Sketchbook # 13

New NGV5 page is up. And this---->
Is a weird guy in a haz-mat thingy. He has hard work to do. Or that suit is keeping him alive, I don't know which.
Holy crap am I ready for a long weekend. I have a wedding to participate in, for my buddy Craig. That will use up tonight and tomorrow. Sunday will see Cookie return, perhaps just as triumphantly as Superman did. COOKIE RETURNS now in theaters! That would be awesome.
I took Monday off, so now I don't have to go back till Wednesday. There WILL be whiskey in by belly at some point in the mean time, just to warn you. Weddings are generally great sources of whiskey, and I fully plan to take advantage of that. I don't know what I doing for the 4th, so if anybody has any ideas, let me know. I hope to see several things explode in the sky*, and this year I just might get my wish. That is, if mean ol' Mr. Chinese Dragon God of things exploding in the sky isn't still mad at me about that hooker.

SuperJack

I think Jackson will grow up to be a super man. I saw the movie last night. I liked it. Muy fun. The bits with the kid were a little cheesy, buy could have been a lot worse. Routh seems to have channeled Christopher Reeve from beyond the grave. He was a dead ringer in almost every way. Except the haircut, which kind of bugged me. It looked like Clark Kent had the same stylist as Franz Ferdinand.

Yesterday, a bunch of baby armadillos visited us. There were three of them, and I snapped a few pics, and video taped them romping around in utter cuteness for about two seconds until Sadie dug her way under the fence and tore after them. I think she got one of them on the tail before I could catch up to her in the woods and grab her. They ran under a big brush pile and never came back out. Sadie is a terror terrier. She'll get you. The woods behind our house are nice to look at, but I found a tick on me this morning after I was only out there for a few minutes, adding to the list of reasons to not go out there. I dropped my video camera when I ran after Sadie, and now it doesn't play right.

sad.

Gone to Pot

We had a heckuvah busy weekend, and it is still technically going, as I have not been back yo work yet. Jen had an event, so I did the same thing I always do on relay weekend: I drive to Tulsa, get the boy from the babysitter's, visit the relay for a while, spend the evening with him at the grandparent's house, and fight to get him to sleep. Then the boy and I amuse ourselves on saturday while Jen sleeps it off. We went to the coffeeshop, saw some friends, and poked around Target. Saturday night,we had a lovely meal with B&G, and went back up to Stilly. I had to bag out of Craig's batchelor party because I was too tired. Sunday was an eventful day, sort of. Jen had to prepare for a procedure she had today, which involved taking laxatives and clearing out her bowels. It sucked. If she wasn't asleep, she was in the bathroom, and wee Jack was getting sick, so I had to deal with a cranky baby all day in the midst of mowing and cleaning the house in preperation for Jen's dad coming up to watch the boy while we went to the hospital. whew! Somehow I managed to watch the entire box set of Spaced (I had to order a duped copy from England via ebay), and Shaun of the Dead, as I have recently become a HUGE Simon Pegg fan. His bit in Doctor Who was awesome. Today was the hospital. All that prep, and the thing only lasted like 20 minutes. We've been relaxing and doing chores and taking care of a sick baby all day.
Off to Wally-World!

Sam Houston was a tall man

66 feet tall if you believe the statue. I went to the city named after him this weekend for a family reunion (of Jen's family). We (Us and Jen's sister and her husband) drove a rented mini-van all night Thursday, so that Jack could just sleep the whole time, which he did. We met a very stoned, very butch tweaker-girl at one of the various gas stations along the way. She clamed she was looking for her friend Crystal, and we figured out hours later that this was actually a drug reference, and we all felt really old and out of touch. We continued on our way, arriving around six in the morning. We handed a fully rested baby off to the grand-parents, ate some greasy-spoon breakfast in Baytown, and slept it off at a really shitty hotel. This was after showers and switching rooms due to an undisclosed liquid being on the bedding. Could have been salsa, could have been blood. All we knew was that it was red and that we didn't want to sleep on it.
On to the reunion. Lots of family, lots of catching up, lots of passing Jackson around for people to scream "Isn't he CUTE!" and make loads of snap judgments about his life, pleasent and future. My fav being that he must love all things round like balls and knees because they remind him of boobies. We are a heap of barbecued burgers and hot-dogs and mac and cheese and salad.
The next day was much the same. Sitting around and yapping, although this time the cooked an entire pig on a giant spit. That was cool to watch, but the the meat wasn't very good. Kinda gamey and under cooked, even after being over the coals for most of the day. We checked out the bay, and sat through a series of torrential rain storms. Sunday we drove home, and Jack was a bit more perturbed about it, but slept most of the way, meaning he was fulla energy all night long, so I'm a little sleepy now. On the whole I had a good time but the drive wore on everybody after a while, and we were glad to come home.

Viking

This is a playmobil Viking. Everyone thinks it's lego, but it isn't. Playmobil is cooler. Maybe not cooler, but I like them more. They are a little more inventive. They don't allow the player to be as inventive as legos, but they are different kinds of toys, so that's okay.
Tonight, we are traveling to Houston (actually Baytown) for a family get-together. We are traveling at night so that Jackson can hopefully sleep through the 8+ hour drive. He doesn't ever sleep through the night anyway, so I don't really see why he would this time, but maybe being in the car will help. The Powers and The Nelsons will pile into a rented mini-van and stare at the Texas landscape. I'm really tired from Jack not sleeping last night, so hopefully the Nelsons will do the driving in the wee hours of the morning. Driving through Houston can be a pain, but I have driven in L.A., and Lonny has driven in Iraq, so we should do okay. We have ipods and good company to help out.

