Tired. Hungry. Out of ammo.

As my house has reached critical mass, it's time sell off some costuming items. All prices are listed in US dollars and include US Priority Mail shipping costs to addresses in the US only. International buyers are welcome -- just put your location in a comment and I'll calculate additional shipping costs to get it to you.

If you don't want priority shipping, I can lower the prices a little bit. Contact me at weirdnessmagnet at yahoo dot com or comment below to discuss.

I accept PayPal only. Thank you!

(P.S. Super-special thanks to silverstah for assisting with the photography!)

( Kikiyou from Inuyasha - $50 )
( Bleach ensemble - $60 )
( White haori (shirt) - Large - $25 )
( Rurouni Kenshin - Purple haori (shirt) - Large - $25 )
( Rurouni Kenshin - Gray hakama (pants) - Large - $25 )
( Reversible Renaissance bodice in teal and black - Small - $20 )
( Black suede leather bodice with peplum - Small - $20 )
( Black leather bodice without peplum - Medium - $20 )
( White cotton Renaissance chemise - Large/XL - $15 )
( ON HOLD - Reversible Renaissance bodice in floral and gold )

I celebrated Spring by hemming two pairs of trousers, three pajama bottoms and finishing the new pink-skull pj bottoms I started a mere week ago. All of the above turned out nicely. I love my skull jammies. I am so going to have to make a robe to match.

In other news, Slade got the full-ride scholarship to Wake Forest's divinity school, so she's going to be a Deacon come fall! I'm so thrilled for her! They're also giving her a stipend that will cover her rent for the year. She'll have to work enough to pay her other living expenses but that's it.

Her moving to Winston-Salem means I may be getting her cat. Spenser isn't getting along with one of her dogs and I offered to take him off her hands. Chances are he'll try to eat Scribble or something, so when we officially invite Spenser home I plan to telecommute to keep the bleeding to a minimum. Also means I have to clean the bejeezus out of this house and find yet another spot for a cat box.

SP2 is due back from his week-long motorcycle ride at some point tonight. He's been texting me all week threatening to never come back, to which I replied "bite me" and to bring me a t-shirt from one of the voodoo shops in New Orleans. I'm now addicted to text messaging and it's completely his fault. I still don't know how to make all the punctuation on my phone work, so I either need to read the manual or ask a 10-year-old to show me how.

Links gakked from twistedchick. Good reading and futher proof that LJ is out to get us.

http://stewardess.insanejournal.com/227815.html
http://stewardess.insanejournal.com/228035.html
http://stewardess.insanejournal.com/228245.html
http://cannot-find-me.livejournal.com/954.html

The short version: LJ's various owners are persecuting writers and artists. What may have started as a CYA move to protect themselves from lawsuits over questionable content involving minors has evolved into a flat-out Big Brother-esque old fashioned witch hunt against anything the powers that be find "objectionable." Which they -- once again -- are refusing to define.

I'm enough of a fascist to agree that covering one's ass from lawsuits to keep the entire system from having to shut down is a necessary evil. Altering statistics is not a necessary evil, and I'm not having it.

So. I don't have time to write much these days and all my stories are archived on my personal website, so I'm less immediately affected than some. But I'm going to take a page out of 's journal and migrate to Insane Journal full-time.

A lot of my RL friends are on LJ and it's the main way I keep up with their lives, and until my LJ paid account expires at the end of this year I'll still read their journals and use LJ to post. But I'm going to move everything to Insane Journal and gradually move away from LJ.

If you're already here, come say hi. I'm glad to be here.

Due to work insanity (that I have posted WAY too much about lately and special thanks to those who still read my journal after all that) I have not been able to go to the gym. Five a.m. in the really quite cold and dark to go sweat is just not happening lately. I started looking for a small exercise bike I could keep in my home office.

Craigslist wasn't much help, but Play It Again Sports had one that I liked and was within my budget, so I get to pick it up Wednesday. I requested they assemble it because I don't assemble stuff well but that means I have to find someone with a vehicle large enough to get it home. I could always rent a van, but that seems like an awful lot of trouble to cart an exercise bike three miles from the store to my house. Office Manager has an Explorer and if it's running I'll ask to borrow it.

manticoran pointed us all to the best version of the 12 Days of Christmas EVAH, performed by Indiana Univerity's a cappella choir Straight No Chaser.

The two categories I thought I'd be high in, I'm not. Looks like I'm a more well-rounded lost cause than I thought.

Greed:	High
Gluttony:	Medium
Wrath:	High
Sloth:	High
Envy:	High
Lust:	Medium
Pride:	High

The Seven Deadly Sins Quiz on 4degreez.com

Just a gentle reminder that Daylight Savings Time ends NEXT Sunday, November 4 at 2:00 AM in the U.S. Yes, usually it ends the last weekend in October, but an act of Congress extended it.

