Anime Cons

The past three months of my life…

Posted by Merrow on Apr 11, 2010 in Anime Boston, Anime Cons, Blog, Ohayocon | 3 comments

In which I go to two cons, gain 5 roommates and swim with dolphins, not necessarily in that order.

Hello everybody! I am alive, there have been inquiries, and I want to set evderyone’s mind at ease. At least I believe I am most of the time, sometimes I feel slightly on the zombie-ish side. A lot has happened the past couple of months, let me start with a quick chronological break down.

In January, I went to Ohayocon. Then in February, I went on a 7 day Caribbean cruise with my sisters! While I was on the cruise (and swimming with dolphins!) I gained 5 roommates. Well, one roommate that has three cats and a dog. Then at the beginning of April I went to Anime Boston. Did I mention that during all this I went back to school?

Yes, I decided that my solution to the fact I have no free time was to add getting a degree on top of full time job, convention travelling and button biz. -_-; I know, I know… Not really so much a solution and more an expanding on the original problem.

But I’ve wanted to finish up my four year pretty much since I completed my two year degree about five years ago. An opportunity presented itself to get into an accelerated program through Keuka college called ASAP (Adult Studies Accelerated Program, clever, eh?), my day job helps pay for it and I have a friend who is going through the program too. Each class is five weeks long, and class always Tuesday nights at 6-10pm with the same class of 5 people. I’ve already completed two courses! I start my third on Tuesday. In less then two years I’ll have my degree in Organizational Management. Day job only pays for business degrees, but I figure I can use this degree to help actually, you know, organize my business. I run a lot of it flying by the seat of my pants and I hope this will get me thinking more about the future and planning a head. If nothing else, juggling work, school assignments and button making is making me schedule my time a whole lot more proactively.

I’ve decided I’m going to write separate posts on the cons and the cruise. They deserve their own posts. (Especially the cruise! Did I mention I swam with DOLPHINS? Well, I did.) I posted in a few places a one liner about gaining a roommate. My friend Kristen moved in while I was on my cruise the last week of February. Due to unexpected circumstances (her fiancée calling off the wedding) she needed someplace to live quick-like that would let her bring her dog and three cats. I offered her my office upstairs, but she decided to take the big room in the basement instead. Things have been going fairly smoothly with the move, outside of some dirty dishes in the sink and the cat hair coating just about everything. I’ve become buddy-buddy with the animals, and one cat, Willis, has decided he looooves me. So much so that he cries outside my bedroom door (where he is not allowed) because he wants to sleep with me at night. This is cute when I’m going to read in bed an hour before I go to bed. Not so cute when I’m trying to go to bed at three am to catch a few hours of sleep before I have to get up at seven. He’s also something of a big fat ninja, because he keeps managing to open my door and worm his way into my bed.

But we’re managing! And so far we’re keeping to the rule of no getting mad without giving the other person a chance to fix it. Here are my roommates:

This is Gem. She’s something of a ghost cat. She hides unless you’re eating yogurt or ice cream, at which point she will scale your body to get to the food.

This is Honey. She’s pretty laid back, and she gets kinda beat up by the other cats. She likes peeking out my curtains from the top of the couch (as evidenced by the black hair on the curtains I keep having to lint roll off). She is not nearly as evil as she looks in this picture.

This is the ladies’ man, Willis. He’s big, he’s fat, he wants to sleep on your face. Or your chest… or your back… Or really any part that you might leave open. Mainly he just wants to be ALL OVER YOU, preferably with you petting him.

And last, but not least is Cayenne (like the pepper). She’s something mixed with a Shiba Inu. She looooves you, unless you’re a boy. Then she’s not so sure, but she probably will love you on second meeting.

Oh yeah, and the furry creatures came with this person too…

She’s Kristen, I don’t see her too often.

I will try not to let my blog devolve into funny cat stories. Unless they are really funny, or come with video, though perhaps there are enough funny cat videos out there. (Just possibly.)

So that’s my quick update!

