Conventional Love

So the reason I've been away all weekend is that I was at a science fiction convention. Yes. I am an official nerd. And no, I don't give a shit. Since I don't do coherent long paragraphs, I'll do bullets instead. I love bullets.

• Where was it? ConDFW in Richardson, Tx....so Dallas basically. Missed a good panel due to fucking Dallas traffic. No offence to all you Dallasites out there but Dallas traffic sucks.
• Three days among my kind. Awesome. The best way to put it is how my mom put it="It's nice to be among like minded people." Indeed it is. Three days of being able to talk about the books and tv I like with other people who like them too. It's nice to geek out without people going "Oh...that's nice" or giving me the mal ojo, or looking at me like a total weirdo. Which I am but that's not the point.
• Now that I'm riding on a wave of convention love I'm looking at future ones instead of writing. Bad.
• So we went because two of our favorite authors were there-Jim Butcher and David Weber. Well, for David Weber, because we like one series he wrote but not the point. But I got to go to dinner with the Butchers and 30 people from the message board on the site. That, the car ride to dinner and the Butcher Block were the highlights of the convention for me. Love love love. And I got three books signed by Jim. :) Super nice, both of them.
• The hotel's breakfast buffet-not worth 12 bucks. Sorry ya'll.
• Favorite panel: (besides Butcher Block)- Cliches of Doom!
• Least Favorite: Paranormal Romance....for a certain author I shall not name.
• Costumes are awesome. And they were freaking out the little socialites that were in the lobby getting their pictures taken, which makes them twice as awesome.
• I had a 50 dollar budget and got 2 pendants, a pair of earrings, and 5 books. I'm awesome.
• Please, don't overpress your book on me. I get subsequent feelings of creeped out/guilt/not buying your book.
• Only at cons (and renfaires) will the dealer's room sell broadswords.

That's all I got for now. Pictures later. :)

Random Things...

I've seen in Austin:

*Bouncer type person-riding a moped.

*People walking their miniature horses on Town Lake. On leashes, like dogs.

*Carmadillo

*An uber hip dude with the requisite jeans in a smaller size than I can ever wear and an ironic tee-and sporting proudly a Texas tattoo....that may be more a texas thing than an austin thing.

*Cinnamon Dolce Goat Milk Ice Cream

*Too tall bikes-a bike that's basically one frame welded onto the other so you get a six foot high bike.

*Custom made, tens of thousands of dollars Longhorn bbq rigs.

*On that thought, the Longhorn Hoopty Car.

*Art cars in general-my faves are tied between fish car I saw during EAST and the ping pong ball car I see in Hyde Park.

*Three dudes piled onto a one dude moped. Starting down an incredibly steep hill. All of them wobbling in their seats.

*Captain Planet graffiti

*The worst movie I've ever seen in my life (Tales From the Qua-Dead Zone)

*Six figure cars parked in the customer zone of a tiny, hippy juice stand (Daily Juice! woot)

*Impromptu jam session on the bus between guy with guitar and guy with schizophrenia.

Once again, I love it here so much.

Artsy.

Just a little update. Not feeling up to writing tonight. I put this site on my little business cards. I don't know why I did. I don't really write about my art here. I always feel a little self concicous doing so-I've heard too many pretentious blowhards in art and I don't want to seem like one myself. I take pictures of places and things I love or that amuse. I draw to make myself happy. And thats the long and short of it. :) Yeah.

Stress Management

I meant to post last night but then that hellacious storm blew in and I turned off my computer. It was raining and blowing so hard here that water came in through the crack of my front door. Any who. I've been under alot of stress lately, and I needed a mental health day. So I headed down South Congress.

I know some people might think that South Congress is all overpriced now and all the good places and stores were pushed out by high rents. And that might all be true. But I still love going down South Congress. It's absolutely great for people watching and picture taking. And I love all the vintage stores down the way.

I walked from Oltorf to...uh, that street that borders Tx. School for the Deaf. I got two pairs of earrings from Tesoro's for 8 bucks and a pair of Steve Madden shoes from St. Vincent's for 5 dollars. Squee. That's why I love South Congress-and bargin hunting in general. If you're willing to look a little bit, you can satisfy both your fashionista side and your cheap broke side. Plus, Steve Madden shoes for 5 bucks!!!! :D They're a passion of mine.

I love going into Yard Dog because they have the neatest art. One day I will be able to afford the bench they have in there made up entirely of soda caps....probably never but a girl can dream. Yard Dog's actually one of my favorite galleries in town. Not sure if it's an actual gallery per se, but they only sell art so I guess it is.

I love no matter how far down you are on South Congress you can turn back and see the capitol building. That's one of my (many) favorite things about Austin. It always just blows my mind that not only that I live in the capitol of Texas, I can go to the Capitol building any day of the week-even at night. Trust me, my friend and I went in once at 8 pm and they were open til 10 pm. O_O. Whatever. Cheers ya'll.

Myrtle

I was going to start today with a post about Austin-the city I live in and love. But I got Myrtle so we're going to segway. I can throw some Austin love in though.

I decided I wanted a plant about a week ago. I miss having something living to take care of. Plus, I want to put some life in our living room-literally I guess. And there's this awesome place I found during Christmas on South 1st called Happiness. It's a little plant store but it's not like one of those jumbo nurseries.

At the risk of sounding like a total flake, it feels like every plant there has a personality. That's how the proprietress (God I wish I could remember her name!) treats them. It feels like someone's home or garden, instead of a store. There's art everywhere and several cats.

And the lady who owns the place is soooo nice! She helped me the entire time. She recommended which plant would be the best for me, then she helped me find a pot, then she potted it for me. And finally she told me "What's her name going to be? She's gotta have a name." And Myrtle was the first one that popped up in my mind.

My cactus looks like a Myrtle to me. Her thorns kind of go in, like little mini flowers, and she has three beautiful little purple flowers. She lives in a blue pot on my front windowstill. And it's stupid and goofy I know but I love my Myrtle. My fucking cactus already has a personality. :) Pictures later for all 2 of you who care. :)

Test!

Let's see if I can't do a photo.

Well hell, that was easy. Bitching.

As for what this photo is, it's a picture of me from FenCon, Sept. 2007, doing the Team Venture sign with one of my favorite authors, A. Lee Martinez. Kewl.

Hallo.

So.

It's 12 am in the morning. And it's the time of morning when I do crazy, random shit.

Like start a blog.

I've always wondered about having one and now, ta da, I have one. I'm kind of excited. I can write stuff that will be seen by peoples....probably a dozen but whatever.

There's the kind of writing you do on Facebook, like "25 things about me" and "Football game!". But I want to write about the places I love and why I love them, and fun things to do, and anything else random that comes up in my mind.

Like, for example, the title. Everytime I see the wide open Texas sky, I feel free. And that makes me happy. Thus, the title.

I don't know how long I'll keep this up. I don't know how often I will update. We'll just have to see. I got more to write but now I'm going to play with the layout. :) Night all.