And we're sitting in the airport

Flight leaves at 1:30 local time, giving us another several hours until we can even check the bags. Fortunately, Ted Stevens Int'l has free wifi. We're all getting done all the internet stuff we couldn't do at the new AK house (more info about which can be found at Jim's Wild Ride). And my computer;s running a little hot, so I'm having to shift constantly to ensure I don't bake myself. Owie.

The new place is great. I want most of it. Mom and Dad can have one of the front rooms near the door, and THEIR VERY OWN BATHROOM WOOHOO! I like the little basement room with a built-in desk and shelves, but it's too small for an office. So that means I need a bedroom and an office, like I have now. The one with the big closet, yeah! It's one of the ones by the door, leaving someone else the other one. But before that, I had to see the loft Mom has been desperately trying to claim. I went up the stairs and WOW. There's this awesome room, a decent closet, and the bathroom off to the right is great. The shower has two nozzles (though, as I figured out this morning, the handles are not connected the same way on each of them, in case you want to use them in tandem w/o the "fire and ice" treatment), and the triangular bathtub is actually big enough to fit inside! Way better than the one at home. I claimed that first, but Dad had to give it to Mom (playing favorites I suspect :) ). So I went for Door # 2: room/office package. No to that, too. Apparently, we need a guest room. So I had to go with just the bedroom on the middle floor.

Then there's the current claim I'm trying to make: the under-the-stairs closet. It's only about 5 feet high, and it's currently covered with a curtain. It's situated so you have to walk past it on your way to anywhere in the basement. Well, when we first stopped by the house, I hid under there before Mom came downstairs. Then I jumped out at her from behind as she came downstairs. That was awesome. No jumping, no physical reaction. Just her personal best scream. I know, it sounds mean, but it was really funny at the time. Now she has to keep making such a big deal out of it (rolls eyes). Anyway, what I realized last night is that it's bout right as my own personal cave/lair. Not "room" by any stretch of the word, but for watching TV or the goings-on in the basement, maybe with a pile of shiny things to lay on, it could be quite cozy. Maybe some rare meat to snack on while I'm in there. Seriously, sounds fun. I've just gotten chuckles and eye-rolls at this point, but I don't think they realize how serious I actually am. Very serious.

a poll thing I pulled from another person's blog... thought I'd fill it in

What were you doing 10 years ago?
Being 8 XP. Figuring out I wanted to play the fiddle.


What were you doing 1 year ago?
Going to AK and camping on the Char Vic property (funny, cuz I'm in AK again), and going to PA for a scholar's conference.


Five snacks you enjoy:
1. cake, most kinds. No red velvet, yuck...
2. Mochi ice cream
3. chicken fingers
4. cold pizza
5. Eda mame.


Five songs that you know all the lyrics to :
1. Ebay - Weird Al
2. Pinch Me - BNL
3. Sing Along - BMG
4. The Storm - Blackmore's Night
5. Hanging Tree - Blackmore's Night


Five things you would do if you were a billionaire:
1. buy some top-notch instruments.
2. commission a WHOLE bunch of prosthetics from NF
3. buy Maya or C4D
4. Buy a 6-cylinder car.
5. buy a Kayak



Five bad habits:
1. bad posture
2 hands MUST stay busy.
3 Obsessive about my face
4 That about covers it.
5 Really, it does.


Five things you like doing:
1. Cook
2. 3D model
3. Photography
4. browse wikipedia
5. read


Five things you would never wear again:
1. braces
2. my old jeans
3. My clothing style never changed much.
4. a buzz cut.
5.


Five favorite toys:
1. Lego
2. Laptop
3. new dragon costume, once it's done
4. Maya/Blender
5. D1X

The goal is to share with you all 8 things you don't know about me.
1) I'm an only child
2) I'm more secretive than you think
3) I can't draw.
4) Economics is the most enlightening thing I've ever studied.
5) I am largely unaffected by anything I see on TV. I'll LOL, but I never cry. I thought the Reavers were disturbing, though.
6) Birds pwn all other pets, except maybe fish. Unless you don't have time for the birds, in which case the fish could be better :).
7) I like being isolated, and I'm not much of a conversationalist.
8) I'm the only white guy at my work. One of my coworkers seems to be amused with that fact.

Name and pictures, by request.

