Category: Family

October 3, 2002 /

Today is my brother Ian’s birthday! Happy birthday, Ian! Ian is no longer a teenager, and if he were predictable he’d probably stop stealing people’s lawn ornaments now. Ian is anything but predictable, though, so he may or may not continue stealing lawn ornaments. He’s a madman!

(I’d link you to his website there, but he currently has a beautifully written and really sweet piece about me on his front page and I’m too embarrassed. Remind me again another time. It’s a neat site, and has dinosaurs and spacemen.)

More ways in which the world is a wonderful place: Ken blew me a new fishbowl! Out of glass! Ken can do anything. The bowl is huge and perfect, and Idaho tends to get lost in it and do backflips. Were I to spontaneously develop gills, I think I’d move in next to him.

ALSO! As you may have noticed from the link above, Ken finally obeyed my command and got himself a LiveJournal or something. Hooray for you, Ken! Now make me a sandwich.

two guns, both arms
feelin’ like Fonzie

September 20, 2002 /

I was wrong, incidentally.

Scent memories still freak me out a little sometimes. I know it’s really because long-term storage is next to the nose’s part of the hypothalamus, or whatever, but in practice it just works out so that even weak smells bring back really vivid scenes.

As it rained all night (during Homecoming! bastard rain!), and as we were dolled up for the occasion, Caitlan and I were sent with the rest of the candidates to wait in the library. As the library was locked, we hung out in the rear lobby of the Industrial Arts building downstairs.

The doors there were locked, too, but on the other side of one of them was the original MCHS CAD lab, the site of the first programming class I ever took. I’d messed around in BASIC since I was a kid, but that room was where I learned about Pascal, and about having a weird knack for it. Six years later I’m about to graduate with a BS in Comp Sci. The room still smells the same.

I wasn’t expecting much of a real homecoming, and in fact I only saw two other people from the class of 1999, one of whom recognized me. Instead I got memories of the game two years ago, when my brother was on court. I watched him and his friends stride around like giants who were still learning to shave. I was so proud and awed I thought my heart would burst. I had a girl on my arm with the biggest smile in the world.

I thought about Erika for the first time in a while tonight, and it was sharper than I thought it’d be. I thought about my brother, and how he’s felt lately. I wish I’d really known how to shave myself, so I could have shown him.

September 20, 2002 /

I’m going home tonight to escort my sister out onto the field at Homecoming. I guess technically I could be there to actually come home too, especially since my own (ill-fated) appearance onthe Court four years ago was the only football game I ever went to. But I’m not real big into that.

I don’t have much else to say. We did a lot of work on the play this week, and it’s going to be good, but right now the payoff is mostly exhaustion. Really I just wanted an excuse to update the cam. There ain’t much better than a reluctant girl wearin’ a plastic mullet! Well, actually there is.

August 23, 2002 /

P.S. Today’s IdiotCam© has been one of myfavorite jokes since fourth grade. I’m almost glad Mom bought one of the stupid things, since I cannow finally capture it in low-quality digital form.

August 23, 2002 /

Today is my sister’s birthday! Caitlan is eighteen! Happy birthday, Caitlan!

In other news, Sumana has frequently plugged Bookfinder, a kickin’ service that, well, finds books. It’s kind of like the “network of bookstores” that Amazon uses to find out-of-print books, only much, much better. I was reading some of her comments on the service and how cool it was, and I kept thinking “gee, I wish I had a rare or used book that I was looking for.”

A couple days later, I was surprised to remember that I WAS looking for such a book, and had been for three years–Orson Scott Card’s short story omnibus, Maps In A Mirror. Bookfinder turned up several copies, all of which were too expensive at the moment, of course, but most of which were still cheaper than the few an Amazon search turned up two years ago.

So I went away satisfied, but came back tonight when I remembered a book that this amazing girl had showed me at a convention. The book is Anthropology, and it’s one of those forced-restriction masterpieces: 101 stories, each 101 words long. What I got to read of it was fantastic, and I wanted my own copy, but I remembered she’d said it was out of print.

