Fifty-Five Fabulous Faces of Florida Steampunk

I was once told by someone who did not live in Florida, that steampunk wouldn't work well in Florida, because it was too hot here to wear elaborate costumes. This is not the case at all, we just schedule our events differently. There are more outings during the late autumn, winter, and early spring. Also, there are some beautiful places for indoor events (this is the state where air conditioning was invented).

Florida has a very vibrant steampunk community. Steampunk has brought people together from all over the state, into a big, extended family, where everyone can interpret the concept of steampunk their own way, feel acceptance, and share their talents. The community includes small children, retirees, and everybody in-between. Among our active members are artists, writers, filmmakers, leather workers, seamstresses, make-up artists, metal workers, photographers, prop makers, and musicians (such as the band, The Cog is Dead, from DeLand, Florida). Many of these people share their talents with the rest of us through convention panels and small classes.

Without further ado, Let me show you what Florida steampunk looks like.






















(photo by John Pena)














(the above picture was taken by Sean Neumayer)




(photo by Andrew Williams)


(photo by Ken Smits)








(photo by John Pena)













(photo by John Pena)


(photo by Ken Smits)




(photo by Ken Smits)




(photo by Tim Baker)






(photo by Ken Smits)


(photo by Ken Smits)


(photo by John Pena)




(photo by Curtis Frey)





For more information about steampunk in Florida, please check out the following groups:

In the Orlando area: https://www.facebook.com/groups/CFSteampunks/

In East Central Florida: https://www.facebook.com/groups/IRLSteampunkConsortium/

In the Jacksonville area: https://www.facebook.com/groups/54807605258/

In the Tampa area: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TampaBaySteampunkSociety/

In the Tallahassee area: https://www.facebook.com/groups/362389590506821/

A Day in the Life

I was reading a "day in the life" blog post written by a stay-at-home-dad a couple days ago and realized it had been awhile since I had done one, so here was my day for Thursday, May 22nd, 2014.


6:58 a.m. I wake up and go make coffee. Everyone else is still asleep, even though the coffee grinder is very loud.

7:11 a.m. I go check Facebook and email.

7:30 a.m. The alarm goes off and DH gets up, pours coffee, asks me to wrap a piece of left-over pizza for his lunch, and goes to take a shower.

7:55 a.m. DH sits down at the computer to eat his breakfast and I go wake up Blaze.

8:15 a.m. After taking his medicine and getting dressed, Blaze sits down to start his math lesson. I serve us each a piece of cold pizza and he gets a glass of milk, while I get a cup of coffee. Neither of us finish our breakfast before we have to leave to take DH to work. We only have one car, so we do this twice a week, either on Tuesday or Wednesday, so we can shop or go for walks, and Thursdays, because that is homeschool day at the park.

8:56 a.m. We drop DH off at work and head home. Blaze is sketching a picture of a face in a Harry Potter blank book in the back seat as we drive.

9:05 a.m. Back home. We return to our breakfast and Blaze continues his math, while I look for new sight word apps for the Kindle.

9:50 a.m. I read aloud the book, Cornerstones of Freedom: The Manhattan Project. Our current history topic is World War 2.



10:19 a.m. I fill two electric tea kettles to boil water for my bath. Our hot water heater does not produce enough hot water for a comfortable bath.

10:26 a.m. Blaze takes out the trash while I start running bathwater.

10:30 a.m. Blaze returns and begins his reading lesson. He says that a workman from Comcast has dug a hole next to our mailbox.

10:40 a.m. I start the dishwasher and finally get in the bath. Blaze is playing a new sight word game, but he gets free-time as soon as the game is over.

11: 18 a.m. I'm out of the bath and Blaze has begun 30 minutes of timed bedroom cleaning. He is more will ing clean if it is timed.

11:33 a.m. I spent about 10 minutes hanging T-shirts on hangers and folding underwear, now I am changing the attachment on the Dremel, before I head out to the back porch to work on the backpack that Blaze and I have been making for his steampunk costume.

I'm writing this as things happen, but the internet is working spottily at best.

11: 56 a.m. Made 4 holes in the back of the wooden box we are using for the backpack and fed through the 2 matching belts that we purchased at Goodwill yesterday. Then Blaze tried on the backpack and it fit! I'm so happy that I won't have to cut the belts to make them work as straps. They will be much stronger if kept intact. I tried to take a picture of Blaze wearing the backpack, but the camera battery is dead after all the pictures I took in St, Augustine last weekend. It is now recharging, so that it will be ready this afternoon for the Tallahassee Homeschool Group's dance at Optimist Park.

