February 2009 – akaemi.com
 

Month: February 2009

The husband’s birthday was this last weekend, and so that meant it was time for our Firefly party! There were some great costumes. Kaylee was my favorite, but Mal, Simon, Saffron, River and Shepherd did excellent jobs of capturing the essence of their characters.

Check out pics in my new firefly gallery!

I’ll post further details of my party when it’s not Cheroes night …

couldn’t resist

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Your Word is “Fearless”


You see life as your one chance to experience everything, and you just go for it!

You believe the biggest risk is being afraid and missing out on something amazing.Sometimes your fearlessness means you’re daring. You enjoy risky activities.

And sometimes your fearlessness means you’re courageous. You’re brave enough to do the right thing, even when it’s scary.

What’s Your Word?

So I just plugged all our numbers into some of that fancy tax software, and the results are, well, enough to make me want to stop working so hard.  Or at all.

The husband and I had slightly more taxable income in 2008 than 2007.  For that we are grateful, especially in this time of financial distress for so many.  But our owed tax is significantly more expensive in 2008 than 2007.  Thanks to the AMT, 58% of our increase is owed as taxes.  That’s MORE THAN HALF of our increase! 

So why do I work so hard again?

doppleganger

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Facebook has introduced me to my doppleganger!  No, she doesn’t actually look much like me, but she shares my same mis-spelled Japanese name.

I now have to adjust to the idea that I’m not the only one, but at least I snagged the domain name before she did.  🙂  Also, I was born 7 months before her, so that still makes me first.  (You know, cuz I had so much to do with naming myself…)

the big day

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the bear!The alarm went off way too early, and after a snooze, the husband kicked me out of bed.  I got ready, ate breakfast, and packed up the rest of my things.  (I do take longer to get ready for the day, it was necessary for me to be kicked out of bed in order for us to stay on schedule.)

We made sure the bear was ready for his debut, checked out of the hotel, and took the ferry into the city.  We got to the convention center at 8:20 just to find that they wouldn’t let us line up till 10.

As we sat on the floor with the bear in my lap, we met one of the husband’s website friends who was looking for a couple of freaks carrying a stuffed animal.  And she found us!  We gave her a strahotski.com sticker, and as we were chatting, a professional photographer with a crazy nice camera and a pro badge (that gave him access to the good seats) came over to see what all the hubbub was about.

We met a nice man wearing the Buy More Jacket I contemplated buying from the NBC store a few days before.  When he saw me eyeing his jacket, he worried that I was looking at it to mock it – I assured him I had nothing but admiration for it, and I whipped out the ‘Nerd Herd’ hat to put it on.

Once the convention staff realized that a critical mass was forming, they created a pre-line so that there would be order when they finally let us get in the real line.  We met up with another one of the husband’s website friends, who, again, found us because we were hauling the bear around.

They finally let us stand in the real line, where we stood in anticipation of seeing the creators of Chuck (Chris Fedak and Josh cranky-pants Schwartz) and of course, Yvonne Strahovski.  When the doors opened, we rushed in, and thanks to the quick-thinking of one of our new friends, snagged seats on the aisle right by the mic.  You know, in case they had a Q&A session.

We caught a 5-minute trailer of what we have to look forward to in the rest of the second season – and boy, was it INTENSE!  Sarah gets it on in a serious way with somebody who is not Chuck (I hope it’s for real, and not just spy bizniss, Chuck’s been having most of the ‘fun’ so far), Sarah and Chuck get to move in together in a nice house in the suburbs, Morgan’s mom gets busy with Big Mike, Anna finally comes back!

The panelists finally entered, and I have to say, WOW, Yvonne Strahovski is GORGEOUS.  Like in a way that I didn’t even know was possible.  I like to think I’m pretty, but after seeing Yvonne, I’ve had to re-evaluate.  On a scale of 1 to 10, she’s a 10, and the rest of the population is down at 1 and 2.  Except maybe for Brangelina, I’ve never seen them in person …

After some introductions and quick chatter, they opened it up for questions, so I stood up and took a step to my left – and, voila!  I was second in line.  I let the husband slide in right in front of me and handed him the bear.

When his turn at the mic came, the husband introduced himself as the webmaster of strahotski.com, and the room erupted in cheers.  Clearly, many of the thousand people in that room were aware of his site.  He asked if he could give his bear to Yvonne, and after a few moments of confusion, Chris Fedak said to ‘throw it up’.  The husband tossed the bear to Chris, and he handed it to Yvonne.

Yvonne was nothing but smiles as she accepted the bear, and she placed it on the table in front of her, by her nameplate.

My turn at the mic came, and I asked a quick and silly question that got some laughs, and prompted a funny discussion about how the creators had suggested Yvonne change her last name to ‘Smith’ or ‘Striker’.

One of the last questions was about who Yvonne’s craziest fan was, and she gave that honor to the husband for creating his website, and gifting her the bear.  That was the true highlight of the husband’s weekend, he is ecstatic to have made it onto Ms. Strahovski’s radar.

When the panel was over, Yvonne, Josh, and Chris were ushered off somewhere and quickly disappeared.

We hit the Joss Whedon and Josh Jackson (oops, I mean Fringe) panels after that with some of our new friends.  Since that meant we all missed lunch, I passed out snacks that I carried in my handy-dandy carry-all bag.  They weren’t very substantial, but it was enough to tide me over.

After the Fringe panel ended, we bid farewell, and the husband and I headed home with fond memories of the day we got to sit in the same room as Yvonne Strahovski.

saturday in the city

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We woke late on Saturday and had a leisurely breakfast of chocolate chip muffins, cran-grape juice for me and a chocolate breakfast shake for the husband.  I made us bring food from home for breakfast, as we often spend way too much money on mediocre breakfasts when we travel – I’d rather spend not much on mediocre breakfasts by bringing the food ourselves.

We took the ferry to the city, but as it was the weekend, we had to take the hotel shuttle to the port with weekend-Weehawken service.

Once we made to the other side of the Hudson river, we walked the short way around the Javits center to get to the front door, having learned our lesson from the day before.  We walked in late to a Batman panel that had the potential to be cool, but it was just some dude telling us how cool he was, his whole bootstrap story.  Which is a good story, don’t get me wrong, I have one of my own, but it just wasn’t what I was expecting.

We then went to the crowded food court to get lunch of a blood-dripping rare cheeseburger (for the husband) and a grilled chicken sandwich for myself.  My sandwich was good, but the husband ate his as quickly as possible so as to not think about his raw beef.

We caught the incredibly not-funny star trekkin’ improv comedy group, the moderately boring champions online/star-trek online panel, and the heated genders-in-comics panel.  After some wandering through the vendor room, we decided to call it a day, even though we had planned to hit a comedy show in the city that evening.

We rode the ferry back, and since it was a warmer night than the previous one had been, we braved the elements and sat on top.  It was a scenic ride back with the city all lit up.

In the room, we tried to order Papa John’s pizza, but all the stores I called referred me to another store, with the final store giving me a number that was disconnected.  After that failure, I just called roomservice to order a well-done burger and some french-onion soup.

The soup was sweeter than I expected, and I followed it up some famous amos cookies.  The husband thoroughly enjoyed his no-traces-of-pink burger, and I stole his pickle.  We caught some Alien-Predator movie on HBO, and I finished up our Jayne hats (I never got around to weaving in the ends).

We headed to bed early so we could get up nice and early to get in line for the Chuck panel – the real reason for our trip.

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