No Sale

I saved myself $750 by pushing two buttons.

My phone was acting slow since Hawaii, and I knew the constant photography was a blight upon its soul. Finally the power button didn't respond, and I could only wake up the phone by sliding out the keyboard. I figured the phone was toast.

I went to Best Buy instead of a Verizon store because Your Sister and I have had bad experiences with them in the past year. For me, the salesperson sold me a phone that had not been cleared of the previous customer's contacts and photos. I had to go back and get all that erased, and he offered me a free shell case and screen cover for my trouble. They had to be ordered. I went back after the weekend to get them, and he had forgotten the entire conversation. Your Sister tried to order a new phone and equipment from the local store, and they were understocked and open at erratic hours.

So, yeah, Best Buy. I browsed at some nice phones much fancier than what I have. The one I picked would cost me the full price because Verizon wouldn't let me upgrade until October. I figured the price would be worth it until I drove out of the parking lot and realized I was crazy. I could wait two months. I took the fancy phone back for a refund and reactivated my old phone. That night, I opened the back to look at the battery and found a small note telling me how to rest the phone. I pressed the mute and power button at the same time for ten seconds, and it cranked up. Works just like new.

+  +  + 

We all got together on Saturday for Your Dad's birthday. Your Sister threw the party at a restored train station. It has a few cars and engines open for tours, and it runs a small trolley along a few miles of track. We ate in a refurbished train car, and The Deputy was in heaven. I think Your Dad was too. They both got free shirts, and we may go back to the trolley before winter.

+  +  + 

We're plucking roma and cherry tomatoes from the backyard garden daily. The Deputy and I eat cherry tomatoes after his dinner every night. Somehow we're now growing pumpkins. I didn't plant any. I didn't plant any last year. We had one grow maybe five years back on the other end of the garden, but now we have at least five swelling and turning bright orange. I blame birds for pooping out seeds from other folks. Your Sister thinks they might be from intact seeds from our jack o-lanterns in the compost bin.

+  +  + 

Your Sister started back at school on Monday. She gets students next Monday. Next Friday, we go to DragonCon. My costume is almost ready. She's renting hers from a local place, and she bought a blonde wig. I have about another hour's of work on my outfit, and that should be done this weekend. I'm also wearing my costume's shoes around the house to break them in. Mom will again watch the boy, and he can manage an entire weekend almost by himself. They'll be fine.

Picture of the Day

If you're looking for a new series to catch online, look up Hannibal. It's true horror and gorgeous. It's amazing what they're getting away with on network TV.

This Thing On?

Thought I'd crank this up again to catch you up in the easiest way.

We seem to still recover from the trip. Our sleep cycles are all askew. The boy cannot sleep before 11 pm, making him a rascal for three hours after bath time. Your Sister and I both slept in late over the weekend, which is something we haven't done in months.

I was able to get up fairly early otherwise to run at the school. I thought I would have an easier run on the flat terrain, but I can go faster with a longer stride. I'm really running now, not an uphill shuffle, and I can see some results already. I definitely lost weight during the vacation, and I attribute that to lots of fruit and deputy carrying. I haven't gotten over the pineapple, and I bought two of them in the last week for breakfast and homemade pizza.

The deputy has taken to lying as all kids do, and we're trying to break him of that by taking away toys. It's a phase hopefully. He and his mom got a planet model set for his birthday, and they spent the weekend painting the Styrofoam balls. He likes astronomy, and I link that to the Star Wars planet names.

I'm working on a new draft of my next comic project, something unrelated to the Focus stories. This will be my fourth pass at it, and I hope to have a thick trade's worth of issues ready by March and the Seattle convention. I don't know when I'll get the final word about being approved.

We are three weeks away from DragonCon, and we have almost finished my costume. We have maybe two hours' worth of work on it, and I'll use my lunch break today to look for the proper belt style. I think I'll need to make it with curtain rope and clasps. I bought the shoes last week at the mall. I also discovered no sports store carries my brand of running shoe anymore. I thought about getting running shorts, but they're $30 on clearance. Yeesh.

I was interviewed for a local arts podcast over the weekend, and I'll post a link when I see it. It was about an hour, and it was in Asheville. That gave me a great excuse to stop by Five Guys for supper on the way home.I can't eat from there every week, but God knows I want to.

And I got a call Saturday from my bank saying someone in NJ was trying to use my debit card number. The transaction was denied, and my card was spiked. I am sans card for a week, which is not happy time making.

My Mom was horrified that the deputy ate octopus. She also asked if anywhere in Hawaii sells hamburgers. I told her, by and large, the islands have everything we have and a little extra. She seemed OK with that.

