Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in pyrian's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, July 12th, 2009
10:22 pm	Labyrinth Preview Here's some photos of my costume and a few other preview shots before I get the whole set together (which is large, as most of my pictures turned out great): ( Preview Pictures... ) (Comment on this)
Friday, July 10th, 2009
10:00 am	To Labyrinth! It is finished. Okay, it isn't finished, it's just done. There's certainly more that could have been added and I'm sad that my dragon-man costume lacks wings. I didn't find a set of horns/antlers to use, but I'm sure I will in the future, though. Still, the sheer amount accomplished is remarkable. Both costumes have arm bands, greaves, a mask, a weapon, and a full covering of scales/leaves. The dragon also has a large number of specialty scales, most notably including gold scales down the front (belly) and ridge spikes in a line down the back. I've made a belt, a weapon loop, and even added velcro to my camera case so I can mix it into the leaf costume better. Finally, I repaired my long-damaged belt pouch, since I'll be using that instead of pockets. And of course all that is in addition to the velcro undergarments that hold it all together, which include the top halter piece, the two half-skirts, and a pair of armbands. Whew! And now it's fun time. :) (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
12:20 am	Costume Update - Greaves! My shin-guard leaves are ready. I probably should have done more such work, but being a bit burned out on leaves I also did a proof-of-concept for a card-based dragon scale. It looks great, but being shiny, it photographs terrible, so no post of it yet. The mocassins are nice to look at but kind of a pain to get on and off, and I'm not sure how well they'll stand up to abuse. I may just wear my new hiking boots. ( Greaves over mocassins... ) (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
1:14 am	Costume Update I completed the lower riding-skirt portion of the velcro garment, so the basics are now complete. ( Pictures! ) Next, it's time to work on accessories! (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 6th, 2009
12:32 am	The Project Which Ate My Life So, here's the velcro webbing for my upper body. Finally! The lower-body portion should be much quicker and simpler, as it's basically just two rectangles, "riding skirt" style. ( Pictures... ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 5th, 2009
2:58 pm	Weekly Review I didn't quite hit my exercise target this week - just 35 minutes short, which is kind of sad, but I really thought I'd manage to get more time in Saturday. I did reasonably well on diet, though with parties on Friday and Saturday I'm not precisely sure whether I made my targets or not. I allocated a full 1200 calories to each party and didn't go too crazy, but, y'know, Cassandra brought cookies! Anyway, for all that and the fact that I increased my calorie target from 2000/day to 2400/day, I still lost the expected 1.5 pounds! So, that's reassuring. I'm cruising slowly through the last ten pounds, hoping for a soft landing rather than a rebound. Labyrinth is so close I'm reverting back to how-can-I-get-everything-done panic mode. :) It's so close I have to estimate how much exercise I'm going to get there so I can hit my weekly exercise quota! My first costume is coming along nicely, though, and is getting into the stage where what used to be random strips of fabric are starting to come into a definite form. Very exciting! (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 28th, 2009
9:36 pm	Cruise Formal Night My get-up for the Alaska cruise's first formal night. The tie is apparently... Controversial! Some people like it, many people hate it. ( Pictures of me! ) (9 Comments |Comment on this)
12:33 pm	Back At It I gained a few pounds on the cruise, surprise surprise. This week, despite a sore throat and general lethargy, I managed to make all my usual diet and exercise targets, dropping all the weight I'd gained and actually ending slightly under my pre-cruise weight. For the next couple weeks I'm planning on relaxing my calorie target slightly - going up from 2000 calories/day to a more reasonable 2400 calories/day. In theory, that should still be a weight-loss plan for me (especially as I'm keeping to the 10/hours a week of exercise), although in practice I'm not sure if it will be. The point, right now, is more to get well and feel good, since I think that's important and achievable by Labyrinth while losing 10 pounds is really not (short of chopping off a limb or something). (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 21st, 2009
