Comic-Con Costume #1

New costume!

Almost done.

Well, sort of.

It's supposed to be this...

But still, it's a dress! I shall celebrate with ice cream!

Yes, I Know I Suck

So, I came across my own blog just now and discovered that, hey, it's been a month, a week, and three days since I last updated it. (Not counting the pic and three sentences I added yesterday.) Which is a new low, I think - although I'm too lazy to scroll through the archive and actually figure out if it's a record. Therefore, I suck. I am aware of it, and comments should feel free to explore the magnitude of my suckiness, but for now I'm over it. Mostly.

It's especially ironic given that a) I started the micro-posts to allow myself to blog more often by requiring less words at a time; b) I just ponied up $80 to Yahoo! for hosting the site I eventually intend to post this blog on; and c) I sadly and with much reluctance succumbed to the pestilence that is Twitter. Yes, I Twitter! Well, about once a week anyway.

But self-flagellation aside (verbal only, thank you - while I theoretically understand that for some pain can be a fetish, it seems ridiculous to think you'd accomplish much by whipping yourself - wouldn't knowing when the blow would fall kind of ruin it?), I'm back. And just in time for the run-up to summer geekitude galore.

As usual, the centerpiece of the summer will be the annual pilgrimage to Comic-Con (July 22-26, http://www.comic-con.org/cci/). But July also includes Independence Day (meaning good food, good friends, and ridiculous amounts of fireworks) and the Labyrinth Masquerade.

And if you can't wait that long, head over to http://www.cantstoptheserenity.com/ to find a showing of Joss Whedon's Serenity on the big screen sometime in June. (Dates vary by location, and profits go to the excellent charity Equality Now.)

I'm working on several Comic-Con costumes, although they're for the floor and not the Masquerade. (The stars were not as aligned as I thought this year.) I'll keep you posted on those and other events, and attempt to figure out how to use Twitter and Flickr to improve this blog.

Wish me luck... or better yet, perseverance.

Teenage Princess Persecuted By Madwoman

Micro-post #3.

Snow White

So I continued thinking about fairy-tale princesses, and what they might be like if they had been allowed to be strong women. Next on my list was Snow White. I started going through her tale, trying to make it real. Her mother died having her, and her father remarried a beautiful woman who probably ignored her most of the time. So... she would have been raised mostly by the servants, which would explain why a princess even knew how to cook and clean for a household of eight. She probably grew up sweet and well-mannered and completely ignorant. She would have been bewildered when the huntsman told her the Queen wanted her dead. The Queen had presumably not been interested in her at all until Snow White hit puberty, and then became instantly homicidally jealous (but was probably canny enough not to show that to Snow White). So you're Snow White, wandering around, making friends with servants and playing in the forest. Until one day a scary man tells you he was sent to kill you, and that he's not going to kill you, but your stepmother wants you dead and it will never be safe to go home again. So you run away and get taken in by seven bachelor miners who desperately need a housekeeper, and you're perfectly happy there. Despite the huntsman, you've never really been exposed to any danger, so when the dwarves tell you never to open the door to strangers, you promise without actually thinking about it. Of course you open the door to the nice old peddler woman and sample her apple. It doesn't actually make sense that your stepmother would be so enraged by your teenage beauty that she would not only throw you out and disown you, but then (upon finding out that her hitman had chickened out) stalk you for miles and miles, despite the fact that you clearly have no interest in deposing her, regaining your kingdom, or competing with her for the attention of men. This is because she's insane! And you, Snow White, are no heroine. Saving you doesn't actually save the world or even your kingdom. In fact, if you managed to save yourself, you'd be almost as bad a ruler as the insane Queen, because you have no training in anything but housework and are almost certainly hopelessly naive. So it's all for the best that you're going to marry the prince and let him add your kingdom to his, since it's probably the only thing keeping his father from invading already.

Sadly, Snow White is not a heroine. She's not even much of a fairy-tale princess. She's merely the final victim in a bizarre crime spree perpetrated by her stepmother. And as such, I can't really make her kick-ass. Although I'm open to suggestion if someone else can.

SemiGeekGirl really hates needlessly stripping the magic from things, as she's just done above. She realizes that she never really liked the Snow White fairy tale, but she knows that might not be true for everyone, and she apologizes.

Micro post - Labyrinth Masquerade

For more on this topic, see last year's posts. As soon as I get around to updating the tagging, anyway...

