More pictures!

Decent costumes, crappy pics. Bear with me.

Here's the underdress for my friend's costume - hemmed, trimmed, and finished.

And the overdress, also done. I think it's pretty. :)

Accessories for my costume. After much internal debate, I decided to be Rogue, from X-Men. (The comic, not the movie. I love Anna Paquin, but all that black leather was so boring.)

The undermost layer. I live in SoCal, so it's possible it will be overwarm even on October 31. If so, I can strip down to this at the party and still be decent.

Here's the jacket. It's supposed to be trimmed in fur, but fur was expensive and hard to work with, so I bought a really soft robe of fluffy terry cloth and used pieces of it. It was easier and cheaper, but it did have an unexpected side effect - a fuzzstorm. Tiny bits of white fuzz are still being picked off all of our clothing.

The cape. It's hooded, which you can't really see here.

So my costume and my friend's are completely, totally, 100% done! (Which is not to say I won't be bringing a needle and thread with me on Halloween; I'm jubilant, not stupid.) Now all that's left to do is finish my boyfriend's (he'll be Gambit to match my Rogue), and my work costume. When searching through my costumes, I came across a dress from four or five years ago, when I wanted to be Darla from Buffy, in the episode where it flashes back to 1762 and she sires Angelus. It never quite got finished (there's no hem, several parts are held together by safety pins, and inadequate pleating means the waist of the underskirt is approximately a foot too big), but I'm confident I can conquer that by next week. It was made by a friend (with my minimal help but complete financing... go, price out fourteen yards of brocade-like curtain fabric. I'll wait.), and even unfinished, it's pretty impressive. Hopefully, it will annhilate my colleagues.

More pictures to follow!

Boredom, Frustration, and Moral Outrage

While I'm still geeking out over Halloween, my daily thought processes are steadily marching towards the unremittingly political. Especially because it's a lot more acceptable to be caught reading nytimes.com at work than trolling eBay listings for costume pieces. (Well, at least it is in my head. I'm sure my company would actually prefer me to be, you know, working.) Beyond browsing up-to-the-minute updates of CNN's electoral vote map, though, there's not a lot I can do about the presidential election. I'm registered to vote, I've signed up for my mail ballot, and I've made sure my boyfriend's all set as well. California's not a swing state, though, so unless there's an unforeseen catastrophe we'll go blue as usual.

Despite my mostly futile musings on the deeply important general election, though, I did come across two advertisements today that managed to morally offend me (and believe me, that takes some doing. Mostly I feel that everyone should be able to do anything they want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else and isn't stupid. Unfortunately, there's a whole lot of stupid out there). The first, unsurprisingly, was an ad for Yes On Prop 8. For the uninitiated, California Proposition 8 would amend the California constitution to define marriage as only between a man and a woman. The ad in favor of it shows a little girl coming in to show her mom what she learned at school that day. She's holding a storybook with two frogs on it, with a title I can't quite recall - "King Meets King" or something like that. She says to her mom, happily, "Today at school I learned that a prince can marry a prince. And someday I can marry a princess!" (That's not verbatim, just the best I can recall.) And her mom frowns sternly and takes the book, as an old white guy comes onscreen to tell us that if gays continue to be allowed to marry, gay marriage will be taught in schools, as part of California curriculum - just like what happened in Massachusetts.

There are a number of infuriating things about this ad. First of all, what's so bad about being like Massachusetts? It hasn't exploded or fallen off the continent. It isn't even holding giant orgies in fields. And it somehow managed to produce Mitt Romney (though admittedly, he was fully formed before they legalized gay marriage. Maybe it wouldn't be able to elect a governor like him now. Hmm... still not seeing the downside). Secondly, at what point do California schools teach about marriage? I attended twelve years of California public schools, and I don't remember marriage being mentioned more than once or twice. I certainly wasn't taught it was my responsibility as a good citizen to get married and pop out kids. I think it might have been mentioned in grade school social studies - as in, a married couple and their children make up a household, and a number of households make a neighborhood, neighborhoods make a town, etc. But it hardly matters what gender the couple is for that kind of thing. And then, third - using that cute little girl is so clearly a scare tactic. The evil gays will corrupt your children! If by "corrupt" you mean show them that not everyone lives by the same value set, then yes, they will. And it's going to happen whether they're allowed to get married or not. Unless you plan to homeschool your children until they die, or lock them in a closet, they're going to meet gay people. And bisexuals and transvestites and people who get off on dressing up as horses and whipping each other with riding crops. Either your value set is strong enough to withstand these temptations, or it's not. (Or it's fundamentally flawed, but that's a different discussion.) Every religion has prohibitions that aren't reflected in state law. Catholics don't eat meat on Fridays, but it's not illegal. Mormons don't drink caffeine at all, but it's legal even in Utah. The point is, there are many things we don't do because we think they're wrong, not because the penal code forbids them. Teach your kids right and wrong (however you define it - it's legal to make your kids bigots if you want to. See how great freedom is?), and they'll be fine. Don't depend on the state to raise your kids.

Weirdly, the other ad that enraged me wasn't even political. In fact, it was so odd that at first I thought it was a spoof. But the punchline never came. This morning on my way to work, I heard an ad for a website called ashleymadison.com. It's a dating site, like match.com or chemistry.com, but with a twist. It's specifically for people in committed relationships, looking to hook up with each other for no-strings-attached fun. Its trademarked tagline is "Life is short. Have an affair." I'm pretty liberal - see my philosophy above - but excuse me?!?! WTF?!? Sadly, I'm pretty sure this indicates the fall of the American Empire and possibly Western Civilization as we know it (we've already destroyed Iceland, people). But that's okay, we'll all be too busy watching the circuses (henceforth referred to as "TMZ") to notice.

