Tag Archives: knitting

It was famous comic people night in Anne’s head

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I had a beautifully long post here about a very strange dream I had.

I met comic author Lea Hernandez and her son at the supermarket, and they helped me find the right yarn for the project I want to knit (it was in the refrigerated section between the Coca Cola and the milk), and we all got free cookies that Fox picked out because i won a contest at the supermarket.

Then I went to a party with my friend Steen and her daughter at a ski lodge, where some of the guests from another party, including Neil Gaiman, thought our party was cooler so they joined us. (Neil had planned to hang out with Scott McCloud and Amanda Palmer, but Scott was sick and Amanda was in New Zealand. Scott, if you’re reading this, get well soon! Amanda, I don’t know if you’re really in New Zealand right now, but it sounds awesome.)

Then we all went back to my house (which wasn’t my house – it was located where my parents house is, but it was my friend Camille’s parents’ mountain cabin from that trip we took 20 years ago) but we got lost on the way. This happens so often in my dreams that it didn’t even stress me out (this time). Friends shouldn’t let friends dream and drive. But if you have to dream and drive, it helps to invest in a good dream-based GPS, which apparently I had with me, in the purse I carried in high school.

Once at my house, we figured out who would be sleeping where (Steen and her kid got the big bed because there was a Tinkerbell decal with “Christine” over the bed, and Neil Gaiman was totally OK with taking one of the two twin air mattresses on the floor. My brother took the other one.) and we got down to the task of partying, which consisted of some people jamming on the guitar, others talking about writing, and still others playing Killer Bunnies.

The reason I wrote this beautifully long post was because as I wrote it, I realized that a whole bunch of situations that would have totally stressed me out when awake (like, how do you ask an autistic kid to help you at the supermarket? Is it rude to just assume he could and would help? And how do you say “Just pull up a chair,” to Neil. Fucking. Gaiman? And is it really OK to give the only guest bed to the person with the kid when you have people with bad backs and people who get cold easily and famous people in the house? And why do all my dream parties look like high school theater cast parties?) totally failed to stress me out at all.

In fact, I woke up because in the dream I was starting to stress out about what I looked like and suddenly had the need to put makeup on (which, by the way, I screwed up. I painted lip gloss on my eyeball, trying to use the lip gloss as eye shadow) and guests started asking me questions like “Do you really think Neil Gaiman wants to be at YOUR party?” and I realized I must be dreaming because I hadn’t been stressed out about this stuff the whole night and it was stupid to put on makeup just because someone famous I wanted to be friends with was at my party.

It turns out I am a much better person when my left brain is asleep, because my right brain doesn’t care if people might be offended or might think I’m a no-talent hack or stupid or ugly or I haven’t updated my comic in months. My right brain says, “say hi, be polite, and you might get something awesome.”

My left brain tries to put green lip gloss on my eyeball to make me look pretty for my guests, all the while telling me I can’t possibly look pretty enough for them to like me. Like whether I look nice was going to matter to Lea Hernandez and her son.

And then I had to exit the post for a split second because of an incoming text message, and WordPress ate the entire goddamned beautiful post.

I lost easily a half hour of writing, nuance, and description on a dream that it now rapidly fading from my mind as it’s replaced by grouchy dog whining.

So goodbye beautiful post and beautiful dream, good morning world, and fuck you WordPress app. I’m going to go feed the dogs.

I’ve been kind of quiet lately – here’s a catch-up.

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Christmas, and the days before and after, were awesome.

New Year’s was quiet, but also awesome.

Day after, I caught this massive head cold thing that’s going around – sore throat, cough, snot factory, the whole bit. My energy levels are through the floor, but at least I can’t smell dog poop when I’m cleaning up after the pack.

Work went from almost nonexistent to flat-out crazy, which is typical of the “everyone’s back from the holidays, now get to work” mentality that I’ve come to expect after almost 9 years in the same place.

Speaking of long times, today marks the 16th anniversary of the first date where Nighthawk and I considered each other a couple… so that means we’ve been together literally half our lives… that’s 10,000 years in binary.

The puppies are having a hell of a bad time adjusting to us working, and that’s even with us timing our schedules so we’re rarely out of the house for more than 4 hours.

I’ve been doing a lot of knitting, and some drawing, but my drawing is going poorly due to horrible horrible writing. You can draw a funny comic with no words, but if you have poor words, no skill at drawing is going to save you. It’s a work in progress.

So yes, lots of idiocy on the internet and lots of life is odd comics until i get my shit straight.

