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Dear Diary

A 3618-post collection

Preparations

I've got to finish stressing the "photo" today. It's the last day that I have another adult around.

I've already written down some thoughts in case one of the many planes I'm catching ends up on TV for all the wrong reasons. And I made myself cry. Yay.

I have all most of the stuff I need for the con in one place. I will start packing my backpack and organising my suitcase today.

The Dress of my Dreams is still in Brisbane, but it's been forwarded for delivery. Which means it's in a loading bay or sleeping delivery truck, just waiting for people to come to work and start shifting things around.

Still no hint of anyone in the SPG fanmily willing to carpool with a nutty Australian. I'm thinking about preparing a cardboard standee with some leftover stuff from the "photo" making. "Lone Aussie seeks Careful Driver (seatbelts a bonus)"

I can economise by hoofing it from the airport to the hotel (and vice versa) in my clown pants and crocs, towing my suitcase behind me. If I'm just wearing my backpack, then some incompetent specimen has lost my luggage and I am understandably pissed off(and in a minor pickle). I can economise further by breakfasting on Vegemite Soup in my hotel room and seeing if I can make one meal at the park last all day (US believes in large serving sizes, right?) if it comes to that.

I have plans and backup plans. I shouldn't need half of them.

And if I wait until Tuesday, then I can plausibly buy the Minties, Jaffas, and perhaps Polly Waffles I'm planning to use as bribes for rides. As long as they're packaged, customs is fine with that.

I still have to pack up a day's worth of my supplements for my carry-on. If I declare them, I should be fine. I'm going to have "fun" this trip, as my daily amount of supplements is an impressive count of pills. One day's dose looks like Intent to Distribute.

All I have to do is remember to not be sarcastic with the TSA and I'll be fine.

It's the getting a lift part that has me fretting. Considering how I am on long trips, or long trips while tired, I'm really better off not behind the wheel in the States. So far, all my pleas have been answered by silence. Not very encouraging. At all.

I'm going blue!

The Dress of my Dreams is currently relaxing in a warehouse for the weekend. Assuming it doesn't go to a warehouse closer to Burpengary over the interim, it should have a nice, relaxing weekend before meeting its doom owner.

This weekend, I'm getting my hair and nails done.

Plan C - if some incompetent specimen looses my luggage - I am still an off-duty Walter Worker with my blue hair and nerd shirt on. I've been unable to find blue lipstick in

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The best news EVAR!

I was all ready to go and collect the Plan B skirt from MeMum's, after I collected the kids. And just as the alert goes off for me to take off and fetch my little darlings... I get an email from Hello Cosplay that contained this beautiful information:

["We have sent out your cosplay via DHL Express"]

Of course, I still have to be prepared for it all getting lost in the mail. There is many a slip between Shanghai and Burpengary

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Ugh...

Last of the last of the running around, I hope and pray. I have eyedrops, sunscreen, and a tube of the pawpaw stuff. Just in case. I plan on carrying along my little tin can of band-aids and elastoplast. Also just in case.

I've emailed the people at WWWC about transport for foreigners, without much in the way of word in return.

I've emailed the people at Hello Cosplay about Overnighting my finished dress... without much in the way of word in

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PLNs and high finance

I got my travel insurance settled, yesterday. As well as all the mad dash to get a substitute skirt done with minutes to spare. So to speak.

The price for the finished emergency outfit is literally one tenth the price of the dream dress. Which, I might add, Hello Cosplay is now not sending out until... either today or tomorrow.

I've enquired about them sending it to me by overnight express [since regular post delivers inside 3 weeks] but I haven't heard

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Cue the Lone Ranger Theme Music

This is the email I got from Hello Cosplay. You can understand that this is nails-down-the-chalkboard stuff for me.

My corset is in transit because I now dwell in the 91Kilo zone. My dress is in limbo.

I had to rush arrangements for the kids because I will be in Boronia Heights, 80K away, getting a kludge skirt together out of whatever we can manage.

