Fan X Saturday

Saturday, the final and busiest day of the Con by far.  This was a great day for me because I had some company to brave the masses with me.  Also, I wore my new costume, which was actually a lot of fun to put together.  Remember how I'm a huge Lord of the Rings fan?  Even though none of the celebrities at the con were connected to Tolkien's work, I couldn't help but dress as one of my favorite female characters from the movies, Galadriel.  Especially since the final Hobbit movie just came out in December.

For this I got to use all kinds of fun props, including my hand-crafted elf ears, and hair extensions (I wish my hair was really that long).  What a fun outfit!  I was disappointed because most people didn't recognize me.  I attribute this to the fact that for the most part, Galadriel wears white lace gowns, and I just didn't feel like making a dress that was so reminiscent of a wedding gown!  Anyway, I went in blue.

I admit that by Saturday I was a little bit burnt out.  I had seen all the vendors, and wandered the floor for two days already.  I was, however, excited about a few celebrities coming that day, and I got to introduce my friend Dave to the con!  Dave opted out on costuming, but he was good to be seen walking around with me.  I had to laugh, because my costuming is mild compared to some of the things people come up with at these events!

Dave and I braved the crowds to check out the booths, see the Lego fortress, and get some photos.

Dave and I with the TARDIS.

Tom Felton, or better known as Malfoy from Harry Potter.  He was actually very nice!

Paul Wesley.  This guy is from one of my favorite shows, the Vampire Diaries.  Dave was being a good sport for this one since the que for the photo was filled with fan girls!  This was weird, because Paul is super attractive in real life (not just on TV), and it was pretty intimidating.  Also, it's a little surreal to watch the show and realize I got to meet him in real life.

At some point in the day we stopped by the Truffle Cottage, home to geeky-shaped delicious truffles like Millennium Falcons.  As an odd coincidence, Dave is related to the owner of the cottage, so they were nice enough to give us a sample of "broken" truffles to try out.  Yum!

Lemon Sherlock-themed truffles from the Truffle Cottage.  They were delicious as well as nerd-themed!

We also bumped into a guy from Studio C, and another guy Dave knew of from his mission.  I, on the other hand, had a fabulous time getting pictures with random cosplayers!

Awesome Guardians of the Galaxy!  They were just missing their Groot.

Captain America and a rather beefed up Spidey.

This guy playing Captain Hook from Once Upon a Time.  I can't get over how much he looks like the actual actor!  Apparently he works for a charity cosplaying for kids.  There are actually several different organizations like that, which I think is pretty cool.  Maybe I need to be a part of one of these?

Gandalf the Grey!  I was really excited to see fellow LOTRs people, since there really weren't that many.

Sauron with a lightsaber?  I was a little confused, but his helmet was awesome!

Lego Movie people!  Both of them were my heroes.  Uni-Kitty was actually an adult woman who could fold herself up inside the box, but was walking around with these boxes around her shoulders!  Seriously hilarious.  She actually ran into me, so I asked for a picture.

 Dave got bored, and found some creepy-crawlers to entertain himself!  I, however, was less than amused.

We attempted to get in on a panel, which was too full, so we sat around and observed cosplayers, then eventually headed home.

Not a bad way to spend a Saturday.  Thanks Dave for coming and partying with me!
That Sunday was Super Bowl Sunday, and I basically just spent the rest of the weekend trying to recover from the Con.  It's pathetic that it wears me out so much!

Doctor Who day - Friday

Friday at Comic Con!  This day was my Doctor Who day since this was the day the Doctor came to visit.

I like to go in themes, so my outfit for the day was definitely from Doctor Who.  I wore it last con, but I actually re-made the entire shirt since it basically got destroyed after two full days of wear last con.  I wore it specifically for last con because John Barrowman (Capn' Jack Harkness from the show) came, and definitely gave me a hug!  Anyway, it was an outfit worn by my favorite traveling companion of the Doctor, Rose Tyler, when she came back for a role in the 50th anniversary special.  The best part of all this was Rose Tyler (or rather the actress playing her) actually came to the con!

Billie Piper was one of the first celebrities announced for the con, so she was definitely one of the major draws for me.  This was only made better by the fact that one of the Doctors, and another companion was coming.  It made for some very exciting Doctor Who activities, as well as a huge turn-out of Whovians!

From the 50th Anniversary.  Ten on the left, and I got to meet the two in the middle!