Today we’re getting a bit of snow (this is not the global warming I signed up for) and possibly some ice tonight, so I’m hoping to hit the mall and save the economy before dinner. We also just got new bookshelves – big ‘uns – so that might be tomorrow’s project, before or after the football game.

The Eagles somehow weaseled their way into the playoffs and I feel obligated to at least watch. I’m not sure it counts as being a bandwagon fan when a) I watch all their games anyway, and b) I’m watching out of morbid curiosity more than a desire to see them win.

Where does the time go?

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Someone asked me the other day what I do when I say I didn’t do anything a given weekend or evening. Well, there’s…

  • writing or drawing the comic
  • working on the Online Comics Day 2007 site
  • working on this site
  • reading comics
  • reading books about drawing comics
  • knitting
  • playing Final Fantasy 12
  • cursing at the laptop because it froze up
  • taking walks with my husband
  • date night
  • playing Final Fantasy 3
  • reading my email
  • hanging out on the forum
  • playing with the pudge dog
  • playing Solitare Til Dawn
  • watching Nighthawk play Oblivion
  • baseball!
  • and I’m sure a bunch of other stuff I’ve forgotten.

So my apologies that I haven’t been around much… some of this stuff will be dropping off the list as I either finish it or lose interest again. The comic and the blog aren’t going away, just sometimes I get quiet.

Just catching up

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So I’ve been pretty busy. Working hard at work, and resting hard at home. We spent the first half of the weekend with family, celebrating birthdays and fixing computers. We spent the second half of the weekend with appliances – dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, etc. Right now is computer time: I’m trying to fix some new problems in the forum, and Nighthawk is trying to learn all the patterns to beat Pac Man.

Yeah, I don’t even ask anymore.

Anyway, it looks like one of the bb plugins I’d added prevented everyones’ signatures from displaying on the bulletin boards. I’m still trying to hunt out why but suspect I’ll be doing a lot of code rewriting in the near future. Ah well, that’s how you learn, right?

It’s been, well, quiet lately. A lot of people seem to be off doing there own thing. The forums have been quiet, friends have been out of touch, even the comic community seems to be quieter than usual. Or maybe it’s just me – I’ve been so busy I haven’t been around to cause my usual level of trouble.

I’m staying about a week ahead on comics and have more stuff to add shortly. I think. I’m still knitting and working on my Mother’s Day gift too.

That’s all that’s new here. How’re you all?

Up and down the rollercoaster

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So much to tell you, so tired, this’ll be quick.

On the plus side:

There are comics in the queue, and more on the way, and lots of ideas firing off in the brain cabinet.

Also, everyone is healthy, the diabetes thing is progressing without major incidents, we’re all good.

Plus, I’ve been coding again (more on that in next post) which makes me happy. Tired, but happy. The project itself looked like it was going to be a lot rockier than it turned out to be, and success is iminient.

On the minus side:

I’m on Day 2 of a headache that may be sinus, may be migraine, but is definitely HURT. It’s much better than it was thanks to the care provided by my totally awesome husband, but still lots of hurt.

The coding and the headache have set me way behind on a knitting project for which I was way behind anyway.

I haven’t heard from my sister on what’s going on this weekend yet. (HINT HINT!!)

And, oddest of all, we found out today that Nighthawk’s primary specialist passed away suddenly on the 23rd. He was a good doctor, and a good man, and it’s going to be very strange to go to the office and see someone else after over five years of care.

So, as always, we’re riding the rollercoaster of human existance. But you knew that.

Tax season is over!

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Woof.

Now that tax season is done (for everyone except six lunatic states that are ending it today), there’s the gradual slowdown at work, and a chance to breathe. Less overtime means more comic. Got one up on time today – and a fairly lame-duck one up for Saturday. (You’ll either love it or hate it. Probably hate it. I think it’s hilarious.) Scripts are starting to flow inside my pathetic brain as well. It’d be nice to build a buffer again.

Still have some knitting to finish — and fast — but I’m trying to limit my knitting to during the Phillies games, since I won’t be drawing comics during that timeframe anyway.

Of course, catching up on my sleep and eating healthy and all that play a role in the grand scheme of things too, so I’m starting to do all that again.

News: all JessieDog’s blood work came out normal, so for now we’re going with a diagnosis of “old dog”. I can live with that. Little runt better not wake me at 7 am tomorrow because she’s thirsty and can’t open the bedroom door though.

Speaking of sleep, I’m off to do just that.