Photo support here.
We left Orange County at midnight because it was Memorial Day Weekend and we had to drive through Los Angeles; I took highway 395 up the east side of the Sierras for essentially the same reason. It was 500 miles to Lake Tahoe, and we arrived mid-morning. Despite being completely exhausted, we then proceeded to tour around the lake, and finished off with a six-mile hike from D.L. Bliss park to Emerald Bay. By the time we finished with supper and returned to our rented condo, I had literally lost the capacity for rational thought.
There is a harrowing section of highway 50 that crosses a sharp, glacially-carved ridge between Emerald Bay and Cascade Lake. The ridge top is about as wide as the two-lane road, and has no shoulder or guardrails of any kind. I couldn't help getting that yawning feeling in my diaphragm every time we drove across it.
The lake is, as everyone says, an impossible shade of blue. The surface ripples are also strangely soft, like the lava in a lava lamp.
The next day was a side trip to Virginia City, Nevada, across the Washoe Valley from the Sierras and Tahoe. I didn't expect much, a ghost town with a museum and tourist traps, but I am a big Mark Twain fan and VC is where he built his writing chops, and he has much to say about his life there in his autobiographical Roughing It. (There's also a good story about him accidentally setting a forest fire at Lake Tahoe.) It actually turned out to be a worthwhile stop. Though the economy is tourist-driven, it feels more like a bustling town that happens to have rich history oozing from its pores. Most of the old buildings on C street are still intact, including Twain's newspaper, the Territorial Enterprise. The main museum was poorly-organized, but interesting and large, and the shops had genuinely interesting stuff, from ostrich-skin boots to period coins made from local silver, to exotic candies and sodas, to fossil fish. Virginia City sits directly on top of the Comstock Lode, the largest silver strike in US History, and so many of the shops have access to the hundreds of miles of abandoned mine shafts below the city. Virginia City Jerky and BBQ serves one of the best BBQ sandwiches I have ever had. I want to go back!
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My vacation itinerary may have been a bit too ambitious. This was not entirely unintentional-- I specifically plotted a course I had never taken before so that I could see new places. I hope to one day move to some place in that block of northwestern states, so I want to learn as much as I can about them.
Our route took us to Lake Tahoe by route 395, with a side trip to Virginia City, Nevada; then through northern Nevada to Twin Falls, Idaho. From there, north through western Montana's Bitterroot Valley to Glacier National Park on the Canadian border. South and east from Glacier to Bozeman, Montana and Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. South again to Provo, Utah, and from there to Cedar Breaks National Monument and Zion National Park. Then Las Vegas, and home.
It turned out all to be fairly exhausting. Not to say I didn't enjoy it. I love road trips.
I experienced Portable Electronics Fail, though. From the very first day my small, easy-to-carry camera stopped accepting memory cards because of a faulty sensor, so I shared![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) sdskuld 's camera for most of the trip. I did bring my Canon digital SLR, but it's a pain to haul around everywhere with its massive telephoto lens. As it turns out, Skuld's little overstock Kodak Z1275 was the overall best camera on the trip: higher resolution than the SLR, video, better color balance, adequate zoom and low-light capability, and surprisingly adept in-camera panorama stitching. Current cheap tech trumps five-year-old top of the line. If only we had remembered to turn off the obnoxious time stamp. It did go through batteries like a goat through kudzu, but I had brought rechargables so it wasn't much of a problem.
Next I discovered that I had forgotten the rather specialized charging cable for my hand-held GPS, so no geocaching for me.
I'll post more details as I sort and post photos on my Flickr account.
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Having safely returned from my vacation, I find myself overwhelmed with Things That Need To Be Done. Such as:
-Posting about the trip to LJ and Flickr. This will be happening gradually over the week, and probably over next week as well.
-Setting up a payment plan with the IRS for taxes on some income that my tax attorney missed including on my 2007 return. Along with vacation expenses, car registration, post-road trip car maintenance, and a couple of other obligations, this means I will be eating a lot of ramen for the next few weeks. Hopefully I'll be somewhat recovered by Comic Con.
-Page 20 of Persona Animus. During the trip I worked through a major story wall I had been up against, but it means that I have to throw out what I had done on page 20 and re-draw it. The good news is that I worked it out before posting page 20, which would have made the course change more difficult.
-Catching up with e-mail.
-Unpacking, including organizing omiyage and making room for all my new shot glasses, which is what I buy as souvenirs.
