Monday, January 30, 2012

Ponies and Ohayocon


 So, according to polls, I'm the minority when it comes to Bronies since I'm female, over 30, and also married.  Only 3% of Bronies aren't single, according to a poll I read online today.  Go fig.  Maybe it's because the majority of people who are my age, female, and married are probably too busy worrying about what their kids want to watch rather than what they do...

And yet, here I am, a grown woman, going out during one of my days off in order to search for these elusive blind bag sets of ponies.  My first round was actually pretty successful even though I didn't know there's a numbering system to the bags.  If you want to collect these ponies too, just know that on the back flap near the top there's going to be a little number which you can match up to the picture on the back to see which pony you are getting.  (I have them here in this picture in order, 1-24)

The first two trips, I didn't know that there was a numbering system, or at least, I hadn't figured it out yet, but I managed somehow not to get any duplicates.  Then I started my quest to find more this weekend once I'd discovered the secret and managed to get every single one, no duplicates, at the local Walmarts (and I can say Walmart-s because I went to four.)

I'm especially happy I was able to get the 'secret' ponies, which are numbered 22, 23, 24.  They are clear and glittery which brings out the 10 year old in me.  Hee hee.

Anyway, as this blog is also about Ohayocon, I'll put a note about that in here as well since there were dozens upon dozens of pony cosplayers, which I may have joined with provided the bad experience I had would have been avoided.  I'll explain that more later, plus I saw a dealer selling these blind-bag ponies for $4-$5 a pop when you can get them for less than $2 at Walmart.

Ohayocon started out really well, we had a table in the dealer room for Tsubasacon so we were able to do some advertising, but our guy with the flyers and the sign poles didn't get there until late so I spent most of my day trading off to wander through the dealers and buy stuff I probably shouldn't, have, and then later we did a bit of advertising before heading home for the evening.  I took pictures of pony cosplayers and found out that they were going to be at the various brony get-togethers through the weekend.

Saturday was a mixed bag.  It started out snowing outside, but I wore my Mitsuki outfit anyway, froze my butt off for awhile, but it was all good, because I had a lot more interest in our booth because of it.  Then a Staffer came by - biggest a$$ of all time because the bugger told me that we couldn't have some of the things we were selling out on our table!  For over 10 hours on Friday we had those same items out and I'd already sold some of them, no one had said a thing.  Then suddenly he's threatening to kick us out??!~  I took down my 'questionable' items - aka my foamie wings and earrings - all wing designs and all "official" Tsubasacon merchandise even though they didn't have the Tsubasacon logo on them (ahem, another table also had t-shirts on their table that didn't have their logo!!)  but I left my sign out talking about them and managed to sell one of the pairs of wings (helped I was actually wearing a pair myself - ha!) - thumbing my nose at the law, that's what I'll do!

But there were a whole heck of a lot of grouches at Ohayocon this year.  Mind you, not everyone, there were some really nice staffers I met and were really helpful, but then I even had an artist alley guy yell at me for being too close to the glass in the alley...I was THREE feet away, couldn't even touch the glass, and had my hands clasped in front of me and the guy yelled at me!  I'll tell you what, jerks like that don't deserve to sell artwork, little lone make any money for being an idiot.  Well, I'll show him, I bought a bunch of prints from another gal who actually designed the cover for a journal I'm writing in at the moment and I was so excited that I was able to meet her after looking at her artwork for over a year now.

Okay, so as I said, pretty mixed bag.  The first guy who yelled at us made me go into total breakdown mode and I decided not to go back on Sunday.  But Saturday when we had closed down for the night and had our dinner, I thought I'd see if the brony meetups were still going on, but the areas they were at were surprisingly empty...so I just started walking and somehow mysteriously stumbled onto a MLP showing.  My husband couldn't believe it, because he'd just asked me where we were going and I was like, "I dunno, I just want to go this way..."

We later found another friend we hadn't seen in awhile doing the same thing after I watched the newest episode of MLP...but that's another story.

At least all the money I made at the table before the idiot closed me down paid for my blind bag splurge!!  ^_^

Friday, January 6, 2012

Pinkie Pie

If you haven't watched MLP:FIM, then you probably won't get the pink pony drawing.  BUT, if you HAVE watched the show, you'll know who Pinkie Pie is.  She's not my favorite pony in the series, but for some reason I felt like doing a quick sketch that was kind of free-flowing and very different than the actual style of the series.  I have my own kind of drawing style normally, but I some of my style from the early anime styles I used to read like CLAMP and Trigun, and throw in perhaps a random shojo manga here and there too.  It's kind of fun putting a character into a different style all together.

