Further Exposure

The second visit I made with the sidekick to the daycare was good and bad. 'Good' in that the awful nose gunk had vanished from the other kids. 'Bad' in that the boy got upset, and we could only remain hidden, allowing the sitters to settle him down. He was doing well for a time; he continues to sit with a book or toy and entertain himself. I'm fine with that. He's an only child. He has limited social time, and we've steered him toward solitary amusements.

I think this is healthy. I think it fosters independence. I learned it when I was young, and it makes me compatible with Your Sister. Not only can we occupy ourselves while sharing a room, but it means we can make use of personal downtime with a variety of options. We don't get bored. We don't demand to be entertained or attended to.

They were able to distract him from his tears, settling him with a toy or song. That's the real secret to comforting a baby: distraction. It also works for saying 'no.' If he wants to play with some restricted item, saying 'no' and changing the subject keeps him from fighting the instruction. We set him down and stayed out of eyesight while we chatted with the sitters (attendants? baby monitors?). He's the new kid in the group, and he has to learn the pack rules. There's a kid who commandeers toys at will, causing tears and wailing. I don't like him. There's also a girl who's fighting to be the alpha of the bunch. We hope we've taught him to be resilient as the relationships sort themselves out.We left after about half an hour. On Tuesday, I'll take him for a full day, and he'll go three days consecutively each week until Your Sister goes back to school in August. I still remember my pre-kindergarten days. I loved the daycare I was in. I hope he grows to enjoy this place.

+  +  +

We found a zucchini in the garden, suddenly full and ripe, and Your Sister deemed it ready to eat. She plucked it while offering a new schedule for grabbing the gourds. I disagreed, and she persisted, so I decreed she would now be responsible for squash harvesting. I'll mind the 'maters and taters.

+  +  +

The usual juggling of notions has begun as family comes into the area for the weekend. We might entertain the nieces Saturday but going to Asheville for a group supper is almost impossible given the sidekick's bedtime. Your Sister feels the pinch of clashing schedules. I'm on the periphery of this. I go where she points. We'll recover Monday with a mutual holiday.

Picture of the Day
Sean Connery will not sell your wares.

Gooey

The sidekick again visited the daycare, and this was the first time I was with him. My God. All those kids have noses running with various colored goo. I want to boil myself. The boy seemed just fine. We sat him down in the common area for his age group, and he started playing with this toy and that toy. The other kids were squabbling over their toys, and our guy looked ten times smarter for avoiding the pack. I want him eventually to be social with them, and he might be once we're not hovering over him. He can ease his way into the group. That's fine.

I was invited to sit among the kids, and I found a chair in the corner. The kids eyed me up for a few minutes, and some went back to their toys. I saw some books on the floor and showed them to Parker, asking silently if he wanted one. He decided to play instead with the toy vacuum. Another kid, the lone girl, picked up a book, walked up to me, and held up her arms in the universal "pick me up" gesture. I heaved her up and sat her on my leg and read her a book. She would stare at my face and then back at the book. We finished the book, and she walked off to get another one and came back to return to her roost. We went through about four, and her patience shortened with each book. Eventually she walked off. The novelty was over. Another kid started to walk over, but he had some foul gunk coming out of his nose, and I shuffled away to the other side of the room.

The attendants seemed in control and patient, but I felt those pangs that plague Your Sister: We should keep him home. We should never let him out into the world. I squashed those quickly. He can't conquer the world from our cocoon.She again mentioned her hesitance to send him to daycare full time, and I asked what kind of public-education advocated we'd be if we kept our kid at home.

But those icky noses gave me the creeps.I think I caught the bug he had last Friday. I'm flooding my system with Vitamin C and Ricola. Yesterday's vaccinations don't seem to have affected him.

Picture of the Day 
Ah, I see.

Check Up

The sidekick had his one-year checkup, complete with five vaccinations in preparation for daycare. He's completely normal if a little under the curve in weight. Your Sis is afraid we're underfeeding him, but he knows how to ask for food and doesn't get desperate for snacks. I think he's eating fine. We gave him a little more to help him sleep. The doctor says he's just perfect. He visited the daycare and attended a swim class, so, yes, he slept through the night. He slept like the dead. He even slept though a diaper change.

It's a horrible feeling to go to bed anxious that he'll wake up, screaming and inconsolable. Every movement and noise he makes jolt me awake. Your Sister dives straight into sleep while she can. I never picked up that talent. Before we married, I would go to sleep listening to the radio. Your Sister can't sleep that way, and I acquiesced, and I still occasionally get distracted by branches on the siding and the house settling. The boy doesn't share this problem. He doesn't seem to associate our walking noises with our proximity, if he hears them at all, nor does he get rattled by weather noises or the house settling. He is his mother's son.