-Laundry, dishes, vacuuming, raking, etc. This mess is a place!
I have made a bit of headway this evening, but as I am still exhausted from the ascent to Angels Landing three days ago, I think that I'm through getting things done for the evening.
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Idaho and Montana, while beautiful, are not intimately acquainted with the 21st century. Wi-fi and even cellular coverage is so rare and spotty that my original plan of posting from the road is in shambles. To complicate things, my smaller, more portable camera stopped recognizing its memory card and sdskuld 's portable camera, though it is a trooper, uses an obscure interface cable that we don't have.
So suffice it to say that we are having a great time, and I'll give the recap and post the photos when I return in two weeks. Today we drive from Glacier National Park on the Canadian border to Yellowstone in Northwestern Wyoming. Nagato, the little Prius, is holding up well except for a couple of psychotic breaks from the GPS.
Meanwhile, the curious can follow sdskuld 's Twitter feed here.
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My road trip with sdskuld starts tomorrow night! We are leaving just after midnight to try and avoid Memorial Day traffic to Lake Tahoe. From there we'll drive through Idaho and up the Bitterroot valley of western Montana, up to Glacier National Park on the Canadian border; then down to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks; then through Provo to Zion National Park via Cedar Breaks National Monument. Then Las Vegas, and back home two weeks hence.
I'm not sure how good my connectivity will be, but I will try to post updates here as well as on my Flickr account as the trip unfolds.
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I started taking horseback riding lessons last weekend. It's something I've wanted to learn for a long time, and it's also good research for the comic.
The stable is hidden right in the middle of Anaheim, just north of Honda Center. The first time I went I was convinced that I was lost, as I passed a car dealership, turned into a business park and found myself at a dead-end next to a shriner's club. But the stables are at the back of the club's parking lot, and as soon as you pass the gate it goes all Old MacDonald with chickens and cats and goats and sheep and dogs... and horses, of course.
It's fun! Horses are just amazing all by themselves, and there are all descriptions there, from show horses to draft horses to miniature horses, bays and pintos and palaminos. As part of the lessons I have to also learn to scrub down the horse and put on tack and saddle and such, as well as mounting and riding. It's nice to have some scheduled outdoor/exercise activity again. I'm learning a lot about horse psychology too, which is awesome. And riding requires a certain amount of confidence, as the animal can tell when you're unsure of yourself; so that will be good for me too I think. Being exposed to so much new information already has my brain powering up somewhat.
So far I can (sometimes) start and (sometimes) stop the horse, and (sometimes) turn it in the direction I want it to go. I've improved greatly just in two lessons, and I'm only a little bit sore-- not used to using inside leg muscles. I'm looking forward to continuing with it.
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My studio threw a big shindig in Las Vegas recently, and while there was the requisite drunkenness and gambling, I also got to fire WWII era automatic weaponry. The Gun Store on Tropicana offers a package where you can rent a Thompson submachine gun, a german MP40 machine gun, and a Colt 1911A sidearm. (They also had an M3 'grease gun,' but I did not know that until after I had left.) The Colt was 'eh'-- if you're only going to give me five shots, give me a revolver. The MP40 was a fine weapon, as easy to aim as a laser pointer, placing dainty, closely-spaced 9mm holes in the target wherever I pointed it.
The Thompson submachine gun is a monster. It pushes you back, it tries to escape, and the ordinance only goes vaguely where you're pointing, and steadily upwards the longer you shoot. However, since it leaves ragged, ugly, quarter-sized holes in things, you don't really need to hit what you're pointing at too many times. Exciting! But I can see that the depiction in gangster movies of people dodging Tommy gun fire isn't as inaccurate as the Tommy gun is.
Oh yeah... also got to drool on this.
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Oh, hi there.
So, here is a new page of Persona Animus.
After three months of being crippled by being on antidepressants and another two months of being crippled by being off of them, I think I'm ready to rejoin the internet community. What have we learned? It's better to feel things and be useless part of the time than to feel nothing and be useless all of the time.*
*This only describes my own experience, and is not a general observation of the usefulness of people who take antidepressants. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited.
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| Date: | 2008-11-19 10:05 |
| Subject: | NCC-90210 |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  nostalgic |
As an old-school Trek geek, I can't let the new trailer pass without comment.
While the purist in me hates the production design for the Enterprise, and I'm not sure how I feel about the whole Smallville vibe, I have to say that the movie looks like a pretty interesting take on the franchise.
