Unsigned comics

Once upon a time, I did a guest appearance in a panel of the Fragile Gravity webcomic. Today, the circle is complete, as I’ve been privileged to write and draw an episode.

Monday morning, my Twitter client lit with a notice from kittykatya: she and impink needed two guest strips due to a family emergency. Now, I can draw a little, and I have always dreamed of having the fame and respect of a webcomic artist, so I volunteered. To my great surprise, Barb accepted. Oops: looks like I had to draw something. When would it be due? More oops: Wednesday. But it got done.

Take a look, and be sure to let me know what you think, especially if you liked it. And there’s quite a lot more to tell behind the scenes…

For I Toss And Turn, Can’t Sleep At Night

Oh, wow. Bet you haven’t heard 1981’s “Tainted Love” covered in quite this manner…


I’m hitting iTunes – if this guy has an album, I want it. If only he’d cover “Girls On Film”…

The Hunt for Red Hyundai

The first folks I asked for transport to Roanoke had other commitments, and that’s completely understandable: this all happened on pretty short notice. I was getting a little panicky about finding someone.

Then, by the sheerest coincidence, I was talking to a friend on Thursday night who’s a woodworker. He had an appointment in Staunton on Friday, and casually volunteered to drive me the rest of the way down I-81. I couldn’t say no! The trip turned into quite the adventure, as his delivery truck has no stereo, no AC, windows which must be wrestled into place by hand, and (it turned out) a bad left turn signal. But, while the whole excursion was draining, the conversation was great. I have no complaints.

Thanks to missed connections and three separate car-accident highway backups, the trip took nine hours, and I reached Mom’s place around 11 or so. We chatted briefly, but I had to beg off because my energy levels were almost non-existent. When I came back in the morning, we talked for quite a while, and I fixed her air conditioning set up, the new shower sprayer, and her computer’s Internet connection. When it came time to leave, I took her red Hyundai back to Chesapeake as promised. The five-hour drive on Rt. 460 stayed pleasant, and I got home in time to surprise Starr with a scallop dinner after her workday.

Today, I have done nothing useful. I am exhausted, and the house needs a lot of work still, but I have managed little. I will need to make up for it this week. And now to whine about something trivial: today, the ‘not-Easter’ celebration starts in WoW, and it begins with a ‘not-Easter’ Egg hunt. This is a lovely idea, except there’s some nice rewards for collecting large numbers of eggs, and you can’t get to any of the places where they appear; the micro-second an egg spawns, someone else has already clicked on it, and it fades right back out. People are ‘camped’ at all the spawning points, collecting eggs. Perhaps they’ll get bored, or finish, and I’ll have the chance to pick up a few after work later this week. 🙁

Car and house and car

Okay, quick recap of the last ten days: Starr’s doing really well. She’s had to do a lot more physical labor than someone who’d just left the hospital should, but since I was working my butt off as well, I really couldn’t relieve her of the necessity.

The rest of our stuff is out of the storage unit and in the house, and 95% of Starr’s parents’ stuff is out of the house. There’s an epic tale right there, but I’ll just say that this is why she and I are still physically exhausted. The house is a wreck, but we’re working on that a bit at a time.

The insurance company paid off the car loan on the PT Cruiser, but won’t provide for a new vehicle. Of course, we’re still trying to buy a house, and extra funds are non-existent. So, my mom has generously offered to loan Starr her car for a while, which is a perfect solution; if I can pick up the vehicle this weekend, she won’t miss a day of work. Only problem: the car’s in Roanoke. I’m going to need to plead with someone to come up with me and drive one of the cars back. I haven’t figured out who to ask, yet.

I’ve been a little forgetful recently. I think my brain’s overloaded. Have to come up with a workaround for that.

No More Collisions!

How I Spent My Saturday Night (or, another of many reasons I’m behind on much correspondence)

I dedicated my afternoon to the kitchen and living room, as I’d promised – got them looking pretty good, too. Around 7:30, Starr called to let me know she was on her way home, so I started dinner (boxed stroganoff).

Just before 8, my cell lit up with an unknown number, but I went ahead and picked up. It was Starr – she was calling with a borrowed cell phone from the scene of the car accident she’d just been in. I later found out that someone else had apparently missed a turn; and in confusion occupied the middle lane of a 60 MPH highway, doing about 20. Starr came out from behind another vehicle that was spewing smoke (oil leak perhaps?), saw brake lights, and did her best to stop in time.

All her windows shattered, and the airbag fired. The accident totaled her PT Cruiser’s front end, doing an estimated $8,000 in damage. Starr’s seatbelt and airbag did their jobs, and we later discovered that her greatest injuries were bruising from the restraints. A passerby unjammed her door and helped her from her car, and medical professional that she is, she quickly went to assess the other driver for injuries (no serious issues there either).

I abandoned dinner to spoil, issued a quick Twitter note to the world, and jumped right into the car. I didn’t speed – I mean, how stupid would a car wreck on my part have been right then? – but I somehow reached the hospital before Starr. A number of people replied with support on Twitter, Facebook, and email, and I would later find many phone messages after I left the hospital’s signal interference. Thank you all so much! One of the first things I did was pass along everyone’s messages, and they boosted morale for us both! (Thank you, jsciv, for the “Creeps” recommendation: Starr played that until we nearly killed the phone battery!)

Several X-Rays and five hours later, they decided that Starr was merely bruised, and sent us home. We’ve spent much of today trying to recover from adrenaline overdose and poor sleep. We already have some lines of attack with securing a replacement vehicle. The funny thing is that today’s a happy day for us. First of all, Starr literally walked away from a full-speed highway crash. Second of all, we’ve had our friends pouring out love to us all night and day; how could we be grumpy?

Thank you all!

Starfleet Vice – 1990

The RoVaCon 15 Starfleet Vice video, as threatened promised…

So, I’ll explain a little of what’s going on. I’m in the wheelchair because I’d been in a life-threatening car accident only weeks ago, but I was too stubborn to miss the con. Heather and Valerie are dressed in costumes from the anime Dirty Pair. Mike Allen represented KODRA, a ruthless Klingon-Orion terrorist organistion out to rule the Alpha Quadrant; while Markus… well, he had a lab coat, so we worked that in. And of course, Tom, Mike, and Beth were solely there to support our blatant swipe of Monty Python material.

I don’t remember the name of the dude working the camera… but he really liked the anime costumes.

More edumacation

Wall-of-text post is finally up (behind the lifestyle filter) about my Saturday night panels. That was a bumpy ride, to be sure. But we had sandwiches!

Looks like the chances are good to be doing my schtick at MarsCon 2010 and SheVaCon 2010. I think I’m almost relieved that the NekoCon audience is probably far too jaded for such a thing.

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