Dragon Con Schedule and Cosplay!

Image: www.dragoncon.org

I've been lucky enough to be a panelist for several Kaleidoscope Track panels over the last few years. I love being on panels and talking about things I'm passionate about - which has been often been Disney related.

This year, I'm on four panels and I'm very excited about it! Here's my schedule if any of you want to attend!

The Young Nerd Life - Fri, August 29, 7pm – 8pm

A708 Atlanta Marriott Marquis

There are many shows families watch together! Let's discuss those shows & how kids fit into the world of fandom.

Disney Princesses & Heroes Panel - Sat, August 30, 11:30am – 12:30pm

A708 Atlanta Marriott Marquis

Fan led discussion about all of your favorite Disney Princesses and Heroes. 

Theme Park Travel - Sat, August 30, 8:30pm – 9:30pm

A708 Atlanta Marriott Marquis

Share ideas and discuss how to make theme park visits fun for the entire family.

Phineas & Ferb Fan Panel - Sun, August 31, 4pm – 5pm

A601/A602 Atlanta Marriott Marquis

What are you doing today? Discussing what you love about Disney Channels hit show 

I'm also planning on bringing several costumes as well as marching in the parade.

Friday - Kaylee from Firefly

Saturday - Haunted Mansion Tightrope Girl

Sunday - I'm hoping to wear the Tightrope Girl again - but if it's too sweaty and icky, I'll be wearing American McGee's Alice

I'm looking forward to Dragon Con! Hope to see some of you there! I'll be live tweeting through the con as well!

Ten Years Ago....

Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/

I watch the Super Bowl every year. I’ve been to a few parties but most of the time I just watch it from home. As I watched the excellent half time show this past Sunday, I was reminded of another Super Bowl from ten years ago.

In 2004, I was struggling with my new chronic pain. I was in the midst of the doctor’s trying every medicine they could think of and none of them making any difference. I was living at home at the time and I was suffering from very high levels on Super Bowl Sunday.

I still watched the Super Bowl though I was stuck on the couch because it hurt to move. In years past, I had gotten up for snacks or to go to the bathroom during the halftime show. But that year, I watched it because I wasn’t going anywhere.

So I got to see Janet Jackson’s boob, which didn’t seem very shocking to me. Partly because I have my own boobs, but I was feeling doped up on pain and whatever medicine I was trying that week. I didn’t really think much about it until the internet exploded the next day.

Ten years later, I still think that a lot of fuss was made about not much. But I’ll always remember it as part of what happened at the height of me trying to figure out how to manage my pain. Thankfully this year’s Super Bowl I felt pretty good and got to watch it with my family

2013 in Review

Since this is the last day of 2013, I thought I’d visit some of the highlights and lowlights of the year. This year was very mixed. Some good things happened but it seems like we spent the year moving from crisis to crisis.

The year started out pretty good. Todd found out about a horror convention in Charlotte that was going to have Bruce Campbell as a guest. Bruce Campbell is one of those actors both Todd and I always wanted to meet but he doesn’t do a lot of conventions. We made plans, got a hotel room and someone to watch Emily. We did bring her on Friday and she got to meet Danny Glover, who thought she was very cute.

Todd and I had a great time at Mad Monster Party but we had gotten some bad news right before. Emily needed dental surgery because of teeth issues. It was going to be very expensive and we didn’t know if we were going to have to cancel our Disney trip.

We managed to get the money together for the dental surgery and Emily was fine afterwards. Her surgery was in May and things evened out a little after that. It was also this summer that I got to meet Neil Gaiman which was awesome. He was doing a book tour for his new book and Todd got me a ticket. I waited for hours to meet him but it was worth it in the end.

As we got into the later summer, Todd was having more and more issues at work. He had been unhappy at his job for years but didn’t feel like he could leave because the money was too good. It got to a point in August that he couldn’t stay. Thankfully

he got another job right away and he’s been much happier. But it was pretty stressful for a few weeks.

We still got to go to Dragon Con which was awesome as always. I got to be on two panels this year and it was great fun. Once Dragon Con was done, I went into high anticipation mode for Disney. The Disney trip was great. My pain levels were low the whole week and it never really rained except in the morning of the day we went to Hollywood Studios. Emily had a wonderful time and has been asking to go back. The only bad thing that happened was Todd got food poisoning on our last day so the ride home was pretty miserable for him. Otherwise, it was the highlight of the year.

Once we got home, we got back into the groove of things. Then at the end of November, my car died when Todd took Emily to school one day. He tried to fix it himself with the help of one of the dad’s of Emily’s preschool friends. But they couldn’t get it to start. Finally we just towed it to a shop and they pulled it into a computer, flipped a switch and it was working again. Thankfully it didn’t cost too much to fix though it was stressful again because Todd couldn’t figure out what was going on.

The last thing that really made 2013 an overall sucky year was the death of our cat Star last week. It put a damper on the holidays for me and I still am grieving his loss.

Mostly 2013 was not a good year for me but it did have its bright spots. I’m really hoping that 2014 will be a much better year. We don’t have anything big planning – just Mad Monster Party and Dragon Con. Plus I’ll be planning and attending the Browncoat Ball, which should a lot of fun. Otherwise, working and doing house improvements is our main goal as a family for next year.

Goals for 2014

Now that Christmas is over with, thoughts turn to the new year that is almost upon us. I’m really hoping that 2014 is better than 2013. This year had a lot of down moments though the bright spot was Disney. Next year, we are hoping to have fewer issues and just save in case anything comes up.

A lot of people make resolutions for the new year, but I prefer to think that these are goals. The theme of my goals for 2014 is to finish all the things. I have a lot of unfinished projects and I’d like to get them done.

The first one is finish the 2nd draft of my novel. I’ve been finding it hard to find time to write. I work in the morning and then after work I often feel drained because of my chronic pain. But I really need to make time to finish this novel if I ever want to be published.

The second is to finish Emily’s cross stitch Christmas stocking. It’s one of the biggest cross stitch projects I’ve done and I’m a bit sad that I didn’t finish it in time for this Christmas. But I now have plenty of time to get it finished. I do hope to have it finished early in the year because I have three costumes I want to make for this year’s convention season.

The third is finish Couch to 5K. This one may prove to be the hardest. I’ll run and get pretty far though but often I’ll have a pain flare and end up too sick to do anything but work and take care of Emily. Our tree is where the treadmill is so I haven’t run in quite a while. As soon as we take the tree down next week, I’m starting from the beginning and really going to try to get through the program all the way this time.

These are my main goals for 2014. There are other things I want to accomplish like making three different costumes and organizing my office. But these three things are a holdover from 2013 (and before) and I’d like to be able to move forward.