Another fucking hailstorm gave my potato plants the business, and I had to bolster a few with stakes and string. I think I'll have to yank up the taters this weekend before the big baptism party. That will give me space to plant some late-season stuff, like pumpkin.

Picture of the Day
Seacrest out.

Things Was Did

The deputy visited his daycare-to-be Friday and immediately picked up whatever nose-flood bug the kids had. He was cranky with the babysitter that night and has slept poorly this weekend. Lovely. We knew daycare would expose him to everything in hopes it would strengthen his immune system. I had hoped, though, that the exposure would be more gentle and less goo-inducing.

We hired a sitter to attend an anniversary party for Travis and Kathy. It was at a German restaurant, and I of course ate American food. They had a deal on steak. and I pounced on it. We haven't had red meat in the house for almost a month as part of our communal diet. It's worked; Your Sister's pre-pregnancy clothes wear baggy on her now. During appetizers, we ordered at the bar, and I had my first Manhattan. I blamed the order on reading Esquire all these years. It's a nice drink; I see why it's a classic.

I sat with an acquaintance I met through Travis -- a guy we see maybe once every two years -- and we discovered that I had seen him in a production of Little Shop of Horrors while I was at my first college. He acted alongside my girlfriend at the time, the woman who became my first wife, and we exchanged notes on her stagecraft. We both remembered that particular performance because, at her request despite his reservations, he slapped the crap out of her onstage. I jumped in my seat. He was apologetic about the moment during our meal, and I assured him I knew she would request that, and I myself was likewise clobbered onstage around the same time in a Look Homeward Angel scene with another actress. We debated ways the local theatre group could reverse its fortunes, and how we'd run a theatre. We also talked genre shows and Def Leppard. A fine time, as you can imagine.

On Saturday, Your Sister shopped for baby stuff with Your Mom while I tended to the garden and ran. That afternoon, I took a friend's son to see Green Lantern (a solid C+ production; bad pacing, odd story movement, and a hanging subplot that demanded closure in such a boys film). He was wild about the trailer for the new Transformers movie, and I offered to take him to that if he couldn't get a movie date otherwise. I was worried about how we'd relate. We may have said ten words to each other prior to this. But we talked the whole drive home about the film we just saw and the ones he wants to see, including Captain America. He was jazzed after seeing GL; it was exactly what he wanted.

This might become a regular thing during the summer if not longer. We seem to be bonding over video games and comics, and movies, proving that Your Sister married a sorry manchild. He and his sister were done dirty by their fucktard father, and their mom is worried about his continuing response to an ugly divorce. She jumped at the chance to get him out of the house with what can only charitably be called a good role model.

It may be the cold, but the deputy is wolfing down more food than normal. He practically ate all her rice at the Mexican restaurant yesterday. He's only run into one food he didn't like, and those green beans may have been cooked wrong. He got a rocking horse and a new bear for his birthday, but the cold seems to have sapped his curiosity for either.

Because of Murphy's Law, my garden is a fantastic grass orchard and a middling veggie plot.  I had to use a weedeater to cut the grass back so I could merely see the squash plants. I also forgot a pen in my jeans pocket and ruined a load of laundry. Virtually all the affected clothes were mine.

Picture of the Day
Protect me, Mister Lion Action Pants!

Retelling Retailing

I wonder sometimes if I'm ignored by so many store associates because they consider me too old to shop there. I hovered in American Eagle for about ten minutes, scouring the shelves for a shirt I saw on a mannequin. Finding only the one of those shirts in XXL (which I could use as a bedspread), I scanned the barcode with my scifi-future-magic phone and took pictures of the sales tag to track it down on the store's website. I can't believe none of the three associates who I spied failed to notice me.

When I worked retail, and granted this was literally decades ago, I preferred to help this kind of shopper -- someone who was actively, if not aggressively, looking. They were engaged. They knew what they wanted. They were the highlight of my dreary day, and the nightmare was type of shopper who walks into my department and stops dead still, staring blankly at the back wall of the store as if God will use the Force to levitate what they want through the very air and at their feet. That guy only knows what he doesn't want and can in no way articulate what they came to buy. That guy will devour hours of your time and complain the whole time.

I bought a similar shirt in a different color when I remembered I already had a blue striped shirt from AE. And much to my surprise I bought it a size smaller than I expected. I tried on a medium and a small, and the small is the better fit. Men's clothes used to be reliably consistent. Now I gotta treat every item of clothing like jeans.

Still, I got a shirt that looks decent during my lunch break. I think I shopped well.

  +   +   +

My Mom watched the sidekick yesterday, and today he is visiting the daycare for a few hours. He failed to sleep through the night, and he was oddly difficult to put down after supper. Maybe his system's still frizzed from cold medication.

