And I Shall Name Him Takoyaki

Check out this adorable amigurumi octopus my friend made for me for Christmas. It's very huggable.

Luna and the Monsters

In response to my last post, S said, "Poor Luna looks like she's in hell!!"

The thing is, Luna wouldn't leave the couch! No matter what I did, he was bound and determined to outlast me! I put the plushies around him, and he sat still for a couple of minutes, then moved to the other end of the couch. So I moved the plushies to where he was. And he moved again. Three feet to the left, three feet to the right, three feet to the left again. This game went on for fifteen or twenty minutes. With the picture I used in the last post, I loved the "okay, I'm starting to get annoyed" expression on his face, especially the faintly red glowing eyes.

But just to prove that he didn't really mind all this plushie nonsense too much, here's a picture of him looking reasonably content, even with the chimera perched on top of him.

Monsters!

While most of my tax refund will go toward replacing my glasses and, most likely, more dental work, I did allow myself to buy some frivolous things with part of my state refund. Namely, monster plushies!


(My long-suffering cat Luna is shown with them for scale.)

I have loved griffins ever since I was a little girl. They've always been one of my favorite mythological beasts. With my love of birds and cats, a half-eagle, half-lion monster was just the coolest thing on wheels. I have wanted a stuffed griffin for nearly my entire life, and I had never before seen one, until I discovered the Here Be Monsters toy line.

What caught my eye first (before I saw they had a griffin) was the chimera. How often do you see a stuffed chimera? Seriously!

So I treated myself to the griffin and the chimera. And they are so adorable! They're goofy and cheesy, which makes them somehow even more lovable.

I think when I get my tax rebate, I will allow myself another plushie or two. I'm thinking the hydra is a must-have. All those cute little heads! The beholder ("eye tyrant," as they call it) is also pretty darn special. But the gargoyle and the transformable werewolf are rather tempting, too. And that four-foot long Chinese dragon! That would look pretty awesome stretched across the back of the couch.

Oh, it takes so little to make me happy sometimes.

Chasing Tiamat

It’s a childhood wish come true! When I was a kid, my absolute favorite Saturday morning cartoon ever was Dungeons & Dragons. I liked the heroes, of course--especially Uni and Sheila. (Rewatching it as an adult, though, Diana is way cooler than Sheila.) But my favorite character of all was a villain--Tiamat the five-headed queen of the dragons. I used to draw her, write stories about her, and dream about her. (She wasn’t evil in my dreams. Just misunderstood. How could anyone that cool be evil? Besides, she helped the heroes at least once.) I always wanted a Tiamat toy, but of course, no such thing existed at the time.

Well, earlier this week I saw a nifty Gargantuan Blue Dragon for sale. They also had a Gargantuan Black Dragon, which led me to wonder if they had made all of the D&D dragons. So I went home and got online, looking for a Chromatic Dragon--what Tiamat was supposed to be, according to my old 4th edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual (c1978). No luck. Then I just searched for Tiamat. Jackpot! I found a fully painted plastic figure called “Aspect of Tiamat” and made a fairly expensive impulse buy.

(Note that, for me, “impulse buy” means buying it the same day I discovered it. I still checked ten online stores, six of which listed the figure as out of stock, and, of the stores remaining, the one with the lowest price had only five left in stock. So maybe it should be called an “obsessive-compulsive slightly-delayed-impulse buy.”)

And now, a momentary pause to give three cheers to the United States Postal Service. I ordered Tiamat late Tuesday evening and chose the slowest, cheapest shipping option available, which happened to be USPS First Class. (Actually, given a couple of lukewarm experiences with UPS and several downright awful experiences with FedEx, USPS is my preferred shipping option anyway. But I digress.) The toy could not possibly have shipped earlier than Wednesday, and it was sitting on my doorstep tonight when I came home from work. Now that’s fast! Forget that “five to seven” days they said to allow. Thanks, USPS! You rock!

So now I have my very own Tiamat. She doesn’t look as cool as she did in the cartoon, but she looks way better than she did in the Monster Manual. I am happy.