12:24 p.m. Lunch is served. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while watching the last episode of season 1 of Primeval.

12:47 p.m. The internet stopped working again, which means no Roku. I cleaned out the coffee maker and put away a few more clothes while we waited to be able to finish watching our show.

1:40 p.m. Blaze started to work on his spelling workbook. I drilled holes into the backpack and put the battery back into the camera. Put the back-up battery in the charger.

1:50 p.m. I change clothes, into a dress that is not covered in saw dust.

2:04 p.m. Blaze is still working on the writing portion of his spelling lesson. It is not that the lesson is that long, it is just that Blaze is easily distractible, so it takes him a long time to finish.

2:21 p.m. We're heading to the car.

3:40 p.m. Kitsu, the 3 year old girl I babysit for, is dropped off with us at the park.  At first she is tired and out of sorts, so she just wants to sit on my lap and watch the dancing, but after some strawberries and corn chips, she's ready to have fun.





4:30 p.m. The dance will continue until 5:00, but we need to go pick DH up from work.

5:35 p.m. Back home.  Downloading pictures and videos from the dance, while the oven is heating. DH has started the rice maker for us and the children are in Aidan's room watching cartoons on the Kindle.

7:22 p.m. Blaze took his anti-seizure meds.
Kitsu and I are sort of eating dinner, while also playing catch (toddler multi-tasking).
I am also waiting for the compilation of videos from the homeschool dance to finish loading.

7:35 p.m. Kitsu just realized two interesting facts about DH. One, that he has pictures on his legs (tattoos).  Second, that he is perfectly capable of finding Curious George for her on Netflix. To make sure he understands her demand for "George", she makes monkey noises and jumps on the bed.

8:03: I put Kitsu's shoes on her so that she's ready to go when her mom gets here and we start watching Pocoyo on the computer.

8:14 p.m. Kitsu is picked up and I get to stop watching Pocoyo.

8:30 p.m. Blaze says he's getting ready for bed, but is really watching Ben Ten on the Kindle.

8:51 p.m. I put away the clean dishes and Blaze finally brushes his teeth. DH is relaxing on the bed watch t.v.

9:00 p.m. Blaze heads to bed and I go to read to him. I'm reading The Return of the King. The king of the Nazgul was just killed when we left off reading yesterday.

9:16 p.m. Blaze fell asleep as I was reading. It's my turn to get ready for bed. Then I'm going to make a brandy alexander and go watch t.v. with DH.

9:43 p.m. I have my drink and am playing on the computer, because DH is watching the season finale of The Americans, a show I stopped watching several episodes ago.

10:41 p.m. Brushed my teeth.

10:50 p.m. I sit in bed, looking at viewing options on Amazon Prime. DH has gone into the living room to use the computer.

11:00 p.m. I settle on the first episode of Carnivale, but only watch about 20 minutes of it before I start falling asleep.

St. Augustine Weekend

This past weekend was a fun mini-vacation to St. Augustine, filled with Spanish Colonial history, steampunk/Victorian era splendor, and pirate miniature golf. In other words, we had a good time!



Our tour guide of Flagler College, Carson, was both knowledgeable and entertaining.





Food-wise, the weekend had it's ups and downs. Saturday, the steampunk group ate at the Taberna del Caballo, where we were entertained by a talented guitar player, while waiting far too long for mediocre food and sangria. I had the chicken quesadilla soup and the cheese and beer fondue, which looked like duplicate bowls of thick orange-ish glop. The flavor of the fondue was fine, but it was hard to eat since I hadn't been given a fork. The soup reminded me of the period of time I spent working in a hosptial cafeteria and the blenderized food we would make for patients who had no teeth and couldn't wear their dentures.



Sunday, we ate at one of our favorite St. Augustine restaurants, the Columbia, where the food is always good and the service is friendly and prompt.

Toddler's Mother's Day Card

I helped the 3 year old make a steampunk Mother's Day card.



The front of the card:



The inside of the card:

Free Comic Book Day

Blaze dressed as the Tesla Ranger to visit the Bookshelf on S. Monroe St. in Tallahassee this morning. Free comic book day was a big deal there, with super heroes out in front of the store and customers packing the inside.









After lunch, we took the toddler with and went to two more comic book stores, Fall Out Comics on Apalachee Parkway and Cosmic Cat Comics in Railroad Square.



This is the combined haul of both children today:



I purchased one comic book for Blaze, all the rest were free.

This was a really good way to get new people into these stores, because I had never entered any of these stores before today.  I will definitely be going back to The Bookshelf, because it has turned out to be more than a comic book store. It's actually a well-stocked used bookstore that just happens to also have a nice comic book section.