Brony Birthday

Another year older!!! Where does the time go??? Last weekend was the observation of the younger's birth!!!

For his cake, he wanted his OC pony, CounterDash. A take off of Rainbow Dash. With the hat, his brother called it Scumbag Rainbow Dash. I did an image search, and all of them came up with Scumbag Steve hats.

On a mildly tangential topic, my wife was solicited for a donation to D.A.R.E., who used to be anti drug and gang, but they told her that their new hot topics are anti bullying and cyber bullying. She was a little puzzled by the cyber bullying thing, thought you could just ignore or disconnect from any potential bullies. My older overhears, and says he's gotta show us his favorite site, Ask Cyberbully Fluttershy. I was amused.

So, in addition to the traditions of cake, presents, and pinata, the boy wanted to get several cans and have an epic silly string war!!!

And that pinata??? We went shopping, and the one he selected had nut crackers on it!!! "So we can crack 'em in the nuts!!!"

It didn't last long. Two hits. Him hitting the pinata.

The pinata hitting the ground.

The older boy, going all Gordon Freeman on it...

Happy birthday, boy!!!

Christmas Shirts

One of the things I did up for both my boys for Christmas were several shirts.

Since the older boy is quite about the Homestuck these days, I made him up a couple with that theme. He uses the "§" §ection sign in his online dealings, so I incorporated that in two of the three shirts I made up for him.

The first one pictured here has the Homestuck logo with the word "SBURB" beneath it, only of course I changed out the "S" to "§". Interestingly, the logo somehow mirrored, so true Homestuck fans will notice it's hinky.

The next one is John Egbert's "Ghostbuster" shirt. He's already got the glasses. If you look close, you can see him on his monitor. Now he's the Cosplay kid, too!!!

For the younger, he wanted a Minecraft Creeper hoodie, but those are expensive!!! I made him up a shirt, and he loves it!!! Unfortunately, the iron on transfers I used, it said to wash it after applying to make it relax and not be so stiff. Well, it made the unprinted area really show up on this particular one. Might be because it's a cheap T-shirt, none of the others had that problem. Trust me, it looked a lot better before it was laundered. Oh yea, there's the much searched for Diamond Sword again!!!

I didn't get a shot of the actual shirt, but here's the design I did up for the older boy, Fluttershy, with the word "Shy", once again modified. I put it on a yellow shirt, and it kind of bled through a little.

For the younger, he wanted DJ Pon3 and her bass cannon. Again, the color of the shirt affected the transfer some, but it works OK.

Lastly, one of his friends gave him the Yoda shirt.

Mechanics of the Horn

Of the many posts I've had in mind, I've had the image for this one on a flash drive for several months. Finally removed it, and fixed it up with the addition of some colors this morning.

In case you can't tell what it is, it's a cutaway detail of my OC, Apple Core's, apple launching horn.

I can picture the scene where he explains how he came to have it, along with his cutie mark. The Cutie Mark Crusaders approach him...

Apple Bloom: Uh, Apple Core???

Apple Core: Oh, hello young fillies. What can I do for you???

Scootaloo: Well, we were wondering...

Sweetie Belle: How did you get your cutie mark?

Apple Bloom: And that horn of yours that shoots apples from it... that just doesn't seem natural!!!

Apple Core: Well, it was some time ago... back when I was a young stallion. Me and a couple of other young stallions would hang out at night outside of the 7-11. To this day I don't know what the attraction in doing that was.

Scootaloo: Yeah???

Apple Core: Anyway, one of the other ponies, Larry the Loser, really short, even for a pony, always wore this seedy leather jacket. He told us about the apple core game.

Apple Bloom: The apple core game???

Apple Core: I'll explain that a bit farther along in the story. Anyway, about that time in my life, I also broke my horn.

Sweetie Belle: Ouch! How did that happen???

Apple Core: Why, I'd mistreated it for years. So Foolish. I used to go around sticking it in everything. Stuck it into watermelons -- just for practice. One day, I stuck it into the dirt -- broke the tip off.

Sweetie Belle: Oh, how awful.

Apple Core: Yeah, that really hurt me. [ Sighs ] but that's okay. I made myself a new one.

Scootaloo: You can make new ones???

Apple Core: With a little inventiveness, you can make just about anything. I came up with the idea for one that would screw onto my horn-stub and launch apples, but I needed some way to trigger it.

Apple Bloom: How did you do that???

Apple Core: (Displays a blueprint drawing of his horn prosthetic) I happened upon a lazy bird, Tweeter. We came to a symbiotic agreement, where I supply him with apples, which he eats down to the core, and in return he would handle the cocking, opening and triggering of my horn!!!

Sweetie Belle: Neat-O!!!

Apple Bloom: But what about the apple core game???

