Last weekend, my husband and I went to the Renaissance Faire in Raleigh. Despite the rain that poured on us the entire time, we had a blast. I have absolutely no desire to sit down and write the whole thing up, though, so I’ll just show you what it was like–maybe a picture a day.

This guy? He swallowed swords, did some very uncomfortable things on a bed of nails, and is seen here about to eat three flaming batons. At least, I’m calling them batons. I have no clue of their technical name.

So, in the last week, I have had to replace my laptop, lost the USB cord to my digital camera, misplaced my iPod headphones, had 48 songs on iTunes refuse to live on my iPod because I had to transfer the old hard drive from my laptop into a new laptop, and sneezed. A lot.

But–I have found the USB cord and the headphones, I have Benadryl, and I have a new laptop with Picassa.

To celebrate, have a picture of a sunflower!

I’m not sure what it is–maybe the slightly warmer days and the sun shining a little bit longer each evening–but I’ve been in super-crafty mode for a while. Today, I decided to get back to my knitting, since I haven’t done anything with yarn for a really long time. Of course, I needed a super cool pattern to get me back into the craft, and I found it: Space Invaders socks. The pattern is hosted on knitty.com, a site that I highly recommend you check out if you’re not familiar with it already.

So I went out today and bought my wool yarn–black, white, and green–and my circular knitting needles. I’ve used DPNs before, but never circulars. After casting on my 92 stitches, I was jumping to go at starting the corrugated rib at the cuff of the sock, only to realize that my needles are too long.

I bought 16-inch needles. I need 12-inch needles.

I knew that this project would be mentally taxing, but I wasn’t expecting to run into a wall this early. I’m planning to post the whole adventure on  my blog here. Just as soon as I get the right needles, of course.

I am. I’m writing a very awful fantasy novel. I’ve got 3,096 words at this point–I’m already behind–but it’s a fun thing to do. Especially when, like me, you haven’t done much planning on your plot at all. I have a vague idea of where this is going to go, but I’m happy just letting it flow for the moment.

In other news, we got back from Alabama, and the funeral, late last night. I still hate flying, but there’s a certain magic to flying at night and looking down at all the city lights.

I took the above picture at the N.C. Renaissance Faire–it’s held in Charlotte, and my husband and I attended this past weekend. We walked through a dungeon showcasing methods of torture, and this lovely scene greeted us as we were on our way out. They’re obviously dummies, but they freak me out nonetheless.

Tomorrow: we’re flying home to Alabama to attend the visitation & funeral of my husband’s grandmother. Back sometime Saturday.

On the Sunday mornings when we wake up with enough time to actually eat breakfast before running out the door to make it to church on time, my husband likes to make pancakes and bacon for breakfast–and he always makes a special, weird-shaped concoction for me, along with the normal round ones.

Since my profile is still ridiculously inadequate, I present this truth about me: I am a nerd.

And an unapologetic one at that. I have an unabashed love of everything geeky–science fiction, video games, the nerdier the better. The first pleasure-reading book I bought as an undergrad (and that’s saying a lot, since I was an English major) was a complete selection of Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

I got into science fiction and fantasy novels in high school; I devoured all of the Dragonlance novels, and everything by R.A. Salvatore I could get my hands on. I was already a complete Star Wars fanatic, and so every time I found a new SW book at my local library, I’d pick that up, too.

I was born in ‘83, and so I grew up with video games. My parents had an Atari–a little before my time–and when I was six or so, we got a Nintendo. I still rock at Duck Hunt–and I still play video games. I’ve been addicted to World of WarCraft for quite a while, and I’ve got Kameo and several Wii games on the back burner.

For me, I think the immersion is what makes the world of science fiction & fantasy. I was a natural bookworm as a kid, because I loved being able to read page after page of action, adventure. I just loved words, really, which is why I’m now getting my MFA in creative writing.

There’s finally a chill in the air in North Carolina, and the arrival of fall, for the last few years, has always heralded a special time for me: when I bundle up in blankets on my couch and reread all the Harry Potter novels. I could probably recite vast portions of them by now, much the same way that I recite all of the lines to Shrek whenever I watch it. And of course I was involved in all of the hype with Deathly Hallows; I wore my Ravenclaw badge to the midnight release of the book, and started reading as soon as I got in the car that night.

The buildup leading to that release was like the culmination of my love for this crazy genre; at the pre-release party, I saw a lovely Trelawney, a scarily accurate Argus Filch (complete with cat on shoulder and wonky eye), Mario & Luigi, and a guy dressed as a Transformer. I took a whole lot of pictures that night, but unfortunately, most of them came out blurry–except for this gem. It sums up a lot about that night, I think.