I'll do a detailed post on the awesomeness of the masquerade and what we plan to do this year, but for now I'll just give a brief summary. In the absence of a better idea, we've decided (tentatively) to do a twisted/fractured fairy tales theme with our costumes, specifically focusing on princesses/heroines. I've been trying to brainstorm, but a lot of times I end up just going around on the same thing. I did, however, have an inspiration for one princess, so I'll note it here.

Cinderella

So what if you were Cinderella - but instead of being the kind of girl who wanted nothing more than to go to the ball and marry the prince, you were a more kick-ass sort of protagonist? What exactly would you do if you no longer had to cook and clean for the step-wenches? Wouldn't you be out for revenge? Or at least out to help other oppressed young women? And most importantly, how can I tell that story without actually telling it? How can I make it into a recognizable costume?

I'm thinking, Vigilante Cinderella. Her clothing - the tattered remnants of a ball gown. The shoes, unfortunately, will have to be glass slippers. They're her most recognizable attribute, so I can't ditch them. (It's mostly unfortunate because I think that means whoever wears this one will need to purchase clear heels. And really, where are you going to use those again? Although there have been an awful lot of news articles about 'fallback careers'. Hrm.) The makeup - soot, of course, but used as guerrilla face-paint/camouflage. The weapons? A fireplace-poker-cum-rapier, and - my favorite part - mini pumpkin grenades. And, on her shoulder, to complete the picture, a pair of evil-looking sparrows for sidekicks.

SemiGeekGirl would insert an evil laugh here, but it's a skill she hasn't yet mastered. Alas.

Micro post - Chase Bank update

So I've now severed all non-checking account ties to Chase. Sadly, though, when I attempted to reorder checks online, I was informed my information was no longer on file. I assumed this was an artifact of the switchover, so I called the customer service number that popped up. After entering ALL of my information by touch-tone, I was once again informed that I wasn't on file. I hung up, called back, and proceeded to look for the magic menu option that would allow me to talk to a real human being. There wasn't one. I had to go to the bank anyway to deposit a check, so I went in Saturday morning. I asked the teller if she could order me checks, because if she couldn't, I literally had no idea how to get them. She put in the order. I then asked her to close all my non-checking accounts. She asked why. I told her, nicely, that they had terrible interest rates. She asked if I had spoken to anyone in customer service. I nearly cried.

I was proud of myself later for neither laughing in her face nor demolishing parts of the branch on my way out. There are days when it's a very good thing I am not an Adept-level mage...

Work Blogging

I’ve just realized that my unproductive and irrational work habits are multiplying, which makes me feel guilty and a little sad. On the other hand, when I confront their ludicrousness head-on, I’m amused… for the ten seconds or so it takes me to realized how pathetically not-funny most of them are.

Just now, for instance, I got up from my desk, momentarily cheered by the thought of being away from my cubicle, and drifted toward the office supplies in my usual fog of depressed sleepy ennui. I needed window envelopes; there were fifteen or twenty in a sorter with a variety of other envelopes, but that didn’t seem like enough. (I just counted – I actually needed fourteen.) So I hunted through a couple of cabinets until I found the box holding the rest of the supply, and grabbed as many as I could hold in one hand. Looking at the pile I’d just snatched up, I thought, isn’t it funny that I seem to take more of these at a time whenever I run out? And then I followed that thought to its logical conclusion and realized that some primitive part of my back-brain seemed to believe that if I just took enough, someday I would never need to get window envelopes again. Which is obviously absurd, so I was amused. And then depressed again by what passes for amusement.

And now I’ve actually bored myself writing this, which is another excellent reason not to blog at work, beyond the possibility of getting caught and the questionable ethics of using time in which I am being paid to do something else. I am BORING at work. My complete and utter lack of interest in the job actually just translates into complete and utter disinterest (sometimes). If you could accidentally commit suicide simply by sinking into complete passivity, I’d’ve died a couple of years ago.

Well, maybe a good rant will get the blood flowing to my head again. Today’s topic? Let’s go with Chase Bank, N.A. (I believe the N.A. stands for North America, but I don’t care enough to Google it. I just added it because it looks official, and that’s how they refer to themselves in all their radio ads.) So in October or so of last year, Chase purchased my bank, Washington Mutual. At the time, WaMu held my checking account, my savings account, and my primary credit card. I had been fairly well satisfied, if not ecstatic, about the services provided for all of these accounts, and had been a loyal customer for eight years.

