The other group costume was using the Celtics theme. Davidson and I were Brian Scalabrine and Scott Pollard, respectively, the only two white guys on the Celtics this past year, both of whom sat on the bench throughout the playoffs. Some of the girls dressed up as Celtics dancers and Duke dressed up as Gino because everybody was a winner.

It was a challenge to have a costume with no pockets, but it made things interesting. And yes, I brought my own coozie for my beer bottles. I’m just that awesome.

I have amazingly already posted my pictures here.

Happy Halloween!

XXX,

I have had severe water damage to my ceiling since I moved in. I pointed it out to you, but I haven’t heard back at all. It is still actively dripping water and I saw a mouse poke its head through the hole in the center of the damage. I was hoping you could take a look at it before it gets any worse. I’d like to get this repaired and patched as soon as possible before the winter snow comes to make things worse.
I’m available nearly every weeknight between 6pm and 9pm to show you the damage. I think its caused by the cable utility box outside my window. I’ll show you when you stop by.

If you need to get in touch with me, you can reach me at ###-###-####.

Thanks in advance,

Bradley
## XXXXXX Ave.
Apt ###

I folded the note and taped it to his door. He had said that if I had a problem to just leave him a note if it wasn’t urgent. I really want to resolve this in an amicable way. I’m going to give him plenty of time to respond, but I need this ball rolling. If I do not hear back from him by the time I have to send in my next rent check (sent one in today), I am including a copy of this letter, pictures of the damage and a brief summary of events leading up to this point. If nothing still, perhaps the mayor’s office would like some good publicity. It will only take one inspector to look at it before the fines start rolling in.

My life has become so exciting.

Among some of the other items I picked up for the house was a new garbage receptacle since I think I have a little mouse. This way it won’t eat through my garbage bags. I actually watched the little bastard jump into the higher bag I setup. At least this way, the opening is high and covered. As for the mouse, I bought a humane mouse trap that won’t kill it, but will make it significantly easier than me chasing him around the apartment like Wile E. Coyote chasing after the Road Runner like I did in Braintree (odd, I was going to link to the post I had made about that, but now can’t find it). Lastly, I bought a hair stopper, which is just a plastic strainer that you put over the shower drain to prevent much hair going down. My shower was missing a drain plug and was just one big whole, so I needed to put something there. I was getting tired of being paranoid about my hair washing down the drain and having to call the super to have a plumber come and unclog my drain.

Day 2 started with me groggily getting out of bed, grabbing my work laptop and heading into the basement. An hour later, I had the network back up with access to the internet. Unfortunately, I ended up having to reset my router causing me to lose all of my security settings and MAC addresses for each laptop allowed on our network. Fortunately, I wrote most of them down in my little black book. This was followed by futzing around a bit online, checking e-mail, message boards and news sites, then starting to do a little packing.

I take pictures of each toy I buy in its original packaging before I open it for a personal project I am working on. I set up all the stuff I had bought the previous day so I could take pictures of each item, then open it and pack it.

During all of this, I could hear Duke had finally roused himself and started to dismantle his projector and and components. I offered to help and started to bring the components downstairs. After we had brought just about everything down, we began to setup the frame by putting hooks on each corner for the projection screen. The frame was 10 feet x 5 feet. The screen stretches to about 9′x5′. We had to use some zip ties through the grommets in the screen to make up the difference in distance to the hooks, but it worked with a little work.

Next came the mounting of the projector. Its a ceiling mounted projector and we aren’t allowed to drill into the ceiling so we took the setup Duke had in his room and did the same thing in the living room by putting up a shelf and then mounting the projector to its underside.