  +   +   +

Your Sister and a coworker volunteered me to take her son to see Green Lantern this weekend. He's apparently dying to see it. I asked this morning if it's OK to catch a 2D viewing, and he said he wouldn't care. Good. I can't see the 3D stuff. To me, it looks like the last ten minutes of 2001.

  +   +   +

Your Sister is dismayed to learn that the transfer of power at the school is a muddle. She was asked to coordinate schedules for next year by the outgoing principal. Not only can't schedules be made until the school hires replacement teachers, she's not the person who should be doing this; the current department chair is. And the outgoing principal will have no oversight on whatever schedule is made. We suspect he asked Your Sister because she happened to be at the school yesterday, and making the request allowed him to check an item off his out-the-door to-do list. She's meeting Sunday with some teachers to straighten this mess out.

Moving Picture of the Day
The new trailer for the Captain America movie. It continues to look a little flat -- as in "those sets look like backlots" -- but the low-budget retro style harkens back to Rocketeer and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Hopefully it won't be as middling as The Shadow and Phantom. Those films couldn't elevate themselves beyond the stifling doldrums of b-movie cliches. I think Marvel will be happy if it makes $70 million, just as long as it properly prepares audiences for next year's giant Avengers film.

Evolving Plans

He slept through the night. We're too exhausted to jump for joy. I suspect he tried to milk our willingness to attend to him in the night. We ran to the crib during his cold, but we slowly pulled back from that so he'd relearn to put himself back to sleep. It seems to have taken.

Your Sister decided to introduce him to daycare at a slower pace. Starting in a few weeks, he'll go three days a week instead of the five we agreed upon. She says he wants to enjoy the time with him before she goes back to work. He has been her primary (and secondary and tertiary and, um, fourth-erary) concern for a year now, and it's gotta be a hard habit to break. From a pragmatic POV, this affects me not. I'm at the office whether he's at home or in daycare. I have no reason to object to her schedule alterations. Also, come on, Your Sister makes about nine schedules and then changes them all before the big event, whatever it is. I think she proposed four snack options last night in a ten-minute period. I just answer "OK" and wait for the next change. This may be the secret of husbandry: Be a flow-goer.

The grandmothers are watching him on consecutive days to allow Your Sis to get some yardwork done. Although I dunno how much she can do during all this rain. I worry that the nationwide bee disease has hit our garden; the squash plants have not turned from blossoms to gourds yet. Although the tomatoes flowers have changed to cheery sprouts.

Picture of the Day
I usually never notice grafitti, but this is nice.

New Digs

The new Heygregory.com is active.

I adore GoDaddy's tech support (a top-quality service in no way mentioned in the cheesecake ads), but the very limited web-building software made updating my site a chore. A big chore. A chorezilla. So it's gone.

Hopefully the new site will spur more sketching. I've noticed a number of comic people have gone this route for their sites, and it makes all kinds of sense. Your Sister noted how bizarre it is to now live in a world where websites -- distinct from blogs -- are considered obsolete. GoDaddy is probably great for big businesses, but for me and my modest product field, it doesn't make financial or practical sense to invest in a giant web presence like they offer. Also, because of GoDaddy's weak folder and shop systems, I was driven to Flickr and PayPal for the crucial elements of my website.

+  +  +

Again, the sidekick didn't make it through the night. He clearly has the all-or-nothing sleep cycle of a sick kid. I got him at midnight, and he was oddly quiet, with eyes wide open and body still, before shutting down completely within minutes. He switched off. Powered down. Out out out.

He's gotten so cocky about walking that he's pushing himself into running, and he's falling. He busted his gums yesterday on a faceplant. He bled and cried for ten minutes and then ran off, forgetting that anything happened. 

Picture of the Day

Helen Mirren in a championship belt. Wowsers. It's eMMA in 40 years.

Reaping What Was Sown

The fever broke, and the boy seems to have avoided hand-and-mouth. He has a sore throat made obvious by coughing and some difficulty eating, and we continue with Tylenol and ice water. He didn't sleep through the night, but it was a much better block of hours than Sunday night. I like to think he fought off a worse infection due to his homebrewed diet, but I don't know what the other kids are eating. Maybe I just want some credit for his immune system, ironic considering I was convinced last year that my inherited immune system would practically cripple him.

+  +  +

I made a simple support fence for the pea vines (a term my inner fourth-grader continues to laugh at). It's made of six-foot tomato stakes and string running horizontally and vertically. It's not pretty, but I can bolster the fencing if the vines need a sturdier scaffold. The squash plants have not yet sprouted gourds, and I suspect the continuing nationwide bee disease has affected our garden.The tomato plants look OK, so I dunno. There's still time to plant more squash plants before fall's frost is a factor.

