Lazy Couch

I've been on this couch for a two days now and I feel so lazy!! It sucks being sick because you can't even do the fun lazy things a person normally would do when off. I got a cold/flu somewhere along the last few days. Maybe I can blame my friends who were in the house this weekend or when I was out last weekend shopping. I hope that person is feeling better by now :-9

Yesterday I got pretty excited because I got a call from a job I applied to a long, long time ago! Of course, how nice it is that I am now sick and will be all sniffly to go to the interview tomorrow. Well, for now all I can do is try to get better and make sure I have all of my materials ready to go for tomorrow. I plan on leaving early in case I get lost and for the obvious reasons. Getting some good news really got me motivated, so even though I started getting sick yesterday, I still made homemade ham bone soup and cleaned a bit. The soup turned out great!! My mom was on the phone yesterday and kept telling me it wouldn't work since the ham was already cooked. She's never really had much faith in me anyway, so i went for it and it worked!!! In your face MA!!! My boyfriend came home and picked up some awesome garlic breadsticks from the store. They went great with the soup. We ate soup and breadsticks and I watched him play Fable 2 the rest of the night and slept on and off.

I can't wait to play Fable again, I think I'm going to buy a house in town since I have enough money now! Has anyone noticed that none of the males in this game are attractive??? I was looking for someone to marry or flirt with, but they are all ugly for the most part! LOL. Since it's a video game I think it's okay to be a bit stingy!! ( WOW, about ten to twelve deer just ran past my window!! That was crazy, they were going fast! I just caught the first one out of the corner of my eye.) Well, i'm already on the couch, but i'm going to lay down. I am concentrating on a speedy recovery so tomorrow goes well.

The picture is from two days ago. We actually had a very light dusting of snow here in good ole Clarksville and I got so excited about it, I took a picture of it in this pot where I planted basil and cilantro last summer. It's so sad that I got excited over such a tiny bit of snow. Wow, I'm really missing home sometimes.

Chains, Jo-Blows Pizza, Where's the Taste??

My boyfriend and I had to drive out of town last week to see a friend in the Hospital, who got into a terrible car wreck and we ended up missing visiting hours. So we found a restaurant and ate dinner. We ended up finding this amazing restaurant called the Tin Angel. Crazy but I actually said, "I would love to find a dark lit restaurant with a fireplace" and it was like my wish came true!! It was all there! Not only that, the food was amazing, the atmosphere was great and the waiter sounded like he was a cook on Food Network! My boyfriend of course makes fun of me all the time because I want these completely crazy requests when it comes to a restaurant. I totally thought of my friend Barbara when I was there. Barbara is a great friend of mine who moved away and she was always so much fun and would love trying new places. She was always the one you could call up and get all dressed up with, go out, have a blast and still be in an elegant setting. It's really sad when great friends move away and you can't share those simple moments, like laughing over a great meal! Miss you lady :-)

Anyway, I have to complain because the town my boyfriend and I live in only has crappy chain restaurants and minimal unique dining experiences. This would be Clarksville, TN. There are maybe two or three places that I consider unique and that I would miss, but that is it. There are lots of towns that lack a great dining experience, so I'm sure lots of people can have the same argument about where they live. Don't get me wrong, I love going to Olive Garden once in a while and I really enjoy the Habachi Grill and Chinese Buffets!! I am guilty of loving Chinese Buffet and Clarksville does have some of the best, still... I'm from PA and there are not, per say, fancy restaurants in my hometown, but many privately owned or family run restaurants. I haven't been home to stay in a long time, but I truly, truly miss the fantastic Italian food and it's nice just to have a great butcher in town and a great bakery. It really surprised me that it's warmer here and there are no farmer markets in town and back home we have four to five farmers markets I know that fresh fruits and veggies can be bought. I don't like a lot of store bought vegetables, once you've had a fresh tomato, just picked, you don't want to go back to the store!

Another part that goes into my food rant, is some restaurants you go to just don't seem to care and the food is old, the place is dirty, the service is sloppy. I just don't understand how someone who is a restaurant owner and this is your career, your life, how could you not want it to succeed and be the best in town! I guess once you've been to a great restaurant, once you know how wonderful it can be, you want that all the time!
I guess I have a lot to bitch about the subject of food and restaurants, I can go on forever! So I think I'll chill for now. If anyone has anything they want to add, I would love to see your comments :-) Good night all!

Unemployment Pick Up Lines??

It's a new year and so far it's been pretty rough for everyone it seems. For me as well, but among all the craziness, I wanted to share a story from my afternoon, last Wednesday!Here is a bit of my background first: I quit my job at the end of November after struggling and stressing with my job for 3 years. I know what you're thinking...., "What the hell, in this Economy?" Well, I thought about it for a long time and with the support of my boyfriend, I went for it. I would never have quit unless he was in agreement and he was actually encouraging it in November. There are many reasons I left, but that's a whole other story. Of course it has been a difficult job search and I expected it. Now I understand the saying, "Finding a job is a job in itself."