Picture of the Day

The convention is getting closer. My beard is on borrowed time.

The Boy Turned Three

We kept his actually birthday low key because the big events would come later. Also, His Mom was out of town most of the week for an on-campus course at WCU. I gave him some Batman vehicles as he has fallen in love with what he sees of the Batman movies. On Saturday, we met up with the Birmingham clan for Tupelo Honey and pottery painting. It went really well. The girls adore him, and they do a fantastic job watching over him. We can leave him alone with them for a good hour with no worry. 

We met up again Sunday, and My Mom and Her Guy came up to see everyone. We all had lunch in downtown Brevard before going back to our house for a small party. He got some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toys which he'll have to grow into. I gave him some toy vehicles in Mom's name. Cupcakes were eaten. The kids ran around like mad. We went to the college and waded into the creek. He and I stayed home (he hadn't napped at all) while everyone else went back to Asheville for pizza. He slept like a rock.

It all went really well. No friction, no toes stepped on. As good as we could hope for.

Mom and I nailed down some details for the Labor Day trip to Atlanta. As I learned when His Mom was gone, if you stick to the routine, everything is fine. He only melts down when he's exhausted or you don't have a back-up plan for an excursion.

Picture of the Day
nice cover.

Visitors from Afar

A contingent of Danish students and teachers are in town for the fortnight. We hosted the teachers, Inge and Sophie, last week for a dinner. It went right nice. They cooed over Your Nephew something fierce, and he behaved himself very well. They got to see each stage of his entire post-daycare routine, and he hugged them goodbye.

We made a quasi-Thanksgiving  dinner for them: turkey tenderloin, sweet potatoes, and a dressing with cranberries. They loved it. We offered them ciders after we heard one of them was a big fan. Your Sister wanted to make a toast and tried a willkommen. They greeted it with polite smiles. I suggested skoal, and they brightened at that.

They had each been in America before with other student groups, but this was their first time in this area. They had plans for the big tourist spots, and we traded notes on child-rearing. They liked his nursery, and we swapped shopping tips from Target and Ikea. (I've never seen an Ikea.) They were curious about the types of daycare available in the states, and were surprised to hear of the new trend in "sick daycare" where a certified nurse watches sick children when they can't go to daycare.

I told them about our reading plans for him, and they gave deep, happy sighs to the mention of the Little House series. We already have the books in his room. Your Sister will read those to him, and I'll try Harry Potter. I really hope he picks up Encyclopedia Brown. I loved those. Whenever I'm in Barnes & Noble, I confirm they still stock the books.

She and I took turns with his bedtime routine. I suppose she talked teaching styles with them. I mentioned our school trips to Europe. Occasionally, the younger teacher would ask for English words like braid and commute.They took a phone call during the dinner, and I got to hear them talk in their native language for a good ten minutes. It sounded elvish, and, looking at the Tolkein movies, you can see how the Danes may have been incorporated.

I walked them back to the house where they stayed in our neighborhood, and they were worried about bear attacks. I tried to say it was very unlikely so close to town. I think we've had one bear sighting in city limits in the past 10 years. It's far more likely to walk past a deer at night.

We're still open to hosting exchange students when the deputy is older.  We'll let him have a half-vote on the matter. Just to be nice.

We still haven't cracked on one of the dried-food buckets. We might do that during Your Sister's spring break. I was hoping to start my 40-year-old specialist tests with our doctor that week, but she's out of town. I'll have to wait until summer so the deputy can stay at home for my appointment.

Picture of the Day
I seek my people in the stars. SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE HORSEY!

Turns Out That Wasn't Right

No, Your Aunt did not send us 300 pounds of dried food.

She sent us 400 pounds.

Thirteen 30-pound buckets of dried food pouches guaranteed to last 25 years.

It all arrived an hour after our phone call. I'm tempted to open up a pouch and try it. I figure we can offer the rest to the local doomsday preppers.

That Can't Be Right

Did Your Sister really get a call from Your Aunt, saying she was mailing us 300 pounds of dried food?

That ... that can't be what she said.

Good Day

So last week, I was checking my Facebook messages, and I noticed the Other folder had mail in it. FB doesn't tell you it puts messages there from those not yet befriended. I had three. Two were comments on my Commissioner Gordon costume, one dating back to September.

But the third message was from December. And from Australia. A cable-access roller derby show found my Power Jam artwork and asked to use it for their show.


Power Jam Episode 12 from Fans Of Derby on Vimeo.