Once the shelf was up, we decided it was a good time to take a break and go grocery shopping for the food we’d be cooking up later. On the menu was burgers, hot dogs, pork chops and chicken. We also picked up plenty of soda and snacks. I made sure I grabbed a few of those POM Iced Teas that I recently discovered. I was also put in charge of getting the hot dogs, while Duke got something else. When I found them, I stood in front of the display for at least 5 minutes completely perplexed. There were at least 20 different types of hot dogs in front of me. I clearly didn’t read the hot dog horoscope that morning to know which I was supposed to choose, so I basically blindly reached my hand out and grabbed an acceptable package and then picked up a second of the same kind. It would have to do. I’d be eating the chicken mostly anyway.

We got back and Duke set to finishing the setup of the components while I showered and shaved. Christy had apparently gotten there while I was shaving after my shower. I greeted her and she quickly went back to drooling over the projector setup Duke had finished up. Transformers happened to be on HBO and we caught the end. The diagonal of the picture was said to be around 96″ I think.

Needless to say, it worked out pretty darn well. The XBox 360 and the Wii were also part of the setup so it didn’t take very long for us to break into a four-man Smash Bros. Brawl game, passing the controllers around after each match. Peggy and Joaquin had come just before we started, I believe. When they got there I wanted to show Joaquin the Revoltech figure I had gotten the day before because it was from the same series that he had burned to cd for me at Otakon and he had gotten a different Revoltech figure from the same series and really like it. Dan and Brendan showed up not long after with some more chairs. I had brought up Davidson’s computer chair, which he either hadn’t moved yet or left behind, and dubbed it the birthday seat for the day. We then proceeded to play Smash Bros., Mario Kart Wii, and Rock Band for the next 7 hours or so. Duke would randomly pop his head in and let us know that a new type of food was on the folding table in the next room, ready for our consumption. A little later he randomly put a table in the middle of the living room and then came back out with an enormous bowl of tater tots. Score! We still managed to demolish it by the end of the night, but I’ll be damned if there weren’t a lot of tater tots in the bowl. Davidson popped in for a bit at one point to return a book, give me porn, give us his seal of approval on the projector setup and mostly to have a few minutes break from his new puppy he had gotten the night before. Moose, the puppy, apparently doesn’t sleep nearly enough during the night yet, much to Davidson’s chagrin. I look forward to meeting his Pet Monster soon, but I digress.

Christy said she was going to bring ice cream cake. She did not lie and it was delicious. I tried to cut it though and it was solid as a rock. My wrists didn’t fair very well at my further attempts to cut it, so I handed the knife off to Dan. Appropriately, not long thereafter we switched to Rock Band and started with the Portal song, Still Alive by Jonathon Coulton.

As Christy, Peggy and Joaquin all needed to leave (it was a work day the next day), some people started to come. Toby, his girlfriend Danielle, and both or their brothers, Eric and Garrett all came since they were all going to help Toby move out the next day. Danielle, Duke’s girlfriend, and Duke’s brother, the Dutchess, Chris showed up as well. Chris is actually a percussionist so its impressive to see him play drums on expert in Rock Band. I had stepped out for a short bit to happily receive a birthday call from Brenna. Then I came back and played a few more songs. We ended up playing until nearly midnight.
It was a long exhausting day, but easily one of the best birthdays I have ever had. It meant a lot to see so many people I only get to see maybe a few times a year (read as Peggy, Joaquin, Christy, Chris, etc) and I’m pretty sure everyone involved had a great time.
This is going to be hard to top next year.

Year to year, I have to admit, I’ve had some pretty good birthdays.

Part of this might be due to summer weather or no school or one of a dozen other reasons.

Last year kind of sucked. Things were pretty busy and I didn’t think about it until it was too late to plan anything. Rather than do nothing at home by myself on my birthday, I just figured I’d come into work. It didn’t occur to me how many people on the team would be on vacation or that most of the rest would forget, but work I did that day with little to no mention of a birthday. I ended up needing to stay late to work on something to top it all off.

Not this year. This year I promised myself something better. In talks with Davidson, he had mentioned a friend of his doing a variation of a pub crawl, but something slightly more geeky. Geek happens to be my specialty. About a month ahead of time, I sent an email out to all of my very geeky friends. I outlined a two day event of epic proportions to herald this grand celebration of my birth.

