One of my favorite events of the year, the Fark’s Annual “Tell Your Real Ghost Story” Thread. I know what I’ll be reading today. :D

Happy Halloween!

Moleskine notebooks may just be one of the most useful products out there. I picked a few up last month, one large one for work and one small one for carrying around everywhere, and I’ve noticed my productivity has gone up measurably since. I have always been one to write notes to myself but they always ended up mangled or lost over time. Having one dedicated place to write everything down has been fantastic. One thing I had to get over was the idea of “wasting nice paper” because, after all, this is what the notebook is for. By wasting, I mean things like calculating money or hours spent working, which would take up several lines in a small notebook. I would feel bad for taking up the space for something so worthless, but it really isn’t worthless since I need that information! Now I’m using it as an all-purpose journal for anything I need to write down during the day, with my job-related items kept separate. I am considering buying one for recording my dreams since that helps me remember them. I have much more vivid dreams if I can keep them close to the surface.

Writing down all the irritating things I need to do has made the tasks seem less daunting, and it feels great to plow my way through the list and see my accomplishments. Having too much administrative work to do weighs on me heavily and anything I can do to lighten the load improves my mood tenfold. Current tasks include completely ditching my previous identity and sliding comfortably into my new one. All that’s left now is car-related papers, cell phone, and vet papers! Woo!

On Sunday a group of about 300 150 zombies gathered around the Fremont Troll under the Aurora Bridge and shambled throughout the town. In various stages of decomposition, people from all walks of death took to the streets in search of brains. Much evidence was left behind at the scene.

And for some reason, Amanda Palmer from the Dresden Dolls was walking around in the group, looking a bit frightened.

4 sides of the inner cube structure are complete (along with pink ribbon sewn on each.) Sewing the plastic bits inside the faces wasn’t too bad, but I did manage to break the needle on my sewing machine in the process. Fortunately I had a spare so I was able to continue. I’m pretty happy with it so far, so hopefully I’ll continue having good luck with it.

Here’s a blahg redesign I came up with last December and only now got around to applying. If you notice any problems with it, particularly in obscure browsers, please let me know so I can investigate. Thanks!

Last night I was able to create a frame for the top panel of the cube. Jules helped me set up a scale drawing of the panel to get an idea of the proportions. I’m not confident I’ll be able to do much of the sewing using the machine simply because I now have to take into account the ridges around the edge, which will no longer lay flat enough to get the presser foot over. I’ll have to continue with the experimentation.

Last night’s shopping trip was mostly successful. Unable to find plastic sheets anywhere, I was forced to improvise, and came home from Fred Meyer with “Snap in gutter screens” which are actually the right thickness and consistency. They even have a thicker ridge around the edge which could work for the cube’s outer frame.

From Jo-Ann Fabrics I was able to find fabric for the majority of the faces, including the mesh screen for the front panel. I also got the pink ribbon and matching thread. All I’m really missing now is the wire for securing the head and the form for the raised heart button.

Supply cost is hovering around $70 so far. Eep.

This is what I’m going to attempt to build for my Halloween costume. The much loved, infamous Weighted Companion Cube from Valve’s game Portal. The actual cube appears to be almost half the height of a human so there’s no way I would be able to make that into a headpiece, but the pictures taped over the faces of the people on the wall are less than life size so I’m going to go with that scale. I put it at about 12³” for the main (inner) cube and an extra couple inches for the outer bits (which I will put on after the inner structure is complete.)

At the moment, I plan to build it using thin, flexible but rigid plastic as an inner support and stiff wire around the edges as a heavier outer support, then cover the sides with gray fabric. The pink strip down the middle will be bright pink ribbon unless I can procure some sort of lighted strip that is accessibly mobile (battery operated? glow wire? Does that even exist?) The front panel will be mostly gray mesh fabric so I can see and breathe. The inside will be a soft fabric like fleece. Everything will be machine or hand-sewn in place.

The outer bits will be the last part, and I’m sure I’ll have to hand-sew those on. Thanks to digg, I was able to find an example someone made of a papercraft Companion Cube, with tab-based construction. I should be able to easily adapt that pattern to mine.

Possible problems:

• I don’t yet know how I’m going to make the headpiece so that it stays in place on my head. It will have a mostly open bottom so it would slide all over the place. Perhaps I can rig up some kind of headband system to hold it in place.
• I’m not sure what I’m going to use for the rounded center pieces that have the heart on them. I’ll need some sort of form to put the fabric around, but I will need something that’s in a similar shape, about 6-8 inches in diameter.

At the moment, I see my material list composed of:

• Medium gray mesh fabric
• Medium gray fabric
• Light gray fabric
• Polyfil (for outer bits)
• Medium gray fleece fabric (inside)
• Stiff wire (frame/support around edges and corners)
• Bright pink ribbon
• Medium pink fabric
• Thin, stiff plastic sheets (architectural model sheets perhaps? For cube sides and outer bits as support)
• Medium gray thread
• Light gray thread
• Bright pink thread
• Medium pink thread
• Bendable wire (headband support structure)
• Rounded form of some sort (for heart bit)

I’m really excited about this because it has been ages since I’ve made anything creative. (I have a minor obsession with constructing geometric shapes, so this is right up my alley! See: Plush D20) I wanted to come up with an original but topical Halloween costume and this is something Jules can help me with (even if the help comes in the form of the screenshots that allow me to get the proportions correct!) It will also give me a chance to put my new sewing machine to work!

If anyone has suggestions on how to make this less painful to build, I’m open to anything!

Jules and I decided we wouldn’t go see Interpol this time through despite the fact that they are playing basically across the street from us at WaMu Theater (Qwest Field.) We are getting a bit burnt out from seeing so many shows and the tickets were $30 apiece, which is a bit steep. But the last two days my inbox has been packed with messages such as these, tempting me to blow the money on the show…

Should we go? The show is Thursday night.

We had our “Adjustment of Status” interview for Jules’ permanent residency today. Success! Jules is now a conditional permanent resident of the United States of America!