Picture of the Day

My grandfather's work was doo-doo!

A Wobbly Weekend

The boy may have picked up the hand and foot and mouth virus. A playmate was diagnosed with it last week only after they had rendezvoused. He hasn't developed the tell-tale hand and mouth blisters yet, so he may have only a cold. Or the signs may emerge within the next few days. Either way, he has a moderate fever (101-104), and he didn't sleep last night, and we are the walking dead. We gave him baby Tylenol and called the local nurse hotline. We were told to continue what we were doing and take him into a doctor only if he didn't develop new symptoms. When I cuddled him at 3 am, he didn't fell like the ball of fire he had on Sunday, so I'm thinking the fever is gone. I took some Vitamin C when my throat got scratchy, but that may have been psychosomatic.

We didn't know he was developing a cold/virus earlier in the weekend. He got a babysitter Friday night while we met up with some English teacherfolk, and we drove to a nearby-ish celebrity-animal zoo Saturday. He took it mostly in stride, panicking slightly when some animals got a bit close (a goat licked his foot). He seemed most taken with the occasional truck that zoomed by. The heat and travel zapped him, and we left before trying the safari bus ride. Just as well, I think; a mob of screaming kids in a hot bus surrounded by water buffalo might have been a disaster. He'll get more out of the zoo as he gets older. I didn't see any elephants, but we did hear the lion roar.

We got home just in time to meet the local crew pressure wash the house. I've felt crummy for not keeping the siding clean, and Your Sister hired them as an early Father's Day present.

My first Father's Day was low key as we watched the boy and stayed indoors. I've started a daily sketch exercise, and I'll use those scans to fuel a new version of the website. I'm going to move it to a blog on this service, as I've seen other artists do, and that will encourage me to make with the scratchings and more easily maintain online updates and art stuff. I'll link to the new site when it's active.

Picture of the Day
Brush brush brush.

Doctor Doctor, Give Me the News

The sidekick saw the ENT today, and his Prevacid dosage was cut back to a half pill a day. If the original symptoms return, we go back to full dosage for a kid his age. I think he'll be fine. He doesn't make any snoring noise the way he used to.

I heard back about my blood tests, and my total cholesterol is elevated from December but still within safe numbers. HDL is up but not enough. LDL is up but still safe, and my triglycerides dropped like a rock. I checked my exercise heart rate (128 a minute), and that seems optimal.

We're planning to take the boy to his first zoo tomorrow. There's a celebrity animal refuge near my hometown, and it offers a "safari" bus ride and the ability to hand feed animals. Your Sister is seriously jazzed for this; I wonder how well he'll recognize animals from the storybooks.

Picture of the Day
Looks like more exercise for me!

Waiting for Results

Our regular GP is out with a new baby, and I met her temporary replacement yesterday. He asked to run a follow-up blood test to see where my HDL is now. It was low enough last year that I was put on fish pills. I went in this morning for the blood draw and was told the office would call me tomorrow with the results. If further action is needed, they'll bring me in all quick like to get me fixed up. I feel fine. I'm running again and gardening and chasing the sidekick and biking (but not this morning; I was told to refrain from eating and exercising before the test).

The neighborhood was whacked by a strong summer storm complete with hail. The deck was covered in dead branches, and the garden was lucky to duck a strong blow. I added tomato cages this morning. I need to read up on trellises for the pea vines.

Your Sister took the sidekick to a local stone store for lawn accessories, and he went ape shit over the giant vehicles. We don't have any of these toy types, and he doesn't seem them on TV or in books. Yet he adores --suddenly, completely -- big construction real-life Tonka trucks. Maybe it is gender genetics.  

The new blog artwork is from Time Bandits, an early film by Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin which I adored as a kid. It's about little assistants for God yoinking a map of the universe to hop through time and steal as much as they can carry. They accidentally team with an English boy and move toward The Most Fabulous Object in the World, unfortunately located in the lair of Ultimate Darkness. It's a fine boys film.

Picture of the Day
We must choose the right outlets for assistance.

Up and At 'Em

This marked my third consecutive morning of running. Monday and Tuesday were boot-camp jogs intended to assure me I could at least make the route without stopping. This morning, I decided to push it, and I cut more than a minute off of this week's run time. I hoped to bike, but I forgot we keep the bike helmets in the nursery, and I didn't want to wake up the deputy.  I need to switch up my morning exercise, and I like the idea of biking to supplement the run and floor exercises. I have a doctor's appointment today to follow-up on my check-up some months back. The exercise and triple-omega pills should be paying off by now.

I can't take credit for getting up early and running. I'm naturally waking up a good half hour before my alarm goes off, and we've had enough rain that I don't need to water the garden. I've got the time, and summer fashions tell me I need to shape up.

