cornerofmadness

It’s been a long fun, weird weekend. Friday saw me cleaning like a fiend and hiding things in closest and the back rooms. I heard them weedwhacking outside. Then my internet went down (and still it as I type this to post from work). Who wants to bet that they weedwhacked thru the wiring to the internet AGAIN?

My brother, SiL and Mom arrived Saturday at noon and we were smart. We went out to lunch in Jackson (as lunch at Bob Evans Farm Fest is a nightmare) and I will say LaRosa’s decorated fantastically for Halloween. We loved it. Someone loves Halloween as much as I do and one of my students (a better one) waited on us. I got an appetizer in the hopes of eating it all but I couldn’t and so we swung by my place to pop the leftovers in my fridge and put mom’s stuff in here (Brother and SiL were staying in the Red Roof as I don’t have enough room) Mistake! Called it, didn’t I? And Brother wasn’t content with just looking at my living room/kitchen, he opened the shut up back rooms, the closets and my fridge. WHY the closets? Dude I don’t roam your house peeking everywhere, not even when I stay there. Kanda, who always greets them at Mom’s house, ran and hid.

I’d love to say we had a great time at Bob’s but...it was too fucking hot. It was at least 85 and humid. Even my Brother & SiL who love the heat (they’re off to Mexico again in two weeks) were miserable. Mom and I were dying. It was very crowded and to my surprise the new owners of Bob’s put in rides and funnel cake type food trucks (which honestly was good because the previous owners, the actual Evans family, didn’t allow competing food which made the lines unmanageable.) Brother wanted to go on the stupid Ferris wheel and that was at the very beginning of the time there and it was also the end. As he went off in search of tickets (which he ended up not buying for good reason, they wouldn’t sell individual tickets, just the 10$ day passes).

As Mom and I waited, the heat got us, especially her. She spent 90% of the time in the music tent just sitting. My SiL and I barely got to see ANY of the damn crafters which is the whole point of this thing. I got to visit Laurel Valley farm and cheese maker’s animal tent. I bought my favorite of their cheeses and pet the cow who provided the milk but she looked like she had a respiratory infection so that was not encouraging. My brother got an elephant ear for the first time (I stole some) and then pretty much Mom wanted to go. We were barely there two hours. She could hardly walk back. As my SiL and Brother said, she keeps talking about going to Mexico with them (she’s pretty upset that they only invite my SiL’s parents and never her and Dad), but there’s no way in hell she could possibly do it. I did manage to divert her into the tent with the glass maker I usually buy from for her. Talked my SiL into buying something for Mom for her birthday/Christmas ( as I’ve already bought a bunch and why not? It’s not like mom needs surprised for the holiday). I counted myself lucky to get that cheese, my maple sugar cotton candy and my honey.

I bought nothing else. We left, sat around the house and then went to Arch and Eddie’s for dinner (my treat for Brother and SiL’s birthdays in a couple weeks) and some beer tasting boards. They all got dinners and I got two little sliders (could only eat one and a half, gah my meds are really screwing with me). The beers were good but for the one made in-house. It was a Halloween brew, in theory a double IPA (I don’t like IPAs but I thought most of their beer is good…) This tasted like grapefruit shandy and piss. None of us could drink it. Back home Kanda hid from Mom the whole night. Now she’s taken care of him for FOUR weeks this year without me even being there and he was fine with her. But it might have been ME he was hiding from. He came out to see her when she was alone (and vice versa with me). Cats be crazy.

So the festival didn’t go so hot but the good news is my brother woke me up at 630 so he could get on the road (well fooled him, I was already up haha but was planning on going back to sleep. Who gets on the road before the sun comes up? We all went to the Bob Evans in Jackson. They headed back home. I came back to my place and slipped into Shion Karanamori’s skin and headed down to the last day of Tsubasacon.

Hillbilly Hot Dog was sadly closed until noon so I had to make due with con food (as everyone else was also following the Sunday blue laws of a late opening) but rather than eat the shitty fast food there, I got some of the Japanese buns and steamed cheese cake. The cake was yummy but I forgot how stale and blah those buns were from that vendor (I tried to spread the money around, I should have bought them all from the Japanese fellow. He obviously knew what to actually bring that didn’t taste like stale bear claws). At least the mochi is yummy.

