Hmm..just a blog

My title is a reference to Metal gear solid on the PS1. Kudos to you if you recognize what phrase/portion I'm parodying.

I thought it was high time I made just a general blog as I haven't done one of those in a long time. I've mostly been posting  reviews lately and didn't even do one for this week.

Here in the land of Avane, there's a lot of stuff going on right now, most of it not so fun and geeky.  Jennifer is graduating with her accounting degree in May, we're planning a vacation shortly after, we're both working normally and are doing a temp night job for extra cash. So needless to say we've got our hands full we real life action and adventure.

Not helping the stresses of real life adventures situation are the massive changes our store host went through at the end of last month. I still haven't recovered from all the "improvements" so my listing output has been greatly diminished. (On that note I do NOT recommend Highwire Commerce as a provider) Though not to worry store fans, I'm learning to work with the new framework and have updated over 50 items in the last month with more to add soon. :)  If you're a fan of our store go take a look, we've been going through our collections pretty heavy handedly lately. Our toy room/geek room is reaching critical mass and we need clear some of this stuff out soon before our house explodes sending books, video games, dolls and action figures flying. So you might find something fun. If you're looking for something specific be sure to use to talents of Cornelius, our search octopus, he's conveniently located at the top of every page.


In the face of adversity, adversity of course being responsible adulthood, our geeky spirits endure! To keep our geek cred up we've still been working in some time for gaming I've been spending my nights playing Mario 64 DS when I should be sleeping (I'm up to 112 stars, woot!) and  my days, work/life schedule permiting, working my way through Castlevania:Symphony of the Night for the Nth time. Meanwhile Jen's been  finding flags in Assassins Creed in between work and homework. I've also been working in some old episodes of Tom Baker era Dr Who while I work, because as everyone knows vintage ScFi increases productivity. If that geekery weren't enough to keep us on the top of our game,we had planned on attending the geek prom once again this year, but found it was canceled. Luckily the following weekend we're headed to the Video Games Live concert. So all in all I think we're managing to stay true to the geek life, it's kind of like a thug life only much safer and involving more math and electronics.

So to bring it all together we're still around, we're still geeky and we still want you to buy our geeky stuff so we can buy other geeky stuff and talk about it. We're just busy right now. Though we're trying our hand at social networking so you can always try to connect with us via Facebook and Twitter. We're currently addicted to Gaia Online's Ocean party game so we're over there at least once a day. Come say hi if you're so inclined.

 ~Stephanie

Geek Prom!

On Saturday April 18th Jen and I attended geek prom. Geek Prom has been a local annual event, barring the year it was in St.Paul, since 2002 and Jen and I have wanted to go since we moved here in 2003. Unfortunately for us this is the first year our schedules allowed us to make it. It's billed as:

... a somewhat formal dance for adult misfits age 18 and older...For those who were too geeky to attend their high school prom, it's a chance to finally be accepted. For those who were too cool to properly enjoy their high school prom, it's an opportunity to finally let that inner-geek out..
We initially has some anxiety about what we planned to wear for such a prestigious event as the dress code is quite strict:

Plan on wearing something festive: out-of-style formal wear, superhero outfits, futuristic ensembles designed for casual space travel, or uniforms from any marching band, Girl Scout troop or other such geek activity.

I couldn't find my old girl scout regalia, a great tragedy as I'd attained the glorious rank of Sr. girl scout in high school after 10 years of dutiful cookie selling. So we next considered cosplaying, but had trouble figuring out who/what we wanted to be. So, we decided to be ourselves and choose outfits that greatly accentuate our collective geekdom. Which apparently worked because we were both finalists for the title of geek queen 2009. I even made it to first runner up queen. I can't complain though as the queen was dressed as Arwen from LOTR and I wasn't that committed to being a geek. However, should the other queen be unable to fulfill her duties, I AM THERE! Well I don't think it quite works that way but I did get a gift certificate for a free pizza, CD of local music and $20 worth of cheese (or smoked fish) from a local shop. Which for me is actually better than being queen because I have a horrible love for all things cheesy.