HBO showed Little Shop of Horrors often and daily. It might have been the movie from my teen years that prepared me for the classic musicals I saw a few years later. In the space of about four years, I was introduced to Fiddler on the Roof, Rocky Horror, and Oklahoma. The latter hooked me on the genre. I was probably in my late 20s before I realized Wizard of Oz was a musical. Back when CBS aired it in the time before VCRs, you saw it once a year.

Moving Picture of the Day
Sesame Street takes on the cursed Spider-Man musical.

Just An Excuse to Post Videos from The Tony Awards

For our anniversary, we hired a babysitter Friday night and caught the new X-Men movie.  It's the goods. It cobbles a number of classic X-Men comic moments and makes new story with them. The acting is top-notch, and the action is good. It also rewards loyal viewers of the first three X-Men movies.

The local comic store informed me that three minicomics had sold in the past two weeks. Woo.

We biked between thunderstorms Saturday afternoon. The sidekick is taking to it well. We can't ride the bikes back up our hill, and I shoved the boy-burdened bike as we finished riding. It sucks to run it too. But run it I did this morning. I got up before seven and ran our route in under 21 minutes. The school traffic was thin enough to assure me I wouldn't get plastered by a bus. I dunno if I can do this every day, but I did get a good weekend workout between the bike and gardening.

Also, a neighbor's tree rotted and collapsed across the road on Sunday. I only noticed it when I saw traffic slowing in front of our driveway. None of the tree parts landed on our property, but I didn't see anyone cleaning it up. Out I went. It was light work as the tree felt like Styrofoam. The neighbor thought a branch had fallen and thought nothing of it. He didn't seem too concerned when I rang his doorbell and informed him. The pieces were all there as we left town later that morning and returned that night.

We went back to my hometown for a reunion of my maternal grandmother's family. The deputy was cooed over the whole time. Because I was carrying him for the event, we put his nametag on his back, and people knew his name before they talked to us. He watched the older kids play basketball, and he was itching to join in. After, we had our first swim in My Mom's pool. He took to it with relish after weeks of being trained to splash in the tub. He has a swim bodysuit with a hood, and he floated in a small tube raft. When we poured him back into the car, he slept like a coma patient.

+   +   +

As Your Sister wades into the deeper waters of the teacher pool, she learns many a thing:

1) One teacher is moving. His departure surprises us both.

2) Another teacher is staying. Her continuance surprises us both.

3) It's presumed that Your Sister will be department chair. She'd rather not. I'm trying to comfort her by saying that the sidekick's sleep cycle and time at daycare affords her a lot of time to be chair and do chair things.

4) She's teaching AP again, requiring her to scrape together a syllabus before summer.

5) The county manager's budget proposal calls for $38,000 to be cut from the library, virtually all of it from new-acquisition moneys. That affects the teachers who want to order books for their classes. To secure enough copies of one book, she contacted an Asheville bookstore, and they had four copies of it. By the time I got there the next day, they had eight more copies. The cost of these books is, of course, coming out of our pockets. (Oh, and the library budget cuts means they're scrapping periodicals for a year. That's my favorite library section.).

6) The state budget has decreed that schools will have five fewer teacher workdays as they become full school days. This is packaged as a cost-cutting measure, but it adds five days to the 180-day mandatory schedule, and it requires five additional days of utilities, buses, and school meals. The governor vetoed it, but the legislature says they'll override.

+  +  +

We watched the Tonys last night, and it may have been the best broadcast of the show I've seen. The musical numbers this year were all stellar, and let me post two great examples.

If you don't watch the Tonys -- if you have no real interest in Broadway -- I can't blame you. Broadway has catered to the tourist crowd hard in the last ten years and only recently pulled itself out of the jukebox musical genre (take the biggest hits of a mainstream artist & build a plot around it -- you know, ABBA, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, etc.). But I think the American musical is swinging back to a proper display of talent and skill. Now, yes, the new trend is to make musicals based on popular films, and this clip is from the adaptation of Catch Me If You Can, the Spielberg/DiCaprio film. The star of the show -- Norbert Leo Butz -- won the Tony for Best Musical Actor last night for this show (and maybe this number), and he won a Tony a few years back for his work in the musical based on Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

Anyway, in a Tonys show that was PACKED with talent this year, this number stood out even against hot, hot performances from The Book of Mormon and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Sister Act. This number, I think, stole the show, and god damn if I don't want to audition for a show right now.

And here's Harry Potter tearing it UP in his show. This kid is good.

Your Sister asked if, in all my theatre interest, if I ever wanted to be a song-and-dance man. Of course, but it's only been recently that I felt like I had the pipes to do a decent job. For example, the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors? I can do that.

 

Leo Bloom in The Producers? I can do that.