I'm the first to admit that I haven't liked any Star Trek ship design since the original movies (with the exception of the NX-01), but this new one is particularly awful. I actually preferred the hoaxed design with the penis nacelles. They managed to move all the classic design elements around into something that has all of the grace wrung out of it.
The interiors would be wonderful for a remake of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but they are too clinical for the Enterprise. I wouldn't want to spend five years on that vessel; I'd die of depression. Even TOS sets looked more comfortable.
That said, I think it's all good science-fiction design even if not entirely appropriate to the franchise. I loved the opening car chase, with its little hints that you weren't actually in the sixties (the license plate, the futuristic siren, the arcologies looming in the blue distance). I love that the Enterprise viewscreen is now actually a window with computer overlays; you can see the 'hood' of the saucer outside. No more flying blind into nebulae. And I don't doubt that it will be well-directed, though whether I will like the direction is another matter.
Constructing the ship on the ground? Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Still, I've been in front of the TV for every Star Trek pilot (except the first). I've been in the theatre for every Star Trek film. I've only regretted it once. Why stop now?
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| Date: | 2008-11-05 00:52 |
| Subject: | Ape Ape |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  satisfied | | Music: | Dee*lite, 'Love Me Love Me' |
Drove up to San Francisco for the Alternative Press Expo this weekend and had a great time. I got to see my old friends Paul and Cecelia, my new friends DerShing and Johane, and a lot of very talented, interesting, and friendly people. I made a little comic about Elise and caffeine that I left on the freebie table and traded with people. I think I will try to do one every year-- it was fun, relatively easy, and the next best thing to money at APE, since you can trade comics with people.
Highs:
Meeting with DS! I gave her the original of the sketch I made for her birthday, and she gave me the originals of some character arts that she did for me earlier this year. Boy, did she get the short end of that deal. ^^ Check out her sweet web site.
Meeting with Johane! She was just a regular attendee this time instead of managing a table, so it was great to chat without the stress or distraction.
Running into my old college friend Cecelia, who had the brilliant idea of making a 45 minute DVD of kittens playing, which was selling like hotcakes.
Much, the Miller's Son, which was the best bargain of the convention, a top-notch european style comedy of errors for only five bucks.
Brittney Lee's impossibly lovely prints of Hawaiian gods and goddesses. I intended only to buy two, as I don't have much wall space left, but ended up buying three of them because they were so damn good.
Supper with Rikki and Tavisha in LA on the way back home. I love you guys!
Lows:
There were no lows. It was rainy, but heck I love that. It was a very long drive, but the light and the sky were beautiful. 50 mpg in the Prius doesn't hurt either.
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Technically it's been about a year since Rock Band came out and I discovered that I really, really like playing the drums. But Rock Band 2 came out last week, and two days later these arrived. I play often enough that ergonomics became pretty important. This kit took about ninety minutes to set up and a week to fine-tune the layout, but it is awesome.
When my interest in something passes a certain threshhold, I start learning everything I can about it. So I've got a bunch of books about drumming on the way. ^^ No illusions about real drumming-- I am too clumsy, slow, and uncool-- but I'm playing about an hour a day and having a great time.
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| Date: | 2008-09-24 22:49 |
| Subject: | Slightly Better |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  artistic |
Page 18 available here. I think I can talk Elise into coming back for the next page. Moira doesn't care as long as the case of scotch arrives on her doorstep every month.
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| Date: | 2008-08-27 08:37 |
| Subject: | Vegas for Nerds |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: | satisfied | | Music: | Lady Madonna |
Star Trek: The Experience is being kicked out of the Las Vegas Hilton at the end of the month, so I mobilized fellow nerds sdskuld and Chris for one last hurrah as a shakedown cruise for Nagato (my new Prius).
The Experience, it turned out, was a mistake. With only nine days left before shutdown, staff had been cut and maintenance had stopped, so the ride itself was not looking its best or operating at peak efficiency. There were only two crew members on the bridge of the Enterprise when we got there, and they didn't seem to care too much about getting us back to our own time so that Jean-Luc Picard could be born. The simulator made me so ill and depressed that I didn't bother checking out the new Borg part of the experience afterwards.
Quark's was a different matter. Though DS9's promenade shops were shut down, the bar was still in full swing, full of tourists and regulars, as well as a wandering borg refugee trying to reintegrate into Federation society. We ordered a Warp Core Breach and enjoyed the atmosphere. I got TOS shot glasses and Mego Spock as souvenirs.