I said yes and sent them the artwork. They then asked if it could be customized. Seems the Smucker's/Smacker's joke wouldn't fly there. I gave them the fonts to make adjustments, but I warned them that my finished artwork was a photo. I made the label, printed it, glued it to a jar, photographed that, and edited the picture for my t-shirt design. When I tired to edit the Smacker's name on the photo, it looked wonky. They'll try it at their end. I was assured I'd get at least one of each product they made with the artwork. That'll be my payment for the art use.

I don't expect they'll rake in the dough with this. But if there is a demand, I'll make parallel products here and make money off that. Australia, and I can't believe I'm saying this, will be my test market.

+  +  + 

I penciled page 14 of the comic this morning, and it feels like I have momentum again. I need to hustle to give myself breathing space between now and June. It'll be a little tight, but it's feasible.  It looks like I'll be working the big June convention by myself, and that might be the death of me. But I'll die delighted.

+  +  + 

The boy is potty trained. Bribery wins the day. We put him in diapers for naps and overnight. Otherwise, it's Thomas the Tank Engine undies all the way. In other news, I'm fucking tired of Thomas the Tank Engine.

+  +  + 

Your Sister was given Cefdinir, the antibiotic name for a Tolkien character, and an inflammatory for what was diagnosed as a sinus infection. But it doesn't act like one. Still, she's coughed and hacked since Thanksgiving, and this stuff is helping. She's anxious about re-certification, but she would be miserable if she hadn't lost a class to her guidance position.

Picture of What Is This ... Three Months?

Han.

Bribery

We've taken to bribing the deputy to train him.

He stopped feeding himself at home a few weeks back. We had just moved him to the antique high chair from your grandmother and let him eat at the counter or table. When he stopped feeding himself, we threatened to move him back to what we now call the "baby chair." He's become aware of the privileges of the older kids at daycare, and we tell him he has to earn those things. Also, he can lose his current privileges if he backslides. He didn't respond well to the high-chair threat, so I went the other direction. I bought him a ten-pack of cars and told him he could have one each day he feeds himself dinner. That worked immediately. It still takes him way too long to eat, but we cut back his TV distraction to help that.

Your Sister bought an advent calendar, and I called an audible: He would get each day's chocolate if he fed himself. He doesn't automatically get advent candy because it's Christmas. He'll never know. But I moved the car reward to potty training. I set down the bargain each day: If he uses the potty and we have to flush something, he gets a car. Worked like gangbusters last night, and we wants to call himself potty-trained.

The daycare uses M&Ms to train the kids, and I told him I have no problem with this, unlike some parents. He's not getting fat; he runs way too much. Not me, unfortunately, and it's starting to show. I got to get out there again.

He sings pieces of songs, he throws small tantrums, he likes to dive onto furniture. He's a boy.

Picture of the Day
What do you get a jedi for Christmas?

What You Missed at Thanksgiving

In convenient list form!

1) A surprisingly docile nephew. 
He handled the drive just fine. We stopped before we reached the interstate the first time because he spilled half his water on his car seat. We found a convenience store conveniently open and covered his soaked chair in oven baking bags (I suggested a deflated pool raft.). With his books and toys, he was fine to ride for seven hours. We got McDonald's for lunch -- after breaking his heart by finding a playground McDonald's just as it closed -- and got back on the road within a half hour. I like this version of the traveling deputy. He was only troublesome on the drive back when he fought his nap.

2) The closest I've ever seen Your Sister come to telling someone to fuck off.
As we neared dinnertime, the deputy asked for a cookie. Your Sis said no. Immediately, our sis-in-law and her mom petitioned. Protested, really.
"Oh, let him have just oooonnnne cookie."
Your Sis resisted. "He asked me, and I said no."
They kept at it. "Awwwww, just one cooooookieeeeeee. Awwwww."
She got mad. Tight-lip mad. "He asked me."
Now a cookie bit was being put in front of him as they asked again. Your Sis was steaming. The deputy took the bite, and the gals were delighted they could give it to him. Your Sister was livid. Again, never before have I seen her so close to beheading someone.

3) Our sis-in-law threw two tantrums.
She was, as ever, obsessed with documenting the event more than experiencing it. Except, of course, documenting something means you don't compose and arrange. Which she did. Matching clothes, matching pajamas, arranged plateaus of family. When she wanted a picture of the cousins and their parents, she went ballistic when the youngest niece didn't sit exactly right. That girl was immediately lost in silent despair -- the crying so wrenching that the kid can't make a sound -- and our sis-in-law stormed out of the room. She did the same when her mom "ruined" a video of the girls doing a cheerleading routine in front of the football score on the TV. The girls did it four times as she directed them in all minutiae.

