I managed to get to New York Comic Con this year! I went for the first time two years ago, and it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. So when I realized I would be in the area for NYCC this year, I immediately bought a ticket. Unfortunately, there was only Thursday tickets left by the time I bought them, so I wasn't able to go to the big panels that happen on the weekend. Still, it was completely worth it. I had an AMAZING TIME.

For anyone who has not gone before, NYCC is nerd heaven. It is larger than the much more famous San Diego Comic Con. Several tens of thousands of more people attend it every year. Every single one a devoted nerd. For those of us mega nerds who often have trouble finding people in every day life who share the same level of passion for our nerdy interests, comic con is home. I was on my own this trip, so I did whatever I felt like doing. The first thing I saw when I walked in was the Weta Workshop booth. For those who don't know, Weta Workshop is the company that was created for the first Lord of the Rings series to manufacture all the costumes, sets, miniatures, ect....I was PSYCHED to see them there. They mostly had costumes from the new Hobbit series, but they had a few things from the original LOTR.
 Really the only thing from The Hobbit movies I was interested in was the War Pig, the true hero of the last hobbit movie :D
 One of the many other things I came in contact with was the USA distributor of the one and only manga/anime that I am a fan of, Tokyo Ghoul. I was quite pleased to see this GIANT poster of the main character. (yes, it is as disturbing as this picture implies)
 NYCC can be very overwhelming, especially for those who are unprepared. I tried to move through the show room floor pretty quickly to avoid an overload. One thing that caught my eye was this giant Iron Man statue. I think it is connected to a Marvel tv show or something. Honestly I didn't pay much attention to Marvel at NYCC, because it seems they didn't care to pay attention to it. Their presence was barely felt this year.
 There was a booth showing costumes from different films as well. They were just reproductions, but still very cool to see up close. They had Marvel and Star Wars stuff.
 I really really wanted to buy one of these Captain America propaganda posters. How cool are they??? This stand was selling Captain America trading cards, covered in fake blood like in the Avengers movie. I seriously considered getting those.
 One of the odd things about NYCC this year was that it was the descent of insurance companies. Nerds need insurance too I suppose. Progressive stepped up their game though. They had their poor employees dressed like THIS (below). You could also tweet them and they would send one of these employees to stand in line for you. I am not sure how that worked exactly, but it was a delight seeing them around. Good on you Progressive.

 My other big event of the day was making it into the Game of Thrones panel. Now, I have some serious mixed feelings about the Game of Thrones tv show, but actress Natalie Dormer was going to be there so I put those feelings aside and decided to go. I made a friend in line for Grumpy Cat who was also on her own, so we went to the panel together. We made it into the room two panels before the GoT one, and after watching a panel for a Star Wars tv show while standing, we got really good seats. Unfortunately we still had to sit through a Walking Dead panel, which I had no interest in. It was worth it, however, because the GoT panel turned out to be amazing. They spent most of the one hour panel taking fans questions, which turned out pretty well. The actors were super funny, it was interesting, and overall I had a lot of fun.
 Natalie Dormer was of course charming and lovely. Someone asked her about her role on Elementary (one of my favorite TV shows), and she talked about that for a while. The cast was very careful to avoid spoilers about the upcoming season, but she may have let slip that her character on GoT, Margaery Tyrell, may perform a "walk of shame" in the next season. Here is (approximately) what was said.
Fan: "My question is, how do you think Margaery would handle doing a walk of shame like what Cersei had to do last season?"
Natalie: "I can't answer that without giving away spoilers"
Audience: "OOOOOOO"
So yea. Probably the biggest hint about Season 6 that came out of the panel.

 I want to finish up with some general views of NYCC. Below, for example, is the line for the Main Stage. Now, the first time I went to NYCC, they did not clear the Main Stage after every event. That meant that people could sit there all day taking up seats at panels they did not care about waiting for the most popular panel of the day (basically exactly what I did for GoT). This is actually a pretty frustrating practice for everyone involved. However they have started handing out tickets for panels at the beginning of the day, and clearing out the stage hall after every panel. So the good news for all these people is that they are all going to get into the panel they want to see.
 When I wanted to get into a panel on the Main Stage two years ago, I waited in this line, which encompassed that entire large room, FOR TWO HOURS. Pressed chest to chest with the people around me and not able to sit down, all for the Agents of Shield panel. I was one of the last 16 people let into the panel. It was rough.

The other main attraction of any comic con is, of course, COSPLAYERS. What are cosplayers you ask? Well they are basically amazing fans who create costumes for their favorite characters and wear them to conventions. Here are a few of the ones I really liked...

 Sally and Jack Skeleton from A Nightmare Before Christmas
 Sexy V from V for Vendetta and Maleficent, I think.
 Esmerelda from Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame
And Kaneki Ken from Tokyo Ghoul.

A lot of people ask me if I am ever going to dress up for a comic con and my answer has always been, and always will be, NO. I have no interest in becoming a cosplayer myself, but I do enjoy seeing other people do it.