I figured as long as I was in Vegas I might as well catch a show, so while Mike and Chris attended to their respective Saturday night plans, I went to Cirque du Soleil's Beatles-themed show, Love. While it was a little light on the Cirque, being more about the spectacle and music, it wasn't a problem since spectacle and music was what I was there for. The sound system was incredible, and it had perhaps the best stagecraft of any Cirque show I have seen. The first five minutes of the show were worth the price of admission-- it pretty much made my head explode. Everything after that was icing.
We ate very well. On Friday we went to Lawry's steak house, where I had an excellent ribeye with merlot, potatoes au gratin and Yorkshire pudding, that was more reasonably priced that I expected. It was a pretty high-falutin' place but my respect for them dropped a bit when they let us in.
On Saturday we went to the Burger Bar. I had a kobe beef cheeseburger with... some... stuff I can't remember on it. I think bacon was involved. It was really good. I also sampled dakota farm, angus, and bison burgers between which it would be hard to choose if I hadn't gotten all of them as sliders.
The rest of the weekend was spent exploring, gawking, and drinking a moderate amount of alcohol. I had never been down to the Luxor end of the Strip, so we took the monorail system down there and wow, the Luxor's main lobby is pretty incredible, with the walkways for the hotel stepping up the inside of the pyramid and hanging out over nothing. Mandalay Bay has a very nice aquarium focusing on predators, so I saw a lot of sharks, piranha, and a barracuda. Uh... the MGM grand has a pretty big bronze lion in front. There's only so much you can say about vast casinos. We also raided the enormous FAO Schwartz inside of Caeser's Palace, which had a really cool, really enormous red dragon plush, and some slightly disturbing Playmobil toys. (Surrre... it's a 'Ranger Station,' not a 'Deer Blind.') I do want the set with the badgers.
Nagato logged over five hundred miles and averaged something like 45 mpg. I paid eighty bucks for gas. Between that and the rinky-dink room at the Casino Royale, travel and lodgings came to $240 for the weekend, for three people. I could go every week!
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| Date: | 2008-08-10 22:49 |
| Subject: | Summery Doings |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  accomplished |
I finished pencilling page 18 of the comic this weekend. Inks this week. Lettering is already done in the computer. Yay.
And today I met sdskuld in Del Mar to watch the Spreckles Cup Polo Semi-Finals. (Flickr set here.) I find it ironic that while tickets for traditionally blue-collar sports like basketball or hockey cost upwards of sixty or seventy bucks for third-rate seats, I can pay ten bucks at the Del Mar polo grounds and set up a chair right next to the pitch to watch the Sport of Kings, where the action is sometimes only ten feet away. Plus: horses. Did I mention that horses are awesome? Even more awesome than former speaker of the House Dennis Hastert throwing out the first ball (which wasn't really all that awesome).
I think I'm going to make a Bingo game to play with the announcer's tired old witticisms. Today's scores, 'Plenty of sail, but not enough rudder;' 'son of a biscuit;' 'no es bueno.'
Lunch at Milton's Deli (chicken soup with kreplach), and supper at Pizza Port in Solana Beach (pizza with Canadian bacon, pepperoni, onion and green pepper). Plus I passed two Lamborginis on the way home in my Prius. I'll call the day a success.
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| Date: | 2008-08-03 15:49 |
| Subject: | Bang Bang Shoot Shoot |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: | creative | | Music: | The Beatles, 'Happiness is a Warm Gun' |
Go-cart plans fell through on Saturday, so instead I went with cow orker Kevin to a local shooting range. Kevin brought his two automatic hand guns, a .40 caliber HK pistol and a .45 Ruger, and we rented a .357 magnum revolver.
I'm not interested in owning a firearm, but I have been wanting to learn how to handle one. Thanks to an extended friendship with gun-loving Erk I wasn't really carrying any of the romance or fear usually associated with them, so I was able to shoot without much stress right from the start.
The afternoon returned further evidence of my atrophied Y chromosome. It was fun to fire the weapons, but there was none of the manly 'Aww yeah' factor to it. The Ruger was definitely my favorite of the three-- it was the easiest for me to aim, and I was able to group a clip within six to eight inches at 25 feet... not awesome to be sure, but not as bad as the other two weapons. The magnum was fun, but a monster: huge recoil (with a cool muzzle flash), heavy, and hard to aim since the trigger pull also had to advance the cylinder. I hated the HK. It was very hard to shoot accurately, and something about the recoil (figuratively) tore up my trigger finger.