On Saturday, August 16th, we would go to Randolph and catch a movie and from there move along the Red Line hitting up the New England Comics in Quincy and Harvard Sq., Newbury Comics in its multiple locations and top it off with Comikazi in Davis Square. Afterwards, we would grab some dinner and retire for the night.

On Sunday the 17th (my actual birthday), we would get an early morning toy run to Toy Vault in before heading back to the house, where we would then play Mario Kart Wii, Smash Bros. Brawl and Rock Band until all hours of the night while grilling up some food.

Things didn’t go quite according to plan.

Early Saturday morning Thanh instant messaged me, that we should head to toy vault that morning and skip the movie since it was just he and Dan that had responded for Saturday’s activities and Dan requested nothing before noon. All things considered, this looked like a fair change of plans to me while keeping in mind the theme of the weekend. So, I drove down to Randolph and met Thanh at his house where his neighbor’s lawnmower was engulfed in smoke. I could already tell that it was going to be an awesome day. We then headed down toward Attleboro. Thanh drove. We saw some interesting license plates along the way. Toy Vault had to have doubled their Transformers selection on display, yet I didn’t find myself really needing much from what was there, which was a terrifying realization. I was also on the hunt for some M.A.S.K. stuff, but all they had were a few drivers with masks and no vehicles. On the upside, they had most of the last couple of waves of Masters Of The Universe Mini-Statues which had since been discontinued. Thanh got me one of those and this. I ended up buying two of the other mini-statues before we left and proceeded to hit the rest of the stores in the area that carry toys or comics; Kay-Bee, Wal-Mart, Target, Toys R Us, and Newbury Comics. It was a long haul with lots of finds. Outside the Newbury Comics, we saw an amusing truck grill. I think it was in Target, we were lucky enough to see the demo XBox 360 sporting the Red Ring of Death.

When we got back to Randolph, I picked up my car and parted ways with Thanh. I went to Bob’s to pick up Brendan and picked up a sweet tire pressure guage for two bucks at Ocean State Job Lot, next door, while I was waiting. We headed to Quincy to meet Dan. We stopped at the Wal-Mart where Dan was waiting and moved along on our way. We hit the New England Comics in Quincy only to find it had closed 20 minutes earlier. After that we headed back to Brighton to drop off all my loot and continue on to Comikazi. Part of that plan involved going back to the Brighton House specifically to get directions. I only knew how to get there by subway. Unfortunately, Toby had decided, earlier in the day, to take down the network and couldn’t get it back up, so he just left it down and left for the rest of the day. We spent the next two hours searching for Davis Square. Along the way, we found some hole-in-the-wall comic shop, which turned out to be a pretty good find. Dan and I both picked up business cards. It stated, “A comic shop for NPR listeners”. I didn’t really know what that was supposed to mean, but they had a good selection.
To make a long drive with lots of monotonous turns and traffic lights short, we found Comikazi after they had closed, but now we would know for next time. We headed back and got dinner at Longhorn’s just in time for Michael Phelps to win his 8th gold medal on the televisions in the bar. After dinner, we headed back to the Brighton House and Dan dropped me off. I was off to bed. I was exhausted and had a long day ahead of me.

All in all, it was a pretty fruitful day as you can tell by the image at the beginning of this post. More photos from the Birthday weekend may be found here.

One of the downsides to my system is that the boxed and carded toys tend to stack up in large piles before I get the opportunity to actually photograph and open them. I have never been forced to notice this to such a degree that I have been forced to open nearly everything that I don’t already have open, until recently. As I slowly pack my room for my move September 1st, I am only just now realizing just how many toys I never got around to opening. Its a truly staggering revelation.

Time to go open some more toys and immediately pack them.

Yay.

Subject: Please Stop
To: My Roommates
From: Bradley J.