10:07 pm	The LoJ is Almost Here! The Labyrinth of Jareth Fantasy Masquerade Ball is almost here! I knew that, heck I've practically got a countdown going, but it's really been more of a "crud I've got less than three weeks to get ready" until I opened my mail from last week (when I was cruising Alaska) and found my tickets have arrived! Now suddenly I'm all excited. It's almost here! And that's a good thing, however much I think a few more weeks preparation time would help! (I'd just procrastinate, anyway.) It was a pleasant surprise because I wasn't really expecting my ticket to arrive, since the last two times I went they had gotten lost in the mail somehow... (2 Comments |Comment on this)
9:29 pm	"A" Gone I have completely eroded away the "A" key on my home keyboard. I've also done significant damage to the left-control key, which makes some sense, as I play a lot of FPS and use it as the crouch key, and the right-shift key, which also has me mystified. But the "A"? I really don't understand why it's gone. Finally, there's a tiny bit of damage to the "C" key, but the entire rest of the keyboard is fine. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
1:01 am	Sensitivity I saw UP today. It's good fun, if a bit formulaic in places. Then, I went home and bawled my eyes out. ...Sheeesh. I'd ask when I got this sentimental, except I know the answer and it's "birth". Haha, I think I could totally work the "emotional guy" angle if I didn't tend to view exposing that side of myself with considerable trepidation. It's not that I'm ashamed of it; it's that I've been burned too many times when I've worn my heart on my sleeve. I wonder if that "tactic" only really works when you're faking it? (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, June 19th, 2009
1:08 pm	Alaska 5 (Canada, Really) Today's a sea day as we travel back through Canadian waters towards Vancouver. They've finally lifted the biosecurity measures, so we can serve ourselves from the buffet, select our own silverware, pick up a glass of water without assistance, and so forth. I under-packed socks - I'm short a single pair of clean socks for tomorrow. Oh, well. I refuse to take the long trip home in dirty socks, so I'll have to either buy a pair on the ship or do laundry. ...Kind of sad to do a load of laundry the day before returning. (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
7:09 pm	Alaska 4 I finally got to see bald eagles! Lots of them, too, flying around, diving for fish, and so forth. We're in Ketchikan now. My family just kind of wandered around town a bit. This is supposed to be a really rainy area, but it's been nice all day (a bit cloudy). Oh, and I saw night here for the first time last night, heh, partly because I was up late, but mostly because we're further south now. The comedian the ship had on last night (Steve Bruner) was really good, that was worth staying up for. From here it's a straight shot to Vancouver: tomorrow's a sea day, and the next morning we get into port and disembark. The Hawaii contingent will spend some time in Vancouver, while us San Diegans are taking a puddle jumper to Seattle and then flying home. It's been nice, but I don't think I'm going to feel any burning need to come back. Next year it sounds like we're going to take a family cruise to Tahiti, from the way people are talking. That'd be very nice and probably very relaxing. I'd really like to take a Hawaiian islands cruise, or maybe even just go to the big island for an extended vacation. We'll see. This cruise has been pretty hard on my niece and nephew; they can't stand the "cold" (having grown up in Hawaii) and, like most children, don't like being cooped up, either. "Cold" is in quotes because, despite spending most of my life in San Diego, high 50's just don't impress me as being particularly chilly! (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
5:26 pm	Alaska 3 I went hiking around Skaguay, which was very pretty. My Dad came along, we walked for a total of over four hours start to finish. Poor Pop, he was beat! ...I forget he's seventy. There were a ton of big, fat, slow mosquitos up by the lake and we forgot bug spray. I felt like I was on the wrong side of a cruise ship buffet line. Today we're in Juneau. We took a bus to see yet another glacier (Mendenhall), and then took a chopper up on top of a glacier and went dog sledding! That was fantastic. Flying always scares me, but the view was gorgeous. And the pups are sooo cute and eager! As soon as they see the helicopter inbound the dogs get all excited and start trying to pull the sleds (which are still tied off). Woof woof woof, bounce bounce bounce, when they pull the tie rod you're off with a jerk! The huskies are friendly, too, most of them are only too happy to be petted and will jump up to say hi. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, June 15th, 2009