At least Spotlight takes Amex.

Alas, I shall also be rushing today's Instant because I only have

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More lessons learned

Post makeup lesson one: I should have applied vaseline.

It's the little things that "everyone knows" that trip a body up. In this case, "everyone knows" to put vaseline on body hair before applying sticky stuff.

Not I, said the mouse.

Following the usual thing-making, I shall be posting pics of my horrible face again. Be warned.

[Shown here: reassembled clock]

Beloved drilled some holes and we re-screwed in the embellishments. The bell will be pointing towards my rear, so people will

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Tests and Finessing

Be prepared. This blog contains images that some may find disturbing.

That's right, gentle readers. I finally got my keister in gear and did a makeup test.

But first - a little about what we're doing with the clock.

[Shown here: clock bits]

First, we took off the bell and the two brass feet so we could remove those weird little bracer things. They'd just get in the way.

[Shown here: Red clock insert and belt clips]

This is the result of

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Round, round, I'm run around...

Welcome to the Last Mad Dash, the final 80Km relay in the Cosplay 2016.

Today, I am taking my admittedly limited funds to Spotlight to get the best look material for Bitzer's capelet. It has to be warm, because night-time temperatures in Tucson head to the single figures, it has to be woven, because MeMum can't pilot an overlocker, it has to look pretty nice, because Bitzer's a robot with standards, and it has to be cheap because I'm almost broke.

You

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Print crazy

Many of you probably don't remember the first time you got a printer. I do. Of course, this was before I found out what the internet was, but the ability to make copies of things, or even print out stuff on demand? It was like magic.

I'm pretty sure I did more damage to the rainforests of the world with my first printer than I have throughout the rest of my life. Heck, I even printed and bound a "book" of sorts,

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I got Beloved a gift!

It's always hard to shop for the snuggle-buddy who can get everything they want for themselves. Unless, that is, Aldi's happens to be selling 3D printers for $500.

The next-best commercial price for a 3D printer is around $1600, from Jaycar's. So this thing is literally less than half the price.

Caveat emptor - you have to at least know something about these things to get anything decent out of it. Including that it uses absolute meters of filament to print anything

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Progress and setbacks

I hit the 92 zone, this morning. 92.6 kilos. On one hand - hooray, I'm losing weight and that should be good for me. On the other - boo, the corset I have is now too big. And I have no idea where to get cheap and comfy corset stuffing.

I have got in contact with the corset people to see if I can swap it out for the same style in one size down. Fingers crossed that it won't break

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Spoonless...

The blockage in my lungs is not preventing me from getting air, apparently. I've been taking the nebuliser to little or no actual effect. And certainly zero relief.

I couldn't sleep because of the blockage. It's a struggle to breathe in. So, long about midnight, we had the home service doctors swing on by and take a look at me. That's how I know my asthma meds are working, even though it feels like some invisible python is crushing my windpipe. Or

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Zip ties and superglue solve lots of problems

...but not the one where I have to spend a lot of money to keep breathing.

Beloved and I restocked my medication stores, yesterday. It was quite the shopping list:

  • Ventolin nebules
  • Atrovent nebules
  • Magnesium tablets
  • Olive leaf extract tablets [I refuse to take the liquid, it is gut-wrenchingly gross]
  • Vitamin C
  • Probiotics
  • Cough syrup of the expectorant variety
  • Herbal anti-anxiety stuff

And a few items of sundry miscellany that were neither here or there. Now... how much would you expect to

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Asthma Games I Play (and other business)

I want it to be understood that a shortness of breath is something of a default state for me. Asthma creeps up on me by slow increments that are nearly invisible. I should be checking my nails for blueness, but if I do so regularly, I don't notice how much blue has crept up on me.

So I play really odd games like:

  • Is it a cough or a tickle?
  • How shallow is my breathing?
  • Do I really need my medicine or
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