It has not been going well lately…

Posted by Merrow on Oct 20, 2009 in Angst, Anime, Anime Cons, Anime Syracuse, Blog, Daily Life, Fandom | 0 comments

But surprisingly I’m not in a bad mood. Let’s review the past week and a half… On Wednesday I came down with a cold that I’m still suffering with. Been to the doctor’s, it’s not strep, pneumonia, or the flu (swine or other-wise..). It’s just a really horrible cold that. won’t. go away. On Friday I popped a tire and scratched up the side of my car. On Sunday my anime club, Anime Syracuse, had it’s Fall mini-con. Attendance was disappointly low and even worse… $200 went missing from our cashbox. To top off the evening, when taking down the a vendor’s display one of our helpers managed to clock me in the eye with a wire rack display. Now I have a black eye.

I should be wallowing under the blankets somewhere, shouldn’t I? But actually I’m in a pretty good mood. For one, even though I popped a tire (and am still driving on a donut…) I have road-worthy tires in my garage just waiting to be put on. Even though the Sunday event had low attendance, everyone there seemed to have a blast! And the Monday free Funimation screening was very well attended compared to last time. Also, the event provided an excuse to have the Neko-jin Girls  (Kit and Neko of Neko-jin designs) up, and we had a fun night talking shop, manga, and bizarre yahoo japan finds. We are already making plans for them to come up just for fun some time this winter during school and job downtime.

Today my cold hit me pretty hard, so I pretty much crawled into bed the moment I got home. I decided to marathon the rest of the first half of “Big Windup” (warning link takes you to site with an auto starting video, but it also has free episodes to watch). I’d won it at our first free Funimation event, and we’ve watched some episodes of it at club. I really love it. I am admittedly biased. While I can’t stand to actually watch a real sporting event, I have something of an obsession with fictional baseball. I have just about every baseball movie out there from the Natural, Field of Dreams, A League of their Own, The Sandlot… you name it I probably have it or have at least seen it, same goes for books. Sadly, the only baseball manga I can think of that came out in the west was an OEL called Boys of Summer… but I’ve read scanlations for Touch, H2, CrossXgame… So when I heard there was a baseball anime, licensed and available for sale and everything… well I knew it would be mine. And obviously it was destined to be as I won it before I even had the chance to plunk down money for it.

But the first box set ends at episode 13 (of 26) and at an AWFUL place. It could be worse, it wasn’t a cliffhanger but they were just about to start a game! Now I have to wait until November to buy it.

No I don’t have Swine Flu…Just a movie addiction.

Posted by Merrow on May 1, 2009 in Anime, Anime Cons, Anime Syracuse, Blog, Comics, Fandom, Movies | 0 comments

Image by Chesi – Fotos CC via Flickr

I’m back from Mexico! And have been for a week. It was a lot of fun, and I luckily all I came back with was a horrible sunburn. (Which thanks to my Irish heritage has now peeled away to reveal the normal glaring white complexion beneath.

No, the only reason I look like death warmed over at work is because I keep insisting on going to late movies during the week. First L: Change the World (the third Death Note movie) last night and now the Wolverine movie premiere tonight.

L: Change the World was about what you would expect for a third movie in a series adapted from a manga. As my friend Jess put it, you know going into it’s it’s going to be fan service, and a lot of it. And there was a lot of L doing what people like best, being charmingly weird and quirky. The plot of course was horrible, and a for some reason they seemed to think the best direction was to turn the pasty-faced, emo, sugar addict L into an action hero. We spent a lot of time giggling every time they had him do something new like run (still hunched over), ride a bike,  or stand up straight. He even, at one point, stands up straight AND walks.

We joked that the promo should have been “See L run, run L, run,” because really that was worth the price of the admission. The cheesy viral weapon storyline wasn’t what sold the movie, it was the weirdness like the hot pink Angel Crepe van that is apparently L’s version of the batmobile. (And yes we did sit in the back row and go da-na-na-na-na. like the old Batman TV show every time he got in it.)

I’d like to say that the new Wolverine movie, X-men: Origins, was a lot better… But also being a movie based on an overused character it suffered from a lot of the same flaws, only with a much bigger budget. It was a lot slicker, but it was still mostly fanservice for the comic crowd who just can’t get enough of those claws. When I’m more awake maybe I can give a better review.

