....it's not my fault I have ADHD and also jacked up my arm, so typing hurts now D:

Now I'm trying to remember what I actually did for the past month :T I always mean to update here and talk about what I've done and then I forget and then my memory fuckin' sucks and here we are, like always!!! So, here's a bit of a list to start~

• blew a bunch of dia on the jp xmas enstars events, because I wanted to support the newest unit and then Kohaku was one of the rate up cards for the Ra*bits event...which led to me pulling the rate up 5* for it, so I just went the whole way XD
• went harder than planned in the Shinobu & Mayoi xmas tour in engstars, because I love them and wife was doing it and we wanted to match uwu
• saw Say Anything live in concert!!!!!!!!!!! it was supposed to happen back in early May, but the lead singer got sick and the rescheduled show didn't happen until December, but it was so fucking worth the wait!!!!!!!I've now fulfilled a teenage dream and it was incredible
• made the mistake of going to the fountain pen store- I only walked out with one new pen, so I guess I'll count that as a win?
• date night with wife led to us finally checking out a Chinese restaurant we'd been meaning to go to, and we discovered that it serves hands down some of the best food I've ever had
  • extra note: went on a Friday night and were back on Sunday afternoon because it was that damn good, and also we just had to buy a jar of their chili oil
• one of our Joanns is closing, so wife and I went to see the deals...and left with some of the fabric we'll need to do Tales of Antique Double Face + a terrible plan (we're going to hand embroider all the designs on their outfits)
• got the Christmas tree up and decorated it...less than 24 hours before Christmas day, because life is hard, okay?
• Liz met some other local-ish enstars fans/cosplayers at Otakon and we finally managed to meet up with them irl!!! and it was a lot of fun, even if we had to drive to Virginia for it >:O
• successfully pulled demon Madara in CN enstars, so I could complete a goal: putting him in the Ringing evil phone MV with bridal lingerie Kohaku- and it was everything I'd hoped for ♥

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I also have a shit ton of pictures I meant to include with this entry, but tbh my arm still hurts a lot and I'm trying not to strain it too much...especially since I have to conserve all my strength for the upcoming jp event with AKATSUKI + Ibuki that I've been looking forward to since it was first teased back in early November. The song dropped yesterday and I've had it going basically nonstop since~~~

ANYWAY!!!!!!! Pictures next time??? I doubt I'll update before the new year, soooooo I hope everyone has a wonderful start to 2025!

aka, I went home for the holiday and, since Liz had just gotten me Madara and Kohaku nuis, I decided to bring the boys along! It was quite the trip because we were also traveling with two of our cats, soooo why not document the highlights?

Part of the trip - besides visiting my family for Thanksgiving + my mom's 70th birthday - was to bring Genevieve to Josh and Emmy. We tried really hard with her, especially since she's so sweet, but she does not get along with other cats. The shelter we got her from lied/misrepresented her, I guess????? But she wasn't jiving with our household, no matter how much we tried. And now that Josh and Emmy have their own house and can have pets, they offered to take her in. So!!! She had to travel with us, and I didn't want to leave Lumos behind...so she came too XD


locked and loaded in the car, right before getting on the road!!!
Anyway!!! This is about to be a bit of a long post: I originally made it on tumblr and it was very image heavy, and this is....even more so, because I found more pictures from the trip XD I HAD A LOT OF FUN AND TOOK MANY PICTURES AND NOT A LOT OF TIME ONLINE BECAUSE TIME WITH FRIENDS IS IMPORTANT!!!!!!! ♥

which is to say, I'm putting the rest of this entry behind a cut so I don't just destroy everyone's reading pages~

( come join me on a maaaaagical adventure!!! )

And that's my whole trip!!!!!!!!!!! Kudos to anyone who goes through the whole thing~ I had a lot of fun taking pics along the way, despite the fact that I've done this road trip so many times...so I guess nuis are the way to succeed? ;D

Today was really nice!!!! I finally got to take Liz on a little date I'd planned a couple weeks back- I found out there's a gravity hill in Maryland, and I knew they'd love it. Ever since our lackluster but incredibly fun detour to one in Pennsylvania a few years back, it's been a sorta "this would be nice to do again" sorta thing.

AND SO! Today I drove us up to Burkittsville, MD - which is also where Blair Witch Project was filmed, actually - and...had a lot of trouble finding it XD It was meant to be a surprise, but eventually I had to let them know what we were doing so they could help me navigate. After a couple false starts/getting turned around, we found it...and it was actually really impressive!! The last one we went to was kinda lame (it was very obvious that we were rolling downhill, not uphill) but this one worked!!!!!! SO THAT WAS COOL :D

After that, we stopped for ice cream! We'd passed it on the way to the gravity hill and remarked that it looked good, so we decided to split a cone on the way home. AND IT WAS REALLY GOOD!!! It was locally made and deliciously autumnal~ We got pumpkin with gingersnaps + apple pie, and both flavors were so good. It was definitely worth the stop~

Other than that.....I'm still job hunting.......and playing a lot of enstars......that's about all I have going on most days >< I've been trying to get out and do more, but since finances are kinda tight, it's been rough. I've been going grocery shopping with a friend every week or so, because we're both unemployed and know that just sitting home alone is a terrible plan.