I ended up getting there nice and early on Friday.  I was originally planning on attending a couple of celebrity panels, but instead decided I wanted to meet one of my favorite actresses from the Star Wars franchise - Carrie Fisher!  Normally the wait time for autographs isn't too long, but as soon as I got to the front of the line, Carrie took a break for nearly 30 minutes.  I can only hope she was feeling okay!  Anyway, it was totally worth the wait to meet her.  I ended up getting her to autograph my Star Wars DVDs, but I didn't take any photos.  She is this sweet old lady who actually brought her dog with her!  Also, she was glitter-bombing people for some reason.  Basically she was rubbing glitter all over people's foreheads, children and adults included!  I thought it was pretty sweet, and I walked away with golden glitter all over my face care of Princess Leia.

My very own autographed Star Wars Blue-rays.

I missed the panel she hosted, but apparently she was pretty charismatic.  She started off begging the audience members for a Coke, and when a random man from the crowd obliged, she totally laid one on him!  Hilarious.  I'm pretty sure she's been famous for so long that she can - and does - get away with basically anything she wants with the fans.

Skip to 1:50 for the crazy Coke kiss.  A woman after my own heart - she loves Coke products!

Later that afternoon was my big Doctor Who picture event.  I can't even express just how excited I was for this activity.  I had elected to get a photo with all three people from Doctor Who at the same time, mainly for cost reasons, but also because it was super cool to get all three in a photo.  However, next time I think I will be getting autographs instead of photos, mainly because you actually get a chance to talk to some of the celebrities.  Anyway, first up was Billie Piper.  She played Rose, or Bad Wolf girl, in the first two seasons of the re-boot.  She is my favorite companion, and she worked alongside my favorite Doctor, Ten, played by David Tennant.  She's so much my favorite that I dressed up as her character for this, and the last con!  Second up was the Doctor, the eleventh incarnation, played by Matt Smith.  I admitted Tennant was my favorite, but Smith is a pretty close second.  The third person is Karen Gillian, who played Amy Pond alongside Eleven.  They were all very nice, and even though I didn't get to really talk with them, they did comment on my outfit.  I'm not sure if you can actually tell from the picture, but I was completely freaking out.  Therefore, I didn't say much of anything to them, just smiled like a crazy person!

Later that night I participated in the Ultimate Doctor Who experience, which was basically a panel featuring all three of the Doctor Who stars.  It was a ticketed, sold out event, and I was amazed at how early people were lining up for this activity.  Thanks to my VIP status, I did get a pretty decent seat.  Basically people lined up, and got to ask these three stars different questions about the show.  It was really fun to hear their responses, and more fun to be surrounded by that many people who were just as excited about the show as I am!

Billie Piper in front of the TARDIS.  Pretty awesome.

Billie and Karen getting cozy on the couch together.

Matt Smith, aka the Doctor!  Can you see why we love him?  He just so chill, goofy, and lovable.

Awesome night.  Now I just need to go ahead and find David Tennant, and my Doctor Who celebrity dreams will have come true!

Comic Con - Thursday Edition

Okay guys, here's a major Comic Con overload!  January's Con extended for three days, and I'm updating by the day, just for fun.  Brief sum up.  Comic Con was held in September, and they do what's called Fan X in the spring.  This is only the second year they have held these events, and I actually got to attend both of them this year.

When they initially announced FanX I was a little on the fence, but decided to go ahead and buy my ticket since they were about half the price when they first announced.  Also, I like to do this thing VIP style, and those tickets tend to sell out.  As they kept announcing more and more celebrity guests, I got more excited.  Especially when they announced that Matt Smith, the Eleventh Doctor from Doctor Who was coming!  I'll admit that David Tennant is my favorite Doctor from the series, but Matt is a close second.

I spent a good amount of time in the month leading up to the Con putting together my outfits.  They were a bit of a modge-podge of old and new with one making a reappearance from the last Con, and another a slightly improved version from Halloween.  The costume aspect of the Con is one of the major reasons I love these events so much!  You will remember how I like to go all-out for Halloween, and this is one place where I find people ten times better at it than me!  Seriously, people are so creative, I love it.

Last Halloween I dressed up as Link, who has some exceptionally amazing ears.