But I will say, there were several naked Hugh Jackman scenes, so I didn’t leave unhappy.

Oh, and by the way… did I mention I was helping to put on a one day anime event on here in Syracuse? Well I am… which is one of the reasons I went to both of these movies, to hand out fliers promoting Anime Syracuse, which will be held on May 9th at the Palace Theater. I’ve got advance sale tickets set up in my shop if you’re in the area and are interested in coming. (We’ve got vendor space left too, if anyone wants to come and sell stuff.)

Did I mention I’m in Mexico?

Posted by Merrow on Apr 13, 2009 in Anime Cons, Blog, Buttons, Daily Life, Mexico, Tekkoshocon, Travel | 1 comment

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve had an extremely busy couple of months, and I kind of dropped off the face of the internet for a while. I’m still catching up. So I thought I’d do a quick post to let people know I’m alive, well, and still plugging along.

I’ve been up to a lot, I went to Tekkoshocon as a vendor in their dealer’s room with friends Mindy, Mark, & Darnell, and we were later joined by Morgan. We had a ton of fun, and all the booths around us were super friendly. I have to say, the Tekko dealer’s room was one of the most welcoming we’ve been in. Mary Pat, the head was very patient both before and after con with all of Mindy and my questions.  Darnell bought me the cutest plush from the Able Sisters, a hand made orange cat dressed like Kyou. Actually they have a picture of it on their site. Darnell surprised me with it and I responded by carrying it around like a little kid all the rest of the weekend. I added one of my “angry vein pop” word bubble pins and a “no glomping” pin to him.

There has been SO much done on my house, mostly thanks to my friend Kristen and her boyfriend Jay. With their help I’ve been able to get the library and living room painted. (Jay  did the living room for me, and even re-patched a wall that had an old badly done patch. It looks SO good!) Well, I say we… but it was mostly Kristen as it turns out I am a terrible painter. Mostly I bought paint, dinner and beer, and they let me work on pulling up tack strips while they painted. We also got the carpet up in the library and bedroom. The hardwoods underneath look great, I won’t even have to refinish them.

My uncle gave me a couch, so I now have furniture. All I have to do is put down some shoe molding around the edge of the rooms I pulled up carpet in and I can actually move in! Jay said he’d do that while I was in Mexico (because Jay and Kristen are awesome, plus occasionally I fix their computer.)

Which leads me to where I am now. Mexico City! I’m visiting my best friend Shelly and her 6 week old baby! Baby R (since I’m  not sure I’m allowed to give the baby’s name online), is cute as a button and very pleasant. I’ve been here since Thursday afternoon and have spent most of my time being a pillow for her. After all the forced overtime at my day job, the work I’ve been doing on my house, plus all the stuff I’d been doing to get ready for Tekko, it’s about all I was capable of. Besides being a pillow we went shopping on Saturday, and I’ve read four books.

So far I’ve read Grave Sight , Grave Surprise and An Ice Cold Grave , the first three “Harper Connelly” mysteries by Charlaine Harris. She’s better known for her Sookie Stackhouse “Southern Vampire Mysteries.” Of the two series I prefer the Vampire books, but if you’re looking for a quick mystery with a slight supernatural bent, these are pretty good. The  main character, Harper Connelly, has one gift. She can find dead bodies, and see what they died of. Not who, just what. It’s an interesting tack to take, but the characters aren’t as likable as they are in the Sookie books. (except Manfred. Manfred is awesome and should get his own series.)

I liked even better, Patricia Brigg’s Dragon Bones the first all out fantasy I’ve read in months. It’s a quick read without being simple, and I like the world and politics she’s built. She’s got good women characters too, even though her main character is a guy. I’ve already started on the sequel Dragon Blood, which I’m enjoying almost as much.

I’ll be in Mexico until the 22nd, and I do plan to do more than hold the baby and read. Friday I’m going to go see Lucha Libre! (Mexican Masked Wrestling, see pic above.) I don’t know what else I’ll do but I’ll try to post about it.