So I was cruising the "Brony" meme site on the icanhascheezburger site (if you've been there, you'll know what I'm talking about) and saw a link to IMDB and the television series.  So I put my rating in for the show and there was a bunch of information.  So, it really is true that the majority of the (at least those who can access the internet) fans are males in their 20's or so.  Females in their 30's (like me of course) are actually a very low number.  Now, I kind of wonder whether that's because many women my age who might be fans are fans because of their children, and they don't have time to be going around online voting for cartoons.  It's a theory I have, but at least my name is in there somewhere so they know I'm a fan too.

The strange thing, and I know I've said this before, is that most women my age grew up with My Little Pony in its original incarnation.  I'm proud of that fact, but not in a creepy 'hoarder/white trash' kind of way.  If you've ever met someone like that, you know.


I just can't grow up.  Okay...WON'T might be a bit more accurate.  Sure, I work my 40 hours, I do my manager stuff, I try to be all professional from time to time.  I pay my bills, I take my cats to the vet, I clean the house...but my house is filled with posters of cats and anime and cartoons.  I have a shelf in my master bedroom of stuffed animals that both my husband and I have collected over the years.

But I don't like pink.

I'm not sure why Pinkie Pie was the first of the ponies I drew in this style, but I'm thinking of trying a few more soon, so keep your eyes peeled.

More weirdness to come.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

New Year's Repairs

Instead of writing a list of New Year's Resolutions, I thought I'd make a list of repairs that I'm going to be working on this year.  I believe I started this blog after buying our house, well after we got settled in, in fact, so that most of the initial problems were solved long before I started writing about life.  And for quite awhile, we didn't have many problems crop up, just the usual cleaning and daily care.  But the house was in pretty bad shape when we first bought it since it was a bank owned property where the owners were obviously not happy to have left their home.

I think I might first tell you about the state of the house, at least briefly, because from what I've heard it was originally owned by a couple, and you can kind of tell that things were going well.  They'd painted the downstairs, installed various shelving units in the garage and basement, put up wallpaper borders in the kitchen (bleck - first thing to go!) and at least for awhile, I think they had a pretty good home.  Somewhere in there, according to a neighbor, they moved to another town, allowing one of their children's families move in with their two young children.  You can tell that one room had been 'loved' to death by the sheer amount of dirt and crayon drawings on the walls.  Then another room must have had a special painting day with the kids helping because it was painted fuchsia pink and there were tracks and fingerprints of it everywhere throughout the house.  I'm still finding spots on the stairways, outside on the back doors, you get the picture.  They must have thought that the bright paint was a good idea because part of it was also in the second bath, but they ran out of paint and used a bright orange to finish it up.  I figured this room was for a pre-teen because every square inch of the pink space was pin-holed with, what I assumed were posters of some sort.

There was also candle wax everywhere.  This was a rather new addition to the house before we got it because over time the spots I was unable to get out of the carpet have turned black with dirt buildup and then I have to spend time repairing these spots on the floors.  There were also nailpolish spots and smoke damage in the master bedroom where I suspected mom or dad smoked under the bathroom fan, staining the counter with nicotine as they put out their butts, burning the floor's linoleum multiple times.

Almost every light switch cover was damaged or removed, all of the light fixtures and fans were gone, nearly all of the appliances were gone and so too all the blinds and even one of the doors was removed from its hinges.

Mind you, this wasn't the worst house that we'd looked at during our house-hunt a year ago (goodness, it's almost been a year since we started looking!) but it took me a good week to get all of those repairs completed, and the bank had to fix a gas leak too.  We had other problems over time, like bad lightbulbs and beeping smoke detectors, a garage door that we had to get openers for, and a back porch that I had to pound into submission so it wouldn't fall apart on us the first year.

During the summer months we'd pretty much solved most of our problems, except perhaps for the leaking sub-pump, which was thankfully a very easy fix.  Leaky sinks that my father-in-law repaired.  But overall, this house has treated us pretty well.

And then...

There's a leak in the basement.  We've been working on fixing it for half a week now, but it's leaking from a t-joint under the washing machine, and no matter what we've tried, nothing has stopped the leak.  Tape, epoxy, rubber sealant...  So that's number one.

The calk that I thought I'd repaired in the bathrooms is now cracking, so obviously I did that wrong in the first place.

The soap dispenser in the kitchen stopped working so we need to get a stopper for the hole and just stop using that all together.

The pretty wood floors in the kitchen I thought had been there awhile?  I think they were actually put in to sell the house because they're starting to fade already.

Not to mention all of the nasty holes in the linoleum floor in the master bath which needs a new coating.

The subpump pipe next to the house needs a better repair than the duck tape we used at the beginning of the year...

Well, you get the picture I think.



And yet, you're probably wondering, why am I sitting here blogging instead of getting on some of these problems now?  Well, it's because I spent a few hours putting up all of the Christmas decorations, and that is enough work for me!