She and her mom left for Black Friday shopping with the decree that we keep the deputy awake long enough to take another pic of him and the girls in matching PJs. I said this was feasible as long as she came back in an hour. No problem. But it was. They were gone almost three. I called an audible and took the pictures myself so my guy could get to bed before he fell apart. She complained about the photos. And she chided her eldest because she wasn't sitting like a lady. She's eight. In full PJs.

And she and her mom gave us shit for keeping our guy on a schedule. "Just one more minute!" "Just two more minutes. He can't wait two more minutes?" Nope, we're done. Also they gave us shit for not striving to preserve the Santa illusion. We were both asked what Santa was getting him for Christmas.
I said, "I'm not sure what we're getting him this year."
"You are aware there are kids in the room, right?"
"Yes. And they are screaming their way through a dance game."

They both wanted us too often to concede their points or agree just to be nice. "But don't you think [something something]?" No. "But don't you -- ?" NO. We don't. We'd say so if we did.

We've been polite in the past. We are their guests, and I am a nice guy by default. But fuck that noise. Is this how they win conversations with your brother?

4) The girls were fantastic with their cousin. 
As soon as we arrived, they led him to a playroom. They babysat him throughout the visit. They encouraged his play and investigations. They made sure he played nice and safe. They gave him first turn at new games. I cannot overstate how good they were in this. I would let them watch him anytime. They were great hostesses. I praised them a lot. They earned it, and it seemed sincere and effortless.

5) I never get to talk with your brother as much as I'd like.
We can't find good common ground to provide traction for a conversation. We try. It hasn't happened yet. I'll keep trying.

6) The deputy loves the mango strips.
They're his version of jerky. He chewed and chewed.

7) I dished about Mom's new guy as much as I was comfortable doing.
I didn't mention we're blood relation. I'll leave that to her.

The drive was good. The food was great. The time with Your Parents was good. Your aunt has stumbled into the zionist conspiracy theory without realizing she's parroting anti-semitic horseshit. The drive back was good. The gifts to the deputy were generous, and the wine was necessary. I'm glad we did it. I'm glad we're home.

We're Fine

Our town only got some wind. Asheville has some snow flying around, but it's too warm to stick.

I met the high-school senior Sunday for observation time. We met at a restaurant where her dad works, and we had the place to ourselves. We mostly talked comic inanity (multiple universes, how the marriages of Superman and Spider-Man were magicked away, etc.). I also steered her planned minicomic to more polish, stressing that the grading panel will not care one bit about the content of the comic but will fail her if the product looks sloppy. She was going to show them art on comic boards. I told her she had to hand them a comic, inked and stapled I said she could get 10 copies for relatively little money at any office store. She seemed to take this to heart. We'll meet again in a week or so.

I started planning certain scenes in the 2013 comic, and I really hope I can keep it under 40 pages. 

The carving party went fairly well. The deputy had a very late night and crashed hard after a dinner consisting of crackers and chips. The neighbors are going to dry the habaneros I picked that night. I also yanked up the sweet potatoes, and found our basket weighed 20 pounds when I was done.

Picture of the Day
I don't think the cold will deter too many trick-or-treaters.

Not Much

 Depending on which local handyman you ask, the potential drainage issue at the house will either cost around $3,600 or is no needed at all. The crawlspace continues to collect water, despite the new cover we put down there. One handyman thinks we need to build a drain that circumvent the house and leads water down past the garden (and I'm fine with a drain going into the garden). Another says nope, it's not that bad. We also hired a third handyman to reattach the pipes to the roof the crawlspace. Home ownership.

I have convention crud, and it's no fun.

Despite the cold nights, our bell pepper and habanero plants are asploding with food.

Picture of the Day
He plays the card at dinner every day. He got vampire toys in McDonald's Happy Meals, and suddenly our deputy is dogpiled in vampires. I approve.

Weird Dream

I dreamed you sent us a large bundle and a note. The bundle was filled with these pigeon-sized cassowaries with elaborate kabuki-style faces. Under the tail feathers, the birds had giant bee stingers. Your note explained that the hospital required all doctors to now milk the bird stingers for the medicines they need, and that would mean 100 birds per dose. You decided that was too arduous and decided to quit medicine altogether. The bundle was about 20 of these birds, and they had already clawed and ripped holes in the burlap sack.

So yeah.

Show Within Sight

I went to town yesterday to use the office while the deputy was in daycare. If I kept him at home for Columbus Day, I would have maybe gotten one hour's of work done. I walked through downtown for a lunch break and noticed my column of shirts was no longer in MIA. I asked what happened and was told the store had changed employees, and items were rearranged. They kept up one shirt (the beer shiva). Right before I left, the new employee I talked to found checks for me based on shirt sales, one dating back to April. Apparently, they didn't have my address or email information once the former employees left. But hey, late money is still money. I told them I'd send along some roller derby shirt designs.