Each morning at approx. 05:45 my alarm goes off, I wake up and turn it off. Most mornings, this is quickly followed by immediately rolling over and falling asleep again for about 20 minutes. I groggily grab my towel as I stumble into the bathroom. I do not bother opening my eyes all the way as I enter. The reason for this is three-fold. It is entirely too bright when I turn the light on for my currently active night vision. I will also be immediately forced to start rubbing my eyes due to the those morning eye krispies in the corners of my eyes. This also gives me the benefit of not seeing any number insects crawling about the floor as I disrobe and brush my teeth in the partial nude.

About two weeks ago, after performing this normal routine, I then sidled over between the bathtub and toilet, pulled the shower curtain to one side and carefully gripped the cold water knob. As I delicately placed the proper amount of pressure on the knob to make certain it was not spinning freely, I quickly turned the knob and moved my hand to the other knob. During this action, the water immediately turned on and like a firehose in my face, I came to the realization that someone had turned the showerhead toward the toilet instead of its default position of straight across. In complete surprise I nearly fell back onto the toilet, but I was able to regain my balance and quickly grabbed the cold water knob and fumbled to turn it off as it spun freely. I gave up and reached to move the showerhead to an acceptable position.

I stood there, completely soaked, water all over the floor in quiet spite.

I recomposed myself and took my shower.

This has happened four times since.

The first time was a fluke. The second through fifth times I was bushwacked!

I’m not pointing fingers. I don’t even want to know who is doing this. All I ask is that this near-daily ambush stop.

Thanks in advance.

Your grumpy roommate,

Bradley J.

AnimeBoston came early this year. March 21-23.

Brenna came to town again for the con. Friday, the first day of the con was her 23rd birthday. Naturally, we celebrated, but one thing at a time. I have posted a not so brief summary of the week/weekend after the jump, but if you are only interested in seeing the pictures, you can check out the gallery here.

Her flight was fairly late on Wednesday, so we did not get to do much that night. We ended up ordering out and watching Accepted.

Thursday we had the entire day to ourselves so we packed up and headed to Harvard Sq. I got a sweet parking spot, but since it was still a regular weekday we needed to mind the parking meter. The max time on the meter was sadly an hour. We headed into the Garage, which is basically a small multi-level mall. After looking around Hootenany briefly and spending nearly the entire hour in Newbury Comics looking at toys, comics, and music, we went back and refilled the meter. Then back to the Garage to check out Tokyo Kid. The store was in disarray because they were preparing for AnimeBoston, but we still managed to spend a little bit of time in there before we went to Crazy Dough’s and got some pizza. I had a chicken parm pizza slice. It was pretty good. I think the most outlandish pizza slice I’ve gotten there was a broccolli, shrimp alfredo slice. It was actually pretty good. After pizza, we got some ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s and headed back to the car. Upon our return, we got out of costume and headed over to Best Buy to pick up Super Smash Brothers Brawl for our gathering the next night. We basically just hung out at the house for most of the rest of the night and played Brawl. And by that I mean we hung out and Brenna completely abused me all night in Smash Brothers Brawl.

Friday morning was spent getting our costumes on and getting to the convention. We got there around 11:45ish. We headed straight to the pre-registration line, which was actually in a function hall all on its own. That was a little depressing. Especially three and a half hours later when we got to the end of the line in the hall only to realize it continued into the hallway into another room with another large line. An hour of despair and hunger later, we finally got our registration packets and were ready to go. Unfortunately we were already a man down. Brendan and Thanh were about an hour ahead of us in line. After standing in line for four hours and taking a quick tour of the dealer room and the artists alley, Thanh left the convention for the weekend before Brenna and I even got out of the preregistration line. He probably spent about 20 minutes at the convention, even though he pre-registered for the entire weekend. I’m still mystified by that.

