Mostly just an excuse to post the photos, which are here, as I am way too unfocused (and have been for most of the year x.x) to do a nice blow-by-blow recap, and it would probably boring as all hell anyway. I ended up going to barely any events because all the ones that looked like they might be interesting were at times where I was getting really tired, really hungry, or both. So I spent a lot wandering around looking at the costumes and having photos snapped of me (everybody digs Leon!). The cosplay was pretty average - nothing really terrible, not too much really great - there were a few gems there, which I tried to get photos of. The one 'con' event I did go to were the two Academie Duello workshops, longsword and rapier, which were both really fun - I'm really tempted to sign up for lessons there, but it's pretty expensive :<

Dealer's Room swag:
-Tokyo Babylon 1 & 7 in English
- Fruits Basket 12-15 in English (slowly catching up!)
- CCS doujin "Honey" - a Tomoyo-Sakura friendship story, and a shorter Touya/Yuki romance story. The art is super-cute, although it's pretty short.

...Yeah, not a lot. The dealer's room was actually pretty well-appointed, but I've seriously cut back on my merch-buying, and all the series I want stuff for are super-old in terms of anime and nobody carries stuff for them any more (hence why I snatched up the CCS doujin)

So I haven't talked about my garden recently - time to change that!

At the beginning of summer, I had my doubts anything was actually going to grow. We had a really long, cold, wet spring, and a lot of the stuff I planted looked all sad and wilted in June. However, we've had some really nice days in the last few weeks, and it's exploded with growth - the downside to this is that it has also exploded with weeds, because I am a lazy slacker :< This year was sort of an experiment, too, as it's the first time I've ever done a garden entirely by myself. I've learned a few things for next summer - more compost in the soil, plant tomatoes farther apart, figure out some way to keep the strawberries off the ground so the ants don't eat them all.

The last two weeks have marked the first major harvests from my garden - I had a few strawberries in July, but less than a handful total. My tomatoes are starting to ripen (and nothing beats home-grown tomatoes picked ripe off the vine), and my zucchini have gotten massive.

Jon and I cooked the one above up today, along with some steak I had in the freezer. We did half of it fried (egg/milk dip then cornmeal/flour/salt and pepper dip), which was tasty, but a little too greasy when paired with the steak. The rest we turned into a sort of baked parmesan zucchini-thing. The topping is breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese, oregano, chopped basil (also fresh from the garden!), fresh crushed garlic, and some salt and pepper. They turned out really tasty, even though I added a little too much salt - all the seasoning was a nice complement to the less seasoned steak. Unfortunately the topping is really crumb-y - I was hoping when I baked it the cheese would melt and make it all stick together, but no such luck. I think next time I'm going to add either a more melty cheese, like some mozzarella, or some beaten egg to the mixture to get it to stick better.

I love brownies so much, but I still can't seem to get the hang of making them nice and moist - my latest batch went really crumbly (still tasty, though). Maybe next time I'll just make batch of batter and eat it uncooked >.>

I also stumbled across this really awesome website about bento lunches, which makes me want to go to Daiso and get a cool lunch box and make myself interesting lunches. I'm not sure I really have the patience for it - I rarely have the patience to cook 'real' dinners as I don't have a microwave to make things fast or a dishwasher to clean lots of cookware in - but I know I should, as I end up eating at 7-11 way too often (most of the pre-made food from our deli is kinda crap)