Since it's practically next door, I gave my comic sales pitch to Downtown Books and News and was told they could carry my comics under commission. This makes the only store of the three that does that, which is fine; I want the visibility. Now my comics are in downtown Asheville.

Saturday was the airshow, and both mother and child were enthralled. They both got into planes and helicopters as regular airport traffic wooshed behind us. Big doings. The boy thinks we can now do that every day. I might have done the 5k had I run three steps since April.

I'm just about finished with the convention stuff. I found out I'm sitting next to the biggest name of the show (Top Shelf, a publisher), and I've got lots of reference pics for sketch chard commissions. The student will be there as art of her mentoring project, and I'll make her my gopher for lunch.

Picture of the Day
This is what's left of the Hawaiian Ginger. We didn't mean to eat it all at once.We're gonna try the marlin jerky with a meal. This was much too generous, and we shall eat it all.

What A Day

Here's my Tuesday.

1) Got a room at DragonCon 2013. 

The hotels go fast for Atlanta at Labor Day. The convention is maybe one of four events happening that weekend alongside college football, pro baseball, NASCAR, other conventions, etc. Because of this, the seven host hotels only offer a small block of rooms at certain times. Today is Oct. 3. The 2012 convention was exactly a month ago. The Hyatt offered their convention rooms Tuesday morning at ten. They were gone at 10:10. I barely got ours, and I opened up my browser to the reservation page 15 minutes early. The only downtown hotel left is the Marriott; the other host hotels have sold out their rooms since the convention ended.

2) Took my comic to the printer. 

And by "printer," I mean OfficeMax. I gave them my PDFs and the eMMA comic to use as a template and ordered 100 copies. That's an optimistic total, but I will probably sell some through the rollergirls. I had no idea how tension the delivery would dispel until a few hours later. Now I'm suddenly exhausted.

3) I got the freelance gig.

I found out a few minutes ago when they emailed to offer final plans and a check. I asked if we could meet earlier than usual on Saturday; we want to catch the airshow at the regional airport.

4) I kinda-sorta clobbered your mom via email.

Last week she forwarded an email about the murdered Libyan ambassador that included a screed against the president. I didn't reply. I treated it like the similar emails I got from your dad (except for the few I did reply to and was met with silence). She complained to Your Sister that I didn't reply. So I did. I tore it apart. I showed how Google and FOX News searches belied all the comments from that email. She replied by saying she didn't read any of the original text and only wanted me to see the dead ambassador and think about the deputy. I don't believe that. I think she was struck that the sage rhetoric of her friends may be the shit of horses.

Picture of the Day
Nifty.

The Rest of Saturday

In addition to the last post's doings, these also occured:

1) I had a meeting with a local business about a freelance gig.
They want to make a somewhat caricatured map of the town and county based on those made in Hendersonville and Asheville. The company that makes them wants too much money, and these local folks decided to find a local guy. I was recommended. I met with the company two weekends to get details. Between that interview and the one this weekend, I made a sample map using Google Street View. They seemed to like what I made, but they want to show the sample to their shadow partner (my bet: a local realtor). We also talked turkey about pay this weekend. I cited a flat rate. They balked, citing the estimate from another artist, and I underbid him to get the "contract." It's still early, but they have my quote and sample. They want to print by March to get the spring tourists, but I fed them some ideas that might affect that time table: Are all the buildings going to face the streets; we'd only see the front of half the buildings; and why not make a map inset for fall attractions?

In a bit of second-guessing paranoia, I wondered if they had manipulated the meetings to take my artistic temperature. In both meetings, a rescue dog was bouncing off the walls. Was that to measure my temperament? Was the estimate from the other artist a bluff to get me to underbid? Even so, that second point doesn't matter. My original bid was a lottery-ticket amount. The second number I gave them, slightly more than half the original, is still a respectable chunka change.

Looks like I won't get to work on the map until after the minicomic is all done. That's handy.

2) I might mentor another student about comics.
I got an email from a high-school student from another county asking if I'd help her with the senior project on American comics. I asked for the mentor paperwork from the school and got them from the school yesterday. We would have to meet for a total of 15 hours minimum. That's hefty. She wants to make a five-page comic as her final project product, and our 15 hours could involve that creation. But the travel is a sticking point. Unless she has her own car, she's gonna be dependent on others, and I got bit by that with the last kid. I don't want that disastrous mentorship to prejudice her project, but the time requirement and the necessary travel work against her.

I presume she found me via the ad in the roller derby programs. I'm going to email her teacher for clarifications.