In other news, look how friggin' cute my kid is-->
I mean really. This kid is the cutest cutie in Cutesville.

Okay. Enough gushing. I'll post a report of the weekend on Monday.

That is all.

Sketchbook #11

I'll have a new NGV5 page up later today I hope. This is our hero, Steve. He winds his way through the silly futuristic/Old West world that I have put him in. He's fun. I guess he just got shot here. Again. He should have that looked at.

It be Monday. I had a good weekend. Went to Tulsa's RFL for the American Cancer Society. It was nice for both of us to be there to just enjoy it, and not be running around the whole time putting out proverbial fires. We had a good time. Jack's cousin Lindsey was staying the weekend with Jen's parents, so they came to the relay as well. Lindsey dragged Jen into the Jupiter jump, and Jen's body has been telling her what a bad that was ever since.

Saturday it was 107 degrees. We tried to stay places that had air conditioning. We did not succeed. After the heat subsided. We went to Enid America to see Cody "Cookie" Dopps and his family at a pool party. I had a really yummy bratwurst. Jack made friends with Cookie's niece London. Cookie's family is down to earth and really friendly. We had an awesome time.

Yesterday we did nothing*. Grocery shopping, the Pita Pit, and some serious lounging. About 2:00, I got a wild hair up my ass to thin out some of my crap, so I went through all of my books, movies and CD, and took a big pile down to Hastings, and got about $100 worth of trade, that I spent all but ten bucks of right then.

And now it is Monday. Most people hate Monday morning, but I kinda like it. My boss doesn't show up till noon, so I usually surf the whole morning. There is usually a new Homestar, post secret, many a web comic, and the big thing is that somebody has usually posted the new Doctor Who that aired in England over the weekend. Yay!

update - The new page is up now.

Bunny

So yesterday after my dick of an alarm clock woke me up, and after I stumbled into the kitchen and made coffee, and was out on my deck having coffee and a cigarette, I saw a bunny. This in itself is nothing to get excited about. We live in rural OK and our lot backs up to a forest with just a chain-link fence as a separator. The thing is that I was really not awake yet. I was really groggy, and there was fog. Literal fog, mixed with sunlight, making the forest look really cool. And it was really still. Very little sound. Just me in my underwear, the forest and the fog. Then I look down and there is this rabbit. Not out in the woods, but just off my deck, about 2 feet away from me. He seemed to be doing the same thing I was. Just sitting there, enjoying the view. I moved, and he looked up at me as if to say "oh, hey, man." and went back to looking at the forest. I went inside to get Jen and Jack, because I thought he might like to see a woodland creature that wasn't dead on the side of the road, but the bunny had gone on it's way. The sun soon burned off the fog and I got into the shower.
I like bunnies. If I were to have a rodent as a pet, I would choose a rabbit. They are actually kind of cuddly, and don't smell as bad as ferrets do. But I would never have a rodent for a pet. I have two dogs, and a cat, and when I have caged animals, I like fish. So there.

What Groo does best.

Here is the May calendar-->
Flash fans will see Bitey. If you haven's seen that movie, watch it and the rest of Adam Pilllips stuff, as he is really good at flash animation.
The old school nerds will see Groo. Somebody sent me a clip of the old Dungeons & Dragons cartoon on you tube, and I saw Mark Evanier's name in the opening credits, and was flooded with memories of Sergio Aragonez's Groo The Wanderer, for which Mr. Evanier was the script editor and answered the letters column. Groo was fun. The same five gags over and over again for close to 20 years, and the part of me that stayed 12 years old never got tired of it.
Also, I really am sick of pirates and ninjas. I see them everywhere these days. Every ironic hipster t-shirt has one or both on there, there is an "ask a ninja" meme going around, and pirate crap is all over the place thanks to Captain Jack Sparrow (I will go see that movie, though. It looks hawesome).
In other news, I crossed over to the dark side this weekend, and bought a PC laptop. The decision was purely an economical one. I just can't afford Mac stuff anymore. I've had macs my whole life, but they have gotten too pricey and too snotty. All the actual technology seems to be equal, just the interfaces that are different, so since I work at a place that uses PC, and I occasionally have to work on stuff at home, and they can provide me with software to do so, $700.00 all together seemed a little more manageable than $2400.00 without software. So there you have it.
I bought it during the first Saturday I've had all to my self in years. The grand-parents took Jackson to the zoo, and Jen had to sleep of a relay, so I was on my own. I went to the coffeeshop, I saw a movie in an actual theater, went to the book store, and generally fucked off. It was fun, but I sort of ran out of things to do, and went back early. I realized that if I'm not with my family or working on a project, I don't really do much. But I'm either with my family or working on a project about 99.00% of the time, so that's okay. I guess I tend to buy expensive things when left on my own anyway, so it's probably for the best.

That is all.