I love to cross stitch!

UPDATE: I ended up getting in touch with Randall Munroe and mailing it to him! He thanked me and said he was "delighted" to have it - life dream achieved!

ANOTHER UPDATE: I posted the pattern for this project here.

Alternate title for this post: x-stitch-cd.

Okay you guys, check it out:

Just to be clear, that is not a framed printout of "xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel," that is a framed cross-stitch of it.

It took about a month of obsessive stitching, as well as an entire skein of black thread. For context on how much thread that is, I have yet to go through a full skein of any other color with all of my other projects, combined. Ben kept calling it my "magnum opus" while I was working on it, but I'm not entirely sure if he was being a supportive fiance or making fun of me for waking up early to cross stitch before work.

Now that it's done, it is my dream to send it to Randall Munroe and have him acknowledge my existence in some way, but so far it's still in my house because:

1. I can't find a PO Box on the xkcd website, and
2. I am afraid that Randall Munroe hates cross stitch and will laugh at me while throwing it in the garbage, and then I will be sad.

So if anyone knows where Randall Munroe gets his mail and/or how he feels about cross stitch, let me know! And in the mean time, you can click on the pictures below to see close-ups of the different sections. If you only look at one, you should check out the ball pits. Oh God, the ball pits.

Drum Corps!

Yesterday my high school band friends and I drove to Allentown, PA for day two of the Drum Corps International Eastern Classic (for those of you who aren't also band nerds, it's basically a professional marching band competition, and it's awesome). I thought I would try and take some pictures of the bands, but it was raining most of the night so the only picture I got is of me and my friend Joe wearing improvised trash bag ponchos:

My favorite corps is the Cadets (and Joe is an alum!), and this year their show did not disappoint. They split themselves in two and did a pretty epic good vs. evil thing, which included them having two separate uniforms and culminated in a giant "fight" during the percussion feature:


(That video is from earlier in the season, because their colorguard now have much cooler costumes. I also found a video of their whole show here, but it's during a rehearsal and the sound quality isn't great.)

The second coolest show of the night was Carolina Crown, who did a mash-up of classic rock songs and Rachmaninoff, entitled "Rach Star." I couldn't find a great video, but this gives you a pretty good idea of what it was like:



Now I really wish I was going to the championships in Indianapolis next week...