Picture of the Day
This is my common sense tell my art brain to stop with the new gigs already.

Meeting the Man

Last weekend, My Mom called to ask if we could meet her and her new best friend for lunch on Saturday. She and her running buddy have been tighter than twins for a few months now after reuniting accidentally in the grocery store. They knew each other as kids, grew up near each other, but were kept apart by their parents. She married. He married. The marriages ended, and they now have no reason to not be together. It's a sweet story. Mom has used the term "soulmate" often when describing him.

She's never home anymore, and you can only get a hold of her via cell phone because she's either at his place or zooming about the state in his motorhome. They're living the life of convenient Bohemia -- retired, flush with cash, aging but still vital. After eating at McDonald's, Mom sat me down to explain their relationship: They agreed not to get married, but they are an item. What's hers will become mine, what's his will go to his sons, but they are acquiring things together as they be-bop to caravan sites. They are committed.

I have no problem with any of this. I wanted Mom to avoid the life of a recluse, and after a period of mourning, she has. She fixed up the house. She put in a pool. She changed up the yard for her convenience. She found people to socialize with. There were other pseudo-beaus before this gentleman came back into her life, and now she's the opposite of a recluse. She spends as much time at her house as I did in college (read: desperately minimal).

There are two small speed bumps that hinder my full embrace of the sitch-iation:

1) They're first cousins.
Now as I understand such things, first cousins are kept apart for fear of their offspring having four heads and hooves. Since we're talking about a couple in their later, later years, this won't be an issue. Socially, it might be. My Mom always stayed close to her mother's family, and her relatives from Pop and Granny are everywhere in the state. I was taught in third grade by a cousin through Mom. Down the hall in that school worked another cousin through Mom. My Mom constantly pestered me with the family histories of my pathetically few girlfriends for fear that I was accidentally dating in the bloodline.

I have some concern about how public their relationship might be, how well it would be received by the surviving family. Would she bring him to the family reunions we usually attend? Even if people don't know him, it's pretty obvious that he's family. He has her mother's face, and her brother's nose. It's shocking to see, which I did for the first time Saturday.

2) She kinda slammed Dad.
When Mom was delineating their relationship to me, she said she was so much happier now than she was with Dad because "something was missing." I imagine that something was intent. They didn't plan to marry. They were forced to. And they had nothing. Dad worked two jobs to support them and build up enough money to buy a house. He went to night school to get better jobs. He was a mensch about sudden fatherhood and husbandhood. He provided. And my memory of their marriage is that Mom was always angry about the up-knocking and being stuck with Dad (not her dream man) and me, the perpetually ailing urchin. She grew up around (and is now sparking) Good Ole Boys, but her husband and child were not of that ilk. Makes me a mite defensive about her reservations toward Dad. He worked hard for them. He worked hard to earn the family trust and love. Remember: This was his second family, his second shotgun wedding, and his near-child bride was a party girl suddenly made domestic.

The Saturday meal went great. Her Guy/My Cousin bought The Deputy his first milkshake, and it was devoured. He slipped the deputy a $10 bill, which I plan to tuck into his piggy bank. He was generous, conversant, and polite. He and Mom clearly are thick as thieves. Personally, I have no qualms with him. He made a good impression. As I told Mom a while back, I'm owed nothing regarding the details of her choices and company. I consider her beaus the same way I consider yours: As long as the women are happy and treated well, I have no gripes. Mom and he were on a day trip to the mountains, but they've gone to the beach and other mountain sites for days on end. She's out and about. She's happy. I shall have no gripes.

She hinted she wants to stay home for Thanksgiving, and I told her there will be no stigma if she chooses not to go to Birmingham. It's a long drive with a toddler in a short amount of time. I don't begrudge her happiness in this or her new relationship.

Picture of the Day
Really not used to the new look, but Your Sister loves it.

Take a Deep Breath. Both of Us.

Since becoming a father (still a weird phrase to type), I've become much more sensitive to depictions of scenes of child abandonment or harm. I just heard a mid-century radio show about a stern space captain remembering how he didn't spend enough time with his son, you know ... the Cat's in the Cradle song 20 years before it was written, and I'm now swimming in vicarious regret.

Like I don't have enough that I've earned. I lose my temper with him, and yesterday was a bad deputy day. I fear we've made him overly reliant on routine, and any deviation from that gets him flustered. We fall too easily into routine, and it trickles down to him. When we veer, he resists. We've gotten him hooked on mealtime viewings of a BBC documentary, and the adults, at least, are getting sick of it. We're hoping to broaden his attention span with Sesame Street and Thomas the Tank Engine. He's good with normal TV material if it includes cars or water. Or ducks. If it has animals, he's very OK with it. He doesn't even realize Mister Lion is eating Baby Goat. We tell him they're playing rough, and please don't do that on the playground at school. Although the idea of the deputy stalking prey before lunch is something I'd pay to see.

