The long awaited day is almost upon us

The Steam Expo begins tomorrow. I'm not sure what to say, beyond that. It's been long in the coming - I've been anticipating the Expo since AUGUST - and finally, all the work, preparation, and saving of money will pay off. Tomorrow I don one of the five outfits I've prepped exclusively for the event and march - Parasol in hand, hat at a jaunty angle - off to amaze and be amazed by my fellow gear-heads. I will try to vlog after each day of this gigantic con, and I intend to take an airship load of pictures. I do have to say, however, that I'm most excited about the masquerade ball, where, when all are hidden behind visages of their choosing, people's true nature - and wild side - tend to come out a little more.

If any of you, dear readers, happen to be at the Expo, just keep an eye out for my hat - you know the one - and feel free to say hello. I don't bite....or at least not enough to leave marks.

Back into the dating pool. Hiyo!

As my twitter and the title of this post suggests, I have a potential guy on the line. And I'm more than a little nervous about it. I've been gradually climbing back into th skin of the unflappable, invincible woman I used to be, but my train wreck of a last relationship has me biting my nails. Said relationship went belly up when it became abundantly clear that my lover and I, while we made great friends, could not tolerate each other as BF and GF. He and I loved to spar verbally, teasing, debating, and arguing, but once we became a couple the rules changed. I didn't want to stop being able to criticize him, but he expected me to support him all the time. Even when he was flagrantly wrong. This I refused to do, and, as consequence, there were long periods of snapping and sulking and general unpleasantness. Words were exchanged (and now our debate skills, honed with each other's help, became the weapons we turned on each other. Oh, irony, you sick and twisted bitch). The relatonship ended in shambles, and it deffinitely hurt my pride and shook my confidence.


But now Cupid is sidling up to me at the bar of Life, offering me a drink, and I'm not sure whether I should accept it or toss it into a potted plant to see if the leaves whither. I've been forced to play the game of love with my cards held so close to my chest for fear of being hurt or losing that I'm unsure what to do. Of course, however, to continue in my vein of ridiculous, over-used metaphors, it's often easier to get into a pool by diving head first than sliding in inch by painful inch. Heh, now all I need is a 'Confucius say' maxim and this paragraph is completely cliche.

Oh well. It's once more into the breach for me, dear friends. Grab some popcorn and watch the show.

Pitfalls

Being a steampunk aristocrat is a full time job. As such, it also has a tendency to be difficult to manage and sometimes can run me into the ground, or else I make the mistake of letting something slide once and suddenly all my self-discipline has rolled over and died and I'm left realizing that I've lost sight of what I aim to be.

And that, frankly, drives me more than a little insane.

It is so easy to loosen my grip and say 'that doesn't matter' or, 'why should I bother, there's no one who cares', and slide back into what some people refer to as 'normalcy' and I refer to as 'a stinking hell'. Trying to maintain the constant glittery exterior of an aristocrat may require endless effort, but, as I once told my freshman roomie (also known as the room-mate from the black lagoon) when she asked me why I didn't just try to 'stop being strange and act normal': 'I'd be unbearably miserable without my oddness.' The facade of a well-heeled lady from a sci-fi 1890s may be just that for me, a facade, but to take it off, to confront life bare without the glam and pomp my bustles and parasols afford, would be intolerable. It may drive some people crazy, and it may piss people off - I know it weirded my aforementioned roomie out - but that's who I am. I treasure the manners and the class and the decadence of the aristocrat. I may be only their pale shadow, but it is what I have to offer, and it is the shield I wear against people who have no interest in beauty, elegance, or etiquette. I won't or can't descend to their level, so instead I'll always aim at the highest spot on the ladder, and no matter how many times I fall off, I'll doggedly climb my way back up.

Restablishing Routine and the Importance of Black Coats

I'm home. After a good but utterly wearying year, I am home. Back to beds with springs, pillows that actually support my neck, and food that's been cooked by means other than dunking it in grease. Already I'm looking better, my skin ceasing to break out like I have some horrible plague, and my hair no longs frizzes so much I have to question whether or not I am, in fact, the bride of Frankenstein's monster. I'll soon be back to looking and acting like my self-imposed title demands, rather than a battered, bitter husk of it. Step one: Tomorrow I repaint my nails. They're currently atrocious, my manicure having worn off a week prior to my return, but my need for study prevented me from clipping, repainting, filing, and generally attending to them as I usually do. And how can I think to call myself an aristocrat with ragged nails and chipped polish? It's just not done! (For those interested, I wear Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's Trading Post nail polish, in the shade 'Destroying Angel'.)

Moving on. Something I came to contemplate towards the end of term was the usefulness of long black coats. My own, a black velveteen greatcoat, has served me well and faithfully without fail since the onset of winter all the way through the schizophrenic weather of April, as it did the year before. Such coats prove their worthiness in that, for a hard-pressed steampunk, they can cover a multitude of sins (literally), permitting one to cut a stylish figure even when the clothes one wears beneath it are less than up to one's preferred standard. I cannot count the numerous early mornings when I threw that coat on over a tshirt and sweatpants and traipsed off to purchase food from the college cafe, secure in my appearance thanks to the elegant bearing of that coat. But wait, there's more! Long coats (color irrelevant) can also double as handy blankets. I have had several occasions where I was either without a blanket or the available blankets were unsuitable for my needs (as was the case a few days ago when the dorm was too damn hot but they wouldn't turn the air on, and all my normal covers were far too hot). Faced with that predicament, I just drew my trusty coat overmyslf and went to sleep.

Finally, I was overjoyed to discover that Terrence Zdunich, the creator of Repo! The Genetic Opera, will be coming to the Steam Expo! I've been longing to review Repo!, but have waffled back and forth on the issue as the movie, being as weird and awesome as it is, is hard to class as overtly steampunk. Now it's creator's presence at the Expo finally gives me an excuse to review it, exact parameters of Steampunk be damned!