Which it is–but tonight I found it for just ten bucks with shipping, and bought it. Thanks to Bookfinder! Hooray, Bookfinder!

June 1, 2002 /

As seen camwise, I have a lightbox. Like a real honest to goodness lightbox. It is made of a box with plexiglass on top, and it has a light switch on theside, and when you flip the switch these two fluorescent lights on the inside come on and you light it up FROM THE INSIDE. So you can trace things. It is a miracle of modern technology.

Like most of the web cartoonists who have one of these, I built mine instead of buying it–if by “built” you mean “stood around and made helpful grunts while Mom’s boyfriend, Joe, did all the real work.” It ended up taking six hours and costing about $50 in materials, plus probably hundreds of dollars’ worth of skilled labor on Joe’s end that he wouldn’t even let me chip in for. He’s a really good guy, and amazingly skilled with anything related to carpentry or building. He tends to stay away from computers, but lately I’m starting to think that’s a wise attitude.

Anyway, I have a lightbox, and it’s well beyond merely “cool” into “slopy” territory. I need to sand down the corners, probably, and maybe stain or varnish the wood, and I’ve got a can of glass obscurer that I may or may not use on the window to diffuse the light a little. We’re going to Gatlinburg tomorrow afternoon, so I’ll pretty much have to test it out tonight if I’m going to do a comic thisweek.

I’m guessing it’s going to cut my inking time in half, at least–which will knock that out of its top place as Most Dreaded Part of doing the comic. Now the writing is all I have to fear.

Back Wednesday.

April 28, 2002 /

Yesterday morning, my uncle John got up at some ridiculous hour and ran fifty kilometers. Fifty kilometers. Then he kept walking until he had done fifty miles. Then he went home, had something to eat and went to an unusual retrospective of his work.

Uncle John makes custom birthday cards, and has done so since he was a teenager. A few weeks ago, my aunt Dana started sending letters to friends and family asking to borrow any cards we might have saved. Of course, everybody had saved everything–you don’t get a personal work of art in the mail and throw it away when you’re done.

They got enough cards to fill four rooms full of shelves (and they had leftovers). During the day it was an exhibition for clients; that night, when I got there, it was food and a jazz band and my uncle’s fiftieth birthday party.

It was one of the best gallery shows I’ve ever seen. The sheer volume of work and creativity and originality was humbling and inspiring and it still stuns me a little to think that I own at least a dozen of those original pieces myself.

I think it was my tenth birthday when I got the foldout card. It was a huge battle scene my uncle had drawn and then left half-empty, inviting me to fill in the rest. It was perfect. It was one of the best presents I’ve ever received, and I could probably redraw it from memory.

I was a weird little kid, and if I’d been born to different parents I probably would have been a Ritalin poster child.The only things that could get me to sit still for ten minutes were a big fat fantasy book or a chance to draw with my uncle. I didn’t quite get all the genes that give him his talent, or maybe his dedication–he did better stuff at fifteen than I can hope for now–but everything I love about sequential art comes from trading panels with him on “Captain Zero” and “The Adventures of Petey.” That this site exists as more than a blog is due to him.

A dozen cards, a million comic strips. Happy birthday, Uncle John, and thanks for all my presents.

November 20, 2001 /

Where Am I Cam

The answer is, of course, that I be me on some Thanksgiving Break. This is one of those “breaks” that doesn’t actually involve me getting a break or anything–before and after stuffing myself with free-range turkey, I will be putting together Theatre History and Comp Sci presentations (sans all my resources) and writing comix like a demon. I hope. If Ian brings the magic home, it’s likely all out the window.

Speaking of my brother, he and some friends have finally managed to get together a Kentucky chapterof the SCL–of which, he informs me, he is suddenly president. Meanwhile, my sister has conquered the competition to complete the Adkins dynasty and become freaking president of the Kentucky JCL. My siblings rule.

mic check one two