Still, reasonably entertaining. I will probably go again at some point.
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"Daddy, where are the comics?" --small child on the dealer floor, San Diego Comic Con
Really, they should just change the name to the San Diego Entertainment Expo and be done with it. Comics are still a part of it, but only inasmuch as they are a piece of the American Entertainment Industry.
The weekend seems more of a blur to me than usual. I don't know if it's because I drank more heavily than usual, or because my brain is starting to shrivel with age. Anyway, here are the highlights as I remember them--
This may be the first year that I saw more good costumes than bad ones. How is that even possible? Many characters from Avatar, including a nearly perfect Jun the Bounty Hunter; The Baroness from G.I. Joe; Trapjaw from He-Man. Yeah, you heard me: Trapjaw. Really stupid character; really awesome costume. (He actually looked more like this.) There were also a dozen really exceptional steampunk costumes. Runners-up included Fire Lord Fro-zai, and Boba Fetish.
Wednesday night I had the fastest badge pick-up ever, followed by Preview Night, heavy traffic and, eventually, Shakespeare's Pub with Haidee, Marek, and his in-laws. =)
Thursday I listened to J. Michael Straczynski answer questions about professional writing in an enlightening fashion, and began my traditional haunting of the Flight table. I bought most of the books I wanted, to get it over with. Excellent tapas for supper at Cafe Sevilla in the gaslamp.
On friday I hooked up with my old friend Steve early on and we walked the dealer's floor for most of the day. The panel for Avatar: the Last Airbender on Friday was worth the wait through the two panels before it. I only wish some of the voice talent had shown up. Really good Yakitori for supper at a little place in Hillcrest. dreamliner kindly gave me some crash space on the floor of his room in the Mariott; I do love being in the convention hotel.
Saturday there was the Futurama panel-- I wish I could make it to every panel with cartoon voice talent. Later, I discovered that Eric Goldberg has the most beautiful signature in the world. Seriously! It looks like it should be on the Declaration of Independence or something. I had lunch with Tavicat at a grill in Seaport Village, which also gave me the opportunity to get a milkshake at one of the three remaining Ben & Jerry's in San Diego. In the afternoon I watched Sergio Aragones out-draw and out-humor two other artists in the Quick Draw panel. That night I was in the hotel room again, so I sat in the lobby lounge with a bunch of friends, chatting, enjoying the scenery, and drinking quite a bit more than I should.
Sunday was Wendy Pini's panel, where I had mixed feelings about the news that WB has picked up the Elfquest movie. But mostly it was winding down: I spent a lot of time at a table behind a window on the mezzanine that overlooks the dealer's floor, one of my favorite spots at the convention. I topped off the trip with venison stroganoff at Kaiserhof, an excellent german restaurant in Ocean Beach.
Thanks to Rikki, Tavi, Mike, Chris, Aaron, Amy, Johane, Reagan, Tony, Jeff, Steve, Joe, Dave, Marek, Haidee, Paul, Chandra, Kaylin, Dawn, Wade, Eric, Tommy, and everyone else who helped make my weekend awesome!
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| Date: | 2008-07-25 01:04 |
| Subject: | Comic Con Ho |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  drunk |
In order not to have to hang my head in quite so much shame, I worked extra hard to get page 17 of Persona Animus posted before I headed off to the San Diego Comic Con. So here it is. Hooray for slightly less poor work habits. =p
Comic Con has been fun so far, if unstructured. I bought a lightsaber and a bunch of books. Heavy, heavy books. Said hello to
rufftoon and gear_halo at the Flight table. Walked a lot; saw a lot of strange and wonderful stuff. Castle Crashers for Xbox Live is going to be a must-play experience. Saw Stan Lee while waiting in line for the How Not to Break Into Comics panel, a kid who really was much too short to be a stormtrooper, an excellent costume of Trapjaw from He-man and the Masters of the Universe and an even better one of the Baroness from G.I. Joe. Saw Kevin Spacey while waiting in line for the Robotech panel; turns out that he is not, in fact, playing Khyron in the upcoming live-action movie. Had very good tapas at Cafe Sevilla in the Gaslamp with sdskuld, rikkisimons, shutterbox, essrose, gofflin, dreamliner, and Joe. Probably some other stuff; it's always something of a blur by the end of the day.
Sleep now.
