Star Wars

Announcing a Little Jedi

Mei-Mei11 Comments

As many of you who have read my recent posts have apprehended, B and I are expecting a son at the end of November.  Everything we do is geeky, so why would having a baby be any different?

We’ve already bought/received baby clothes with dinosaurs on them, a Star Wars baby calendar, and a geeky baby memory book.

Stegosaurus has always been my favorite dinosaur.
Juhani wanted to get in the picture, too!
How cute is this?!?
Level 0 Character Sheet
Is our baby a Jedi Knight or Wizard?

One of the most exciting things for me so far has been the sonogram.  For my research job, I often look at echocardiograms, that is, sonograms of the heart.  I was so excited that they could see the baby’s heart movement; it looked just like the images I study to calculate heart function parameters.  Although the technician kind of laughed when I told her what machine we use to take the sonograms; it was the same kind she’d used when she first trained decades ago.  That’s research for you.

Right now, B and I are trying to decide on a name.  Naturally, we have several from Star Wars in the running:

Which is your favorite?  B tried to throw in some Star Trek names, like “Tiberius” and “Montgomery Scott,” but I nixed those.  Sorry.  Any other suggestions with a geeky/nerdy theme?

I will be honest, I don’t know how this blog will change once I have a kid.  Though I will be taking some time off from work, I am not planning on quitting my 9-5 research job, which will likely mean reduced writing time.  I may only be able to do one post a week, or likely even fewer.  And I’m sure a few mommy-type things will pop up here from time to time, but right now I don’t have any plans to completely change my blog theme of geeky/nerdy stuff.

We’ll just have to wait and see.  I hope you’ll all stick with me through what is possibly one of the biggest life changes imaginable!

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Fan Art Friday: Han Solo

Mei-Mei9 Comments

Welcome back to our Star Wars coloring book club, where Kiri at Star Wars Anonymous and I color the same image every month to compare and contrast.

This image has always cracked me up because it looks like Han has flowers instead of legs.

I kept the main colors in blues and reds to kind of match Han’s clothing.  The red bands kind of reminded me of the Corellian Bloodstripes on his pants.  According to Legends/EU, there are two kinds of Bloodstripes, and Han won both.

One story was that he won one set for rescuing his Wookie pal Chewbacca from Imperial slavery.  I don’t think anything official has been said in the new canon for how he got the Bloodstripes, but I’m interested to see if they will address this at all in the upcoming Young Han Solo movie.

Also be sure to check out Kiri’s interesting study of Han’s color energies here!

Next month we’ll be doing a Boba Fett mandala:

Star Wars authors at Origins Game Fair

Mei-Mei5 Comments

Ohio has several good yearly conventions, and the one for gamers is Origins Game Fair every summer in Columbus.  My husband B headed down for four days to meet some friends and play some games.  While he was there, I discovered that two of my favorite Star Wars authors were also in attendance!  So I gnashed my teeth that I had stayed home and sent B to go meet them. 🙂

He went first to Timothy Zahn’s booth.  Zahn is best known for kicking off the old Star Wars Expanded Universe books with the Heir to the Empire trilogy, and he recently brought one of his best-loved characters back into SW canon with Thrawn (which is on my to-read list).

B got to chat with Zahn for a little bit, and with a promise of my undying love in return, he procured me a signed copy of one of his books.  Scoundrels is a fun little heist story featuring Han Solo and Lando; I reviewed it here a few years back.  B knew I already own the Heir to the Empire trilogy, and Zahn was kind enough to suggest that he sign bookplates for my copies of those novels as well.  There was a lot of squeeing when B got home with this surprise.

My signed Zahn books
Signed for me!

I asked B if he told Zahn that Mara Jade is my favorite EU character, but sadly he had not.

Next, he found Michael Stackpole’s booth.  Stackpole is known for his excellent Star Wars X-wing series, and I have read a few of his fantasy novels as well (check out reviews here and here.)  Sadly, Stackpole had already sold out of books, but B got to chat with him for a bit as well.  He was able to inform him that I named my laptop after his X-wing pilot character Corran Horn (it’s silver, like his lightsaber).

In retrospect, I’m not at all surprised that these two authors should be at Origins, because they are both known to fans as big gaming nerds and frequently attend cons.  They’ve both written in game universes like WOW and Starcraft; Stackpole just finished a novel set in the Pathfinder universe, a tabletop RPG setting similar to D&D.  Stackpole has also been a game designer his entire career and is a board member of GAMA, who runs Origins.

So, who knows?  Maybe next year I’ll make it down to Origins to meet them both in person. 🙂

 

Fan Art Friday: Anakin’s Passion

Mei-Mei5 Comments

Welcome back to our Star Wars coloring book club, where Kiri at Star Wars Anonymous and I color the same image every month to compare and contrast.

I had so much more fun with this one than I did with the last.
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I wouldn’t say this is my favorite or anything, but I like some of the stuff I did.  I started by doing the green circles in varying shades of green, and I love the way it came out!  Then I did the flame-looking designs in some warm shades.

I wanted to incorporate some more blue, like from Anakin’s lightsaber, so I did the bottom designs in varying blue shades.  But I think this area came out reminding me of Flounder from The Little Mermaid haha.

Image result for flounder the little mermaid

As a side note, am I missing it, or does Anakin not have his Padawan braid in this image?  I guess it could be swinging behind his head or something.

I’m glad I picked this image, because although Anakin from Episode II is one of the most lackluster characters of the whole saga, I think this image really shows his personality and characteristics well.

Check out Kiri’s great version here to see her “transitional” Anakin!

Fan Art Friday: May the Force Be With You

Mei-Mei7 Comments

Welcome back to our Star Wars coloring book club, where Kiri at Star Wars Anonymous and I color the same image every month to compare and contrast.

I hope you all had a good Star Wars Day yesterday!  I wore R2-D2 socks at work 🙂

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For this pattern, I was going to do my normal three- or four-color palette, but I got bored partway through and kept adding more colors.  I was originally going to do all the X-wings in blue, but after I did one, I changed my mind.  I remembered that many of the Rebels’ and Resistance’s fighter squads are named after colors, so I went with a rainbow theme to showcase all the different squads that helped take down the Death Stars (and Starkiller Base).

Some of the well-known squadrons include:

  • Blue Squadron (present at the Battle of Scarif)
  • Black Squadron (Poe Dameron’s group present at Starkiller Base)
  • Red Squadron (Luke Skywalker’s group present at the first Death Star)
  • Gold Squadron (actually a Y-wing group, but also present at the Battle of Scarif and the first Death Star)

I’m sure there are more in Legends, also!

I also started doing the swirly parts as gold and green, but got bored partway through and switched to blue and green.  Hence, this month’s picture is very colorful!  Kiri’s is also very colorful; check hers out here!

You can also see a red pencil mark at the bottom of the page; that’s from when I was coloring the picture on the opposite page!  Oops.  Hilariously, I accidentally made a mark on the other page while I was coloring this one…

For next month, I used Kiri’s trick of opening the book to a random page.  But this one looks pretty interesting:

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