So... yeah.  

Work's been a bitch and a half the last few weeks - more so than usual - since I've been back from the holiday time off. That's essentially the main reason for lack of posting and my general all-around M.I.A.-ness with flist stuff.  I'm still not caught up from that time off, but frankly, none of us here in the office ever will be. 

For those on my flist who aren't aware, I work for the U.S. federal government in civil service, specifically with the Social Security Administration as a claims representative/disability insurance specialist. (Most of) my duties involve the taking of new claims and processing of post-entitlement cases through appointments and unscheduled walk-ins, and adjudicating medically approved claims, in order to get clients into regular pay of federally approved disability benefits - both for those based on financial need, and for those insured through qualifying quarters of coverage on their work record, based on taxes paid into Social Security.  And as a federal employee, I take issue with the often-thought stereotype that government employees get paid for sitting on their collective asses.  My reasoning is as follows:

 

Anyway... I kinda just wanted to get that out of my brain. Sorry to bore those who are completely disinterested (everyone, probably).

In better news, though, the 2008 FX Show is finally here this weekend, and I'm ready be there all three days. As of right now, I've already made plans for pics with Nick, Nathan, and Greg. I may be a typical male and see Laura Vandervoort, too. Depends on my cash flow. There's supposed to be a short panel on Sunday at noon with the Whedonverse people - Nicholas Brendon, Nathan Fillion, and Elisabeth Rohm.  Looking forward to that, along with scoping out deals on any fandom-related collectibles too good to pass up (as if I need any more geek-worthy crap).

Since this is a new year, I'm also gonna try harder to keep up with birthdays on my flist from now on. Very belated wishes to wsasianboyand tdog0105, both on the 5th, wrthy2bluvdon the 7th, and mari_guerraon the 12th.  I hope your respective days were good ones, and I'll try to remember in a  more timely fashion next year. 

And I have taken way too much time as it is, brain-spewing all of this.  Back to work. 




Kristen Bell is awesome.

I've been meaning to post about this for the last few days, but have been a little busy.  Since I actually went online today and bought a 3-day pass for myself and a 1-day ticket for my dad, I figured I should get around to confirming that I'll be going to the 2008 FX Show, after I had an amazing time there this past January - including my best day ever.

Last week, I had already decided to go when I learned that Nicholas Brendon was signed on as a guest.  Seeing as how Xander Harris is tops in last summer's list of my 20 favorite TV characters of all time, I could not miss the chance to meet the man himself.  Plus, I've heard he's great to (and grateful to) his fans, so getting a signed pic - and possibly a portrait with - would be sweet.

A list of the whole lineup for the weekend - January 25-27 at the Orange County Convention Center, here in Orlando - as well as the link for ticket-purchasing, can be found from the FX International home page, HERE. Other guests listed that are possibly potential draws for me include Greg Grunberg, George Takei, Stephen Tobolowski, Laura Vandervoort, Helen Slater, and Elisabeth Rohm.

However, the guest-list was made infinitely more geek-gasm worthy with the addition of NATHAN-fucking-FILLION. That's right, Captain Malcolm Reynolds himself will be there - also on my fav. characters list, of course.  Apparently there was an inadvertant scheduling mix-up, since Nathan had a verbal agreement to be at some other charity event scheduled for the same weekend in Phoenix, but the FX Show was a signed contract that he had lined up first.  It was confirmed at Whedonesque on Friday that he's gonna be here in Orlando that weekend.  Needless to say, this is HUGE for fanboys and fangirls alike, especially with how awesome he always is to his fans. While not quite as excitedly nervous as I was for Kristen Bell last year (c'mon, it's KBell - whaddya expect from me?), I'm definitely stoked. My dad's going to be out of town most of the weekend, but still requested the one-day pass for Sunday - when he should be back in town - in order to hopefully meet Nathan, too.  So even my dad has his fanboy moments.

I'll bring along my camera like I did last year, but won't get my hopes up, since the FX staff were pretty rigid overall about enforcing the 'no photo' rule, in order to sell the professional studio portraits with the celebs. But we'll see.

And I know some of my flisters had brief rundowns of the loot they scored for Christmas this year. Since I didn't ask for a whole lot (I pretty much buy all the crap I want myself), I'll just mention that my favorite gift came from my parents, as they actually got me The Complete Calvin and Hobbes collection that I had been eyeing for the last couple of months.  I actually didn't expect this from them at all, planning on probably getting it myself sometime in January, so this was a nice surprise.  Oh, and  _cinjudes_ came through with an offical 'Panther Football' team practice shirt from Friday Night Lights - also totally unexpected - so *smooches* to her for that, as well.

And that's about all that may be even remotely interesting I've got right now. No big plans for new year's celebrations this year - will probably stay with the folks since my mom's birthday is the 1st.  For everyone else that does have a life, have fun and be safe - and may 2008 bring even more good stuff than 2007. 

Happy New Year!




Kristen Bell is awesome.

Last night I managed to take shots of the two art prints I got signed over the weekend, since they were too big to scan.

Each of them (about 600 x 800 in size) under the cuts:



 

Kristen Bell is awesome.

So, I've slacked on some TV-update coverage since last week, both here and at Wicked-Insanity, but I'll get to that eventually. The reason for my distraction was the three-day comic/TV/film/toy/collectible convention held this past weekend here in Orlando - the FX Show. To my understanding (that I wasn't aware of until this weekend), this has been an annual thing for about 18 years - starting as a small toy show exhibit, and slowly snowballing into an outright Con growing in size over the last few years. From what I can gather, Florida eXtravaganza (hence, the FX) isn't quite as big as next month's MegaCon - which has been around a few years, too - but it's nothing to simply sneeze at, either.

