Party Hat

So it was decided that my team's Fun Outing this summer will involve the beach. On my way home this evening, I stopped in at the dollar store to update my complement of beach gear. I saw braided-paper hats, and realized that I probably did need a hat. At some point -- I think it was in the craft area, with plain bags and things that could be used to decorate them -- I realized that a plain hat could in fact be decorated.

I have very little explanation for what happened next, but I found myself with a number of entertaining things in a sack, and a vague plan to make the loudest, tackiest, most fabulous beach hat ever, to entertain and baffle my co-workers.

Foam visors plus glitter glue is actually a lot of fun. I drew something approximating the Dreamwidth 'd' on a celerity-green visor, and then found out the hard way that my orange glitter in the multi-glitter shaker is all contaminated with blue. Pro tip: as awesome as you'd think it would be to have like six colors of glitter in one convenient shaker, this is not actually useful for keeping the colors apart. I drew other little fun shapes on a blue visor. Yay!

As I was contemplating my glittery items, there was a knock on my door. It was my aunt, with cherries, and an urgent need to see my bathroom. My apartment is currently sort of a pit; it's been getting better, but it's a slow process that gets interrupted by things like work and how a fucked-up shoulder can knock me out of anything useful or productive for a week. Augh.

I showed her the stuff for the Hat to End All Hats, and then after she left, of course I had to start, never mind that the event isn't for, like, weeks.

I cannot exactly explain what happened then either. First I was just holding up artificial flower bits and noodling around with pom-poms and pipecleaners, and then -- well. I tweeted, somewhere in there, that if I were Sophie Hatter, I'd be whispering "fabulous trainwreck" to this hat. I snapped pictures of the process. I pressed the not particularly sticky butt-end of a makeup brush into service as a hold-hot-gluey-thing-in-place tool because using my fingers would have been a bad plan. I cackled to myself with glee.

When I emerged from the creative fugue sometime after midnight, I had relocated my bedside table to use as a work table, part of my desk looked like Peter Parker had borrowed my computer, my fingertips were covered with bits of congealed hot glue, and there was a small blister forming on my right thumb, there were bits of green-plastic-covered wire and other little leavings lying around here and there, and there was an entirely improbable hat on my couch.

A photo posted by Azure Lunatic (@azurelunatic) on May 31, 2012 at 3:23am PDT

(ridiculously floral hat with rainbow bits and bobs)

A photo posted by Azure Lunatic (@azurelunatic) on May 31, 2012 at 2:40am PDT

(same hat from the rear)

This monstrosity started the evening as:

A straw-colored braided paper hat
A bright green and silver elastic headband
A virulent pink and spangled toddler-sized ballet-style skirt
Four bunches of artificial flowers
A molded-plastic-bead hibiscus(?) necklace
Three curled-ribbon bows
Rainbow pipecleaners
Pony beads
Rainbow pom-poms
a toilet paper tube (concealed, structural)
a fortune cookie fortune (likewise concealed, not quite so structural)
three blue butterfly ornaments
some fallen bling from my work lanyard
and a *fuckton* of hot glue for my adorable tiny hot-melt hot glue gun.

It looks like an Easter parade collided with a Pride parade.

It's not very beachy, actually. Now I need to make an actual *beach* hat, and figure out where I'm going to wear this one.

Reading CryoBurn: One fan's recommendations

So you've been reading the Vorkosigan saga, and perhaps you've been warned that there is an Event in CryoBurn that fans from the 1997-2010 era had perhaps been spoiled for, by Authorial Declaration.

If you know what the Event is, or have a pretty good idea but don't want to know for sure, you may wish to brace yourself appropriately.


Strategy 0: The Long Spear

The impact of the Event depends on having read the books that come before. You could probably pick up CryoBurn and read it on its own, and for the first 333 pages (in the hardback) it's a pretty standard science fiction detective story, albeit one with a protagonist you're supposed to know already but somehow you don't. If you pick up CryoBurn as your introduction to the Vorkosigan saga, do yourself a favor and read the books that come before first. Most of the series is available freely through one of the discs of the Baen Public Library. If you have trouble finding it, ask and someone can point you in the right direction. ( If you choose not to... )

Seriously, though, this is totally not the book to start on.



Strategy 1: Avoidance

( The spoiler is referred to as 'the Event', in no great detail. Instructions on where to stop reading, including sentence (for all editions) & hardback page number. )

Strategy 2: Preparation and Closure

( Less effort is made to conceal the nature of the Event. )

Strategy 3: Post-book flailing

This is for those people who have read CryoBurn, but haven't read any fic relating to it, or perhaps have never read any Vorkosigan fic at all. ( These, I recommend even to fic-avoiders. The nature of the Event is pretty clear from reading between the lines. )

Whatever your personal strategy is, I hope these recommendations serve you well. Read in good health and/or good spirits.

26 tweets for 2012-5-31

In the last 24 hours, I posted the following to Twitter:

• Wednesday, 2355: A good fortune to be concealed under more fun things. http://instagr.am/p/LSB4W3M4Z0/
• Thursday, 0023: It's like an Easter parade and a Pride parade collided.
• Thursday, 0240: Hat from behind http://instagr.am/p/LSUzTLM4dG/
• Thursday, 0245: @mizzyfish *pulls shards out of heart*
• Thursday, 0303: Photo: http://azurelunatic.tumblr.com/post/24122212043/cherryoreos-one-of-my-friends-on-facebook
( read the other 21 )

Follow me on Twitter.