The night is fast getting away from me. Mile Hi Con is this weekend, and my costume is not nearly complete enough. In fact, I’m probably going to miss both SCA practices this week to make sure I get everything done. And here I sit, at my computer, ostensibly performing “research,” when it’s suddenly much later than I anticipated. Such is life, I guess.

What is Mile Hi Con? Well, it is a science fiction and fantasy convention, where fans of nerdy things can congregate and share their love of popular culture and get a chance to see some of their favorite creators.

Being so close to Halloween, it’s also a great excuse to put on a costume with a group of friends.

You may have heard of the various Comic Cons; Mile Hi Con is much more laid back. The past few years (when work, school, or finances haven’t put the kibosh on it) my friends and I have made an effort to go and hang out, often with a group theme for our costumes. The past few years we’ve been pretty fascinated by Steampunk (think Victorian science fiction: Jules Vernian flights of fancy, magnificent efforts of steam engineering, airships, brass, and of course, goggles), so we’ve often gone with that as a general idea. I made myself a pretty sweet lab coat last year, complete with papercraft goggles with a working iris lens.

This year, the Steampunk craze continues, but with more focus. It turns out that some of the Guests of Honor for the con are going to be Phil and Kaja Foglio, the creative team behind the wonderful webcomic Girl Genius. So we’re going to be going as characters from the series: Jägermonsters!

Now, we’ve done specific characters from the series before (as one of our first group costume themes, acually), but decided that having a bit more flexibility to work within a theme would be more fun. And it has been! It’s really interesting to see everyone’s slightly different approach to the project, with some focusing on makeup and accessories, others on costuming and clothing. I personally have been leaning more towards the latter, making myself a nice military-esque uniform (complete with epaulettes and pants piping!). But I may yet experiment with some temporary hair color, and maybe even nail polish, which is certainly odd for me.

Anyway, I’ve put off work for long enough. Might as well get to the productivity-ing-ness.