Anyway, yesterday, we went walking in the woody areas where Hunger Games was filmed. The foot traffic there has picked up considerably, so much that locals complain about the potential damage done by tourists. That suggests there's a tourist ceiling not considered before as we fleeced them for roadside vittles and sports gear. He didn't handle the change of schedule so well.

We're trying to instill the concept of behaving, the idea that he needs to listen to us steer him away from what he really really really wants right now. It helps to trade off. If we can offer him something else he's previously enjoyed, he sometimes latches onto that, and the crisis is averted. Other times though, he stubbornly refuses everything -- even the very bauble he wanted a second ago -- throwing himself out with the bath water. We try to summon him back from the event horizon into that black hole of anger. Sometimes we can't. And sometimes I get pulled into that gravity well too. It's a learning process for us all.

But he has no problem sharing and welcoming new people to a group. He's good with his age range. That's a relief.

Picture of the Day
Like this guest star on M*A*S*H, I'm considering fake facial hair until my natural masculinity grows back.

DragonCon 2012

Pat Loika photo

You never know how a costume will come together.

We were maybe 15 minutes out of Atlanta in 2011, fresh from DragonCon, driving back home to fetch our deputy when we batted around costume ideas for 2012. This is me last year, on the left.

Amid the brainstorming she said "I could be Batgirl." And I said "hey, that lady in Target one time thought I was Gary Oldman. I could be Gordon." Yeah, we said. Let's do that. And we came up with a handful of other names as we zoomed back home.

(The Target story is this: About five years ago, I stood outside a Target dressing room as the missus changed clothes. The dressing room attendant yelled "I love your movies!" in my direction. I ignored it. She said it again, and I turned. She sheepishly apologized and said she thought I was Gary Oldman. I smiled and said I wasn't, which was probably obvious the first word I said. A few months later, a friend saw my drivers license and said "My God, it's Gary Oldman." And when watching certain movies, I'd see the resemblance -- The Professional and Lost in Space -- but I wouldn't have thought of it except for their comments.)

Months later, after we had nailed down our hotel and membership for the 2012 show, I asked her about our costume ideas. "Aren't we doing Batgirl and Gordon?" she asked. "Well, sure. Right. Let's do that."

I had it easy. I owned a black suit. I could get props through Amazon, and I bought a cheap blue dress shirt from the mall. That was pretty much it. She had to find an affordable Batgirl suit and order it, hoping it would be the right size, and make the mask work with her glasses and get decent boots and better gloves and adjust the cape, and it was one damn thing after another.

All I had to do was shave. Not that it was guaranteed to work. I put on my outfit the Thursday before, and I still had to imagine the face. I was glad to have made an ID badge just in case.

Turns out I kinda didn't need it a lot. Saturday morning, I shaved and put on the outfit, and the missus was floored. I thought she was being nice until I walked past a mirror. Yeah, I thought. This will work. And off we went to the parade. You can see my Flickr set here.

We had arrived Friday night, checked in, picked up our badges, and stopped for Mediterranean food for supper. We sat outside and watched costumes drift by for an hour (when we weren't watching the belly dancer, of course). We went back to the hotel room so she could fix her mask. We called it a night.

The weather was perfect for the Saturday parade, and so were the crowds. But the Batgirl boots killed her feet, and she had to ditch the costume. That done, we ate at Pitty Pat's Porch (best chicken in Atlanta) before diving into the convention. And everyone was wonderful.

The Gordon costume went over like crazy. People also reacted to Gary Oldman. We would talk about what a great actor he is, and all the other costumes I could do from his work. Some already had; I saw an Oldman Dracula and his villain from Fifth Element. Women asked to hug me (a first). People would stop me to ask about Oldman and then see the badge and realize I was dressed as Gordon. Many was the time I would hear people I just passed realize what my costume was. The rule was about five steps: Say hello, pass by, take five steps, and hear "That was Gordon." I'd turn to say hi, and that would usually end up with photos.

I made sure to approach all the Batpeople to get pictures with them. There were a great number of Batman and Banes and villains, and we got out pictures and complimented each other and had a grand Bat-time. I walked up to one group of Batvillains, and they froze for a second before screaming nonstop for a minute.

