Recovering from War, and other things.

So I did survive the War, and had amazing amounts of fun. Drank way too much, showed way too much cleavage, and basically spent the better part of the time laughing like a lunatic. I don't look too happy in this pic, but it's the best closeup shot I could find of the detail on the dress. One word: Amazing. Wearing the dress was like being transported back in time. (The possible exception to that, of course, being the UnderArmor I wore underneath, along with my black Timberland boots.) Though I look very padded in the midsection in the pic, I really didn't look pregnant in real life.

There was much drunk dialing and much drunk texting, more from the Spousal Unit than anyone else. Den Mother and I bought Sewing Goddess a thank-you gift for the amazing work she did to make us look good and we even made her cry! That's good work, right there. Plus, Sewing Goddess is the only chickie I know for whom a short sword in a red leather scabard is a gift that's worthy of tears. Sweet!

This is Sewing Goddess (in red) with her two creations (mine and blue), and Pirate Chickie (far left) with her gold-and-amber creation. People kept complimenting me, and my standard response was, "Hey, all I did was supply the body to put into the thing."

Now we have to decide if we're going to submit to the peer pressure and go to San Diego Comic Con. We were planning to use that money to give MaulRat a proper bachelor party, but I guess only time will tell . . .

Getting ready for the MS Walk.

I'm very excited, because the looming MS Walk has me convinced that I really need to move on getting my Mara Jade catsuit upgraded. The one that I have is vinyl, which is fine, but I really only originally intended to wear it for that one day at CIII. Turns out, it's gotten a lot more use than that, and it's wearing out. It also isn't optimally tailored for my body shape. Yes, it's stretchy, but because my bust, uhh, goes out to the point that it does, it makes for kind of a straight line from there to the crotch (when viewing me from the side). Not flattering. And that's even after I put in elastic under the arms to make it stretch more! When I put the belt on, it pulls in at a weird angle and makes me look thicker through the midsection than I am, and no woman wants that.

Anyway, I hooked up with The Magic Wardrobe and Liz over there is making me a fabulous pleather catsuit. Of course, had I known that Sewing Goddess was so talented, I might have hit her up to do it, but as it is, Liz has done the deal before and has a pattern and all that. It's going to be tailored to my exact specs, so I can't wait to see how much better it's going to look.

Now I'll just have to decide if I really want to sweat all over my new catsuit when we walk the 6+ miles. It's definitely going to be a day when I'll be glad I'm not in armor.

Now, in retrospect, this email I sent The Dark One is entertaining. It's dated May 22, 2005. I had so much to tell . . .

So I make initial contact with a guy named Tom, whose email is LordVader@****.***. This was my first clue. I call him on one of his days off and he says, "We need to get you on the computer--why don't you just come over?" This startled me. He has no idea who the hell I am, but he just invites me to his home, because it's his day off and he's hanging out with his wife and kids. So I go and take the rugs. We walk around his house, he shows me all his Star Wars paraphenalia, his work bench, whatever, I chat with his wife, and my kids play with his two year old. We make arrangements for me to come down for the toy drive for the hospital trip.

I roll up to the toy drive up in north Phoenix in my Mara Jade costume, and when I get out of the car, there's a cluster of stormtroopers in front of the store. The Commanding Officer takes off his stormtrooper helmet and says, "Hi, you must be Jen. Nice to meet you, I'm Kevin." Nice looking guy. The rest of the stormtroopers around him start to take off their helmets . . .

Holy crap.

"Hi, I'm Neil." (Nice looking dude. Tall.) "I'm Mark." (Wow, dark hair. Nice.) "Lance, glad to meet you." (Umm, hot?) "I'm Josh, good to see you." (Holy Mary, mother of God.) I'm smiling through all of this, thinking, "Okay, how are all of these guys hot guys also Star Wars geeks?" It's just one right after another. It then occurs to me in a blinding flash . . . I've somehow, once again, managed to get involved in a pastime where females are vastly outnumbered by males. And this one I did without even realizing it!