I had some prosthetics for Halloween, but I actually found a tutorial on how to make elf ears on Pinterest that really appealed to my creative dentist side.  Prosthetics can be made out of a variety of latex materials, but most custom-fit ones require some type of impression of the body part being modified.  Thus the tie-in to dentistry!  This entire process was basically the same as making dentures, or even crowns, so my interest was peaked, but I didn't have time to get everything finished for Halloween, so this seemed like a good opportunity.
First step - take an impression of both my ears.  This was a bit of an adventure.  After that, I molded some elf ears with clay, then poured them up in plaster.  Once I had a plaster mold, I poured up the latex and let it set up.  Then, voila, magic custom-fit elf ears.

Thursday
This was a shorter day for the con, since it didn't actually open to VIPs till 3:00 pm, which was still an hour earlier than the general admission.  Since I had the whole day off already, I totally got my hair done that morning!

After lunch and perfecting my costume, I headed up to the Salt Palace.  For this day I went as Link, the main hero from the Nintendo game series Zelda.  This was such a fun outfit mainly because I was easily recognizable by almost anyone.  I had a fabulous time posing for pictures, and spotting my fellow Zelda enthusiasts.  Seriously, it's a pretty popular costume choice for any con, but I was one of the few blue Links.

Check out these spectacular elf ears!  I was pretty proud.  I used glue, and I strapped my hair back to avoid getting it all sticky.

I didn't really have much special planned for this night.  Thursday tends to be the least busy day of the Con, but I ended up waiting in line to pick up my VIP package for seriously an hour.  Don't worry, I actually made a few friends standing in line.  That is one of the coolest things about Comic Con.  Even though we are all wearing crazy outfits, and we're complete strangers, we have so many common interests that you could strike up a conversation with anyone!  As put by one of my new friends, Comic Con is a "judgement-free zone."  I may be a little over-enthusiastic about things, but so is basically everyone at the con!  After picking up my merch, I wandered around looking at booths, and I purchased a fabulous Master Sword to go with my outfit!

That night I attended the panel of one of the actresses from Doctor Who, Karen Gillian.  She plays Amy Pond, one of the Doctor's companions who travels around time and space with him.  She also had a role in the recent Guardians of the Galaxy as Nebula.  I didn't know this, but she actually shaved her head for the role.  (If you're not sure, she's the blue lady working for the nemesis.)  It was pretty fun to listen to her talk about her different roles, especially as Amy!

After that, I decided I really wanted to meet one of my very favorite Walking Dead stars.  Okay, let me back up and explain for a minute.  The Con gets all these stars to visit, and most of them will host panels which you can attend for free with your entry pass.  However, if you would like an autograph or photo with them, it costs extra.  Since meeting my favorite celebrities is right on the top of my list for going to these events, I'm willing to pay a little extra.  Because the quality of visiting stars have been so good at these events, I had to be a little selective about which ones I would get photos with.  However, I did see a few other celebrities including Ray Park, and Christopher Lloyd.

AMC's Walking Dead is one of the shows I anxiously watch, and apparently a lot of other people in Salt Lake do as well.  This con there were three stars from the Walking Dead (two of which have been killed off of the show).  My favorite characters are Glen and Maggie, and Stephen Yeun (the actor who plays Glen) was there!  It was a fantastic way to end my day by getting a photo with Stephen.  He was actually very nice, and he complimented me on my costume.  Hooray!

"The one where they're up all night"

Waking up is hard.  So is interacting with other people in the morning.

Ah sleep.  Sometimes I wish I could function with no sleep, and other times I can't get enough of it.  I've established a very erratic sleep pattern that involves moderate to little amounts of sleep during the work week, with major late-nights and catch up mornings on the weekends.  However it may seem from the surface, my pattern is pretty tried and tested, and I get rather off-set if it gets interrupted.  Therefore, I would like to dedicate this post to sleep!  (A little ironic, considering it's now 1:30 am.)  Also, the title is a nod to a Friend's episode.

