Good news

So, after much deliberation and consideration, I went back to the metro and asked if I could work there. My friends Kim and Jeff were amazing and not only got me rehired but did it quickly too. I'll be on the schedule that starts this Friday!

The pay isn't fabulous but it's not much lower than nintendo and the work environment and management are about 10 billion billion billion times better. So I am very pleased and Angela is really happy as well.

I went in on Sunday to fill out some paperwork and I spent like 3 hours there chatting with old friends and new people too. It was really fun.

I have some pictures to post that we took at the blowing sands gallery this weekend. We dropped in there with Anita and Jim. They both seemed to enjoy the show. Jim became our official first customer of The Jerks too! He bought one of the collections of the first twelve comics that I made for the gallery. You can see the cover, and order one if you want, here.

Anyway, I can't find the cable to get the pictures off my phone at the moment so I'll edit this post and add them tonight or tomorrow after I find that darn thing.

--Abe

Two birds on a wire

I didn't get a chance to post earlier because I had to go to the dentist for a cleaning today. My teeth hurt. Anyways, this Friday I actually did some digital painting. Very fun. Here it is, a short comic inspired by the song Two Birds on a Wire by Regina Spektor on the CD Far. This may be made into a print at some point once we figure out how. Sound good?

Here's a link to a better one.

I also have the plain black and white version up there.

I hate titles

So, I found this article on the naked capitalism blog and I think that everyone should read it.

It blows my mind that the sheriffs office just goes and sets up an auction for whatever house the banks tell them to without checking to see if the bank that makes the request is even the issuer of the mortgage for the house, or that the name on the notice even matches the name of the owner in the county records.

The Jerks comic is coming along quite well. I'm really pleased with it. Angela's art is just getting better and better. And my stories, which began with poop and vomit jokes, are actually moving toward less potty humor which you'll see in a few weeks.

I re-started playing WoW last week after Angela and I spent an hour being nostalgic about it. My favorite feature of the game now is the random dungeon finder. It usually doesn't take more than about 15 minutes and most of the groups have been excellent; friendly people, competent playing, willing to work with the strengths and weaknesses of the group members. It's also really nice that I can play for an hour or two and actually *DO* something in that time. EQ2 has gotten to the point where it takes hours and hours to get anything done and I always logout feeling like I wasted my time.

Wow, I got distracted by webcomics there, stopped mid-sentence and just came back after like 45 minutes.

--Abe

Happy friday

So http://the-jerks.com/ now has eight comics posted. I'm really excited about how it's coming along. Angela's made great strides on the art in the last few weeks so we've got comics that look even better than the ones that are up now. So keep checking back there's some good stuff coming in the next few weeks.

We checked out the collected Iron Man comics volume one from the library last weekend and I read a few chapters of it this week. Wow. It's not even veiled, it's straight up cold war propaganda. The movies are actually way tamer in this regard. The writing is also *terrible* like it was written in five minutes with no editing on the back of a napkin or something. The art is pretty good though. It's my favorite part by far.

I submitted a short story to the Aeon Award competition this week. First prize is 1000 euros so wish me luck!

--Abe

Abe's my etsy fiend.

So Abe is posting needles on Etsy for me because I can't be bothered. I am so busy doing other things that I don't have the 30 to 45 minutes or so it takes to do the photo shoot and all the data entry. Buh. Today he posted these funny spades needles.

We got our second comment on the comic, but it seems to have been spam. :'( After next week, I am not sure if I will continue to post comic updates on my Facebook page because I don't think anyone cares. We'll see. Maybe I can annoy them all into looking. It is weird to send the notice out to people who I haven't seen since high school, but whatever. I hear about their nights out drinking or their days out running.

I started posting The Jerks comics to DeviantArt. Though I will just post the previous week's comics there on Tuesday instead of the same day.

The porkchop dinner didn't turn out as well the second night light it does with the Cream of Mushroom soup. Oh well. It was still good. Surprise surprise, the french cook book food doesn't lend itself well to the microwave.

