I Need More Toys…

So, after making pretty much an impulse buy on eBay (I didn’t mull it over for two days before bidding, which makes it an impulse buy for me), I’m contemplating buying myself a bigger, more premeditated camera toy: a new case. My current case just doesn’t have enough room for…

+ Minolta X370s (manual focus)
+ 28mm wide angle lens
+ 50mm lens
+ 80-200mm zoom lens
+ 2x teleconverter just purchased on eBay
+ macro filters (lets me get in reeeeal close)
+ polarizer (makes the sky bluer and water less reflective)
+ hotshoe flash
+ fresh and used film
+ various manuals, lens and body caps, notepads, and other accessories

The dilemma has been whether to just keep my current camera bag and pick and choose what I bring on any given shoot (a “shoot” for me being a trip to the Ren Fest, Fort Meigs, the zoo, the Apple Butter Festival, a drumcorps show, or other interesting local flavor) or get a new bag that can hold all my gear but that has the potential to be a touch cumbersome. The jury’s still out for me, I think.

Beth, Erk, other photo-types—any help?

Mr. Jay Falls, English Teacher Extraordinaire

On one of my essays, my eighth-grade English teacher, Mr. Falls, wrote: “Like a world-class athlete, a writer like you should write every day!” (It was something close to that, anyway—I can’t seem to locate A Day in the Life of a 40-Year-Old College Freshman right now. I do still have it somewhere.)

Mr. Falls was a bit of in inspiration to me; at the very least, he was a wake-up call of sorts. I’d been fairly good at writing ever since that experimental creative writing course my school system tried when I was in third grade—the Developmental Writing Program, it was, or DWP. We learned to use adjectives and adverbs and big vocabulary words and our writing as a class became insanely flowery. By eighth grade, though, my writing style had finally begun to gel, and Mr. Falls noticed and encouraged that.

He was the teacher who passed out the list of “Demons” —I forget how many there were. Twenty, or 40. Anyway, they were the two, too, and to; which and witch; who, which, and that; there, their, and they’re; lay and lie; allot and a lot; et cetera. He was also the teacher who read Poe’s The Telltale Heart aloud and with such dramatic fervor that the entire class could practically hear the disembodied heart beating beneath the floorboards. He was the teacher who told us about the girl who chewed gum while playing volleyball and choked and died—and on a team he coached or assisted, I believe. He was the teacher who called me out in front of the class for ordering too advanced of a book (Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451) through the Scholastic Book Club, and made me defend my selection. He was the teacher who told us about the Kent State shootings and made us all cry at the injustice of it all.

He also took me and a group of other decent writers, both from our advanced class and from the “normal” class, to the Power of the Pen contest. In this contest, each student had 40 minutes to write a coherent essay on a topic which wasn’t revealed until the beginning of the time limit. None of us placed, but we all felt like we’d accomplished something just by having been asked to be on the team. —Come to think of it, though, the team did attend the regional competition in Kent; so, we either did better than I recall, or the regional wasn’t an invitational sort of competition.

That regional competition yielded one of the best alliterations I’ve ever come up with, mainly because it was a 20-minute-long collaboration amongst the whole team. We were sitting in the auditorium before the competition, waiting for Mr. Falls to go onstage, collect our folders, and return to pass them out to us. As he proceeded up the stairs with the throng of other middle-school English teachers, he caught a toe on the stage and tripped. Of course, we were all watching him and giggled, saying, “I hope Mr. Falls doesn’t fall!” Which, after some giggly discussion (yes, even the boys giggled), became:

I hope Mr. Falls doesn’t fall through the floor with his folders because of the flab that runs in his family.

And the fact that I can still remember the exact phrase after 15 years should tell you how impressed with ourselves we were.

Anyway… Mr. Falls, wherever you are, here’s to you.

Totoro Cosplay: The Saga Continues

The pattern arrived today. And all I’ve got to say is… it’s a good thing I’m starting in May/June to make a costume for January. I haven’t sewn from a pattern since 8th grade, and never on a sewing machine.

Once we get the sewing machine from Aaron’s Dad’s house, it’ll be time to go buy several yards of muslin and make a few mistakes—er, that is, a few test suits. 🙂

A little sewing help?

OK, guys—well, girls, probably. I don’t sew, but I’d like to. I have a project to complete. My plan is to attend Ohayocon in January all decked out in a homemade Totoro cosplay outfit.

This could take some explanation.

Totoro = wonderfully cute creation by Hayao Miyazaki, featured in his film Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro). One of my favoritest movies. If you’ll recall, I did some sketches of some totoros back in November.

Cosplay = where otaku (psycho crazy anime / Japanese pop-culture fans) dress up as their favorite character at a convention.

Ohayocon = the only anime convention I’ve been to so far, located in Columbus. (It’s punny—”ohayo” means “good morning,” as well as the name of our state. Erika from the Bluecoats taught me that—it was my very first word in Japanese.) Aaron and I will be attending Ohayocon for the third year in a row next January.

So, I want to dress up like the crazy people. There’s a plushie out there of Mei, one of the characters from the movie, wearing Totoro pajamas. Instead of making a giant, ugly, deformed stuffed Totoro costume, I want to make some Totoro jammies. Several months ago, I drafted an initial plan of what my costume would be like, but I’ve revised my ideas since then. Instead of a more simple sweatsuit-type outfit, I’m looking at more of a one-piece footie pajama made out of plushie pile material, with a hood attached (or separate, if necessary).

I guess my big question is, does anyone know where to get a pattern for grown-up footie pajamas? I’ll need to modify it by a.) making it out of plush instead of fleece, and b.) adding a white panel to the front belly, besides making it big enough for my fat ass. I’m starting on this project way early, because I know I’m in over my head.

Oh, yeah, and I need to thrift myself a sewing machine. And learn how to use it. D’oh!