So during all this job hunting I keep checking the web page for the Career Center in town, in some areas it's known as "The Unemployment Office". I absolutely hate going there and every time I have, I get nothing out of it. All of the city jobs go through them, so it is worth checking out. The other day, I go through my normal routine of writing down the jobs I want to check out and drive out there. I park and creep in there, feeling like I crawled out of the gutter with all the other gutter kids sitting in there filling out paperwork. This time all I needed was a fax number for one of the jobs and the secretary still makes you wait with everyone else. So I sit down and wait. This dude with a black sweat shirt hood and knit snow cap, smiles at me from two tables over. I just smile and keep starring ahead. He walks over and grabs this stack of religious magazines off my table. I thought, he must have been sitting here before me and I took his seat. Funny, he didn't look like the religious type! So 15 minutes roll by and he walks over and smoothly slides this piece of paper across the table towards me and then walks towards the door. So he writes something along the lines of, "I was too shy to come talk to you, but I think you are very, very cute! Please call me sometime - 999-867-5309."

Really??? Really???...... WOW. Picking up chicks in the unemployment office is the new thing now?? Did I miss something? Hell, I have no job, you have no job, we have something in common!! WHY NOT! Imagine how sweet that first date would be?! Walking through the park, sharing a small fry at MickeyD's with the dollar change you found in your pocket. Anyway, I'm sure this guy could have been a nice guy and just took a chance, but I still think it's funny.

I ended up waiting 30 minutes for that stupid fax number which I'm sure I won't get called back on. I didn't know what to do with the note that dude gave me and there were people all around me, so I shoved it in my job folder I was carrying. I was messaging my friend, Chris, about the humor of what just transpired, when here he comes back into the building! He sits down at the other side of the table and says, "You got it locked in?? You got it locked in?" (referring to his phone number in my phone). Then he started looking all around for the note he gave me. He said, "You threw it out, didn't you?" I just kept smirking and texting and he was just smiled and walked away sayin', "You're gonna call me right, right??"
Well shucks, that just makes me want to go back there even more!!

This is the Way the World Ends!!

(PLEASE click the picture to see it in entirety!!)

The world isn't really ending, I'm just quoting Cortana in Halo! It took me way too long to get this Post up (the story of my life). It didn't take me long to edit, I just procrastinated and also being an intermediate user of Paint Shop Pro, I had to figure out how to approach the image and what exactly i wanted to do.

So here it is, the end result of my costume, my portrayal of Cortana from Halo 3! If you've never played Halo or have never seen Cortana, click this link. I am happy with how it turned out. I came up with the idea 2 months before Halloween and then put it together within a month. I was painting it up to the last minute and went to two Halloween events. My friend Mike and his buddy Wolf had a huge party which was a lot of fun and I attended the Wags to Witches Ball. It is a Halloween Costume Ball to benefit the local Humane Society. At the ball there was a lot of older people there, so this meant no one plays video games and no one knew who I was. Then again, a lot of my friends didn't know who I was either. Haha. I was know as "Blue Girl" all night. Of course I got a lot of looks just being a woman in a skin tight unitard!! Lol.

This is the first time I technically "made" a costume. I have received a lot of compliments on the costume and I really appreciate all of it! It really made me feel good to hear how people were impressed with how detailed it was and they couldn't believe I actually did it myself. If you ever search the web for Cosplay, you'd find that I am definitely not the first to portray the sexy A.I.!! I would love to wear the costume to a Sci-Fi Con and I want to put some more into the detail of the costume. I also want to do more detail with my makeup next time. The hands and feet took longer than i thought they would and the makeup would come off my lips and hands. Of course that is to be expected. Now if I only knew how to use a sewing machine. I would love to learn so I could make my own costumes. It would be great to incorporate this with making jewelry. The possibilities!!!

Anyway, if you've never seen my blog, the most recent posts show the progression of making the Cortana costume! So it's kind of backwards ;-)

I am your Shield, I am your Sword....!!

Here you can really see the brush strokes on the costume. I must give credit to another Cosplayer on the internet with this arm pattern. I used the same pattern for the lower part of the arm. I'm not sure where she got her idea, but it was simple to do and looked great. If you go to www.Cosplay.com and search "Cortana"you will see the other girls who were my inspiration to do this costume!

Non-Playable Character

I kept a lot of the basic patterns the same from viewing images of Cortana. I had to get creative with some of it and i made up my own patterns. This view of the arm is one of those moments! The arms and legs have some of my own ideas and i'm happy with the results!

I have defied Gods and Demons...

These photos are not in real time, but it has been a crazy last few weeks! I still wanted to show the progress. More painting! At this point i start to realize how long this is probably going to take. Maybe i should have started during the summer months. Every night after work from Nine something till after Midnight i worked on this for about two weeks. I'll have some actually calculated hours figured at some point. People who do Cosplaying all the time keep track of how many hours they put in. I suppose it makes you feel really fantastic or really ridiculous for spending all that time. I am really enjoying how this is starting to look so i feel good :-)