This weekend, I watched Delgo. I liked it more than Abe. It was a nice-to-look-at movie, for sure. Not the best, but interesting enough. It was just a plain classic story, but it was also a Family PG movie, so I didn't expect much. Actually, the concept art they showed throughout the credits was far more amazing than the art in the movie. I wish the movie had been done in the style of the concept art, which was gorgeous. From the concept art, it looks like there could have been more interesting detail in the movie, too, but for a Family movie, they have to keep it short. Weird voice cast, though. Freddie Prince Jr, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Eric Idol, Val Kilmer, Malcolm McDowell, many other weird ones.

I got an email from Amazon today about a book that comes out June 29, Knitting MochiMochi by Anna Hrachovec. Wow. I must admit I am excited for that book. Cute Cute stuff. On Ravelry, she has a bunch of cute patterns, like bats whose wings close shut with a button so you can hang them from the ceiling, baby alligators, pigeons that can actually perch on things, a resistor and a capacitor, "dust bunnies," a bath tub with bubbles, a toilet paper roll, and so much more. She also did woodins ("a tiny apparition that lives in fallen trees and is characterized by its asymmetrical ears and leaf tail"), which is a cute pattern from Knitty.

Friday!

So, we voted Nisa the jerks of the week because she ate some huge turd on our walk and Angela had to dig it out of her mouth. It was gross. Then, she climbed up on the table and ate all of the cats food. So I pushed the chairs in as far as they would go and later I caught her pushing one of the chairs out!

We've posted two comics on http://the-jerks.com/ this week. Our schedule is Tuesdays and Thursdays. It look like we had about 3K hits since Tuesday morning which is pretty good. Hopefully that will get a lot bigger over the next six months or so.

I've been busy all day and I have a lot to do still so this one is short.

--Abe

The Jerks is a live web comic!

Woot. So the comic is up: the-jerks.com. Every Tuesday, Thursday, barring Abe forgetting. We have about a month of backlog. I haven't really worked on much else, drawing wise. I do have these sketches I did during breaks at work.

Abe has been looking over the views on the-jerks.com and they are coming from all over the world. But mostly between 9 and 5 on the server time. Weird, right?

We did go see Iron Man 2 last weekend. That was actually a really fun movie and I have no idea why it got such bad reviews. I thought it was really fun and completely in the same vein as the first one. It was so loud though. Almost too loud for me to hear, but not quite, if you know what I mean. I am so glad we saw it in theaters. Maybe the bad reviews were from "traditionalist" Iron Man fans, but I know nothing about Iron Man except these movies. Abe and I were talking about it and we can't think of any good way to follow all the "canon" from the comics. They are going to draw in people with no knowledge of background so everything is new. If they just tried to take an existing comic and make that into a movie, it wouldn't translate well because the comics tend to assume a basic amount of knowledge (usually it seems to me). I like the approach they have taken where they make a story based on existing pieces of story. It is a new story based on old story. That way it is new to the newbies and the old fans. Old fans get to see live action pieces of the story they love but in new context. I could just be talking out my butt, but I like how they are doing them.

I have been watching Ten Ton Studios sketch challenge and their challenge this week is what a superhero of supervillain of your choice would look like from a different era. There are already some really good ones. I might do the drawing, but I don't know if I will enter. Can you say lazy? Scanning sucks. I dream of one day owning a scanner large enough to scan in one shot a 9x12 piece of paper. Ooh. That is about an inch or half an inch larger in width and length than my current one. Annoying, right? I have no idea what superhero I would draw or what era to move them too. Abe had a good idea that I will try though. If I can get it done in time, maybe I will post it. I only have to give it away if the winner likes mine enough and that is a bit of an honor.

I know I had an epiphany about the Water Lady story, but I haven't been able to bring myself to draw any character sketches yet. I really need to get on that. In my defense, I have been working on The Jerks and trying to focus on that. Though I guess sometimes I get distracted by drawing a picture for the circus story, which doesn't even have a story line yet.