As I finished my run this morning, I passed a neighbor who's been in a few local shows with me, and he asked if I was coming back to work with the local company. If I didn't have such sour memories of bad choices and backstage drama, I'd hop at the chance to do the latest musical (Annie, by the way). But I can't risk shouldering Your Sister with a revived work schedule and the boy for such a chunk of time only for me to regret working with people who can't learn their lines.

Summer Doings

Yep, he's sleeping through the night. Victory.

For Father's Day, I bought a new video game. It's my first Father's Day present, and it's a game I've wanted for a while. I played it last night for an hour. The main character seems to move faster than the camera, creating a dizzying rate of motion and a fear that I'm becoming too old for this stuff.

The Doom Gallery has, as they say, blown up. I bought the domain name cookingwithvillainy.com through Blogspot and discovered domain names for their blogs are only $10 a year. That's a bona fide steal.

We are preparing for a reunion with my family this weekend and the deputy's baptism in July. Your Sister revels in organizing, and now that she's relatively well rested, she's eager to tackle the specifics of hosting a baptism party. She considered renting another bounce house for the attending kids, but there aren't enough of them to justify the high rental cost. Maybe we'll set up sprinklers for them to run through.

I hope we get to bike Saturday. I got that jonesin'. I was scheduled to give blood that morning, but the continued dithering and hard sell by the local organizer soured me on it. His repeated calls to confirm and micromanage vexes me. I'm protesting by sitting out this local donation drive. I can go to another location if my sense of civic duty starts to itch.

As a result of meeting with a longtime -- and I mean, elementary school -- acquaintance at HeroesCon, I'm thinking of organizing an anthology comic to sell at next year's show. She seemed excited for it. But indy anthologies are common, and we'd need a really, really great idea to gin up submissions.

Picture of the Day
Barnes & Noble expanded their comic selection recently. The photo shows the new comic shelves on the lefthand side, right next to mainstream magazines. This is kinda a big deal for the industry after decades of comics dwindling in mainstream outlets in favor of comic stores. Those stores compete directly with the Barnes and Books-A-Millions and Borders (soon to die) over the graphic-novel and manga markets, but enjoyed the advantage for single issues (or floppies, a term used derisively for a format some see as outdated).

This is the display stand in the Asheville B&N, and those comics represent what used to be stocked in convenience stores in spinner racks. I still want a spinner rack for the living room. I'm stymied in every search. I don't see this new initiative hurting comic stores so much. They stock many many more singles each week, and they allow customizable pull lists for customers. Making such a list guarantees you won't miss an issue and allows you to pop into the store when you want, without fear of sellouts. 

HeroesCon 2011

I went to HeroesCon with the Doom sketchbook and came away with fewer than I hoped but of a better variety than I expected. Saturday is the big-money day, and many of the more recognizable star artists were already working on commissions or in panels. I couldn't get their attention, or they had to decline. Understandable. Luckily that allowed to troll the independent artists, an ilk I like to pretend I'm now a part of. Many folks were nonchalant about doing a sketch for a theme book until they got the full sales pitch; once they got the joke, they were in.

The Chef Doom artwork is here. It's gotten some good responses on other sites.

It was a great crowd as always. The Greenville comic people asked me about joining them next year, and I will if I can make at least two books before then. It's very feasible.

The show also offers collectible shopping, and the vendors are taking a bath on Star Wars items. The market has bottomed out, and what were once top-dollar toys are dirt cheap.

Costumes! These in no way represent the number of costumes on display. These are what I could get between waiting for Doom sketches. I spent the majority of the day hovering over tables waiting for the sketches. Closer to the end of the day, I was invited to scoot and come back for the book. I did that, and I was able to see the whole convention.

Captain America, Harlequinn, Batgirl

 Cobra!

 Firestar

 Kick-Ass and Hitgirl

Superman

I had dinner with online friends and got home right at 11. I slept like the dead.

Speaking of, we may have finally trained the sidekick to sleep through the night. We are almost drunk on a full night's sleep.

Putting My Notion in Motion

HeroesCon is this weekend. This is one of the biggest conventions on the East Coast and is regarded nationwide as the friendliest for creators and fans. It will be about five times the size of Fanaticon. It runs Friday through Sunday, and I will be there tomorrow, hobnobbing and networking. I'm taking comics to hand out 'cause I'm shameless.

A few years ago, someone came up with the idea for a theme sketchbook. You pick an idea and go to each artist at a show and ask them to draw that idea. I haven't done this before, and I decided rather late in the week to start one on Chef Doom. I think this will go like crazy. I'll post the images on the Cooking With Villainy! blog. The convention scene has been tainted in recent years by artists doing free sketches only to see the recipients sell them for big bucks on eBay. They resent that. But sketches in a book can't pull in the kind of money as would sketches on artboard, so they're considered less of a risk for artists. I suppose I'll get dozens of sketches for this. I hope to.