The missus crashed for an afternoon nap, and I went back out to the crowds. I went back to buy her supper at the Hyatt, and we charged into the Marriott to mingle and photograph. I walked her back around 9:30 and told her I'd be back before too long. I'd try not to wake her up. I needn't worry because she's out like a light that late. How late? 3 a.m., and I'd only quit the party because my eyes were going numb from the contacts. I didn't sleep for a long time though. I was drunk from convention camaraderie.

I got many great pictures, and there are lots more of me floating out there. But this is my favorite so far. 

 

So what do for next year? Let me think about that for a while.

The Call of the Colas

I haven't had a Coke or Sprite or any soda since I got back from Atlanta two weeks ago. There are days, like last night, where I crave it. Where the Sprite can sings to me from behind giant jagged rocks. I was dragging, and I dearly wanted the magic sugar syrup. I was good. I rebuked it. But I can still taste it.

The deputy is mesmerized by a piece of the Planet Earth documentary series: A family of ibex butt heads on a  rocky mountainside. He asks for it constantly, and it keeps him in a low gear during meals. I can't count how many times we've seen it, and I don't mind. There's no singing or morals. We've underscored how the headbutting is not something we do by telling him "goats play rough." And that's how he asks for it  -- "want see goats play rough." But he hasn't yet charged another daycare child to establish his alpha status.

We're a week away from going back to Atlanta. Your Sister is just about done with her costume, as am I. She got her boots a few days ago, and my suits come back from the cleaners today. A few tweaks here and there, and we're all set. My Mom will watch the deputy for a few days, and we'll be back in time to have a languorous Labor Day.

I just started inking the October comic, and I'll pimp it tomorrow online, the same day the ad runs in the roller derby program. We're also tailgating tomorrow with friends as a late birthday party for mememe. I also just emailed Malaprop's about them possibly carrying my comics. That would be quite a coup.

The garden has produced giant zucchini and armloads of tomatoes. It's starting to fade, and we'll need to decide what cold crops to try this year. Our habaneros are deadly unless they're smothered in cheese on a homemade pizza.

Picture of the Day
Behind the scenes on Kill Bill.

Breathing Easy

We have a new air system now. The installation took two teams: One crew to deliver and connect the new system to the existing duct work (now scoured clean), and another to hook it up to a new thermostat. Your Sister made it all happen, mostly because she was home to coordinate the companies. We hired the same restoration company that cleaned up after the water heater collapsed, and they cleaned out the crawlspace. The air company came in just within the last few days. They're not done; they have to apply the finishing touches and test the repaired system. The new system is strangely quiet, so much so that I suspect it's failed, before I feel the cold air circulate.

I turned 40 yesterday. It doesn't feel like the cold hand of death that I expected. I've been in the ages that orbit the big 40, moon-hopping closer to the number each year, that it;s a relief to get here. Ages 38 and 39 are just precursors. It feels like this is the first birthday I've had in a few years, and my brain no longer has that glee of a day that's mine all mine. I mean, I have that virtually every day now. I'm 40, and I make comics. I can run a few miles at a moment's notice. I'm attending a local comic workshop this weekend, I'm gonna have a roller derby party the following weekend, and the big costume party in Atlanta is the weekend after that. Things is good.

School started Monday, and Your Sister is back to the salt mine. This is the first year of a Google laptop distribution program by the district. Every student gets a Google Chromebook. Some parents won't sign off on them, so their kids have to leave them at school, even if it might be needed for homework. Do the parents think the kids have new access to online horrors? Probably. I knew kids who couldn't watch the sex-ed films in middle school and had to sit in the hall for almost the entire science class that day. The local pawn shops have been alerted to the new laptops, and they agreed to rat out anyone bringing them in.

One of the freshman parents informed Your Sister that all academia is now devoted to feminizing boys through cherry-picked literature which makes all men look bad. She also said everything in the Obama autobiography (used by her to illustrate rhetorical flourish) is a lie. Her son, by the by, is the only boy in that class. I've heard that anti-boy argument before, usually from wannabe pundits shilling their books on right-wing radio. Why are boys outnumbered in colleges these days? Because they're victimized by literature, and the entire feminist philosophy is to blame. It's not too far away from the same accusations about white students being shunned through affirmative action. White guys got it bad, I hear. Usually from very rich white guys with book and TV deals who dropped out of college.

My comic is moving along. I lost a week to the work convention, but I feel like I'm making headway regardless because this issue is so short compared to the last one. This one will be fully half as long. I might be able to start inking Sunday. The comic debuts in the middle of October for the new local convention. I'm advertising it in the August rollerderby program and again in September. The image I posted on FB and Twitter over the weekend is my comic's derby team logo. I'll tease more art as the convention nears.

Picture of the Day
Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno from the CBS Incredible Hulk TV show.