Happy New Year everybody.

I currently have a new video card on order, I'm hoping that will fix the problem with my desktop and allow me to get back to captioning.  We'll see what happens when it arrives.

For christmas I got a few nice gifts, most notably a new sink for my master bath, to replace the one made out of cheap plastic.  (It's not even good plastic.  It was scratched and melted in places, and the few metal bits were rusted.  Plus, as I'm finding out with a number of things, it was installed wrong so the drain pipe was back pitched.)  Oh, and my house almost caught fire too, that was fun.  Turns out the previous owners installed a light fixture incorrectly, and had a 150 watt bulb in a fixture only designed for 100 watts.  Burned out the wiring in the fixture.  Fortunately, it was not one I used often, and we were able to replace it with a nicer one.  And my front door started leaking again.  This time, I'm taking no chances.  I got a new type of caulking, which I'm going to caulk the inside and out of the door with.  Then, on the front step I have a small carpet runner that leads up to the door.  Under that is aluminum flashing, which I will also caulk, plus put foil back tape over that, then spray the whole thing with a clear rubber sealant.  If that don't fix it nothing will.

In the mean time, I have not been idle however.  I've started working on my next cosplay for Otakon.  As it has been about five years since I last made something new, this is very exciting for me.  I'm a bit dissapointed, though, since it was supposed to be a part of a group.  I had made a new friend at last Otakon, or so I thought, who wanted to get together a group of cosplayers.  However, all of my attempts to get together with said "friend" to hang out have been blown off.  I might have accepted that they were just busy, but they used the same exact excuse twice in a row (of something that doesn't happen so close together), and now it makes me wonder if they were lying because they just didn't want to hang out with me.  It's a bit weird, since it was that person who suggested doing a group in the first place, but then they seem to want nothing to do with me.  Kinda hurts.  I don't often make new friends.  So my other friend and I decided to pick out new characters for just the two of us.  It's gonna be a challenge, but it will be worth it in the end, I hope.  I spent the weekend working on one of the four major difficult pieces.  I had to make a plaster cast of my own shoulder (yes, I was working by myself).  Then I used that as a base, padded it with aluminum foil, then I used polymer clay with wire (for strength) to sculpt the necessary piece.  Baked it till it was hard, then painted it.  Found several "divots" and so I used spackle to fill it in.  Sanded it smooth, painted it again, then put several layers of triple thick glazing on it for protection.  It's not perfect, but I think it came out pretty good.

So that is where I stand, as the new year is about to begin.