We go on and do the toy drive, get lots of great stuff for the kids, and toward the end, Joe comes and meets all the guys. They just fold him in as part of the flock, apparently sensing one of their own. I meet some of the wives of some of the guys, and they're all wonderfully nice. Joe is also very pleased.

Hospital trip just rocks. Seeing the kids was amazing, and hearing the genuine appreciation from these parents that just have the ravages of pain all over their faces . . . just great. And the guys in the suits are so amazing, so incredibly patient, posing for hours for every single picture, going back to talk to every single kid who wanted to talk to them, being so gentle and so kind. It all leaves me a little taken aback, and deeply touched. I mostly assist the Vader dude and the troopers, since they can't hear or see very well, and Vader needs help in and out of his helmet for water breaks.

Mostly the same for the movie premiere. Lots of kids, even though the movie is vastly inappropriate for them, but the guys are all very patient with the fans of all ages, and they are appreciative. I did the theatre gig two nights, and by the last one (Joe came to the 2nd one), the real fanboys had already seen the flick and the average crowd was there, so there were a lot of hecklers. I had a hard time not kicking the crap out of some of them. They're sitting there, mocking these guys, and all I can think about is all the good they do, the vast amounts of time and money they give up for this pursuit, and they come out to the theater to entertain and make everybody's experience more fun . . . and they get heckled.

Needless to say, I got a little protective. When the stormtroopers are in a crowd, it's possible for pieces of their costumes to be peeled off and stolen, and some guys even have people punch them on their armor to see if it's "real". A pair of teenagers sidled up behind Neil when he was talking to some little kids, and made like they were going to steal his (thermal detonator?). (Round thing above his butt that's held on by velcro.) They laughed and walked off to a group of people. I strode over to them, stood between them with my arms around their shoulders and said, "Hi, guys. You're not going to be wanting to steal anything off of the costumes, understand?"

"What, huh, we weren't messing with him!"

"Yeah, okay. Listen, these guys spend a ton of time and money on their costumes, and if one of you were to try to make off with something, you'd have all of us all over you in a second, and it would be a really bad scene. Trust me. So keep your hands off." I smiled in my most humorless fashion at their thunderstruck looks, and walked away. I walked back over to Neil, who is married to his high school sweetheart and is just one of the nicest guys, and he asked me what that was all about. I told him, and he kind of laughed, and said, "Thanks."

Then a while later, I see a pack of preteens closing in around Lance, starting to fondle and slap at his armor. I'd seen them heckling and messing with the others, so cruised over and stood at Lance's elbow. Lance is known as "the polisher" because he keeps his armor spotless, and I knew he wouldn't like hands on it, especially if the kids didn't mean well.

I take one kid's hands off Lance's chest plate. "Don't touch the armor, guys."

"What? Why?" The kid looks me up and down. "Who are you supposed to be?"

I smile slowly and put my hands on my hips, one over my lightsaber, the other over my gun. "I'm Mara Jade, the Emperor's Hand. I am his personal assassin--basically, when he needs someone rubbed out, he has me handle it. I can kick just about anyone's ass in the entire galaxy."

He pauses. "Can I hold your lightsaber?"

"No."

He and all his friends look at me, look at each other, and suddenly have something else they have to go do.

Lance never moves his body, just his helmet swivels to look at me in a way that I've come to recognize as "inquiring".

"I don't make a habit of menacing kids. Those ones, however, were not nice. At all."

He nods, and walks away.

Maybe I've found a new harem to mother a little bit, although these ones are almost all married. Makes no difference. They're all really nice people, as are their wives. It's just really, really nice to find a group of good people who have only Star Wars in common, but they turn it into a really great project.

On a side note, there's one who is just unbearably hot and single, and if you end up looking for a nice fling to fill some time, I'd highly recommend him. You don't find too many guys that hot who are willing to devote this amount of time to kids and charity.

The Dark One and GQ Sith (who is still unbearably hot, but no longer single!) have been together for 6 months, and are planning to move in together if she can ever get a freaking job out here! I'm not exactly brokenhearted that she'll be around.

Here, Mom. This is for you. Bet you never thought you'd see your baby girl in Sand Trooper armor, did you? 