This past Friday, I got my May Rockin' Sock Club kit in the mail. I am doing the Ada Lovelace sock. It came with a nice green Spirits yarn, which means it is barely colored at all, but I think it is lovely. The pattern is sort of steam-punk according to the description from the designer. It has a mix of lace and cables, which I just love. In fact, that is used on my spats. I think I should make some of those spats and sell them on Etsy. And some of my gloves. Today, I will get Abe to start posting items on Etsy. I have a fair number of items ready to post, but they need pictures and stuff and Abe can post them. Anyways, back to the new sock kit, I started Friday night and am currently working on the heel flap of the first sock. So I am about a quarter done. This cuff looks kind of short, but complicated, so it is hard to gauge. I am working on this instead of my mom's sweater. Bad Angela. But my plan is to work complete the first sock, complete the second sleeve of mom's cardigan, complete the second sock, and then complete the right front of mom's cardigan. Then I will basically be done with both. But not really, because then on the sweater, I have to block it, sew it, and knit the button band stuff. Which shouldn't take too long. And I can't finish that until mom gets me the buttons so I know how big, where, and how many button holes to make.

Stumptown

We went to Stumptown this weekend. It was awesome.

Google maps estimated it would take us 4 hours to drive to Portland. Angela totally freaked out cause I'd told her it would take like 3 hours. We left at 6:45 and got there at 9:45 :-) I'm pretty sure the estimate was assuming traffic and there was none.

We walked through the booths on the main floor but neither of us particularly enjoys large crowds of people so we went straight to the seminar things that we were really interested in. We saw one about digital painting which was primarily for Angela but I found it to be fascinating. Then we went to one on copyright and IP law. It was long, like 2 hours, but very interesting as well. Next up was one on story telling without words that turned out to be a dud. It was more like a low quality free college class than a seminar. We left early. Last up was Self Publishing like a Rock Star which was both funny and interesting.

Then we spent all day Sunday sitting around the house recovering :-)

For the next few weeks I'll probably be the only one posting because Angela is heading to Lake Quinault for a much deserved and greatly needed vacation.

--Abe

Volcano pics

Check these out! Straight from Iceland. Those pictures are just amazing.

We're headed to Stumptown this weekend. Going to drive down to Portland in the morning and drive back that night. It's going to be a really long day but should be a lot of fun too.

I've been working on one of my stories a lot lately. I'm super happy with how it's coming along. So happy that I want to talk about it and tell everyone about it but instead I'm going to just get back to work on it. You all can read it when I'm done :-)

I thought that this interactive chart was very interesting. You don't often see this type of unemployment data broken down by metro area. According to that chart the number of people employed in the Seattle area has decreased an average of 4.63% per month for the last three months. That's just scary.

--Abe

Dino-Vamp - now in color

Fun weekend. We went to this month's Cartoonists Northwest meeting. They are very nice. The lead lady even recognized us from last month. This month, we listened to Michael Foster, who does a comic called "Larry's Cafe." It is fun and inspiring to hear about other people who are doing art.

I have been watching Arrested Development on the weekends, since I finished Law and Order: Criminal Intent. That show is really funny. I have been having a hard time drawing the last week, but I did draw The Creeper this weekend, which was last week's challenge on Ten Ton Studios. I think he turned out OK. Could be better, but that will just happen with practice. What I have been trying to get the energy to do for the last week is start the thumbnails of the Gardner story. We have most of a script. And I basically know how the ending goes. There are a few frames I know almost exactly what I hope they will look like. I need to do character sketches (a lot) of the two main characters.

Finally, here is a color version of the Dino-Vamp cartoon. This is my first real color job in Photoshop, so please forgive.

So this weekend, I also watched Superman Doomsday. I thought it was weird how much he tore up the city when it was completely unnecessary and in a real situation, some of his fighting tactics, like throwing a bad guy through a building so the whole thing collapses (at the end of a work day) would have killed a heck of a lot of people. At one point, he even has the option to move the fight to outside the city and brings it right back to the center. One thing though, I loved was how they animated Superman taking off for flight. I think that is exactly what it would look like and it was so graceful. Make me want to be able to fly. :)

I also watched The Devil's Own. That was pretty good. Not much to say about it though. The description on Netflix is terrible. Has hardly anything to do with the actual story.

