Deadlines, Deadlines

Now I’ve got illustrations to do for Worlds of Cthulhu #3. Still getting details on what and how many. Between that and the Strange Eggs work I’m having to push all my other projects back a bit. Those two have more specific deadlines than anything else I’m doing. As we move in to summer and closer to the time Nizzibet and I move I see myself getting busier and busier.

Saturday I spent sometime helping the Bombshell move some furniture. She found a buyer for her condo and now she’s moving her stuff to storage spaces until she moves in with her sister in Portland. Then Nizzibet and I went to the Soon-To-Be-Canadians for a while, drank wine and listened to the conversations swirling around us.

We finished the night at home watching Merchant of Venice and the first episode of Space 1999. I’ve no love of Shakespeare and this sumptuous production of Merchant didn’t change that. Too serious for some of the silliness that occurs.

Space 1999? Hmm. Between the first episode and the two (A Matter of Life and Death and Black Sun) we saw on Sunday night I’m afraid that the show benefitted from It’s-the-only-science-fiction-on status when I was a kid. I last saw these episodes when I was eleven in 1975. Star Wars was still two years away. The original Star Trek was in reruns. Space 1999 had much better special effects. But … The characters spend a lot of time looking serious and discussing the ramifications of pseudoscientific nonsense. I’m pretty sure I thought their science was crap when I was eleven. On an episode by episode basis anyway. For some reason I was never bothered by the moon’s ability to find a new solar system every week. I thought that traveling among the stars on a rogue moon was a great idea.

The Cat Has Made Her Morning Appearance

I’ll be checking in on Nizzibet shortly to see if she’s ready to go have coffee. I’m nursing one of her Diet Dr. Pepper’s right now to get my caffeine level up to a tolerable level. I don’t really like diet anything but, unless I feel like making coffee right now myself, it’s the most convenient source of caffeine.

Paliki has been in and out. We don’t see her much these days. She meows to come in first thing in the morning when she hears us moving about. She eats and then meows to go back out. That performance gets repeated in the evenings. Sometimes then she’ll spend an hour on the front porch meowing about something. The front door is often open while she does this. Why doesn’t she come in? I’ve asked her this many times and I’ve yet to get an answer that makes sense. During the day she seems to sleep in the tall grass outside our bedroom window.

Bungling Along

I would be announcing that I’ve posted an entry for the Glass Cat but Keenspace seems to be down and I can’t update the pages. I’m not even sure that the pages properly uploaded.

In other news, I just agreed to illustrate a short story for the next Strange Eggs anthology. Steve Ahlquist is writing.

Another Addition

The Hammerheads entry should have the image working today. I’ve also added an entry for Cap’n Bill. That one has link for Trot but it doesn’t go anywhere yet. The illustration for the Trot entry needs to be inked, shaded and photoshopped.

No drive to do anything last night. Got home. Made Nizzibet the avocado and turkey sandwich that I’d promised and heated up leftovers for myself. We traded news about our days and then, because I wasn’t in to doing anything productive and she didn’t have the energy, we watched The Magnificent Seven. Yul Brunner’s character is a Cajun. Apparently that’s a handy excuse when actor’s have odd accents and their character is still supposed to be “American”. A little silly given how many immigrants were running around the Wild West at the time. Silly also considering how many of those Mexican peasants in the movie didn’t have Mexican accents. Fun movie.

A Child is an Effective Exercise Device

Still sick but now it’s the sort of sick I can effectively ignore until it goes away.

Saturday –
Nizzibet and I went for coffee. It’s a Saturday morning ritual. We either go out to breakfast or go to coffee. It all depends on our finances and what else we’ve got going.

Nizz had a business meeting. While she was gone I moved the weight bench and weight set upstairs. I could have disassembled the thing but I wanted to see if I could get the bench upstairs without doing that as a challenge to my ingenuity and a generally machoness. It’s now sitting in JayDogg’s old room.

Did some scanning. Did some inking. Nizz got back and we went to JayDogg and TwoM’s. LittleM had a play date next door so we didn’t see here for a while. When she got back she wasn’t interested in hanging out with the adults. She’d had kids to hang with and we definitely rated second best. After awhile she got bored and decided we were okay. While Nizz and TwoM watched Elf I spent some time throwing and spinning Little M all over her room. She’s fairly light. The biggest thing to pay attention to is how long she is. I had avoid thumping her into things. When I finally wore out we settled down to a game of Dinosaur Checkers.

All was interrupted by dinner. Lasagne. Yum.

Still. Sick.

I’d probably feel worse but, instead of getting upset about it and therefore cranky, I’ve pretty much rolled with it. That means not trying to do things that I’m going to screw up or get too frustrated about. It also means I’m not getting as much done as I’d like. That is annoying. I never include a “getting sick” contingency in my plans.

Tanks and Knitting Needles

Today I will be using Google to locate and print out images of Panzer tanks and knitting needles. For drawing reference. I checked around yesterday morning for tank images and discovered that there are quite a few to chose from, many of them images of tank models rather than actual images of actual tanks. Not that that’s a problem. I’m drawing a retrofitted Panzer. Now I’ve got to print out a bunch of them so they are available for handy checkbacks. I’m pretty sure I know what knitting needles look like but it never hurts to check.

Work on the Who’s Who pages has had to be set aside to get some other work done. I will mention it whenever I post another entry.

I’m feeling healthier this morning. Not great. I’ll still probably hit the sack early tonight. And therefore not get much drawn. I’m bringing my sketchbook to work in case things are slow enough for me to play. I’ve got a number of characters that I need to get down before I start needing to include them in actual comic pages.

I’ll Be Dead Within The Hour

I suspect that I’m coming down with a cold. The weather has been warm. I’ve been relatively productive. Perfect time for a crash. I’ve got that scratchy feeling in the back of my throat that just won’t go away. This has often been the precursor to the nose that won’t stop producing snot. I plan to go gargle with salt water (one of BigSis’s favorite tricks) and go to bed early.

Should I be seeing purple centipedes crawling under other people’s skin?