BUT AT LEAST LUMOS IS CUTE!!! I was trying to write and she decided she wanted to be the center of attention instead ♥


She's so friendly and sweet I love her so much ;w;


Also, found the most incredible thing at Homegoods last night. Like. This is unlike anything else I've ever seen before, and I had to have it~

Sometimes you just gotta vanish for a few months because you fall deep, deep into hell, aka con crunch and playing way too damn much enstars. Hi, I'm not dead, just busy and full of ADHD~~~

I've got a whole backlog of things I wanted to post about and that's maybe why I have been putting off writing anything here, because anxiety???? Maybe???????????? I dunno, man, I'm stupid sometimes. Anyway. I may or may not get to it, but at the very least I wanna share the awesome accomplishment of the summer: finishing enstars cosplays for Otakon!!!!!!


Liz & I made a very cute Kohaku & Madara :D I'm particularly proud of the work I did for the gold vinyl + sewing so much god damn pleather.


Double Face, reporting for duty...in the underground parking lot we used all weekend~
I'd have more to say, but I've gotta get back to doing what I swore I'd never do again: getting two copies of a 5* from a jp event. HiMERU and his absolutely insane brother are irresistible to me XD

Soooooooooo, first off, we didn't end up going to Chicago, due to inclement weather and an utter lack of cicadas emerging yet :T But that's okay: Liz & I ended up going somewhere else instead!!!! We packed up the car and set out on Friday afternoon, headed towards...

MYSTERY~~~~~~~~~~~~

j/k j/k but actually only so much of a joke XD We did leave without an exact destination in mind, just a vague direction. We'd floated quite a few ideas around, but nothing felt quite right + it was supposed to rain basically fucking everywhere. Outer Banks? Salem? FUCK YOU, IT'S GONNA THUNDERSTORM.

In the end, I came up with our destination: Geneva-on-the-Lake, OH. It's a small tourist town right on Lake Erie that my family went to sometimes when I was growing up + it's relatively close to the Medieval Faire that Pat & I worked at as teens, so the cast party was always there. It's the exact kind of kitschy Americana that Liz & I love to find during trips, and I've been wanting to take Liz for years. It was also supposed to rain there, but whatever!!!! WE HAD OUR EXACT HEADING!!!!!!

Hey, did you know that Northern Ohio is over six fucking hours from Baltimore? XD

Anyway! We had a very lovely lunch in Frederick at a local restaurant, as opposed to our usual Sheetz run that we do there...mostly because it was actually day time instead of the middle of the night (aka our usual travel time), and then powered onwards!!!!! I had every intention of reading Obbligato to Liz while they were driving, but uhhh sometimes you're casually rping and then suddenly it's been nearly four hours, because time isn't real. I at least paid enough attention to realize we should eat dinner and that we'd be passing by Pittsburgh area right around when we'd be hungry, so we pulled off there. I also realized we'd forgotten to pack lube...which worked out fine, because we got to stop into the Adult Mart I used to work at & chat with the current employees.

Continuing on, we got to experience the utter flatness of Ohio: something familiar to me and quite new for Liz, since they'd only been to Ohio once, and that was when we went to Colossalcon together in 2014. Clearly, I had to fix this~~

As we got closer to the area, I got absolutely smacked in the face with nostalgia...even though I hadn't been up this way in nearly 15 years.


Starting with this exit sign!! Pat and I always thought it sounded like an excessively British road (and I knew I could send him this pic & it would tell him exactly where we were, and I was right)
We also pulled off at a rest stop so we could try to plan out where we'd be sleeping, and as soon as we got out of the car, I was like “WAIT I’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE!!!!”

I then tried to pull up old faire pictures from Facebook, but was thwarted by the absolutely shit phone service in the middle of nowhere Ohio XD I found pics later, though! And I was right again!!!!!!

But first we had to check into our motel, a Red Roof Inn with both the most comfortable bed I've slept on in years and a large fish tank in the front lobby that was completely devoid of any life...but the filter was still running. Okay, sure! We ended up passing out pretty quickly, thanks to all day driving and excitement for the next day. It was still predicted to thunderstorm on and off all day Saturday, but I was hopeful that we could still have fun.