And I watched The Sasquatch Gang, which was pretty funny. It has a very similar feel to Napoleon Dynamite, which makes sense, since it is the same director.

And finally, (this is actually in reverse order) I watched School Ties with a young Brendan Frasier and Matt Damon. Matt Damon was not famous at the time and had a main role, but not the biggest role. I liked it, actually. I really like Brendan Frasier. He is usually really funny. This was not funny, but I think he did the part really well. I think he probably could have been a more serious actor if he wanted to, but he really seems to like making dumb comedies, which is not a bad thing in my opinion.

Here are some comics I found recently:

• The Intrepid GirlBot - So far, I like it a lot. It is very cute. Along the lines of Abominable Charles Christopher, it seems to me. Just in orange instead of blue and a girl bot instead of an abominable snowman.
• Gunnerkrigg Court - I love this one. I think it is in print too, but I have to save my money, so I can only read it online for now. Though perhaps I will buy a commission or something. I might start doing that. I was thinking of starting a collection of different characters knitting. :)
• Love me nice - Hilarious. What a funny idea for a comic.
• Heropotamus - I haven't read too far in this, just the new posts for a week or two, but it seems pretty funny. Light hearted. So far.

Don't these look like fun?! Too pricey for me right now, but maybe some time in the future.

'Cause all vampires wear capes

I drew this from this comic from Hijinks Ensue. This is the DinoVamp combo. All he wanted was a little elephant blood to go with his awesome cape and look what happens.

This took two evenings. Probably 4 hours or less. Also, the first drawing I have done on bristol board and the first one I have inked directly over my pencils. I had to look up a T-Rex online because I only new the most generic sense of what they look like.

This is on the Bristol board for comics with the non-reproducible blue lines at the edges, that I didn't really follow because I am a spaz. And I used my new Davinci #2 round brush. Which I absolutely love. Really my favorite brand so far.

Cartoonists Northwest and stuff

We went to the Cartoonists Northwest meeting this past Saturday. It was a lot of fun. More fun than I expected it to be. We had a blast.

starheadboy gave a presentation about "street art". It was very educational. His love of his art and his playfulness was pretty inspiring.

I started reading book 4 of The Dark Tower series a few days ago. I know that "real" writers look down on Stephen King but I seriously think that 99.999% of that is just sour grapes. He's a great story teller and I'm thoroughly enjoying this particular story.

Also, apparently, there's some sort of flash game that's based on the series on his website called Discordia. It does warn you not to play until you've read the books though so I can't tell you more than I have about it.

--Abe

The monday post that wasn't

I forgot to post on Monday so I'll try to make up for it today :-)

ECCC was super fun. The part where we wandered around on the show floor surrounded by thousands of sweaty stank ass dorks was not so great but the little conference things we went to were awesome. Whil Wheaton, er, Will Weaton, was very funny.

I've been playing Torchlight pretty obsessively for the last few days. It's a profoundly simple game but it's a lot of fun. It's sort of the Quake 3 of dungeon crawlers. Like Quake 3, Torchlight is a stripped down, bare bones, just the essentials sort of game. Both take the less-is-more approach to pinnacles of excellence.

Or I might just be really easily impressed.

I'm reading Breaking Dawn right now. It's a guilty pleasure. Actually, the first two books were guilty pleasures the last two are like a clinically obese dude in a muumuu walking out of a krispy kreme with 4 dozen donuts and a 72 oz coffee.

I'm like 100 pages in to the book and there's been exactly one plot point so far and when it came, I laughed out loud. So, yeah, my goal is to get it done by Friday so Angela can read it before it goes back to the library.

We'll be having the exorcism for the house on Monday, black tie, byob, no pets, no muumuu's.