So no resetting the clocks yet. Next weekend.

Just a gentle reminder that Daylight Savings Time ends NEXT Sunday, November 4 at 2:00 AM in the U.S. Yes, usually it ends the last weekend in October, but an act of Congress extended it.

So no resetting the clocks yet. Next weekend.

- It's clear that I have officially turned into an SGA geek because I found a thing I want for Christmas, and for once it's not (just) an iPod.

- It's also clear that I have become a law geek because Amazon is telling me to "treat myself" by buying Bankruptcy and Article 9: 2006 Statutory and I considered it.

- Death Note Vol. 1 anime comes out in just over a month. I'm debating whether to pre-order and spend the holidays wrapped in a blanket eating apples and watching Light and L's game of cat and also cat, or if I should ask for it for Christmas with the understanding that if someone doesn't get it for me then everyone is gonna die.

- Despite my best efforts, I didn't make it to the fabric store this weekend to get material for my new skirt pattern. I've got 2 fabric stores less than a mile from my office. I'll try again tomorrow.

- Despite my other best efforts, I didn't manage to get fired from my job this week, which was a distinct possibility. I'm still trying to decide if this is the Universe being kind or the Universe pasting a "kick me" sign on my back.

- There is a pile of laundry on my bed that needs folding before I can sleep tonight.

- I'll need a flamethrower to clean my office.

- I have been listening to Dalar Mendhi all weekend and he won't stop singing in my head. I may have to resort to Josh Groban's new Christmas album to shut up the Indian man howling in my brain.

- I have three stories kicking around in my head, all of them epic and none of them porn, which makes it hard to write them down. Am officially annoyed with the writing process and will find some way to blame vegawriters for it.

- My girl-cat Lanie wanted to be under my everything while I did my Pilates tape this evening. Made it hard to do "rolling like a ball" when I rolled onto a cat every time, who had the nerve to look at me like I was incoveniencing her by not spending half an hour petting her like she wanted. She couldn't be bothered to want pettins while I spent two hours on the couch watching Venture Bros.

- Laundry now, so I can shower then bed.

Last night produced some effed up dreams. I dreamt I attended a combination NASCAR race and Renaissance Faire. That was not nearly as disturbing as beating up this guy who felt me up and who then turned into a talking ferret.

I'm thinking this is my subconscious' reaction to discovering that Silverhawks is available on DVD.

thagj and I have powered through seasons 1 through half of 3 of Stargate: Atlantis and I think we're officially hooked. We're making SGA references around the house, which means that we've committed enough to memory to make jokes about it.

Things of note:

- The man-crush Sheppard has on Ronon is adorable.

- The man-crush McKay has on Sheppard is equally adorable.

- I want to write fic in which McKay gets a cat again. I just watched "Echoes" and animals seem to be the only creatures whom Rodney has any real respect for.

- I'm amazed -- no, stunned -- at how completely non-military the Stargate 'verse's version of the military is.

- SGA really does need the DS9 writers on it to do the humor mixed with insurmountable odds and a heavy dose of dark. Maybe when they're finished with BSG next season.

I'm going to a friends-only format in a vain attempt to simplify my online life.

I'm also doing an flist culling, mostly those who haven't posted to their journals in more than 6 months. But being de-friended is emotionally difficult for some of us sensitive types, so if I de-friend you and you don't want to be de-friended for whatever reason, just e-mail me and I'll add you back.

I've been advised by a medical professional to write porn. No, I'm not making this up. Don't ask.

Alas, I'm uninspired. Toss a prompt my way. You'll get fic.

Because of troubles with Time Warner, thagj and I are exploring alternative ISPs. Has anyone used clearwire? If so, how do you/did you like them? Any good things or bad to share?

I broke not one, not two, but three computers today at work. My computer had to be carted off by a friendly tech support guy who will most likely never bring it back, which is too bad because it has stuff on it that I need. Poop. It also made it hard to do things that I kind of needed to do, like send e-mails. Apart from that, I still got a good bit of billable work done but not as much as I'd like given that this is the last week of the month.

My Office Manager has also decided to quit smoking, which will be super-extra-sucky for the office as she is not the most cheery person in the world even when she's chain-smoking a pack and a half a day like normal. I'm planning to hide in my office and drink heavily whenever possible.

