Soundtrack to my life

I thought I'd put together a compilation of my favorite nerd music to listen to while I'm crafting, all on my playlist appropriately titled "Nerdgasms". Why? Because I can, duh. And I'm busy making things I can show you until January so I need something to share with you lovely people. I'll even be nice and put links to the tracks on youtube (the ones I can successfully do that with anyway) so you can listen to them, and maybe find yourself a new favorite track!

1. Road of Trials & - Journey Soundtrack (Austin Wintory)

2. Pirates Medley - Pirates of the Caribbean (Peter Hollens & Gardiner Sisters)

3. The Asteroid Field - The Empire Strikes Back (John Williams)

4. Gerudo Valley - Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary Symphony (Ok, this theme is awesome as it is, but it has never sounded more epic than this!)

5. Waterdrops - Ni No Kuni (Joe Hisaishi)

6. Dry Your Tears Afrika - Amistad (John Williams)

7. Presenting the Hook - Hook (John Williams... what, I like his music)

8. Malcom's Journey - Jurassic Park: The Lost World... ok, no the second movie wasn't as good as the first, but the music is still awesome (John Williams)

9. Skyrim - Skyrim (Peter Hollens & Lindsey Stirling, pretty sure I like this version better than the original)

10. Koume and Kotake's Theme - Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (MOKA)

11. Enterprising Young Men - Star Trek (Michael Giaccino)

12. A Deep Mentality - Persona 3 (Shoji Meguro)

13. Calling - The World Ends With You (Takeharu Ishimoto)

14. Song of Time/Song of Storms - Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Taylor Davis, she also does lots of other awesome covers you should check out)

15. Soar Up - Kiddy Grade (Sorry, couldn't find a video...)

16. Tank! - Cowboy Bebop

17. Kazenone - Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (Yae)

18. Baba Yetu - Civilization IV (Christopher Tin ft. Soweto Gospel Choir)

19. aLIEz - Aldnoah.Zero (Amanda Lee - she does a good cover, and the real version doesn't seem to exist anywhere...)

A day in the life of Mikey

So rather than my standard weekly post of Throwback Thursday (which I missed yesterday anyhow since I spent the whole day working on props for people), I thought I'd give you guys a glimpse into my real life... although that still involves a lot of cosplay and crafty things.

First things first, I am definitely more of an early bird than a night owl, so I tend to go to bed by 9:30 or 10 every night. I know it sounds crazy, but my fiance (and soon to be husband) gets up at 5 every morning, and I usually follow by 6 or so. That's one reason you'll see me posting on facebook & here & tumblr a lot more frequently in the morning, and often catch some of my friends who haven't yet gone to bed. Absurd.

 My mornings begin with a cup of coffee with cream at the cafe. My afternoon begins with hot tea with two lumps of sugar. And my evenings... In the evening I change into my pajamas.Yes, nothing beats a hot cup of tea in the morning.

FOOLS

My day begins, ends, and is occupied primarily by cosplay and crafts. Thankfully, I recently acquired a new space to do my crafting at our house. Thankfully we weren't really doing anything else with the space, and we really just stashed a bunch of stuff in there. Its much nicer than the space I used to use since it was the back end of our game room so any time we had company over to play games I'd have to clean everything up and find someplace to stash it. Also, it was carpeted so I had to be a lot more careful with paint and other stuff. All around, the new space is awesome!

That's it! It looks like a mess, I know, but it's my little crafty world! And usually those giant green pieces of foam aren't there so there's an actual place for me to sit on the floor. Yes, I do all of my crafting on the floor, like a toddler. But it's the best thing for me cause then I can move around as much as I need to, I don't need to worry about dropping stuff cause there's not that far for it to fall, and my butt slowly cleans up previous messes as it scoots around; it's perfect!

Let's take a look at that picture again cause you can see all of my current projects in it!

The claws and gun are projects I mentioned a few posts ago. The claws are for Hsien-Ko from Darkstalkers, and the gun is a blunderbuss from Bloodborne. The two swords are actually both a commission from the same person, but they are two different swords for two related characters. They belong to Yuu and Mika from Owari no Seraph. I'm pretty excited about them cause they're pretty awesome designs.