I wanted to post this video because Glen Beck is such a slimy douche and it's just fantastic to see John Stewart skewer him. Enjoy :-)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Sour Gropes
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

--Abe

Oh Oh I had to add this one because, A) It's awesome B) It's Terrifying

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Rebecca Skloot
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care reform

Goblins and ECCC

Here are some colors of some drawings. Neither of these were in photoshop. The first one is a water color version, which I think I prefer. I did it on printer paper though, so it bled a lot. I fixed that in photoshop.

Second, we have the color pencil version. I think I would use the color pencil to choose the colors I want and then do the water color for the final piece. I am not sure if I should do the water color on the same piece as the original ink or print it and then water color it. If I do that, I would certainly need to use different paper in the printer, I just don't know what.

I have also inked a lot more. But all stuff that isn't mine. I did one of the pages from the Art of Comic Book Inking. Such a good book. And I did Wonder Woman by JMan-3H. That was a blast to ink. Took forever with all that detail though. And I inked Batman - Dynamic Trio by cinar. Very fun. Also took a very long time. I started that Batman one when we got back from ComiCon. I was too tired to do anything else. I am still tired. The combination of daylight's savings and a day surrounded by that many people really has me worn out. I wish I had taken Monday off instead of a half day Friday. I took a half day on Friday because I was so freakin' tired from learning to sleep with a night guard. It didn't help right away (still had the nerve pain in my neck or whatever it was), but it seems to be gone now. I just need to wait and see if it comes back.

Anyways, I am working on a new story by Abe. I have the guys head down well, but his body. Arg. I need to practice that. It is really fun to work on though. I hope to have the whole thing done and printed in a tiny chap book by Stumptown Comic Fest. I think we are going to that in April. Sounds like a lot of fun.

Speaking of, ECCC was a lot of fun. We started by looking at the exhibit hall. Meh. We looked for Skottie Young and Ben Templesmith. Found Ben Templesmith, and Skottie Young (deviantart) was supposed to be next to him. Turns out Skottie Young's flight was canceled and there were no others from that airport. Maybe next year. :'( Then we went the Wil Wheaton Awesome Hour, which was pretty awesome. He read from some of his books and took about 7 minutes of questions at the end. Idiot Abe didn't get a picture of him because we were too far away. Then we stayed (same room) for Leonard Nimoy, which was awesome. I liked that one more than Abe did. He seems like a really cool guy. Passionate and thoughtful. And just the best voice ever. He liked the new Star Trek movie, which is good, since he was in it... And you know what? There were more people for Wil Wheaton the for Leonard Nimoy. Crazy, right?

Then we ran downstairs for the Image panel. I thought they would go over taking submissions, but instead it was a review of their upcoming projects and then a Q&A. Which was still a good time. Ben Templesmith was on the panel. When the first Choker collected book comes out, I think we will get it. The ECCC special cover of the single comic book was $10. Abe absolutely refused to get that.

Then we spent some time being annoyed and wandering around the booths. I was thinking of buying some Wormwood Gentleman Corpse and getting Ben Templesmith to sign them, but there was too much noise and too many people to allow for adequate thinking so we gave up after wandering around with scowls on our faces and went to the room the next panel we wanted to see was. Turned out to be the Oni Press one where they review what they have coming out and they also sound like a good company. So Abe ran out and bought the first Ghost Projekt.

The final panel was Art Techniques with Todd McFarlane, who was running the meeting using GoToMeeting and he was on the phone which they put up to the mic. That was interesting. He sounds very passionate, so that was fun. Couldn't hear him when he got a little too excited. At one point, his screen froze on our end and his editor was trying to get him to stop talking. He said "Todd" no less than 20 times before Todd actually stopped talking and found out our screen wasn't following his anymore. I was hoping the panel would be more on the tools and less on drawing, but I did finally get the face ratios I was wanting so now I don't have to go to the Face class for $99. Then we went home. And zonked out. Man I was tired. I watched some netflix and inked that batman. I think I might have knit for a bit too. I was pretty tired, so I don't really remember.