I know Tsubasacon is a very small anime con but the vendors hall was really anemic this year. Granted most vendor halls are in decline because of unfettered access most of us have to online stores of anime merchandise. This was about 80% artists and I need more wall art like I need shot and literally nothing seemed all that good. There were exceptions of course but mostly not in my fandoms. The one piece of FMA art I saw (mostly looking for ELD) was Ed’s head floating in space above his beheaded shoulders with a blue array between head and shoulder. That was SO WTF. The lady I buy steampunk stuff from had a beautiful pencil of Levi (AoT) but again, no need for more art but she did have it as a pin. I rarely wear buttons but I did buy it. There was a vendor with beautiful stuffed betta fish and one with stuffed bats and another with stuffed sloths/otters/platypuses that I, ELD and Silvrethorn would have loved but yeah NONE of us need another damned stuffed anything. In cleaning this place, realizing there is NO MORE ROOM and hiding storage boxes behind closed doors, I realize I need to toss things out and not buy more crap I don’t really need.

I was already SO tired by the time I got there, I wasn’t thinking straight. Otherwise I would have a) looked at the con handout to see who the guests were. I would have caught the entire panel with Austin Tindle (Kaneki (Tokyo Ghoul), Accelerator (A certin Magical Index), Leah Clark (Mari from Yuri on Ice) & Kristen McGuire (Loop from Yuri on Ice and artist) but I did see the last half (not well attended. In fact most of the con wasn’t well attended but it was the last day after all). I’m not a big one for autographs but I might have since there was barely a line had I known who any of them were and honestly Tindle annoyed me a bit by looking like he wanted to be elsewhere and telling us ‘he doesn’t care about the shows, only the characters he plays. He didn’t even seem knowledgeable that much about anime).

An old fellow followed but I didn’t stay. Turns out he was Robert Axelrod from Cowboy Bebop and many others. Ah well. I missed the musical act too because they wouldn’t let me in as it was full. Opps. Mostly what I did was go to the traveling manga library and just chilled out reading. I read #4 of Seraph of the End. It was one I was collecting but was unsure I wanted to continue. It was good but as a series reminded me too much of Bleach and other manga concentrating on fight, train, fight. That bores me after a while. #4 was interesting but yeah, I wish the library would get this so I could read it (I don’t like going to online manga pirate sites for many reasons, a main one being they’re often virus-ridden.) The other I read was #1 of Tokyo Ghoul which I’ve enjoyed the anime for. I found Kanakei to be a fascinating and tragic character right up to the episodes after he was tortured into near-insanity and then it started into one of the fight train fight story lines. Sigh. It still remains mostly interesting though. I have to say in a way the manga reminds me of Attack on Titan in the respect that the art is SOOOOOOOOO much better in the anime. It’s not quite as ugly as AoT’s art was in the early days but it is a bit rough or at least not to my taste.

I went back for a final round in the dealer’s room (because the Panchinko machines were all full. I’d love to try my hand at that. Maybe next year). I wanted to buy something since I’d spent 20$ to get in and all I had was some overpriced crappy buns and mochi. (and I didn’t get to buy anything at Bob’s fest). The Japanese fellow with the steamed cheese breads also had a crap ton of wall scrolls. In fact there were several FMA ones but I didn’t end up getting any for ELD for a variety of reasons (she needs more wall hangings like she needs shot as well, and shipping it would suck) but the main one was almost ALL of them were oddly enough, original anime and given that’s nearly 15 years ago I was surprised (also shocked that FMA is THAT old holy shit). There were a couple from Brotherhood but the only one with Winry had to have been drawn by the third stringers. The proportions were so off I could barely tell it was Winry (There was an AoT one like that. I couldn’t figure out who the woman was on it with Eren and Mikasa only to realize the skeletal chick with the womanly hips in a standard swimsuit pose, was Levi. Head desk). The other two were weird. Only one had Ed in it and he was miniscule up front fighting Envy & Greed!Ling while a huge Father and Bradley loomed over them. Yeah pretty sure ELD wouldn’t have liked that. Not one had Al in them btw.

I did end up buying another wall scroll (I KNOW!) for the office of Tokyo Ghoul. I wasn’t planning to buy anything for that fandom but I liked the art in it and the arrangement. I picked up a plastic folder with Kaneki on it too and finally found a little something for ELD. And one of my former students was there.

I headed out and found the Mexican restaurant I liked for dinner. I wanted to go to Micheal’s and Macy’s but I was just too tired. I went to Booksamillion, realized I forgot my coupons (ditto the ones for Macy’s and Micheal’s). You’d think if you give them your BaM card, they’d just scan in the current coupon but no. I ended up with the most manga/anime related stuff from them which is just a little bit sad. Two new ones Queen’s Quality which is the sequel to QQ Sweeper which is an interesting paranormal where they clean people’s psyche and InSpectre which has a handicapped girl as the main character so that sounded interesting (and I got the next Noragami: Stray God. Love this one). Picked up a caramel chip frappe from their Joe Muggs coffee shop. Meh. The taste was good but the caramel chips were crushed up in it like waxy sand.

Made it home, almost all the way before the downpour that threatened all day finally let go. It went from 85 to 58 in under and hour. Naturally now that I won’t be outside summer finally fucks off.