To start off, I have a story from about two weeks ago.  Basically I live in a two-story town-house that shares walls on both sides.  At least I don't have upstairs neighbors, but I've discovered that the walls are very thin.  I will randomly hear my neighbor's crying baby, or the kids banging up and down the stairs, or the adults yelling at each other, and I'm usually aware of the fact that they probably can hear my loud music or TV.  Not exactly ideal, but for the most part we get along fine.  However, about two weeks ago I woke up suddenly around 3 am.  It took me a minute to realize I was woken by someone crying next door.  When I say crying, I really mean sobbing.  Also, it wasn't the baby, and instead sounded more like the mother.  It was very weird, and very disturbing because once woken, I didn't go back to sleep.  This is mostly because the cry-fest kept up for the next two hours which included bouts of sobbing where other kids and baby joined in, and angry voices trailed downstairs.  I finally gave up by 5 am, went downstairs, and found something to watch on Netflix.  I did catch about an hour of sleep on the love sac, but all told I really only got about four hours of sleep to run on for a full day of work.  I was not amused, especially because exhausted as I was, I was terrified the next night would be a repeat event.  Luckily it wasn't, but I was pretty loopy for that day.

This weekend has been weird with sleep.  With starting a new job, and the ridiculousness that is "Daylight Savings time," my circadian rhythm is a little messed up.

Oh yeah, new job.  My company asked me to take over the office down in American Fork, so I moved from Taylorsville down south.  I started down in AF this Tuesday, which has been an adjustment, but it's also a bit of a commute.  Therefore I've been getting up quite a bit earlier than usual, and working on going to bed earlier to fit in a 40 minute commute.

Friday night when I got home from work I basically sat down and dozed off at 6:30 with the lights on and everything.  That means when I woke up four hours later I was pretty much done sleeping for the night.  I basically just wandered around my apartment, made some dinner, watched some TV…. wandered around, fixed some cereal… browsed through Netflix, filtered through Pinterest….  Finally I started some random movie on Netflix at about 4 in the morning, and got a little drowsy.  I took that as I sign and finally went back to sleep at around 5 am!

Believe it or not, this was actually a ton of fun!  It's like the best feeling in the world when you don't have to set an alarm for the next day because you know you don't have anything pressing the next day (like work).  Also, it felt odd, like I was recovering from an illness or something.  Either way, it was nice having an excuse to watch TV way into the night, and then sleep in the next day.

Saturday night I decided I had no interest in leaving the apartment after a day full of errands.  I picked up some delicious pizza from The Pie, and around 11 pm I fell asleep on my love sac.  That's surprisingly early for me to fall asleep on a Saturday night, and usually I make it to my actual bed sometime in the middle of the night.  It was probably close to 6 when I did wake up, and thanks to Daylight Savings time, I lost another hour.  Lame.  Also, I was too tired, and very confused when I did wake up for real, and I was convinced my phone clock was lying to me.  That's my excuse for being really late to church this morning.

Basically I think DST is the worst.  It makes me miss Hawaii where they don't do that silly crap.  Here's looking forward to the fall when we get our hour back!  Also, here I am again up way too late.  Good thing I don't work Mondays, but I get the feeling I'm really going to struggle to get back into a normal pattern before Tuesday.  Blergh.

New Year's Eve 2015

New Year's Eve!

This year I spent New Year up in Salt Lake since I worked the Monday and Tuesday before.  I think this is the first time I've actually been up north, since I normally spend my winter break in Cedar City.  As you can imagine, New Year's in Cedar isn't exactly wild, which made Salt Lake a refreshing change.

That afternoon I totally got a pedicure and basically just hung around.  That evening I headed up to the State Capitol with my friend Dave for a party being thrown up there.  It was some kind of multi-ward YSA event putting on this huge party.  They had fun party favors, h'orderves, delicious ice cream, a DJ, and dancing.

Dave and I from the State Capitol.

It was such a big building the party looked pretty small.  Don't worry, more people showed up!

They gave out whistles and confetti.  Also, Dave made a random friend...

We had a fantastic time dancing, and randomly wandering around the capitol.  It was a fun, slightly random night, and I thought it was a spectacular way to ring in the New Year!

Xbox Update

Oh hey, remember how I got my Xbox stolen back around Thanksgiving?  For Christmas I finally got things resolved!  The good people at Microsoft were very helpful - despite needing to spend a good three or four hours on the phone with them.  Things moved along pretty quickly, and after I sent in my console they refunded my money, and shipped out a new functional console.

Despite my instructions otherwise, FedEx again left my packages on the porch of my apartment.  (The same place they were stolen from before.  Genius.)  Luckily I was basically stalking the shipping confirmation page, and I went home at lunch to pick them up.  Huzzah!

Even though I finally got these, they didn't have a power cord.  Uh… what?  Once again I was back in communication with Microsoft, and they were kind enough to send out some power cords.

