Once again, you can find me this weekend at Mid-Ohio Con!  I'm going to be somewhere in the Columbus Convention Center on Saturday and Sunday.  It's weird having a convention that's just a few miles downtown.  I swear, I'm gonna leave the convention hall late Saturday and be confused when I step outside and it's not Hartford or Seattle out there.  I will approach the first local I see and ask what a good local joint is, and they will respond "Donatos Pizza."  And there will be this great tumult in my brain.

Tomorrow morning Maggie and I are driving back to Indiana for my grandfather's funeral, and will be returning Thursday afternoon, hopefully in time for Maggie's mom to arrive, for she is visiting!  It is a busy week for us, apparently.   We may or may not still have one hamster left when we return.  Gnngh.

Today I watched the new DC animated direct-to-video thing, Batman: Year One.  Since I've read the comic itself enough times, and this cartoon adaptation was extremely faithful, I was actually pretty damn bored with it.  That story needs a beginning, middle, and an end, am I right?  Bryan Cranston was excellent as James Gordon, but I feel like he was starring in a calendar, not a movie.  But, tell you what, if you like your Frank Millerspeak, this is the movie for you.  And I know some of you do, so that's not intended to be an indictment.  Plus it's very beautifully animated.

Thankfully, Arkham City is here to pick up any batslack.

This here is Fractyl!  His only real toy was from BotCon 1997, the year before I started attending them, so I've never owned a Fractyl.  Now I own a fake Fractyl!  He's the last 3H Wreckers guy I intend to make.  I'm technically missing the Alpha Trion repaint of Beast Machines Snarl, but if I'm gonna waste time and money painting something, I kind of want to direct that effort towards a character appearance that actually has a character appearance.  No, the one blurry two-panel fly-by silhouette doesn't count.

I like Fractyl.  He's a scientist.  He's a nice scientist.  The Botcon 1997 toy theme seemed to be "sympathetic bad guy and a jerky good guy."  Y'know, to mix stuff up a little.  And so he's this awkward antisocial creature who just wants to study some rocks, dammit.  Stop shoving him into his locker, Inferno!  Oh, what a geek.

And the Transmetal toy that they never made would have been beautiful.  Too bad.  My attempt at recreating it kind of sidestepped some of the beauty.  I wasn't able to find the proper greens.  My Fractyl is a reasonable approximation, but it falls short of the ideal.

Yay, Fractyl.

Boo, funerals.

First of all, yay!  Mid-Ohio Con is this coming weekend.  Saturday and Sunday, I believe?  October 22-23rd! That is good news!  The bad news is Book 4 won't be in the States quite yet.  The big pile o' books isn't expected to reach Columbus until the first week of November... if customs doesn't flag it for being terrorism, that is.  We'll see.  But I will have Roomies! book 1 and Shortpacked! books 2 and 3, as always.  I will have an extremely limited number of Dina hats.  And finally more Dinobot "Honor" posters came in, so phew.

The bummer part is I have a big pile of deaths to announce!  Two hamsters within the past week (mommy ham and "Pirate" ham), and on Friday my grandfather passed away after suffering from Alzheimer's for a very long while.  His body finally caught up with his mind.  You'd think, since he hasn't recognized me in about over a year, that this would be easier to handle, but it still stings surprisingly.  So this Wednesday and Thursday I'll be off in Indiana for the visitation and funeral.

We have one remaining hamster from our current batch.  She used to be the most skittish and wild one, but once mommy disappeared from her cage she just sits there, depressed.  We can even pet her now, which was a near impossibility before.  She just takes it, like she's given up.  This is definitely not helping my mood.

Anyway, enjoy this image of two Nightbeats powerlinxing incestuously.