Now that we had all been registered, our small group of three headed straight for the artists’ alley.The artists alley is essentially a funtion hall full of aspiring artists trying to make a name for themselves and sell some artwork at the same time. Over the past couple of years, it has quickly become my preferred area of interest in wandering about the convention. It used to be the dealer room, but the dealer room changes little from year to year. Mostly the same stores have tables selling the same trinkets. Very little changes from year to year. We were able to secure half of a table through Brenna’s hardwork and pestering on the AnimeBoston message board. We lost out on a full table because the Alley sold out in roughly 24 seconds when the tables went available for registration online. In retrospect, I think the half table worked out best for us since we used no more and no less than the space we had. Maybe something to keep in mind for next time. We were only there for maybe 2-3 hours before it was already time to leave and get home. Stupid registration line. It wasted almost the entire day.

I had invited people that Brenna had previously met to the house around 7ish to hang out for her birthday. Dan came over early and hung out with the three of us. We played Rock Band for hours. During that time Peggy and Joaquin came over as well, which was really great because I wasn’t sure if they were coming and I hadn’t seen them in quite a while. Later on, Duke, Toby and their girlfriends came back from Dinner and joined in as well. We had a full band going most of the night with people rotating on instruments and microphone. I got some fun footage. Duke’s brother, Chris came over at my invitation and rocked out on the drums. He is a drummer and showed us what he could do on Rock Band’s drums on expert. It was really impressive. I’ll probably post some of the footage I took in a future post. Once people started going to bed, we quieted down and started playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl. I didn’t win at all, but it was a lot of fun and I’m getting slightly better with the pokemon trainer. Squirtle is still pretty terrible on most levels though. Eventually everyone headed home and Brenna and I went to bed. Tomorrow was going to be another long day.

Saturday came very much like Friday had. We got up and put our costumes on and Duke was kind enough to give us a ride to the convention center. Thankfully, we did not have to wait in a line. We went straight up to the Artists Alley and setup shop. Paul showed up not long after. He apparently had been in line since 8am and had only just gotten out. He was dressed up as Time Jump Shino. It looked really good.

Sunday was a very early day. Since the convention closed at 3 or 4. We needed to be there early to make sure we made the most of the shortened day. I dressed up as Xorn (my last halloween costume) and Brenna wore her civvies. I did a last walk-through of the dealer room. I went back to the FUNimation booth and bought the WildCATS dvd I had seen on Friday because I was still thinking about it and it was a very good deal. It was the full series. Outside of that, I did not find much that I wanted. Brenna was able to sell a few of her other prints on the final day, which made her rather gleeful. I sat in on the charity auction to try and bid on first pick of the artists alley for next year. Little did I realize so many other artists had been jaded in the immediate sellout of the alley. While I was bidding, the price escalated quickly out of our range. When it hit 250, there was a short silence and it almost ended, but I bid 251 just to be a jerk because it was clear this girl would not be outbid. Naturally she bid again, but someone went higher and it continued to escalate further. The final damage cost her 320 dollars for her pick of the first table for next year’s artists alley. Thats not far off from what a dealer’s table costs in the dealer room. I left in frustration and went back to our table and took a nap on the floor behind it. I was starting to get a headache from wearing the Xorn helmet.

The day passed by very quickly. It was not long before we were wrapping things up and heading back home. Duke’s family was over for Easter so we quickly went upstairs and changed. I took another nap to try and get rid of the headache. Brenna read another of my graphic novels. After a while, Duke’s family left because they were stuffed, but he still had more stuff cooking so we went down and helped out, of course. Davidson, Antonia, Duke, Danielle, Brenna and I all sat down and ate and talked for a while. Then we called it a night.

Very early the next day (6am!) I dropped Brenna off at the airport and reentered the mundane working world from my relaxing vacation. I wish vacations were longer.

The costume creation process will be posted in several parts soon.

I will say though that I just won this on EBay:

I’ll also say that its not what you may think. Keep in mind, I like obscure. Hopefully this does not happen to me though.