All told, this took around two months to figure out.  During this whole mess was the first time I actually utilized the fact that I had a smart TV.  I totally Netflixed it up, and because of this I got a little obsessed with Gilmore Girls.  In my defense, I didn't have a DVD player for over a month, so that became my go-to show to wind down with at the end of the day!  Anyway, I know I'm a little spoiled with all my technology, but I was sure glad to get this whole mess resolved.  Also, I'm never voluntarily using FedEx again.

A Very Potter Christmas

Christmas time!
This was a really fun, but extremely busy Christmas for me.  I wasn't in school, which eliminated the need to study, but it also removed the "break time" which most employed people don't really get.  Anyway, I was scheduled to work the Monday before Christmas, but I came down with what I think was the flu that weekend, so I called in sick.  I was actually really glad to have that day off, since I hung around trying to feel better, as well as finished off last-minute Christmas stuff.  That being said, I didn't even drive south until the 23rd.

The 24th was spent with last-minute shopping, and food preparation.  It's usually my designated job to help my mom finish up wrapping presents for the brothers.  Luckily by now the belief in Santa doesn't factor into our Christmas' that much anymore, so I got out of most of the wrapping.  That evening we had our traditional fondue with chocolate, cheese, and oil for cooking assorted meats.  We had the added bonus of including our aunt and uncle Evan and Carol, and a couple of their kids this year.  Evan's family has lived in New Mexico since I can remember (except their brief 2-year relocation to Australia for his work), and since retirement he has built a home on the property adjacent to my parent's home.  We had a great Christmas Eve cooking, eating, and catching up!

This year was also a bit different because Mitchell is still gone on his mission, and Randall is now married, and he and his wife didn't spend much of the holiday with us.  However, they made it over for part of the night, and we got to exchange gifts with them that night.  We also do our traditional sibling gift exchange on Christmas Eve.  Christmas shopping seemed like a major challenge for me this year for some reason, so lucky for me I drew my brother Calvin.  I ordered him a cool gadget from Amazon - a solar-powered charger!  That's right, he will be prepared if we ever have a zombie apocalypse... or some other major power loss.

A big part of our Christmas fun was getting to see our missionary, Mitchell.  We had it all set up so we could Skype with him via our Xbox One, which meant Mitchell's face was all blown up on our big-screen TV.  It was so fun to see his face, and get to joke and talk with him Christmas morning.

Like most people already have noticed, this winter has been very strange weather-wise.  I was glad for it, since I don't like trying to drive the I-15 in holiday traffic with the added bonus of snow.  However, it just didn't feel much like Christmas to me because of it!  Imagine our excitement (and my chagrin) when we woke up to snow Christmas morning!  My brothers mocked me as I grumbled around outside trying to scrape the snow off my car that morning.  We traditionally have a brunch with the Brown side of our family Christmas morning, as well as more gift exchanges.  Since a good number of us have entered the "adult" category, we've instituted a "white elephant" style gift exchange with the adults, but with good gifts.  That means you don't buy something specific, rather you get something an adult would like that's somewhat generic, but you can trade items around with each other.  I was last to go, and imagine my surprise and delight when I opened this puppy:

That's right, awesome little Etsy signs about Diet Coke!  Haha.  This plus about 20 bucks worth of gift cards for Slurp's Up, a drive-through soda fountain.  I actually received a lot of my favorite beverage for Christmas this year, as well as a new vacuum and a fancy crepe maker.

Blake with his gift.  A basket full of hot cocoa, mugs, and a certificate to use the condo up at Brian Head!  I think he was most excited about the basket.

After filling ourselves with delicious breakfast foods, we headed back home.  We pretty much spent the afternoon sitting around together, and messing around with my brother's giant dog Russen.  He is a total doll, and actually pretty talented with anything that can be thrown and reasonably fit in his mouth.

Rather than get into the Lord of the Rings trilogy this year, I decided to tackle a different series.  I'd brought along the Avengers, Star Wars, and Harry Potter thinking that I like options.  Anyway, we started into the Harry Potter series.  Due to technical difficulties we skipped the first few movies, but we had a good time getting into the magical world of Potter!  Seriously, I love Harry Potter!  They were such a big part of my, well not childhood, but my teenage years.  I actually just re-read the entire series again.  Now I just need to plan a trip to Potter Land in Florida.  Any takers?