Spoilers: it rained some in the morning, but by around 1pm it had completely cleared up and it ended up being absolutely beautiful, perfect weather the rest of the weekend :D My luck is fantastic~

So!!! We spent the day in Geneva-on-the-Lake, during all the important touristy things:

• playing DDR on an actually arcade machine for the first time in years, in one of the many arcades I used to frequent
• eating at Eddies, the walk up restaurant that serves all the classics (aka burgers & fries)
• realizing that it's a small kitschy town in the midwest, so of course everywhere only takes cash even though it's 2024
• having coffee at the most hipster/gentrified looking place there (that was also the most expensive place we went) BUT the coffee was damn good and we wanted somewhere to sit for a bit because...
• sitting in a coffee shop for an hour playing enstars merge mansions featuring my bestie HiMERU, because it's so damn fun (and also we weren't emotionally ready to start reading Obbligato yet tbh)
• mini golf at the oldest continuously operating miniature golf course in the country
• winning at mini golf against my wife but losing BADLY compared to the actual par XD
• cooling off with really good soft serve ice cream (because ice cream is just better in Ohio, okay, I don't make the rules but it's true)
• walking through a scenic area to experience the beauty of nature, aka me talking about Lake Erie to my lovely wife who grew up by the ocean
• regretting our choice to not bring our swimsuits from the motel, because we really thought it was gonna rain all day
• seeing some glorious bootleg pokemon plushies in one of the gift shops (I should have bought one of them, but uhhhh money is hard)

ANYWAY. We ended up heading back to the motel eventually, because we'd walked around a lot and wanted to chill...and maybe get our swimsuits. Apparently we were tired than we thought, because we just sorta flopped around the motel room for awhile, playing the enstars event and relaxing. Eventually, I decided I wanted to at least see the beach properly, and it'd been a very long time since I'd seen sunset over the water.


AND I'M GLAD WE DID!!!!!! I GOT SOME GORGEOUS PICTURES :D
Also, I preemptively had us wear swimsuits, even though it was evening and we were just going so we could see the sunset...and I was right, again, because we ended up having a wonderful time swimming. It was kinda chilly at first, but easy enough to adjust to~ Liz had many experiences of "why is this so different???" from being used to salt water (most of which boiled down to them being surprised by the lack of crabs) and I just love being in the water. Just...it was nice!!! Relaxing!! A lovely evening!!!!

And then our dinner plans were the Waffle House across the street from our motel, which I had been looking forward to since we got to town. Look, I remember it from staying in a different hotel back in high school, so it was exciting!

...and then it was fucking closed for the next few days for no discernible reason??????? The parking lot was blocked, so Liz got out of the car to check, and it was just like "we're closed until Tuesday" with no explanation. But it was already late enough that most places were closed already, because fuck you, and we were both pretty distraught over it (mostly me though, because I'm dramatic- especially about Waffle House).

HOWEVER WE WERE SAVED BY A TRUE HERO: STEAK 'N SHAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The single location in the Baltimore area closed a couple years back and all of the locations in Pittsburgh closed, so Ohio was pretty much the closest location...but I can't drive 6+ hours every time I want a Frisco Melt, unfortunately. BUT WE FOUND A LOCATION NEARBY AND WENT AND IT WAS JUST AS GOOD AS MY MEMORIES AND I FEEL REVITALIZED!!!!!!!!!! We also picked up a few more bottles of their seasoning salt, since we were starting to run low.

Sunday was just as warm but windier, so going to the beach in the morning was actually a bit colder...also because the water hadn't been baking under the sun all day. But it was still nice!!! We spent a few hours flopping around the water before heading back into town for lunch + purchasing Pat's least favorite souvenir: another fucking mug. I was very picky about finding the perfect one, so this actually took awhile XD

Anyway! Since it was gonna be a 6+ hour drive home, we decided to stop in Pittsburgh for a day and drive the rest of the way back on Monday. The tl;dr for that is that I'm glad I saw my dad, we had a nice time seeing Josh & Emmy, and I swear my mom learns to be more passive aggressive with every passing year. Overall a nice time, but jeezus. There was a lot I don't have the energy to unpack right now :T

We left later than we meant to on Monday, because I was busy telling Carson about enstars and then having autism to autism communication about the Japanese phone games he's currently playing XD I knew he'd understand my plight!!

The drive home wasn't too bad, partially because we finally started reading Obbligato. Liz read it to me while I drove, which meant I did more driving than I usually do on our trips because I didn't want to have to take over doing all the voices for everyone...Liz just does a better job. I'm gonna have to make another entry if I wanna get into Obbligato thoughts, though, because this one is already super long and I still have pictures to share.

( that's right!! you didn't think I forgot to be a dork, right???? )

HELLO THIS IS ONLY OVER A WEEK LATE (and no promises about the rest of the weekend lmao) BUT HERE WE GO!!!