Until next time,
Fuming in Futility
(a.k.a. The Girl, wearing an Uncle Sam top hat. She likes hats.)

I Can't Get No Satisfaction

Brief and belated again, I'm afraid. But I promise that soon, very soon, I will post not only pictures of the many things I am working on but also details on how I created them. (Not so much to impress you as to force you all to smack yourselves in the forehead and say, "That's so simple! I could totally do that!" To be quickly followed by: "Why I am reading this blog again?")

My job is still overwhelming and unrewarding (except for the financial rewards, obviously; I wish to remind the relevant deities that I am grateful to have a job in these troubled times), but it's settled down a little, enough so that my brain regularly wanders off to do other things while my hands and eyes muddle though the routine. But everything else seems to be piling up. Fall, which has arrived in calendar if not in temperature, is a season of birthdays and parties and holidays. And all the plans and undertakings that arrive with that.

It's a lot to do, but most of it is stuff I really enjoy - shopping for the perfect birthday gift, whipping up something delicious to contribute to a party, making an elaborate costume, etc. And, with the exception of internet research, none of it can be done at work. But that can't keep my brain from working on it in the background, and it's starting to drive me crazy, as I think through every detailed step of the creative things I need to be doing - then sit in my cubicle doing none of them. It's like running in place while hitting yourself in the head with an inflatable bat. It doesn't hurt, really, but it does annoy the #@$% out of you.

I make detailed lists when I think of things, of course, but there's only so much satisfaction in making lists (even for a neurotic like me) when you can't cross things off those lists. It's gotten to the point where I'm blocking out my free time by the hour on my Google calendar. Not that I really pay attention to that once I'm actually home - it's more to relieve frustration while at work, by imagining myself at home doing things I care about. For instance, I've just remembered that I was supposed to do laundry tonight. Too late now.

But I am making progress, slowly but surely. For instance, my Halloween costume is now... wait for it... FINISHED!!!!! Well, except for 4 belt loops, 4 hook-and-eye closures, and some hand-sewing to make trim lay a little bit flatter. But I could wear it tomorrow if I wanted to, and only I would know it was missing those things.

And all that's missing from one of my party-contribution dishes (recipe and photos to be posted later; it has to be a surprise at the party or it won't be as spectacular) is an auction I'm currently winning on eBay. Well, and the actual food part - clearly making it this far in advance wouldn't really work out well.

Also, just today I added two new projects to my list... wait, no, make that three. Pictures and tutorials (if they turn out really well) to follow, yadda yadda yadda...

But of course that's the danger. Given free rein at work, my brain has infinite time to come up with new and cool things to work on... and my hands have zero time to work on them. By the end of the month, I'll have twenty projects, all of them one-quarter done.

Or not. I might not have mentioned that I have something of a tendency to start things and not finish them. (This usually only applies to my own private projects; I procrastinate on other people's things, but I almost never let them down.) So I say this time, the list stops here! All projects for October are now on the list. Anything not yet listed will be politely turned down.

Let's see how long I stick to it.

A Catalogue of Catastrophe

Or: excuses, excuses...

I've fallen way behind with blogging lately, and work is once again my excuse. The Peter Principle is unfortunately still in play - the very nice woman my company terminated three weeks ago has left an untold wake of destruction behind her. I discovered last week that something we do on a monthly basis for each client had not been done since November 2007 for one of her clients. Thus a task that normally takes into account thirty days of activity now had to cover approximately THREE HUNDRED! One day's work became three, and four days of other work subsequently had to be squeezed into one. I've dreamed of work every day for a week, and all that keeps me going is the prospect of a weekend ahead.

And then the heat wave hit, further stifling creativity. Or at least my willingness to spend an hour with a hot laptop resting on my legs. But tonight, dear readers, I have made the sacrifice to bring my marvelous musings to the world! Sorry. When uninspired, I fall back on pomposity. You know, like the Republicans.

It's somewhat amusing that this is the "catastrophe" post in a week when the stock market had the sharpest decline since the Great Depression and Congress passed a $700-billion bailout plan. Amusing only in that I'm complaining that I still have a job, and about heat and lack of motivation for geeky projects. Not really the level of tragedy that some people are experiencing this week, and I don't mean to belittle them with my irreverence. But weighty topics aren't really what this blog is about (we'll see if I can stick to that as Election Day draws nearer... vote no on Prop. 8!), and I was slightly affected. At the height of work-related hopelessness last week, my bank failed, which seemed like an appropriate cap to my day. Rest in peace, WaMu. Your "woo-hoo" campaign was condescending and relentlessly irritating, but you were a pretty good bank overall. Except for the subprime mortgage lending practices, I guess.

Heat, heat, heat. All I want to do is think about fall and Halloween - crisp weather, candy, sweaters and tights and boots, pumpkin patches, and costumes. Instead Indian summer has hit with a vengeance (side note to the Buffy fans - doesn't that phrase make "his penis got diseases from a Chumash tribe" start playing in your head?), and even my daily walk at lunch feels like a trip to the sauna. I freeze in my cubicle, then parboil at home. This had better break soon.

Or else what, I don't know. I'll continue working on all my Halloween projects - I'm up to three costumes, several costume consultations, a side dish, a dessert, and a drink to craft. And I still have no idea what to wear to my work party... I'm determined to win that contest. But everything seems to be progressing, if at a snail's pace, and I plod along through the heat. If it would just cool down, I could find some joy in the proceedings.

But for now, all is catastrophe - at least in the overblown sixteen-year-old sense of the word. So, you know, minor inconvenience accompanied by outsize pouting. What can I say? It makes me feel young. :)

As does the use of emoticons. :P

SemiGeekGirl's sanity will return with cooler weather... or at least her boyfriend fervently hopes so.