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| Date: | 2008-06-26 08:58 |
| Subject: | Summer Reading |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: | sorta well-read |
Meme from kyosuke:
The Big Read thinks that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)
Where the hell is Gulliver's Travels? I mean, I like Harry Potter, but come on. 18th century political satire that reads as if it was written last month? You don't get any more timeless than that.
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| Date: | 2008-06-08 10:32 |
| Subject: | So, Indy 4... |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: | amused | | Music: | Goonies R Good Enuf |
Fair warning: some spoilers.
I've been surprised at the strength of the vitriol thrown at Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I enjoyed the film. It is by no means a great film, it is probably not even a good film, but by the same token it is not the Antichrist, which is the consensus among most friends and all cow orkers. I frankly liked it better than Temple of Doom. I'll take a goofy story over a goofy story plus Kate Capshaw any day.
I'm not saying it didn't have some really stupid things. The story was definitely weaker than any of the other films. I wanted Indy to shoot Mac. There was pointless content. (What was with the prairie dogs?)
But I was entertained. Indy still felt like Indy to me, though he was a relic out of his time. As much as everyone else hated it, the nuke test was one of my favorite scenes. The shot of Indy staring up at the mushroom cloud was a perfect icon for the end of the pulp era.
Now, admittedly it is hard for a movie to completely disappoint me. If it's not great, I look for good scenes. If it has no good scenes, I heckle. If I can't even heckle it, then it's a worthless film. Crystal Skull hovered in the good scenes/heckling range for me. I went in expecting it to be horrible, and found it was only mediocre.
So I am wondering about the reactions I am hearing. "Worst film I've ever seen." I've heard that two or three times. Are you kidding me? Worse than Star Wars I or Highlander 2 or Alien 3 or Jaws 4 or Star Trek 5? No, there is something else at work here.
I have a theory. It has to do with nostalgia. Indiana Jones may be the most beloved single character of my generation of geeks. All of our other beloved films from the 80's-- Star Wars, Star Trek, Terminator, Alien, etc.-- have been franchised into the ground. We didn't really want a new Indiana Jones film: we wanted an old Indiana Jones film. But that's impossible, because Harrison Ford is 65, George Lucas is insane, and we are no longer teenagers. The film was made the only way it could be made, as a nostalgia trip, and we didn't want a nostalgia trip. We wanted Raiders of the Lost Ark. But you can't really make a pulp film set in the 1950's any other way. It's out of its time and out of its element, so it's appropriate to make that a part of the story. The alternative is not to make the film, which probably would have been the right choice.
Also, what we would accept in a story when we were sixteen, we might not be willing to swallow when we're forty. I noticed this when people who liked The Goonies told me that they didn't like National Treasure. How can that be? They're the same film. Well, we're not kids anymore and we don't have the golden nostalgia to attach to the later film.
Just my two cents. Discuss.
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| Date: | 2008-05-12 00:35 |
| Subject: | 10 Things |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  sleepy |
1. Overtime at work for the last couple of weeks, twelve hours two days a week. Fortunately the work is fun, the animation team is actually getting ahead, and unlike my last job, I get paid for OT. Eats into comic-making time, but not as badly as being apathetic does.
2. Sculpture class at the studio, taught by some of our own guys. Really fun and informative. I may even finish my sculpture.
3. Attended friends Marek and Haidee's Victorian-themed wedding. It was very nearly perfect. I look pretty good in a waistcoat and cravat. Top hat sends the look straight to undertaker, though. Made this as a (ticket for a) present.
4. Visual storytelling class at the studio with Marshall Vandruff. Awesome. I have taken this class in the past but it is great to have the refresher. High Point so far has been the film 12 Angry Men which I had not seen before.
5. Reading a really good collection of essays by Joseph Campbell. Inspiring. He is my hero.
6. New favorite beer, Gulden Drakk. New favorite scotch, Dalwhinnie Distiller's Edition (15 years old). A real find.
7. Iron Man was a remarkably good comic book movie. Robert Downey Jr. walks away with the film. Refreshing to see the origin story done in a way that did not put me to sleep. Climactic fight could have been a little more exciting, but I'm not complaining.
8. Renaissance faire with SDSkuld in Irwindale yesterday. Jousting, swordplay, boobs, and uh... Richard Hatch, for some reason. I bought a cloak and a new flask. Slight sunburn.
9. Spent the afternoon with an art school buddy from my sabbatical last year. It was really great to just talk art all afternoon.
10. Otherwise, just hanging on...
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determined
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manly
musical