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The sidekick is adjusting to our new policy of ignoring him at night. He slept all night last night, and he may have been helped by a security blanket (actually a burp cloth). This is the only thing we've seen him cling to during feedings.

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I still haven't heard from the Asheville bookstore that offered to stock my comics. I also haven't yet found the online sale the museum claimed they'd hold for the leftover auction pieces. No idea how my piece did.

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The garden survived a flash hailstorm yesterday. Things are growing very slowly, and I don't know why. The potatoes haven't blossomed. The squash plants have, but the blossoms haven't turned into gourds yet. The tomato blossoms remain closed. The pea plants are still underground, and the sweet potatoes are at a standstill. The garden gets water every day. We got sun, we got compost. But we don't got progress.

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Your Sister dashed out last night to ambush the county commissioners before another budget meeting.

Picture of the Day 
Well, that's just rude.

I don't think I mentioned that an unknown neighbor posted signs throughout the 'hood, including on a pole on our property, warning folks that someone is shooting pets with a pellet gun. I have to admit, I've been tempted to use one on the cats that shit in the garden.

Baby Baby, Let Me Sleep On It

In the face of waking up several times each night to comfort a baby who snaps back to sleep as soon as he's picked up, we've decided to use the nuclear option: ignoring him. I've wondered for a while now if we're coddling, if we've trained him to wake up just enough to want help going back to sleep, and Monday night may have put Your Sister on the same wavelength. She was sleeping on the floor of his nursery as I left for work the next morning. That shit won't do.

For the last two nights, we've put him down after a bath and supper and some cuddling and left him be. If he's awake, he's awake. And when he is, he screams for company. But that's all he wants. He's fed, he's warm, he's dry. It's nighttime, however, and he must learn to downshift when we finish the routine and set him in the crib. We turn the monitor down and let him wail his lungs out until he's unconscious. Last night we decided to test him and not wake him up for a diaper change and nursing. He slept until almost daylight. Eight hours straight. That's almost six glorious hours of uninterrupted sleep, and that is a rarity. But hopefully we can make that the norm. We had also agreed last night to ignore him if he woke up in the middle of the night, but we didn't have to.

I admit it feels cruel, but it's the kind of literal tough love that we agreed to before we knocked ourselves up. If he can learn to accept bedtime and switch off now, it can only help Your Sister prepare for the school year.

Our new supper schedule sees her putting him to bed each night while I cook the meals. If it was her night to make dinner, she'll prepare the ingredients, and I'll cook them according to the recipe. She still does yoga on Wednesdays, and those are the nights I put him down and make dinner. It's my best opportunity to pull my weight.

I'm tweaking the website soon. I'm making more use of Flickr to host my images. I'm tempted to combine this blog and my site, but I still want to keep Your Sister as private as practical.

Picture of the Day
Save me, Super Lightning Tiger. Save me from the sleepless toddlers.

Gear Shift

I bought some more stands for the minicomics and made labels with a short synopsis and prices. I also added "locally produced minicomic" in hopes that would sway purchases. On Friday, I stopped by the Asheville comic store. The shop owner said the books would probably not sell until they move into their new store, and I can see why. They are a store of piles right now. They need more room for everything. Because he didn't mention shelf rent or any other charges for selling the books, I opened a pull list, guaranteeing I'll buy certain titles when they ship each month. Least I could do. We also talked about the feasibility of paying for a table at Charlotte's convention next year. I could easily team with some local guys and sell four to five comics and sketches for three days. Yeah, I could do that.

I took some comics and stand to the local store. The owner said something vague about commissions, and I probably should worry about that more than I do. I'm not concerned with a profit at this stage -- or more precisely, at this location -- because it's a local venue for getting my name out there. People can get my current minis dirt cheap, but the next books will have the heft of my then-recognized name and higher standards of storytelling. Those will cost a little more. I started a small pull list with them as well.

I announced the store and online buying options on FB and immediately got an order. I bought some simple mailing supplies and started a spreadsheet for the tax man. I'll mail it out Tuesday afternoon right before I check on another potential store location. My first shipment!

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Your Sister spend healthy chunks of time preparing an AP curriculum for next semester. She's slowly getting back into the groove of school.  She took the boy to church Sunday morning, and I took the opportunity to run the route you and I chugged. It is hot here nowadays. I worked in the garden Monday and was dying from the heat and bugs at 8:30. But the garden is weeded and mulched and freshly composted. The squash finally distinguished itself from the weeds, and I was able to get rid of the unwanteds. 