In other news, thagj's mom is having surgery at the end of next month to reconstruct her spine. Long story short, she has a bunch of stainless steel rods and bits holding her spine together, which are now all broken and need replacing. They're going to replace the steel with titanium. My mother-in-law will be nigh indestructible and I'm resisting the urge to make Bionic Woman jokes.

thagj and I curled up last night and knocked out the last 9 episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion. At the series' end, we turned to each other and lost our shit laughing. The "my god, that was the dumbest ending possible, and I don't care if it was a typical Japanese ending and I don't care what message the director was trying to convey about overcoming depression, and weren't they fighting alien monsters until about episode 24? What happened to that plot?" laughing.

I know there are 2 movies after the series' end that may or may not explain what the hell was going on in episodes 25 and 26, but I may not watch them for fear I will thro popcorn at the screen nonstop.

And for the record, yes, I understood the ending, but I thought the way it was done was ridiculous given the rest of the series.

I'm going to find a way to blame someone for making me endure watching all of this. Probably doctre. Just 'cause.

And now we're trying to decide what anime to watch next. Possibly Cromatie High School because, hey, Freddy Mercury. Possibly Fullmetal Alchemist. Or the entire Robotech series, including the Macross Saga. Don't know if we want to do another "serious" series or something lighter. Maybe something lighter because after Eva we immediately popped in third season Harvey Birdman to wash the taste out.

I'm a horrible anime fan. Bite me.

...A glorious high-res picture of John Barrowman here.

As notpoetry pointed out, he and Anderson Cooper should find some way to "have genetically-engineered babies to keep that recessive blue-eyed gene going. It's really only for the good of humanity." Word.

Because I am a pale white fat girl and no combination of that is photgenic, I went to a photo studio to have some professional portraits done. Office Manager wants to update the pictures on the company website and mine never turn out well, so I figured one decent shot of me would be worth the trouble and expense.

Worth the trouble, maybe, because they did get some good shots of me. Not worth the price, though. These guys wanted to add on more optional extras than the last place I bought a car: pearlized paper and a retouching service that is basically some 19-year-old with Photoshop taking out every hint of a wrinkle, blemish, and uneven skin tone. The results looked nice but made me wonder: Are photographers and make-up artists getting so lazy that they don't bother trying to take a decent picture of a person anymore because they know any problems in the image can be fixed later? Do we, as a society, have such self-esteem issues that we can't face the fact that the image in the picture is what we look like that we need to spend additional hundreds of dollars editing out our perceived flaws?

There are cameras now that will take images and edit them to make the subjects look slimmer, right in the camera, no Photoshop required. People take pictures all the time to use as proof in court cases, but it would seem that digital images cannot be trusted to reflect the truth of the subject of the image. How long will it be before digital images are no longer used in court cases because the authenticity of the image cannot be verified?

I wound up telling the salesperson that I was getting the standard paper with no retouching. This is what I look like and it's as good as it gets. They showed me the retouched images and yes, I looked great. I also saw some of their sample pictures and the women in them looked 10 or 15 years younger. Which is nice, but...it's not honest. I somehow lived long enough to get laugh lines and yeah, sometimes I worry about how deep they'll get someday, but for now I rememberthat I got them because I have smiled and laughed so much in my life that the pattern stayed. I can not -- will not -- believe that is a bad thing.

I got a good picture for business purposes and a decent one for Thag's desk at work. Should be ready in a week.

I just googled Elizabeth Warren to see if I could find any audio recordings of any talks or lectures she's given (I swear, her voice. *homerdrool*).

I knew she was a Harvard professor; I assumed she taught economics. She's not. She's a law professor.

*Now* I get why I thought she was hot. My lawyer-y sense was tingling.

Been avoiding online for the last week or so. Work is in uber-high-stress mode right now with no end in sight and I've not been good company. Give lots of kudos to Thag for not burying me in the backyard. I should be at work this weekend but I'm forcing myself not to because I'll be trial prepping all week through next weekend.

In other news, Mike Wieringo died last Sunday at the age of 44 of heart failure. Mike was one of those artists I kept an eye on not only because he did a stint on The Flash comic book but also because he was a local. I haven't seen much about his passing online, which makes me sadder than the untimeliness of his death. I expected more people to notice he's gone.

In my brief amounts of free time, I watched Maxed Out. This is one everyone should Netflix. I about ran down one of my co-workers the next day hollering, "Make your son watch this before he goes to college!!!!" because I was worried that the first thing he'd do is sign up for a credit card from one of those guys at the tables handing out applications and free t-shirts. It was well-done and while I wasn't shocked by most of the facts presented, there were some things that struck me, like credit bureaus offering credit reporting machines and software to law enforcement agencies in exchange for information on suspects.

The movie is a strong reminder that credit cards are a product marketed to us by corporations who only make money if we remain in debt to them. I don't like owing a corporation anything.

Also, I totally want to sit in a class held by Elizabeth Warren. I could listen to her talk all day.