Apple Core: OK, this is how it goes, when you've eaten an apple down to the core, you shout out "Apple core!", then one of your crew tries to be the first pony to reply "Baltimore!", then you answer back, "Who's your friend?", and the pony who said Baltimore first gets to name back one of your other friends... and it goes from there... I'll show you how it goes, OK???

Cutie Mark Crusaders, in unison: OK!!!

Apple Core: Apple core!!!

Apple Bloom: Baltimore!!!

Apple Core: Who's your friend???

Apple Bloom: Scootaloo!!!

Apple Core launches an apple core at Scootaloo, and then flies off laughing, "Not no more!!!".

Sweetie Belle: He's kind of a jerk, huh?

Belated Birthday

It's been a while, I've got at least three, maybe four posts in me. Time to do at least one!!!

Back on the 12th, we held the first celebration of my firstborn's 16th birthday!!! Much like last year, My Little Pony was featured, more than was even there last year. The cake I was charged with decorating was Princess Chrysalis. A lot of dark frosting, and all the Swiss cheese holes made this more challenging than most.

We got him a new pocketknife, the latest Assassins' Creed game, and a USB connected drawing pad. I don't have any samples to post from that yet.

His grandparents gave him a shine bright Fluttershy My Little Pony, as well as some cash to buy either a handmade custom pony or a Brony shirt. He has done neither yet.

Of course, since it was celebrated on the 12th, I had to wear my 512 shirt.

One of the cards he received had a "Happy Birthday" teeth grille, which I 'shopped into his face for the effect!!! Not great, you really have to enlarge it to be able to see it.

A Little Artwork...

Here's a little sketch I did up. Don't know what the inspiration for it was, but it came out OK, if not a little lippy and big headed!!!

My firstborn did the second one here, just a little potato face!!!

Christmas 2 Random

Anyway

Seems like a lot goes on, doesn't it??? Yesterday I had it in my mind to change the master cylinder on the Maverick, as it seems to have developed a leak past the seal. I've been considering various destinations for this coming Summer vacation, and they were having the Los Angeles Travel & Adventure show... down in LONG BEACH!!! So, I was thinking that if I got through the master cylinder job I might go down and check that out.

As plans often change, my wife wanted go go to the Golden Star restaurant in Long Beach for breakfast. It had been a while, and sounded pretty good, so instead of wrenching on the car, we headed there instead, then to the travel show after.

My younger boy was going on quite a while about My Little Ponies. I had to come up with my OC, original character, and I came up with Apple Core, a Pegasus-Unicorn hybrid who launches apple cores at other ponies from his horn. Today I did the drawing & spent entirely too long modifying it in PaintShop Pro.

On the way between those destinations, they had several streets to the West blocked off. Found out, on the news that evening, they were having the MLK day parade. The parade looked pretty ghetto. MLK would have been proud.

For the most part, I found the travel show to be a bust and a waste of money. Did, however, discover that for driving into and out of Canada, you can get by with a Country of origin drivers license or some such instead of having to have a passport, so this may open up a possibility...

A few shots of the final 2011 Christmas celebration with my parents, or the Best Christmas Ever. My older boy got a gorgeous acoustic guitar, and the younger got an AirHogs Hawk Eye RC airplane. I 'shopped my arm out of the picture of it.

Funny how they have the MLK day parade on the Saturday before. Is that for the people who would like to attend, but actually have jobs where they have to work on Monday??? Like everyone who doesn't work for a bank or government???

Discovered something quite interesting while checking flight and lodging prices. From here, it costs very nearly the same to fly and stay in Oahu, Hawaii, as it does to fly and stay in Iceland!!! Mind blown!!! Iceland hadn't really been on my travel radar in any serious fashion, but now it really is!!!

I didn't get a chance to finish this post off the day I started it, so some of the references to yesterday and such aren't going to come out exactly right, unless you time travel with me.

The second to the last picture is my mom's ICD implant. Funny thing, all the pictures I took of her showing it off, she's got her eyes closed in. It seems to be suiting her well, but as you can see, it's fairly prominent on her. The heart medicine they've got her on makes her "woozy", but she's getting her strength back, walking around the neighborhood and the park and stuff. The burn on her leg is getting better, but it remains a pretty serious burn. Third degree, it was.

Today I wore a shirt I got from my parents for Christmas for the first time. It's a tie-dye look, but with incredibly vivid colors, and a picture on the front of a smurf (Brainy) sitting on top of a bunch of mushrooms with spots & stars whirling around his head. I call him mind expandy smurf. It got a lot of comments, somewhere around 18, and everyone really liked it.

As always, I'm sure I'm leaving out more than I can remember.

Oh yea, the second picture scan!!! It's just a piece of paper I found with some weird doodles on it.