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Yesterday was a good day. Went into the city to see my sibs and the kids. Been too long since I've gotten together with them (and I don't just mean that this was the first time I've seen them all year).

My sisters and I took the kids to the Museum of Natural History, which was a lot of fun. Seeing neat science stuff, teaching them about it, watching their reactions, and then watching them run around the gem room declaring that "this one looks like broccoli!" and "this one looks like lipstick!" and "this one looks like ice cream!"

At dinner, we played "telephone" around the table, which worked splendidly because my youngest nephew only recently learned to speak clearly - well enough that he could pass the message along, but fuzzy enough that things got properly and amusingly garbled. My sister cracked up when my phrase "here is a Hufflepuff hippogryph" got passed to her.

After dinner, I went to Times Square with my older sister, and met some famous people. You can see the pictures here.

In other news, I've managed to get Do You Want To Date My Avatar stuck in my head, and now I'm kind of vidding it in my head to L&C's Virtually Destroyed. Kind of amusing, but I don't feel like actually making the vid. I'll let you imagine it for yourself. Probably more interesting than seeing the final product, truth to tell. (Besides, for all I know, it's been done by now.)

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In other other news, my nephew asked me to create a Chad Vader stuffed toy for him. (You may recall from years back that I made a stuffed bunny for his older sister's first birthday.) I had no idea how to do it. Figured I'd go to the fabric store, get a bunch of black cloth (plus a little yellow for the banana peel), and see what I could do. Then I realized that there were probably some Darth Vader plush toys out there already. And, indeed, there were.

I ended up getting a Darth Vader "talking" plush toy. It arrived today:

( Pic under the cut. )

The body is out of all proportion, but I figure I'm cheating enough using starter materials like this. Plan is to keep the head and the "talking" mechanism (if you press on his chest, he makes the breathing sound) and possibly the belt and chest plate, go to the fabric store (sadly, the local one closed, so it'll be a bit of a trip), find something that's a reasonable match, and redo the body in proportion to the head. And then make a banana peel and sew it on to the bottom of the foot. And maybe do a nametag - embroidered or sticker, I haven't decided. And probably add his name and mine to the inside of the cape. I don't know. The bunny had step-by-step instructions and outlined shapes to cut. And that was 9 years ago. So, basically, I have only the vaguest idea of what I'm doing. We'll see how it goes. (And if, by the time I finish it, he even remembers who Chad Vader is...)

Oh, nifty little thing: I was shopping around and Toys R Us had a sale that if you bought two items from a certain category, you could get the 3rd free. Vader was one of them. So I got some neat toys for the kids (getting one free). But the manufacturer was running another special that whatever you buy for $20 or more from them, they'll send you a free gift. So I get two things free from them, too! And I only had to spend $40 to get all that free stuff! ;)