And that personal project to the left was kind of an experiment, but I will eventually finish it. It's for [SECRET COSPLAY] so you'll find out about it eventually but it won't be for a while cause my intention is not to have that done until Ohayocon.

You'll also notice the long coffee table which is set up for me to make my Magic: the Gathering life counters, which if you haven't seen them you should check them out cause they're pretty cool, even if you don't play Magic.

Another integral part of the Miked Does Cosplay / Kilted Katana Productions experience is music, because I can only sit on the floor painting tiny details on swords in silence for so long before I go crazy and start thinking I'm holding a real sword and try to stab someone with it. The musical selections differ a bit depending on my mood, but there are two genres I tend to listen to while I'm crafting. If I'm in a bit of a slump and need some motivation, I tend to listen to some upbeat dance music and that gets my fingers flying, and is of course interrupted periodically by personal dance parties when a song comes on that I really like. Which of course is good for you, you're not supposed to sit for long periods of time without getting up and moving around so we'll just call this preventative healthcare. The rest of the time I'm usually getting into super!nerd mode and listening to soundtracks because that's just how I roll. I've been using Pandora a lot and enjoy the Final Fantasy Live channel which is more fun than hearing the same collection of stuff that's on my computer and let's me play the fun game of "What movie / video game is this song from?" I'm getting pretty good at it too, even with some games I haven't played before!

That is pretty much my world at the moment, and I spend the vast majority of my time there. I've been using a lot of foamcore board for my projects lately as I'm getting a good feel for how to work with it, and it lends itself well to a lot of my current proects. You can see the the stack of full sheets to the left in that photo and all of the wierd little leftover pieces all the way across to the right. I always hoard all of my scrap materials to use for projects later, cause you never know when you're going to need a small piece of something for some detail. That is, of course most of the reason my craft room is constantly in such a state because I have scraps that just float around everywhere and just get moved when I need the space they're in for something. I am obviously not an organizational freak XD

You'll probably also notice that there's a vacuum cleaner just chilling over to the right too. I've found that it's best to just keep it right there, and plugged in, especially lately with having to spackle and then sand all of my raw foamcore edges because it kinda looks like a crack den in there after I sand a piece.

I promise, I don't have a drug problem. That would be really unsatisfying to snort, trust me. 
And that, in a nutshell is my craft business, pretty much proving that my life is about as spastic as my blog posts.

But there's only so much time I can spend cutting up Magic cards and foamcore board with an X-acto knife at a time before the threat of arthritis increases exponentially, so I often intermix a variety of other activities into my work day of crafting.

Hooping out in the back yard has been a good intermittent activity cause it actually gets me moving around more and I get to play with hoops and try tricks! I'm still not great at... lots of things, but I can go from my hand to my chest or waist and back. And that's about it.

And yes, I do make a point to dress as gay as possible when I go out to hoop.

And speaking of outside, our house has lots of garden space so on nice days like today I try to spend some time in the garden as well, so lets take a little tour of the yard!

Most of my time in the garden is spent battling the forces of evil.... well the weeds. Thanks to our lovely maple tree back here, we have a small army of little trees sprouting up everywhere. Not gonna lie, I love playing with helicopters but pulling all of these little guys out is kinda annoying.

There's also my constant struggle with the crazy weed that perpetually grow in the gravel area off of our driveway...

And let's just not talk about this area... I've already surrendered the battle to the forest of weeds.

Also, despite not working in the field any more, I'm still a biology nerd at heart so I love watching things grow and finding fun little living things out here.
Like this little American Toad that I found in the yard the other day; isn't he PRECIOUS?!?

I also found this lovely scat in my strawberry plants. Thankfully the strawberries are all done for the season so I don't need to worry about the fact that some animal pooped in there... but it is pretty fascinating.

I don't know what animal this came from, but whoever you are, thank you for eating a healthy diet of japanese beetles because they've been eating my roses and my blackberry plant and I don't appreciate that!

And now that I've digressed to showing you all a photo of all the shit in my life, I think we'll just leave it there. Love you guys!