I had never been to a Con before, so all of it was a new experience. While there were plenty of things to gripe over (so much $$$, poor organization, so much $$$, lack of clear scheduling, so much $$$), the good memories outweighed the bad, for sure. Before I get into any more first-person journal-izing, a list of the celebrities (of varying "fame") who were in attendance, can be found HERE (as long as that link still lasts). I'm going to put the rest of this long "dear-diary" crap of my weekend account under a cut, as to be nice to random flist-checkers. An advance warning that this will be very wordy and probably more detailed than anyone would really care to read, but I wanted my ramblings on the weekend put somewhere. Thus, the cuttage. Oh, and I've c/p this back and forth from Word a few times, so even though it looks right as I'm making this entry, the font size as it's posted seems to get wonky a few times. *shrug* It's still legible:

( My reason for going... )

( Friday. )

( Saturday. )

( Sunday. )
So - that was my experience attending my first-ever Con. It was quite memorable, and in spite of the expense, Saturday turned out to be one of the best days EVER.

I'll post some on new TV (which I haven't neglected, of course) later in the week when I find some time.

So it's Wednesday, and work sucks, and I have entirely too much to do, and I'm impatient for Lost and Bones to return.  

On a personal note, trouble/dumb luck seems to follow my brother like a plague sometimes. 
All that said, here's some commenting for Heroes from Monday and the return of my beloved Veronica from last night.  Cuts to links at W-I, of course:

Heroes: 1.12 - "Godsend"

Veronica Mars: 3.10 - "Show Me the Monkey"

Also will mention that 24 is still, minute-for-minute, the most action-packed and tensely-plotted series on TV.  Season six has really started off with bang - literally. The relevance to current topical issues (terrorism and homeland security-related and such) is striking a good balance right now, to be referential to reality without lecturing or soap-boxing us.  I think both the left- and right-leaning politicos are getting some attention in this nuclear-threat arc so far, and I'm intrigued with how Jack is being portrayed - far from confident, and still pretty lost to what his life means anymore, in the big scheme of things.  Can't wait for next Monday.

Tonight brings a new episode of Friday Night Lights, so my dramatic-quality void this night left by the haituses of Lost and Bones is filled nicely by this gem.  I'll enjoy it as long as it lasts.  Oh, and I forgot in the last update to briefly mention the genius of creator Bill Lawrence, and his entire cast and crew on Scrubs.  Last Thursday was the much-anticipated musical episode, and it did not disappoint at all.  It was as musically- and lyrically-inspired for comedy as "Once More With Feeling" from BtVS was for drama.  Seriously.  I think Scrubs is my all-time favorite sitcom - in both single camera or four-camera/traditional formats.  It's just fucking hysterical.

Two more days until the start of the FX Show that I'll be attending with my dad.  As I think I've already mentioned, I've never been to a Con before, so it should be an experience. The cast of Fanboys is only there on Saturday, so I'll need to make sure I scope all the pertinent details of celebrity meet-and-greet protocol on Friday, to be ready to go with the flow for autographs and photos and stuff.  I had actually ordered a small token of appreciation to give to Kristen - okay, a schmoopy gift - since I'm a fan, but it has taken waaay longer than I anticpated to be shipped, and if it doesn't make it to my house by Friday's mail, I'll miss out on the chance to give it to her. Not a huge deal, but it would be cool as hell if I could gift-it.  FYI, HERE is what I ordered. 

And I am putting off work as much as possible. This is not good.

So... yeah. Happy new year and all that jazz. Hard to believe it's time to change the calendars again. 

Similar to the most recent entry from my girl _cinjudes_,I haven't died or gone anywhere especially exotic or exciting to explain my entry-neglect the last couple of weeks, just been busy with other things.  I did take two weeks off from work, but now that I'm back at the office, I feel like it was hardly long enough.  It was inordinately difficult to drag my ass out of bed this morning at 5AM, and the pile of shit on my desk is just monumental. *sigh* 

The only traveling I did was a 2 1/2-hr drive to West Palm for a 4-day stint with some friends to ring in the new year - to be someplace other than at my folks' house watching Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve. But the party I did go to was still kinda lame-ish, comprised almost competely of couples (sucks for this single guy), most of whom were too drunk or stoned to hold any kind of conversation, anyway.  My married friends decided little more than an hour was all we could stand (fine by me), so we made it back to their house to finish watching Beerfest and went to bed by 2:30.  Woo. Hoo. I feel old.

At least I was able to get somewhat of a scheduling reprieve, with most new TV taking the annual winter-hiatus for a few weeks.  There have been a few new, mid-season shows popping up, but all the biggies I religiously keep up with are slated to be back in the next week or two. Will try to keep up to date with those of the "must comment on" variety here and at W-I.

Also wanted to give a grateful shout-out to one of the best Asian-Canadians I know, schrutefan,as I received his package in the mail the other day, and the Veronica/Heroes/Dexter goodness is mucho-appreciated.

Nothing else too interesting for now, except that I'm getting a little more anxious as the FX Con draws closer this month, and MegaCon following shortly thereafter next month. I've got my 8"x10" glossies of Kristen Bell, Jamie Bamber, and Mary McDonnell pre-printed in the hopes of getting them signed.  Not sure how both cons will pan out, as to what the rules are for the meet-and-greet of celebs, so I'm playing it by ear, keeping my fingers crossed and such.

Back to the god-awful slog through work.  Peace out.