And speaking of the face class, which is by Nils Osmar, I found some other classes I really want to take from him this summer: Drawing in pen, brush & ink, and How to make money as an artist. I would like to take How to draw clothing too. Sucks though because The ink one is on a Wednesday, the clothes ones is the next day on Thursday. I would be so freakin' tired. Oh yeah, they are both 7-10. I usually go to bed at 9 or 10. The how to make money one is on a Saturday, which is certainly the best time for me.

You know what else we found out about at ECCC, which relates to the above classes, is Cartoonists NW. They meet on the third Saturday of every month. Looks like fun. That is this weekend, so we are going to go check it out. Last month's meeting was about self publising, so bummer we couldn't go to that. This month is about a graffiti artist. But they will go over more than just that. Looks like fun.

What the hell day of the week is it anyway?

It's wednesday or thursday I'm sure of it. Here's a very cool drawing of The Rocketeer that Angela did recently. I like it.

I spent most of yesterday upgrading her desktop to Windows 7. I've got all of her hardware working, including the print/scanner/copier. And I've got most of her programs installed and set up the way that she likes them.

I spent most of today playing my bass and working on the pdf for my apple, stilton, and apricot bread. I re-resized the pictures because I'd screwed up the scaling last time and they all looked like crap. I also tried to make the pages have a more artistic layout. Angela looked at my last draft and said "It is so obvious that a man made this." So, I'm trying to gussy it up a bit. The pictures look way better anyway and they are all a uniform size now as well.

Once the recipe pdf is done, I'm going to list it on etsy and see if I can get a few bucks rolling in. Once this one is done, I'm moving on to a cook book who's contents are a secret for now. A delicious secret.

Of course, I also did the requisite laundry and dishes today too. I'm a regular house wife again.

--Abe

Zorro

Well here is my crappy Zorro inspired by ComicTwart. Practice Practice Practice. I might draw another one. I messed up in a few places, like the dots above his head that I completely forgot to erase and the line at the edge of the hallway shadow, which I inked in. Whoops.

I am currently working on the Corrie Vest from Knit Picks. I would link to it ,but it looks like that bad boy is outta here. It is really fun, though now I am worried because I just read that it apparently starts to droop even with only one day wearing it. I might have to do some reinforcing crochet.

I was going to knit it straight through, but I think I am going to do the Knitting Olympics and knit a cardigan from the 12th to the 28th (from the opening to the closing ceremonies of the Olympics). I have the yarn and a swatch and the pattern. I need to rerun the numbers on the pattern though since it is a heavily modified version of a saddle shoulder in the Book of Sweater Patterns.

I also finished the first RSC socks. They are ok. I am not a fan of pink though. I will wear them on Sunday as Abe and I tromp around the city for Valentine's day. We MIGHT go to the Sci-fi museum. Anyways, with my next paycheck I am going to get another skein of STR (Socks that Rock) so I can make the other pattern. I intellectually want to go with a blue or gray to make it look like rain as the designer kind of intended, but I can't help but want to make it green. We'll see. Here are the ones I am thinking about: Jade, Stormy Weather, Nyame, Green-Eyed Monster (though it isn't really appropriate, I just love this color), Monsoon (I am leaning towards this one as a compromise), or Typhoon Tina.

When I get a chance, I also want to get the Andrea shawl and mitts from Knit Picks. These are so awesome. Both were designed by Kirsten Kapur who has a lot of really great patterns. So of course I favorited her on Ravelry.

I am also considering getting a Cricket Loom. It is small and I think I can set it on my lap while I sit on the couch to use it. That is how I use my drawing board and it wasn't intended for that either. Anyways, I can weave up some scarves an stuff. With a little sewing and knitting, I think I can make up some cool hat. And with more sewing and additional fabric, I can make up some skirts. All for myself at first, but once I get them down, to sell on Etsy. I am a slow poke and still have not put up those hats for sale on Etsy. Perhaps I will get ready for that tonight. It is just such a pain to use our good camera. I am tempted to use the poor photos on my phone.

Boxing match

First, I'll start you off with this comic. This is the boxer comic I have been talking about. Hope you like it.