After some looking on a Norse surname website, and a fairly fruitless request on Facebook, I have settled on a name for myself. I'll be Ormgeirr. (Ormr is the root word for dragon, and Geirr most likely means spear)

As for piccies, there's been a good bit of progress, but not much that we've taken pictures of. I got my good adhesive, so I was able to test fit the muzzle last night and try out the makeup.



My claws and horns are done, and as you might have guessed, I typed my last blog post wearing them. They're quite comfy. Now that they're glued into the gloves, which are extensively tampered-with work gloves.



The gloves are in the process of having the skin glued onto them. Once we get one done, I'll post pictures. At this point, Mom has found out that we'll actually be able to do everything but the thumb in one piece, rather than separating the little scales for flexibility.

I think Mom is starting to get in to this a little more, now that we've got some tangible progress.
I'll post pictures in a bit. Now, breakfast.

How hard is it to type with claws?

Not as hard as I expected, but still not so easy.

More about claws

I have now learned the hard way that you don't put items to be varnished on a sheet of newspaper, coat one side, then coat the other later. if you make one wrong move, you rip portions of the paint right off. I had to partially repaint both horns and about four of my claws, sand them, then finish them again - one of which peeled off again. They'll be dry when I get home tonight.
Thanks Mom for letting me use your rack to keep them elevated and damage-free!

What color is your dragon?

Initially, I planned on going as a green and gold dragon - the classic coloring. I'm fond of green and silver, or maybe purple and copper, but there wasn't a shade of vinyl in green. I had planned on making my gloves and tail out of green vinyl, with some gold on the tail. But then, one Friday, Mom and I stopped at the Joann on the way home to decide on fabric and maybe buy enough to get started.

For me, it was pretty cut-and-dry. Get some green vinyl and some brown linen for clothing. Go home.

Ignorance is bliss. Take it from me, because I know nothing about fabrics or sewing. Mom pointed me to some nice gauze, which was actually light and quite cheap. We almost had that picked out, then something else showed up, and we decided to go with that. Then it was on to skin fabric. Mom didn't want to do the vinyl, because it didn't stretch. She had a point, but there were a few things i liked about the vinyl - it didn't look like fabric, it was in a good color, and it was cheap. Mom suggested I look around, and I found some nice swimsuit fabric that had a bunch of shiny dots on it. It didn't look too bad, but Mom pointed out that it had no durability. Also, the green was ridiculously shiny, and the only non-blinding color, navy blue, was abyssally dark. So we ditched that. We had almost decided to just get the vinyl when Mom noticed the crocodile skin fabric in brown immediately next to the vinyl. That stuff was pretty, but a) it was stiff and b) it was brown. Painting it would get rid of all the lovely color gradations in it. Even more, it was $30 per yard. Daaaaaaaaaang. Hour-long story short, we went with the brown and ended up getting another 65% off the 50% sale price because there was a rubber cement stain on one of the pieces. We also got a burlap remnant, in case the rabbit cowl proved too warm.

How about the clothes? We didn't use any of our original plan because we found some nice stuff at the Salvation army - a knit shirt that would become a tunic, a pair of patched-together hippie pants, and a green belt. The nice thing about the pants is that they have enough room in them for padding on my legs to give the, a digitigrade look. We also have a long-sleeved shirt from before that I have underneath the tunic.

On the claw front, I have finished sanding and have produced painted hand claws and a pair of matching black horns. I started sealing them yesterday; once I get home, they'll need some more sanding and another coat. The finish on one horn is damaged because somebody tripped over it; last night the finish hadn't dried enough to move them. I slapped a little more paint on it before I left this morning, and we'll see how it looks when I get home. Mom has also started modifying some work gloves to accommodate claws. We're kind of waiting on the finish to get that done. We'll see how long it takes to get the desired finish after we get them mounted after that.

We also have a pair of canvas shoes to make into dragon feet later. We're trying to figure out an appropriate design, but I'm certain we won't be able to use the paperclay claws there. Stuffed vinyl is probably the best bet.
We've also decided to use an umbrella for my wing fingers, because that already gives the proper number of fingers and a nice premade finger setup. THey even have a little bit of organic curve to them. We'll see how that works, since we have yet to actually start messing around with the wings yet.

Now that I have some liquid latex, I was able to test fit the prosthetic. Here's what came of it. Obviously, the latex won't work for the final result, because it only holds for a minute. Hopefully my adhesive will get here soon.


((sings) Burn, baby burn! Dragon inferno!)