Extreme Geekdom, Iron Man Style

Guess what this is?

For those of you who have read my “About” page, as you can see by the picture above Evil Genius really did make his own arc reactor.  Now it’s not real-all it does is light up, but it looks REALLY cool.  It’s LEDs and a power source, nestled into a pvc pipe vent that has been hollowed out and the design cut into metal by a laser.  Oh and vellum, that was my contribution.  It’s actually part of his cubicle sign at work, but this part he worked on for quite some time at home.

(Just in case you haven’t noticed, we are geeks.)

At some point in this process, Evil Genius promised The Professor that he was going to make him an Iron Man suit of his own for Halloween.  He wasn’t thinking at the time that The Professor would remember. He did.  I ended up buying him a cheap Iron Man costume at Target last week.  There were two different costumes.  The $20 one had muscles.  As far as I could tell, that and the glow in the dark arc reactor were the only differences that I could tell between that and the $10 one.  Needless to say, I bought the cheaper one.

Me being me, and the wife of an engineer, I had to make it light up somehow.  I jokingly asked Evil Genius to make him his own arc reactor.  Not going to happen.  Then I had a vision.  At Lowes they have these lights that look remarkably like the arc reactor in the movie.  Lowes is not a place I get to very often. It’s not like it’s out of my way, it’s just one more place to stop when I’m out running errands.  I checked the light section at Target while I was there, but it didn’t look enough like what I was going for.

Now who cares that a seven year old’s costume that happens to have the middle light up is authentic looking.  Apparently I do.

Today we finally made it Lowes after renting movies.  The light, while not exact, looked pretty darn close to the one in the movie.  So I shelled out the money, and have spent the better part of the afternoon trying to figure out how the heck to attach it.  The first idea was to sew a pocket onto the inside of the costume, and slip the light in that part.  I don’t want stitches showing.  So that idea went away.  My second idea was to use the circle of velcro that came with the light.  I had my son put on a black shirt, then the costume over it.  I slipped the light in between with the sticky side up against the shirt and stuck it on.  Then I sewed the velcro to the shirt.  Looks great, but it’s pretty obvious that the light probably won’t stay on.  The additional part didn’t work-I cut circles of velcro in half and stuck them to the light and to the inside of the shirt.  You could see the half circles of velcro through the costume when the light is on.

The light, attached to the shirt, with the velcro that I have since removed from the front.

This is kind of what it looks like shining through.

This is what I’m actually trying to light up.

So that’s where I’m at.  I’m not sure where to go next here.  Suggestions are welcome.  I’m sure I’ll come up with something, it may just take some time.

Here’s the funny thing, this isn’t an abnormal situation at our house.  We always seem to have something a little strange brewing.  Some days I don’t think we are just geeks, we are EXTREME geeks.  Now granted, I’ve seen people take it to extremes on the internet.  I’ve seen people get married in full Klingon garb and wear their Star Wars costumes around for fun.  But we get into the technical stuff, and that’s a little scary.

I think Tony Stark would be pretty darn proud of my ingenuity. Oh wait, he probably wouldn’t care. He’s a narcissist.

Halloween in my family has never had a shortage of creative costumes.  As an adult, that creativity has been stifled in me somewhat.  Mainly by a husband who doesn’t care for Halloween.  Also because I just haven’t had much opportunity to dress up.  This year, the kids are getting old enough that I can really have fun with it.  We have the house mostly decorated, we’re working on the costumes, I’m getting my geek on in a big way!

I’ll keep everyone posted on the costume.  I’ve had a couple of suggestions from friends on Facebook.  Maybe between that and the old brain, I’ll come up with an uber brilliant idea…

(Incidentally, just as proof that we aren’t just geeks, but well rounded ones- The whole family actually got to go to the football game this time.  It was meant to be.  Not only was it perfect weather, but the eagerly anticipated half-time performance from the marching band just happened to be music from Star Wars.  This was enhanced by the summary of the football season thus far scrolling on the big screen in a Star Wars type title sequence, as well as a mock award ceremony on the field with people dressed up as Star Wars characters.  It had to be one of the coolest things I had ever seen.  I don’t know if anyone else shared my enthusiasm outside of my family sitting with me, except maybe the guy who comes to the games in the Clone Trooper helmet.)