11:31 pm	Alaska 2 It's been all boat so far. The sky has been mostly overcast, but the views are great! Lots of glaciers, mountains, streams, and so on, of course. Also, we've seen a grizzly bear, otters, seals, sea lions, humpback whales, and of course lots of birds (even puffins). What I haven't seen is any nighttime, heh. Even the onboard entertainment has been unusually good. Annoyingly, this ship had norovirus on board coming into port. So, it's in full-tilt biosecurity mode. Among other things, this means you are not allowed to serve yourself at the buffet. :P The lines for food thus grow enormous. Today, I got the reassuring sight of a crewmember in a surgical mask going into the room across from me with a spray-bottle of disinfectant and a biohazardous waste disposal bag. That's not reassuring. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 13th, 2009
9:38 pm	Greetings From Beautiful Alaska! We're just starting our Alaska cruise. Been a bit of a mess getting onto the ship and settled (although the bus ride here was gorgeous), but I think it's coming together now! I'll post more updates later, I'm sure. (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 7th, 2009
10:46 am	"I Shook the Throne of Fat" - Spring Diet Retrospective I made all my diet and exercise targets for this, the last week of my regimen. The results were so-so, suggesting that I haven't so much busted through the 219 barrier as plowed into it. Still, it was progress, I'm down to 215.8 pounds, and I made it down to a 39" waistline as well. Sixteen weeks ago I set out to lose 32 pounds and 4 inches off my waistline in these sixteen full weeks I had left between then and summer starting in earnest. My regimen was quite simple: 2000 calories per day and 10 hours of exercise per week. My net results were 22 pounds lost and 3 inches off my waistline. So, I made a lot of progress, but I didn't reach my goals. As can be seen from the chart, I made great strides at the beginning and end of the period, but there was a period in the middle where things kind of fell apart. First, I got sick, and deliberately suspended my diet until I got better. That lasted longer than I'd hoped. When I tried to get back into the groove, I found it very difficult, reaching neither my diet nor my exercise targets. Further disruption was my week-long business trip to Massachussetts, in which we were feted with many of my favorite indulgences. After that, I spent another week in which I didn't quite manage to reach my regimen's targets. In total, there were 7 weeks (out of 16!) in which I didn't manage my regimen and thereby either didn't lose weight or even gained it - a total of 4.8 pounds gained in that interval. This means that in the 9 weeks I did keep to my regimen, I actually lost a total of 26.8 pounds, or very nearly an average of 3 per week. Given that I was only expecting to lose 2 pounds per week (32 pounds in 16 weeks), that's kind of impressive. I've noticed that it's far, far more difficult to get onto the regimen than it is to maintain it. Cravings and laziness are much worse the first week, and that seems to reset any time I go off - only the "first" first week did I have enough bloody-minded determination to push through and make both targets. Moving forward, the next couple weeks are going to be a whirlwind of activity for me and I don't know how I'm going to even maintain. I honestly doubt I will, but I'm going to try, because later in June I'm planning to launch right back into a last-ditch attempt to reach my goals by the Labyrinth Masquerade. (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 31st, 2009
10:22 am	Busted Through This week I convincingly dropped through the 219-pound floor I've bounced off of a couple times in the past. Also, I've reached 20 pounds of total weight loss since I started this in February. Progress feels good! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 30th, 2009
6:30 pm	Hiking in the Clouds I left my camera home today because it looked like it might rain. What a mistake! Not only did it not rain, the mountains were gorgeous half-cloaked in mists. I started below the clouds, looking up at them floating gently by, then into them, looking down as wisps of fog concealed the city below. On the higher trails, the cloud billowed by in slow, stately style. So lovely! (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 24th, 2009
8:48 am	Back On Track I'm way behind schedule but back on track and cruisin' on down. I made all my diet and exercise targets this week, and it seems to have paid off. Heck, I lost so much weight in the first few days of this week that it made last week look a lot more successful. I'm now just a pound or so above where I bottomed out at in April. I'm hoping to convincingly break through that floor in the next two weeks. We'll see! (Comment on this)