Long Day!

Wow, what a Friday!

My dear friend EK Weaver is in town and I’ve been going out of my way to make time with her and Brett. Last night, we got a babysitter and went to the Indie Ale House with her, Brett, Neil Nadelman, Mike Toole, Dave Merrill and his lovely wife Shain, Greg and Jaime, my husband, and eventually Andrew Stevenson, my friend and editor. It was a lovely time with great food and drink.

Today, I hit the gym and after I showered and changed, went to meet EK, Brett, and Mike downtown. As it turnd out they were on Weston Road. Not wanting them to get lost on the subway or streetcars, I picked them up and we slowly made our way down to Chinatown where I introduced them to Megan Hendricks at the Embassy. They really liked the studio and classroom and after much humming and hawwing, we went for dumplings.

Man, do I ever love dumplings.

The time was beginning to wane on us so I called my neighbour Meghan and asked her to pick up Nick. Luckily, she was able to, because by the time we went to Black Oak Brewery and dropped everyone off, it was late. I got home 20 minutes after Nick got out of school. Thank goodness for Meghan. I have the most amazing neighbours.

I doubt any of my neighbours read my blog, but I still feel enormous gratitude toward Tanya for keeping an eye on the boys after Charlie was picked up by Keiren and Ty, huge gratitude toward Charlie for persevering for hours without tv or internet entertainment (she read books, as I was told), to Meghan for picking up Nick, and to Rob and Cindy for understanding when Alex couldn’t attend that board meeting.

We really do have the best neighbours, ever.

Anyway, I’m home now, and  very sore, but it’s so worth it. Tomorrow is my nephew Eligh’s birthday party and my birthday on Tuesday. Then, June 4th is Nick’s birthday and the 6th is his birthday party.

BUSY BUSY and a long day but oh so satisfying.

It’s Con Day

I’m just about to get started on packing up all my crap for the one day convention. I have to sell six prints to break even. Wish me luck.

Yesterday was simply shopping hell. Bad traffic, long lines, and frustration. I got a couple things done but ultimately, not enough. At least I got my prints.

I have to leave soon, so I’ll keep this short. I might post later with a report. I’ll definitely post later with a daily drawing from the con.

 

It just HAD to snow…

It feels like every time we get really bad weather, I have to go to class. Of all days, it’s always when I am going to downtown Toronto in the middle of rush hour.  As I mentioned yesterday, we got some snow. By some snow, I mean 15cm of snow. For my American readers, that’s about six or seven inches.  Add, on top of that, the wind blowing it around.

It made for some really treacherous driving, as the roads were slippery and the plows can’t be everywhere at once.  I left home at 3:30, got Nick from school, and got to my husband’s workplace at 4:15. After that, it was actually surprisingly smooth sailing.  I was really pessimistic at first, but I suppose that more people than not decided that they’d stay at home and NOT drive.  All the better for me. Greg and I got to the Korean restaurant at 5:15 and waited an hour for the others to show up. Then, it was a matter of SHOVELING our food into our pieholes and arriving at class just when it was supposed to begin. At least we made it.

I got some really good feedback on my story and have some significant changes to make. I’ll sit down with Alex this week and make those changes. Also on the list, lots of stuff. Here’s a checklist, mostly for my own reference.

 

  • Work on Red Surge inks
  • Work on pages for Condo story
  • Get prints made for the table at comic con this Sunday
  • assemble craft for Nick’s teacher
  • draw picture for Nick’s principal
  • knit cowl for Nick’s librarian
  • knit for my mother
  • knit for my cousin’s son
  • knit for my niece
  • laundry — dear god, the laundry
  • dining room table
  • drive out to a secret location to pick up a secret gift for Alex
  • go giftmas shopping for the kids and get gifts for Alex from the kids
  • bake cookies with Nick

So much to do with such little time. So much to do that I don’t wanna do it… but it has to get done.

Off I go to knit.

Still Ploughing on!

Well, I’ve finished some art today. Page 1 of The Red Surge is finished, all inks and lettering complete. I need to do some of page 2 today, and I need to do some knitting in the worst way.  I also need to draw a picture for Nick’s principal sooner than later and finish his teacher’s Christmas craft.

Oy, vey. Have I taken on too much?

It snowed last night; how rude. About a foot of snow on the ground and probably an extra hour to and from my class as a result of it. I’ll be leaving home right after Nick gets out of school and braving the terrible drivers. Snow, I can deal with. People? Not so much.

So, yesterday a few things happened.