Started the day strong by skipping class, running a million errands, and desperately trying to finish cosplay in time!!!!! Liz worked from home for the second half of the day to keep me company while sewing and I managed to conquer the difficult part of Knives's sleeves~~~ I was so fucking tired but I did it :D

Anyway!!! Pat picked Elio up on his way home from work and brought him over, so he finally got to meet our kitties (which was exciting). We did some more sewing and packing until finally heading out (around 7:30-ish, aka way earlier than usual for us lmao). We did end up packing a sewing machine because Knives and Legato weren't done yet. Between props, costumes, food for the hotel room, and four people, our car was packed. Thankfully, it's only an hour drive, so we made decent time in a cramped space XD

Actually getting checked into our hotel room and getting our luggage up was another thing entirely...WAY more people show up on Thursday of katsu nowadays, and we weren't even at the con hotel; we were across the street. After a hellish wait and a fight for a cart, we did eventually get into our room and unpacked......however. We were on the 10th floor and only one of the elevators was working. I still had optimism at this point...I had hope that they might fix it before the weekend was up. MY MISTAKE.


there was a really funny notice at the front desk, tho XD the ghost of homestuck never truly leaves
We ended up heading over to the Gaylord to pick up badges, which ended up being a whole fiasco since Liz & Pat had to get panelist badges. Basically no one knew where the fuck to go for them???? We did eventually figure it out, but it involved a lot of running around after I was already wiped from multiple late nights of con crunch. It was so nice to back, though. Every year, Katsucon is a huge pain and stressful and etc etc etc, and I still keep going back because I love it despite all that ;w;

uhhhhhh we went back to the room and ate.......lunchables??? I don't remember us getting an actual meal, tbh. I was so fucking tired at this point, and we still had sewing to do. The rest of the evening was such a blur, and we had to wake up relatively early to get to Liz & Pat's panel.


good night from Knives~~~~~~

my brain is mush because I'm hungry and doing homework that's challenging bluhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

anyway

uuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

OH YES!!! YESTERDAY WAS MY WIFE'S BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!! We celebrated by sleeping in, playing video games, working on cosplay for katsu, and going out for dinner :D It was very low-key, which was what they wanted after the all the shit we've been doing lately. I'm glad it was nice for them *w*

Other than that, I have a bunch of homework due today and tomorrow that I've been ignoring in lieu of playing enstars, so like....it's biting me in the ass and that's on me but also fuck me I have so much to do XD

I'm gonna make dinner so I stop being so brain dead that I can't think of what I wanted to say :T baibai

I AM FREEEEEEE I FINALLY FINISHED THE ICON POST I'D BEEN WORKING ON!!!! It's live at killiansicons and I'm very pleased with everything I made for it. Lotsa Trigun, because I, personally, wanted more manga icons......so I made them XD That pretty much sums up why I got into making graphics in the first place, lmao.

Besides that, I found a Trigun mood theme in the depths of LJ, so I don't have to make my own!! I know I'll never finish one - I started one in uhhhh 2009 and it's still not done - and I'm very impressed by people who can do it. Anyway. thx quaint_twilight for your contributions to the world :D

Last night, Pat and Liz did a bunch of work on Legato's coat, helped by projecting reference images on the wall. It was honestly super useful!!


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH (I love nightmare Legato)


Genevieve ended up chasing the cursor across it at one point XD
Anyway, I should probably get back to class XD I have to work on a brief memoir of a specific experience, which is, uh, hard, for a person who has kept a journal for decades, somehow. And then right afterwards, Frecklez is coming over so we can practice for the gaming orchestra tonight. Violin buddies!!!!

It has continued to snow, making it a beautiful winter wonderland on our street!!!!!!!!!!! :D


I'm still not feeling good enough to necessarily frolic in it, but I made it most of the way down the driveway (before arahith chased me back up because of ice at the bottom of it), and I'll call that good enough. This pic is from a few hours ago and tbh it's STILL snowing :D The only major downside is that our first floor bathroom is 1) freezing cold and 2) not reliable, but other than that, things are good.

Well, except for still being annoyingly sick ><

I also managed to write a bunch of fills for threesentenceficathon, which is the other thing I was mad at being sick ruining for me. I have plans to work on some more, I just have to eat some real food today...not just jello. Sometimes, recovery is eating more jello in a week than you usually eat in a year, okay.

uhhhhhhhh other than that, I might be hitting up Magfest on Sunday? It's way too expensive to go for the whole weekend - and tbh it's good I didn't plan on it, what with the weather and being so sick - but just Sunday isn't too bad. I'm playing it by ear, though. If the roads suck and I don't feel great, I'm staying home and playing video games on my comfy couch XD

OH ALSO I love the snow + Liz's (relatively) new job, because it means wife gets to work from home and we can cuddle on the couch when their work is slow, peacefully watching the weather together *w* I'm really happy for them and their job, they love it a lot, and also it's very understanding of inclement weather + emergencies.