In February, I happened to be looking over my banking information to see if I needed to wait for a 1098 before filing my taxes, and I noticed that the amount of interest I’d accrued on my savings account seemed kind of low. In fact, when I added it up, I’d gotten a total of $8 for the entire year – on an average balance of $4,000. Digging a little deeper, I discovered that the interest rate (a pitiful 2.25% under the orginal WaMu terms) had, under the new Chase regime, been adjusted to 0.25%. That’s right – one-quarter of one percent. Let’s round that down so that we can more clearly see what it means. Zero point two five percent rounds down to – big surprise – zero! I could have made the same amount of money by stashing the cash under my bed, and then asking any one of my friends for eight dollars. And I would have saved the gas I spent getting to and from the bank. (Okay, usually I walk, but still.)

So I jumped ship. I did a little research, asked around, and moved my savings to ING Direct. (The interest rate there, in the interest of full disclosure, is not great at the moment. But it is over one percent, and, more importantly, it is guaranteed to adjust upward as the economy recovers, something I don’t trust Chase to do.) In the first month, ING gave me as much interest on $100 (my initial trial balance) as Chase gave me on the remaining $3600.

But honestly, I’d been meaning to switch my savings to a higher-yield account for a while, and the best ones are rarely at brick-and-mortar banks. I was disappointed in Chase – and a little insulted by the 0.25% interest rate – but not really bitter. Until last week.

I received my current credit card statement last Monday, and took until Thursday to get around to really looking at it. (I paid it online Wednesday, but that didn’t involve looking at the statement because I’d already budgeted how much I could afford to pay, and just transferred that amount. I’m trying to pay it down, so the amount I transfer is always more than the minimum.) When I did look, I was shocked. The interest rate was 2.25% higher than before – over ten percent.

I’ve never had a major credit card with an interest rate in double digits. Never. (I’m not counting store credit cards here – those always have terrible interest rates.) And my WaMu Visa had held steady for over five years. I called Chase to inquire. The girl on the phone was clearly of the opinion that I was wasting her valuable time. She first tried to make me feel stupid by telling me that Chase had sent me a letter informing me of the change a month ago. Which I’m sure they did. I try to read those “Terms and Conditions” pamphlets, but they’re practically indecipherable. I probably filed it without getting all the way through. I explained, politely, that I wasn’t denying I’d been properly informed, I was just wondering if there was any way Chase could review my account and see if I qualified for a lower interest rate. She informed me with irritation that Chase had already reviewed all the accounts they received from WaMu, and they would not take another look for at least six months, so that I could build up a “payment history”. I pointed out that my FICO score is almost 800, I’m using less than one-fourth of my available credit, and that I had a six-year “payment history” with WaMu, the last three years of which I had always paid more than the minimum. She informed me that Chase had “decided not to take that into account.” Then she tried to say goodbye so she could hang up on me. I interrupted and told her the next call Chase would receive from me would be to transfer my entire balance to a different bank. She told me to have a nice weekend in a tone that sounded like she would prefer it if I stepped in front of a city bus. I asked her to report my comments to her supervisor, wished her a nice weekend in a tone that implied I hoped she would spend it having a root canal with no anesthesia in a dentist’s office where “The Bird Is The Word” was stuck on endless repeat, and hung up, literally shaking with anger.

Half an hour later, I’d been approved for a Citi card with a rate almost as low as my old rate, and a promotional APR of zero percent. As soon as it comes in the mail, I’ll be transferring my balance. It’s not enough revenge on Chase, but at least it’s something. Since despite my love of the name I have not yet learned how to make a Molotov cocktail, it will have to do.

That, and denouncing Chase to my loyal circle of thousands (or at least, more than one) of blog readers. Ah, sweet revenge.

SemiGeekGirl refuses to apologize for her delusions of grandeur... but she will apologize for the lag between posts. She's sorry.

Volume 2.5

So, right after the party I was exhausted.
Then it was my dad's birthday, which involved, among other things, a 200-mile round trip and something called "sky sailing". (It involves a small fiberglass aircraft, and a tow plane. Mildly terrifying but wholly exhilarating. Go Dad!)
Then, a week at work compressed into four days of random busy-ness. Why on earth would you call your accountant from Spain to ask why the logo of the carrier on your mobile phone did not match the one on your wife's? One - why would you care? Two - how the frak would I know? Three - you're in Spain! This call is costing you a dollar per minute!
Now I'm sick and head-coldy. New updates as I feel up to it.
Coming soon - the Renaissance Faire!