I spent the day drawing and inking, as I usually do, and Rusty didn’t nap. We went to get Nick, then went to CostCo because Nick had no more snack foods for his school lunches. Once that was taken care of, we went home, only to find that the gifts that my mother had sent us were left on our doorstep by UPS without a signature or confirmation. Just left out there for anyone to take, should they desire. What a piss off.  I brought them inside, then I dropped off the groceries, and then we went back to school, the three of us, because Nick had his Christmas concert.  Alex was stuck in traffic because people are morons but made it JUST in time for Nick’s performance.  I didn’t properly videotape it with the phone because I was distracted, but we amusingly discovered that he’s the kid who yells the lyrics of the sounds, rather than singing them. It was adorable.  He was also very into the choreography and whole ordeal. Such a good kiddo.

During the show, Rusty decided that he was gonna be a terror, more than usual.  He got out of his seat, pushed past the people in the aisle, and made his way right up to the stage where the kids were doing their show.  One of the teachers grabbed him and brought him back to me, then the lovely librarian took him to the kindergarten room so we could actually watch the show.  Later during the performances, she had brought him back to the gym where the Principal was keeping an eye on him.  Unfortunately for him, he took his eyes off of Russell for ten seconds, during which time Russell made another dash for the stage, and was once again apprehended.

I was just glad it wasn’t my fault that time, and thankful that the little bugger didn’t make it ON the stage, as he knows exactly how to get up there.

We had Harveys for dinner afterward because I had a coupon and Nick took FOREVER to eat his burger. I’m talking, 40 minutes to eat a kid sized burger. Bloody hell, kid, seriously? We spent way too long there cos all Nick did was fuck around.

The last stop was the dollar store for some candy canes for our trees and for gifts.

When we got home, Alex rushed in and I took care of getting the kids inside. One of our letters in the mailbox was from the dentist’s office and they had misspelled our last name, meaning I couldn’t mail in the claim. That, coupled with the kids being wild animals, I was happy to get Rusty and Nick ready for bed. After the kids were in bed, Alex and I worked on my homework and I think we have a nicely solid story in mapped format.  We’ll see what kind of subplot Ty will throw in there for us. Tonight, if class isn’t cancelled, Ty will also be teaching us how to write a roast, which will also be awesome. I can’t wait 😀

The last thing I did before bed was work more on The Red Surge. Sometime while drawing, the layers got merged down. I didn’t notice until I was out of Undos. OMG, I was PISSED. I put the work down for awhile and played PVZ until bedtime. This morning, I rectified the mistake and finished the work.

All good, all good.

Oh, I also stepped on what used to be a banana, all mushy and cold and slimy, on a chair which I was resting my foot on. A gift from Rusty.

How thoughtful.

I almost forgot again.

And forgetting to blog would’ve made me a bad jupe.

Yesterday was a combination of good and bad. Good in that I got a lot of drawing done, as well as my blog post, and good in that I went to class. More on class later.

First, the bad.

Nick had a day at school. He got it into his head that it was a good idea to tell all the girls in his class that they were inferior and that boys are better, and then after getting a talking to about compassion by the teacher, did it again. He was in charge of handing out papers to the class and only gave the boys paper. He upset one of the girls so much, she went into hysterics.

SO, he spent the rest of the afternoon in the office, which I approve of. There’s no need for my son to become a pigheaded woman hater. He’s only six and such habits must be broken early. I’ll be keeping an eye on him at school.

Aside from that, the only other bad thing is the sheer amount of time I had to sit in traffic yesterday. I left home around 4:10 and after dropping the kids off at Alex’s work, then picking up Greg, I finally parked the car around 5:45.  Then, after class, after dropping Mandy off at Union, driving in Traffic where everyone loses their shit and forgets how to drive, and dropping Greg off, I got home an hour after leaving. Thursdays involve 2.5 hours in the car to drive only 62km, round trip.

BLARGH.

But aside from that, pretty good day. My class read their pitches and we all voted on the best ones. Next week, we must have 17 pages worth of a story map and a story bible all done and then Ty will teach us both sub plots AND then, later, roasts. We will get to roast Ty. OMG, I can’t wait! My class picked my Gimmick story. The Sidekicked story got a few votes, too, but it’s too much like a story that was put out in the past… and my Wavebreak story got almost no votes, which is unfortunate — but I’m super happy being able to work on the first issue of Gimmick. I’ve been wanting to refine it for quite some time and will finally be able to do so.

More updates on that as it comes along.

Also, for anyone wondering about Strays, I’m still working on it. I need to revise the script with the suggestions Ty made but I’ve been so busy lately with my daily drawings and with other life crap. It’s coming along and I’ll post again as soon as I’m ready to go.

TGIF, BITCHES!