us it went well. Maybe it did, but she didn't get better, only worse. One of the techs at the hospital who took her out of the room for some tests told us she'd tried to slap someone the day after the surgery, so we all thought she was improving. I feel like if I only knew what had gone wrong, that I'd feel better. Intellectually I do know that's not true.

I wish that I could talk about her without crying. Not because I'm ashamed of or mind the crying, but because it's so much harder to get out all the things that I feel I need to say about her and how much I loved her if I keep interrupting myself.

I used to ask her to tell me stories about her life before she had her four kids. Most of the time she'd say something about how it wasn't all that interesting, but she'd tell me a story anyway.

My dad found me reading one of her diaries a while back, and asked me why I felt the need to read them. It took me a little while to formulate the answer to that one, but now I know. I can't get her to tell me any more stories, and reading her words is a little like that. Being able to listen to her stories again.

Anyway, if I believed in the afterlife I might take comfort in that thing people like to say to you after someone you love has died. You know, "She's in a better place, she's looking down at you now." But I don't.

My mother's legacy exists in the people that she touched, and the children that she raised. And we're all good, because of her. We're good, and I'm glad that she knew that we loved her.


*If you know anything about North Texas in the summertime, you know the odds of rain for the entire month of June. It even rained on the 4th of July last year.

My New Bunny

I originally bought a house because I had some annoying neighbors. Yippy dogs on one side and an idiot with a very loud car stereo and a penchant for Poison (in 2004!) on the other side. So I looked in the same neighborhood as my relatives for a house that I could afford. Turns out that I really couldn't afford it, but that's another story.

I found a cute little three bedroom house, about 1300 square feet and got a loan (though, let's face it, everyone got a loan in 2004) and moved. It was great, until the dog started barking on one side and the neighbor on the other side with the really loud car stereo worked on his car at all hours with his music blasting.

I know, getting to the point. So the neighbor with a dog moved out about a month ago. Yay, not as much barking! Unfortunately the dog dug a big trench under a part of my fence. So yesterday I went out to look at my horribly maintained backyard and had a need to trim the dead branches of the crepe myrtle RIGHT THEN. And something moved in the brush at my feet.

I looked a little closer and saw the tiniest bunny ever right next to my elm tree. I told my sister months ago that I don't have bunnies, and I didn't. She called me a liar, but I know that they not only did not have a way into the backyard, but I had a horrible large loud dog right next door to scare them away.

I took about six photos but in most of them the auto-focus chose the leaves instead of the fur. This one turned out the best. And he's only about four inches long.

Cicada Killers

There's a very large wasp here (probably other places too) called a cicada killer. The female wasp paralyzes a cicada with her sting and lays an egg on it in a burrow. The egg hatches and the larva feeds on the cicada.

With all the noise around here lately, I'm wishing for a few more cicada killers. Unfortunately for me, each wasp only kills between 10 and 20 cicadas, which won't help me stave off insanity.

I was over at my Dad's today and caught one digging her burrow. Maybe I can get some closer photos tomorrow.