After running and hard gardening, I was actually keen on a bike trip with Your Sister. It was her idea, and I rediscovered my love of biking, thanks to you bringing an extra so we could all three go together. The sidekick seemed to like it too. If I had reason to visit more downtown locales, I'd bike there on a regular basis. Except for one time I rode her bike to the school to remind her to answer her phone, I hadn't been on a bike in 20 years. Wen I went to college, My Dad asked if he could sell the bike instead of letting it rot in the carport. I had a Schwinn with those painful rams-horn handlebars, and I don't miss them the slightest. Yesterday was also my first time in a bike helmet,and I look better in it than I feared. Your Sis clipped bike path locations from magazines, and she's planning late-summer road trips.

First Steps

Your Nephew is walking. It's not consistent, but it does happen. Your Sister told me about it yesterday and showed me video from earlier in the day. He braces on an object to stand, lets go, and staggers forward. He is delighted with himself. When she stepped out to adjust his car seat, I saw it happen twice. He holds his hands together as he moves. I tried to get him to walk with his arms out, and he tried it for a few steps.

We're relieved for two reasons. First, obviously, we're glad to see him progress. Also, this kind of movement can only wear him out more and maybe let him sleep through the night. He's almost making it, but he wakes at 4:30 regularly.

I bought more stands for the minicomics to display them in area stores. AREA STORES. I'm just ... I need to lie down.

I have no idea what to get Your Sister for her birthday. I am Mister Bad Husband Person.

Picture of the Day
I'm just gonna tune out the world and focus on my Shasta.

Fanaticon 2: The Fanaticonning

But first this quick note: Some one found my cooking site by Googling "accursed reed richards." Vunderbar.

The convention is now two days behind me, and I'm still smiling. I'm exhausted and sore and reeling, but I'm tickled with the experience. It was much larger than last year, and I think my table location was better. I sold a ton of comics. I made a ton of money. I drew a lot of cards. And I saw lots of costumes. My Flickr set is here.

All the daunting elements were figments. They came and went and left me unscathed.  Loading was easy. Setting up was easy. Turns out that I didn't feel the need to pee until hour eight, and I held out until hour nine when the show was over. I was brought food by a volunteer (pizza and Catwoman respectively). I sold a card before the sho started, and I sold another right before it closed.

To my relief and glee, my sales pitch for eMMA proved irresistible: This is our female robot mixed cage fighter who inadvertently gets her fight league shut down, and she has to get the title back from a gold-medal winning Olympic werewolf wrestler. It got laughs, and it made sales.

Some details:

• Three stores offered to carry my book in their stores, and that's a stunning option I hadn't fully considered. Of course I'll do it. 
• One crazy woman asked me if I would help her do New Yorker-style artwork for a project. I call her crazy because she made a beeline for my open portfolio pages and said flatly "I don't care about comics" before explaining her desire to find an artists. I offered my card, but I'll tell you now there's no fucking way I'm gonna jump in that. She had crazy eyes, crazy hair, and I'm gonna guess crazy knees as well. 
• Two acquaintances from an online forum stopped by.
• People complained of the heat, but I was comfortable behind my table. 
• Your Sister and sidekick visited very shortly as the crowd and heat wore them down.
• Two different parties came up with e genius idea: Instead of drawing a character on a sketch card, why not draw them as heroes. I took pics with my camera and put masks on them. It makes for a good idea for next year. For almost all the cards, I explained that I would draw it up as they wandered a bit and returned a few minutes later. They accepted happily, except for the last customer who asked to sit and watch me draw. She did, and we chatted about Plastic Man as I drew him.
• One of the volunteers brought me a cupcake as the convention wound down. She mentioned her store could carry my comics as I was walking out the door, boxes in my arms. We said bye, and she absent-mindedly told me her name was Emma. I set down the boxes, said "well, in that case ... ," and gave her a copy of eMMA. She was delighted. How better could my day have ended? What more could I ask? (The deputy slept all Saturday night. Flawless victory.)

I'm glad this was a one-day event. If I tried this at, say, Charlotte's three-day party, I'd be dead and gone. But I might consider sharing a table there next year. I might at that. I'm already writing the sequel comic, combining both hero books. It threatens to be huge.

I attended the museum party the night before and immediately regretted not wearing a proper costume. I had a Fantastic Four shirt, and my hair would suggest Mister Fantastic, but no one seemed to put it together. To costumed attendees the next day said they saw me there and identified my costume. I knew nobody and left a little after nine; I promised Your Sister I'd be home by ten. I don't know how the auction went. I'll call the museum later this week to check on my piece. If it didn't sell, do I get it back?

Pictures of the Day
From the Citizen-Times comes a picture of me selling sketch cards to the sons of a friend. The guy in the white shirt is about to buy the monster comic for his grandson. The crowd was that heavy at my table virtually all day.

You can see the convention layout below. My table pops up at 2:56.