After the GoT panel, it was getting later in the day, and I had some time to kill before I had to go meet my cousin in Manhattan, so I spent almost an hour standing at a charging station charging my phone. In that hour I met around a dozen people charging their phones, and had great conversations with all of them. That is the great thing about comic con, particularly NYCC. You can grab any random person and know that you almost certainly have a passion in common with them. It is seriously a sense of community that cannot be explained unless you are there yourself. NYCC is one of my favorite events ever and I would love to be able to go every single year.

In the meantime......I have my eyes set on Emerald City Comic Con, the comic con that takes place in Seattle. I am coming for you Emerald City.....coming.for.you.

When I moved to England last year, I started to collect postcards. They are such an awesome souvenir! They are super cheap, light, and easy to transport. I now have nearly 300 from my year in Europe. It may or may not have turned into a compulsion since then... Since I have been back in the US, however, I have discovered something interesting

Apparently, this compulsion to collect postcards lay dormant in me before I officially decided to do it. I have been cleaning out my childhood room so my parents can utilize it after I leave, and while doing so I have found no less than 30 postcards. A large amount were from Franklin Roosevelt's mansion that I visited when I was 10 or 11 years old. I even found a postcard a friend had sent me from Disneyland when we were children that I have hung on to for all these years.

The most interesting ones I have found, however, are the three pictured above. They are vintage postcards from the Scottish Highlands, which happens to be my favorite place on earth. I originally purchased them last summer in a barn sale. The barn in question was very old and slightly falling apart, but the lower level was filled with treasures. These were just three postcards that I selected out of the hundreds they had in a picture book. I do believe that these are the postcards that inspired me to begin collecting them a few months later when I made my big move. However, despite their importance in my decision that has resulted in a new obsession passion, I had completely forgotten about them! I am glad I have them now and have placed them safely in my postcard book along with all my others.

Collecting things are really fun, and I am glad the object of my collection is pretty easy to manage. No need to risk becoming a hoarder....

                                                                                                                   (Brian Michael Tully)

As everyone in the universe probably knows, last night was a super blood moon! (aka a Super Moon occurring at the same time as a complete lunar eclipse!) I do not have a telescope, so sadly no good pictures from me. At first I did not even think I would be able to see the eclipse. I went outside about an hour before it began and the sky was completely cloudy. However, about half way through the eclipse my mother messaged me from Texas where she is visiting my sister to tell me that the clouds were gone and I could see it.

It is a tad sad that I had to be told from over a thousand miles away what the weather was in my location, but I went outside and I had a perfect few of the eclipse, which was almost at full coverage.

It really was stunning. I could have stayed out there for the entire thing....

Except I live in the middle of no where. While standing out on my driveway in the dark by myself I heard all that nature's night life had to offer. Owls, bugs, unidentified rustling bushes, and in the distance.....the howls of coyotes. Add that to my over active imagination that was telling me horror stories of murderers hiding in the wood..... I did not stay out there long.

Still, it was nice before I got scared and went back inside. There is nothing really like being out under the stars. Plus this is the second full eclipse I have witnessed this year. Earlier this year I experienced a full solar eclipse in England which was a real treat. So I guess this year has been pretty spectacular on the astrological front! Hope you all where able to have a night with the moon as well! Bye for now!

I went to a local film festival! It kind of blew my mind that my area even had a film festival, but there you go. The Big Eddy Film Festival has been around for four years now. I chose a specific documentary to see about the rise and fall of one of the famous resorts of the Catskills, titled Welcome to Kutsher's. I am always interested in local history, so this film was really the only one I wanted to see.

My mother and I made a day of it. The film was screened at the historic Tusten Theatre in Narrowsburg, NY. I have never actually been in there so that was a treat in and of itself. The documentary was good.  Kutcher's hotel was the last one in the Catskills to be open that had been owned by the same family since it opened, a total of over 100 years. It was recently torn down to make way for a wellness and yoga resort. It is sad, but I am glad there is something new going there that will hopefully rejuvenate the area. Growing up around the massive abandoned buildings of these once stunning and prosperous resorts has always been super depressing. They serve to remind us of how far our area has fallen. The documentary showed me a part of my home I had missed out on and never knew very much about. It was a privilege to see it. You can take a look at the website here.

After the screening there was a short Q&A with the directors of the film (above), which revealed they worked on this documentary for 8 years. That is a long time to work on a single film, and they aren't even from the area! Goes to show that a place doesn't have to be part of your own personal history for you to fall in love with it.

After the film we had lunch in the town, I had a rather delicious grilled cheese sandwich, and then went for ice cream.

I hope this film festival becomes larger, and has more young people involved in it in the future. I love film festivals, and cultural events like them in general, so to see one growing in my backwoods home is really something. To see it become successful would be even greater.

Narrowsburg is a beautiful town nestled right on the edge of the Delaware River. You can walk from New York to Pennsylvania from there. It is one of the best places in the area to spot bald eagles, which we did later that day driving to the ice cream! All in all it was a great day :)

I had forgotten what truly warm air feels like. When the sun and the air and even the breeze are hot. It has been glorious. But it is a fall heat. You can feel the change of season in the air.