Of course I have to share our awesome outfits starting with Mine:

From the bottom right:

1) A chain mail bracelet because every proper geek has some chain mail hanging around. This one was made for me by a dear friend.

2) A Nintendo Choker made by me about a year ago using glass beads and Japanese cell phone charms. It includes Mario, Luigi, Toad, and a goomba.

3) My corsage. We went with a green theme to pseudo-match my zelda shirt, not truly match because we all know true geeks aren't worried about silly things like color matching! I made this out of old St. Patrick's day fake flowers and polymer clay triforce I made myself.

4) Blooper earrings. I also made these from Japanese cell phone charms.

5.) Mario Lunch box I used as a purse. What could possibly be geekier than Mario and Luigi "playing" Zelda on a lunch box? Though I'm honestly concerned that Mario seems unable to properly hold the controller.

6) A silly green headband with a bow in totally the wrong spot to ever be attractive.





A detailed shot of the corsage so you can see the triforce more clearly. It isn't lumpy in person the flash was just really unkind to the gold paint:









I made what I think to be a brilliant last minute change to incorporate the Nintendo and Pac Man fuzzy dice into my hair even though it meant Jennifer had to go fetch the pac man set out of the car half dressed. This picture of me unfortunately isn't terribly attractive, but it's one of the few in which both dice are visible. It also shows my awesome promo only Zelda tee. Oh and the handsome fellow with me is a resin caribou. He's really photogenic notice how he managed to avoid the red eye and awkward, unattractive head angle I'm suffering from.







Next up Jen's accessories:


From the bottom right:

1) Sailor Moon watch. Jen's the primary sailor moon fan

2) Light saber keychain. It gets double geek points because it's promo item for the Jedi academy video game. Oh and it lights up and flashes for when you feel like being in a geeky rave.

3) Boutonniere made from the same fake flowers as my corsage and using the same sort of blooper charm as my earrings.

4) Silly glittery green hat with vintage Donkey Kong patch attached

5) In a separate picture because I had already attached the pins to lapel of her jacket in advance, 11 vintage enamel Nintendo pinbacks from the late eighties and early nineties.

Also in this shot Pokemon Ponyta dog tags and her "welcome to a warp zone" shirt which are integral parts of her outfit and not too easy to see in full shots.

I missed getting her chain mail bracelet in almost any of the shots but she has one as well.
I'll leave it for Jen to find a perfect full body shot of herself to post. Of course that's making the huge assumption that she will ever post...

Geek prom ended up not being quite what I expected but still a lot of fun. We were a little too shy to participate in the fantastic events like spaz dancing, the talent show, or the spelling bee. We're looking forward to next year when we'll hopefully be more comfortable and participate more. Though I honestly doubt I'll be able to spell by then....Dragon Port Games actually had some interesting stuff set up and we would have been happy to play Settlers of Catan if we'd managed to find people to play with. Unfortunately, like the true geeks we are, we were too socially awkward to talk to other people. Not to mention we first learned to play settlers a complete douchebag who kept changing how the rules worked because he "forgot" so now we really have no idea which set of rules are the correct ones which would make an already socially awkward situation worse. Hopefully one day well find some awesome people to play with and learn all the correct rules with no douchebaggery involved.
In any case even though we weren't terribly involved with the planned events, it was held at the aquarium so we had time to look at all the fun things the aquarium had to offer. We looked at all the different fish and spent an embarrassing amount of time making fishy faces at them. We also watched otters frolic and the bald eagle look majestic. The exhibits we spent the most time at were a giant water table where you could send toy boats through the series of locks and dams found on the great lakes and the freshwater stingray touching pool. As you can see Jen was a fan of this cute spotted fellow.Unfortunately as it was held at night a lot of the animals were sleeping so we couldn't look as closely at some of them as we'd have liked.

As a whole Geek Prom was a fantastic experience and one that I hope we can make an annual ritual. I highly suggest anyone in the region with an interest in pure geekery make it a point to attend.

~ Stephanie, who was almost prom queen