These *Weeks* on The Geekiary

The Geekiary

I had a couple of slow weeks writing for The Geekiary, due to my travel schedule and just generally getting ready to attend San Diego Comic-Con. But now it’s been over a month, which means it’s past time for me to update my article round-up!

July 4th, 2016
X-Files Reboot Vinimates Are Great Collectibles!
It’s no secret that we at The Geekiary love Diamond Select Toys. I was lucky enough to interview their Marketing Supervisor Zach at C2E2 earlier this year, and I can’t imagine not being a huge fan of their awesome collectibles – so when they added the X-Files reboot Vinimates to their product line, I was excited to add these figures to my display shelves!

The Geekiary PositiviTEA TuesdayJuly 5th, 2016
PositiviTEA Tuesday with The Geekiary (7/5/16)

Those of us who write for The Geekiary are a pretty close-knit community. We don’t just discuss the website with each other; we share life events and fangirl together. Depending on who’s fangirling at the moment, it could be about anything from Bryan Fuller to One Direction to Hogwarts Houses and more. Yes, sometimes we need to face things that are serious and probably not fun or positive, and it was due to one of those more serious conversations that we came up with the idea of “PositiviTEA Tuesday”.

July 12th, 2016
PositiviTEA Tuesday with The Geekiary (7/12/16)

Welcome to the second week of our new series, PositiviTEA Tuesday with The Geekiary! For today’s round of fun posts we bring you X-Files, Iron Man news, and more…including Pokemon GO, of course…

The Geekiary Pokemon GOJuly 13th, 2016
Pokemon GO Isn’t Just Fun – It’s Healthy

It’s no secret that the new Pokemon GO app has taken the world by storm, but this writer is coming to you as someone who never before paid any attention to Pokemon and has had her life improved by playing Pokemon GO.

July 18th, 2016
First Picture of Bilquis from American Gods

San Diego Comic-Con is fast approaching, but apparently Starz isn’t waiting until the end of this week to give fans more American Gods updates. Today they released the first picture of Bilquis, and not surprisingly, it looks amazing!
FEELINGS…with The Geekiary: Ghost Girls
The new Ghostbusters movie came out this past weekend, and considering all of the drama surrounding it – combined with the fact that so many of us at The Geekiary saw and enjoyed it – we put together an impromptu episode of FEELINGS…with The Geekiary: The Ghost Girls Edition.

July 19th, 2016
Dragon Con 2016 Guest Announcement: Gillian Anderson!

As a huge fan of basically everything about Gillian Anderson (and, of course, a huge fan of The X-Files and Dana Scully in particular) I for one am very excited to announce that she has been added to the guest list for Dragon Con 2016!

The Geekiary Steven Universe Too Short to RideJuly 20th, 2016
Steven Universe 3×9 Review: Too Short to Ride
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the Steven Universe episodes that we’ve been treated to so far this week. (Especially “Mr. Greg“!) But when “Too Short to Ride” opened with Peridot, I was immediately excited, because after three episodes without her I was missing her quite a bit.

July 21st, 2016
Secrets of Comic-Con: The Things Most Attendees WILL Tell You
Earlier this week, Buzzfeed posted an article about the “15 Secrets People Who Love Comic Con Will Never Tell You”. Well, I’m here to debunk that, because it’s ridiculous. Will I or anyone else ever know all of the secrets of Comic-Con? I highly doubt it. But that doesn’t mean that most people won’t share them with you – because in every case I’ve encountered, they absolutely will.

The Geekiary Diamond Select Toys Spider-GwenJuly 26th, 2016
Comic-Con 2016: Diamond Select Toys Produces Even More Amazing Items

I had a great time interviewing Diamond Select Toys Marketing Supervisor Zach Oat at C2E2 this year, so I was excited to be able to get together with him at SDCC to chat about DST’s Comic-Con exclusives and some of their newly-announced items.
PositiviTEA Tuesday with The Geekiary: The Comic-Con 2016 Edition!
Several members of The Geekiary, including myself, attended SDCC this year, and while we had an amazing time, it wasn’t just our experiences that made Comic-Con 2016 great…so we feel it more than deserves it’s own PositiviTEA Tuesday post!

July 28th, 2016
The Geekiary Welcome to DeadlandWelcome to Deadland: A Refreshing Take on the Zombie Apocalypse Genre
Last month I was lucky enough to receive an Advanced Reader’s Copy of Zachary Tyler Linville’s debut novel, Welcome to Deadland. Now, while I’ve read all of the Walking Dead comics, I’ve only read a few zombie apocalypse novels, and this one is definitely near the top of that list in terms of being both interesting and featuring good storytelling overall.
Steven Universe 3×15 Review: Alone at Sea
When “Alone at Sea” began with Steven and Lapis, I was definitely excited. This week of Steven’s Summer Adventure has featured two very lighthearted Beach City episodes followed by the lovely but heavy “Monster Reunion“; based on the first few minutes of “Alone at Sea”, I really thought we were heading back in that lighthearted direction.

July 31st, 2016
Comic-Con 2016: Diamond Select Toys Spider-Gwen Exclusive

One of the Diamond Select Toys Comic-Con exclusives for this year was a gorgeous PVC statue of an unmasked Spider-Gwen, and I was lucky enough to get my hands on one, which is exciting on several levels.

…as you can see, despite the first couple weeks of July being slow for me in terms of writing articles, I definitely spent a lot of time doing so the last half of July! And to be honest, when I wasn’t writing articles I was working on my next novel or binge-watching shows like The Expanse, Sherlock, Penny Dreadful, and Stranger Things. (Meanwhile, I still haven’t finished season one of Daredevil…whoops.)