I have been listening to Imelda May a lot lately, and the more I listen to it, the more I like it. Some of the songs even give me goose bumps. My favorites are Johnny's Got A Boom Boom and Smotherin' Me. When I first heard it, Johnny's Got a Boom Boom sounded like a duet between her and the bass. Now that I am understanding the lyrics more and more, it definitely is a duet between the two. With GREAT lyrics. And Smotherin' Me is so bluesy you can taste it. It is upbeat blues, but still definitely blues. 12-bar blues, apparently. Abe says that every time we hear it anyways. But the CD didn't come with the lyrics printed out, so most of the time I have no idea what she is saying. I have figured out more now than the first time I heard it, but probably less than half. I may have found the lyrics online, but they are not official, so they could be wrong.

On the cleaning front, I got filing boxes and it is awesome. I have a box for my art and a box for other paper stuff, which turns out I have a lot: stories, knitting patterns, etc. So I am going around the apartment grabbing my random piles of papers and organizing them in the boxes. It is going to be really nice to have them all organized and safe. I have a little blue folder to use for drawing projects that are in process, so it will be kept with my tackle box of inking supplies and my drawing board. It is a pretty nice set up I have going on. It is close enough to the TV that I can listen to that (as opposed to the radio since my radio gets terrible reception) and I can turn to look when necessary.

I also cleaned up some boxes. Combined two into one of stuff I am saving for when I have a real office that I can decorate however I want (in a house). When we can, we will have an office separate from our desktop computers, which are for gaming, really. I hope to have a Mac to work on my graphics with by then. One of the small ones that are just a monitor. One of the two boxes was my old musty dress-up clothes. And some dog clothes I made for Patience, my Whippet, when I was in grade school.

On the knitting front,I am more than half done with one of Abe's brown socks. I hope he likes them. He says he does, but we'll see. At least I find knitting with self pattering yarn to be really fun. This one is kind of lame in that the vertical stripes don't line up at all (and it is because of erratic dyeing, not my knitting). Unless it was meant to be stochastic. But Abe loves stochastic, so it doesn't really matter. And you know what? I do love turning a short row heel. I find the method pleasing.

I have also realized that to remain happy and in a good mood, it is very helpful for me to draw every day, which includes inking. So I better get on that. After such a terrible night's sleep on Sunday because of the wind, I was really tired so I just sat on the couch and knit. I didn't realize until last night that it was affecting my mood. I think I just need to take a little time to draw, even if it is just little non-comic stuff in a sketch pad.

-Angela

Thursday

So, I've been reading Invincible lately. I checked out books 5, 6 and 11 from the library since that was all the had. It's a very fun super hero story. I've put the first few books on hold after I read the first book that I had :-) I've never really been much for super hero comics, even when I was a kid. And there are some things that I just do not get. Like the obsessive focus on the characters costumes. I do find it very funny that one of the characters in the comic is a normal guy who runs a tailer shop that specializes in designing super hero costumes though.

Image comics publishes Invincible. You can read the first issue of a lot of their comics here which is about the coolest thing for a comic book publisher to have on their website ever. Invincible is there if you want to check it out.

Mice Templar is there as well, another comic that I really enjoy.

--Abe

Comic tuesday

This comic is strangely recursive.

I'm going to be 35 in a few days. I feel old.

I can't decide what to get myself as a present. I'm considering Borderlands, Dragon Age or just pre-paying for a 3 or 6 month subscription to EQ2 and pre-order its next expansion. On the other hand I might just buy a few comics and make a big credit card payment with the rest. You know you're getting old when making credit card payments with your birthday money ranks up with buying video games and comics.

Well, I need to run to catch the bus to work. Hope everyone is well :-)

--Abe

Thursday

We're all over the map now as far as when we post goes. My schedule changes on a weekly basis and that makes it really hard to do anything with any sort of regularity.

So, it seems like we are having a sort of Cthulu week here. This drawing just cracks me up every time I think about it. It really shows Angelas twisted sense of humor at its finest.

Well, off to work for me. It's my personal Monday today.

--Abe