Here's the problem, in a nutshell.

Would you let this man go shopping with you? Talk about a pirate's smile. Sheesh.

Hit the Ren Faire yesterday, and I swear, I am never going shopping with TK-2035 again. We were only going to pick up some stuff for the spousal unit, so that when we make our sojourn to War next weekend, he'd have something to wear that he would feel comfortable in. We ended up meeting 2035 and Pirate Chickie, his fabulous girlfriend, and we had them functioning as our "Medieval Stylists". We ended up with a new wench costume for Baby Girl, a whole outfit for Spousal Unit, a cotton gauze outfit similar to one we saw on a stripper the other night (that one wasn't 2035's fault), a kilt for Spousal Unit, and a chain mail bra for me. Chain mail! Sewing Goddess was there and I fear she was a little taken aback about the bra, but regardless, she said that the totally-sweet Italian Renaissance dress appears to almost be done.

I should probably have assured her that I wouldn't wear the bra with the dress. That might have eased her mind.

Pirate Chickie also does Roller Derby, which is so cool I can barely handle it. One of these days, I'm going to give it a try with her. Check her out being her bad self.

Sewing A Galaxy

Holy crap, people. Sewing Goddess Gabby has almost finished the dress that will mark my foray into Renaissance costuming. I am quite humbled at the result. I am indeed a very lucky girl.

Check it out:
Sewing A Galaxy

Starting out.

For my first 33 1/2 years, I stumbled along, doing a little of this and a little of that. I had various part-time jobs, some more colorful than others . . . got married . . . had two kids . . . went to college and law school and eventually became a lawyer . . .

I never would have suspected that attending something like Star Wars Celebration III would cause my life to become so incredibly different, in so many ways, in such a short period of time.

I had some tangential knowledge of a group called The 501st Stormtrooper Legion, a charity costuming organization that specializes in incredibly accurate Star Wars costumes. My husband is a lifelong rabid Star Wars fan, and it was a foregone conclusion that we would attend Celebration III, the only Lucasfilm-associated convention for Star Wars fans.

My husband had requested that we costume for the convention, since it was supposed to be the last one (coinciding with the release of what is supposed to be the last Star Wars movie). His favorite character is Luke Skywalker, particularly in Return of the Jedi when he appears in full badass Jedi Master mode. He asked that I dress as Mara Jade, who appears in the books and comics after Jedi and is a redheaded force-sensitive assassin who works secretly for The Emperor for many years, but after his death, slowly makes her way over to become a Jedi and ultimately marry Luke.

The 501st was at the convention, acting as support staff and security as they had for Celebrations I and II. I couldn't decide which was more odd, the fact that I spent several days surrounded by absolutely realistic Stormtroopers, or that after a while I didn't even notice it any more. One of the Stormtroopers in front of the ballroom where scenes from Revenge of the Sith were screening called out to me as I walked by in my Mara Jade costume.

"Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?"

I was startled and wasn't sure he was talking to me. Was it someone I knew from Phoenix?

I looked around. "Me?"

He smiled. "Yeah, you. The Emperor's Hand?"

It took me a while to figure out that he was just being cute and referring to the Imperial connection between Mara Jade and Stormtroopers. I kidded around with him for a while, but the upshot was that he was surprised I wasn't already a member of the 501st, with the costume I had. I hadn't thought it was anything impressive, but evidently, it was.

I applied through the website to become a member, kind of as a lark more than anything . . . I mean, what were the odds that they'd seriously want me to join?

I started running with the local Dune Sea Garrison in May of 2005, and they've now become such a part of my life that I can't imagine it without them any more.

Costuming is becoming a hobby, in more than one arena. With the help of friends in the Garrison, particularly my Sewing Goddess friend Gabby, it looks like I'm going to expand into the realm of Renaissance costuming as well. For someone who would routinely sew her fingers together, given the chance, having friends who know what they're doing is a godsend. When she finishes the unbelievable Italian Renaissance dress she's making for me, I plan to wear it to the Estrella War that's coming up next weekend. SWEET!