ChicagoCon Part 2: Pokemon GO, Harry Potter, Baseball, & More

ChicagoCon Part 2 Chi Wizard Tournament

These days almost every trip I take has a convention nickname, because so much of the time I’m visiting or vacationing with groups of my convention friends. We’ve had Not-A-Con in the fall for three years straight, with another one approaching this October. When a bunch of us went to West Virginia in February 2015, it was SkiCon (or rather, SkiKAHHHNNNN). Sometimes I even go to conventions themselves and they’re renamed, such as C2E2 in March of this year being ChicagoCon Part 1, or MegaCon in May being “KiwiCon”. (In quotes because KiwiCon existed before I got to experience its awesomeness.)

Therefore, when I visited Chicago yet again this past weekend, it was quickly dubbed “ChicagoCon Part 2”. And if I erase the awful trip home from my memory (bad weather, flight diversions, flight delays), it was yet another awesome success.

ChicagoCon Part 2 Taste of Chicago

I arrived on a Thursday afternoon, but unfortunately my Chicago-local friends were working and the other two out-of-towners in our group weren’t arriving until the following night. Not that I let that stop me…I checked out Taste of Chicago, had a very interesting but delicious appetizer and drink experience at The Gage, and then did a Google search for LGBTQ+ bars nearby and had an amazing evening making new acquaintances at Brian’s Speakeasy. After several very strong gin and tonics, I headed back to my hotel room for a quick online hangout with my BFF Bekah and a good hour or so of writing. I even broke 80,000 words on my next novel, which means I’m within 20,000 or so words of finishing!

Chicago Con Part 2 The Gage Red Rising

On my first full ChicagoCon (Part 2) day, I got to have lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen since 2011, and then lazed away the afternoon by devouring Red Rising by Pierce Brown. Seriously, I could have gone out. I kept trying to convince myself to do so. But I had to finish that book first. And when I did, and it was only 4 PM, and no one else was going to be around until after 8 PM? I visited the closest Barnes & Noble at DePaul University, but they didn’t have the second Red Rising installment in stock. Thankfully they were awesome and called the next closest store, who did have it in stock. This led to me walking four miles round trip to the Barnes & Noble on North State Street to pick up Golden Son. (Which also happened to be on the buy 2, get 1 free table – thanks to the associate who checked me out, I got two more books off my wishlist and Golden Son ended up being free!)

Later that night I had an amazing dinner with Brian at Russian Tea Time by the Art Institute. I have to be honest, the best part was that we were practically alone in the restaurant. I know this place is popular and that doesn’t usually happen, though, but still…the menu was lengthy and the food was great so overall I just really loved the experience.

Also I started playing Pokemon GO while I was there. And downtown Chicago is amazing for that game. Thankfully almost everyone that I hung out with while I was visiting plays it, too, which meant bonding over yet another thing we all love 🙂

ChicagoCon Part 2 Pokemon GO

Saturday was The Big Day – The Chi Wizard Tournament! Team “10 Pints for GRYFFINDOR!” assembled and did quite well getting stickers from other teams in our VALOROUS attempt to win the Chi Wizard cup (see what I did there, guys? P.S. I’m Team Valor on Pokemon GO haha). And even though we didn’t win the “Tournament”, it was still a lot of fun. While I wasn’t very fond of two out of the four bars on the pub crawl (one was just too small and the other had some really rude employees), I got to chat with some great new people AND hang out with my friends…all while wearing Harry Potter gear and enjoying this “Fantastic Drinks and Where to Find Them” event!

ChicagoCon Part 2 Chi Wizard Tournament

ChicagoCon Part 2 Chi Wizard Tournament

ChicagoCon Part 2 Chi Wizard Tournament

ChicagoCon Part 2 Chi Wizard Tournament

And even when the pub crawl was over, a group of us returned to a friend’s apartment to hang out, play a card game, and randomly re-watch the last two episodes of Game of Thrones season 6 while chowing down on delivered Lou Malnati’s pizza. So that was pretty much perfect.

(Okay, I’ll be honest, we never finished the card game 🙁 )

Sunday was a bit up in the air even after we all woke up that morning (I mean hey, we did participate in a crazy Wrigleyville pub crawl the day before), but in the end five of us gathered together for a trip to U.S. Cellular Stadium to see the White Sox play the Atlanta Braves. Unfortunately the White Sox lost, and yes it was hot as hell in those bleachers, but I’m excited that I added another baseball stadium to my list! (Which now includes many trips to Fenway along with visits to SafeCo Field, Wrigley Field, AT&T Park, and of course U.S. Cellular Field.)

ChicagoCon Part 2 Chicago White Sox

Chicago Part 2 Chicago White SoxChicagoCon Part 2 Chicago White Sox

After the game it was a quick trip to Kuma’s Too so that Ashley and Brian could finally experience metal music, whiskey on tap, and crazy burgers…though Kuma’s Too was a bit more trendy than Kuma’s Corner, where I ate on a trip to Chicago in the fall of 2014. And from there I headed back to my friends’ house with them, had a good evening hanging out with my friend Dave (a.k.a. “Unky Dave”) when he came home and was shocked to see me chilling on their couch, and even got to O’Hare early the next day to walk around and visit Pokestops and catch Pokemon.

I’ll leave out what happened after I boarded my plane in Chicago, because yeah, other than some travel snafus there, this was definitely a successful Part 2, and may need to become at least an annual thing 😉