Daily Life
Simpsonize Me – Jeff Rothe
Like I said, I haven’t updated my blog much, and it has been less than I thought as I work harder on the WordPress version. But I thought this was so awesome that I had to post it here.
I have started to see these around, and the commercials didn’t make me realize this was something you could do.
Check it out at Simpsonizeme.com
J. Scott Campbell Head Sketch – G.I. Joe Baroness
I got an awesome surprise today!
Our close friend, and well connected comics enthusiast David Wray called on Saturday to let both Christine and I know that he had a surprise for us. He got us the 2007 J. Scott Campbell Sketchbook at the Wizard World Chicago convention.
But, then later on in the day he found out that J. Scott would be doing sketches tomorrow, and he was going to try to get in line.
Well, turns out that they were just quickie sketches, but who cares. He stood in line to get one and was able to score one for the both of us! How exciting is that!
David is networking, trying to break into the comics business as and Editor I believe. I wish I could do more for him in that arena, because he always takes care of his friends without asking. He is always thoughtful, and looking out for others best interests. I have to believe that would translate really well to being an editor. Working with the different artists, being a liason between them and the company.
He hasn’t been doing networking for too long and he has already made a ton of progress. He also has a great resume having done Public Relations for a comics periodical based out of Cincinnati, OH.
Well, either way, I could sing his praises all night. Thanks David, you’re the best.
Nobles Visit – Day 3
With no church in the morning, I thought it might be nice to take a “mystery” trip and take everyone to Long’s Donuts. I tried to take a back way to throw Sarah off and make it a surprise for everyone. But there aren’t that many ways to get there so she didn’t stay fooled for very long.
That was the first time they had Long’s and they liked them quite a bit. Most people do notice at least that they are a higher quality donut for a great price.
After our sugar binge, we tried to find something to do. We did some poking around on the internet, but most things opened at noon so that didn’t give us much time if they wanted to leave around 2:00 pm. We thought about going to a water park or to an area to swim, but again, it came down to 2 hours wasn’t enough time so we just skipped it.
So instead, we played some sequence and talked. It was a lot of fun, and more lively, sometimes sequence can be a quite deliberating game.
We had some lunch, burgers, salad and watermelon and they were on their way.
Soon after they left, Sarah went up to school to work in her room. I worked on my blog, updating some other information and sent out some emails to some contacts.
All the while I was trying to finalize our plans for tonight. David was stopping in on his way back from Chicago, and Christine and I were going to try to meet him for dinner. We all met up at Target first, the GI Joe 25th anniversary figures are out and David wanted to see if they had any.
From there we went to El Mason, a Mexican restaurant down off Emerson by County Line Road. The food was good, I was pleased. It was just a short dinner, you could tell that David had been “on” all weekend and both he and Kevin were tired. We had a couple of laughs, and got to see all of the cool presents David brought us, including J. Scott Campbell head sketches and sketchbooks. (I wrote all about that in my comic section).
When I got home Sarah still wasn’t back. I scanned my sketch and found an image of the sketchbook and made a post online. That took me forever for some reason. Sarah came home and was in a good mood. She had gone through a lot of stuff in her room and really felt prepared. She sorted through all sorts of old books, and boxes that last year she had just stashed or hidden in her class room because of time.
Then I had one other thing I had committed to doing that involved some heavy thinking and concentration. I didn’t finish with that until 11:30. Sarah and I had a glass of cataba, thanks Christine, talked more about our days and then went to bed.
Nobles down for a visit – Day 2
With all of the wine the night before, I wasn’t sure how this morning was going to go at the gym. But I wasn’t affected by the early time (partially because the dog woke us up before 7).
I met Dave at the gym at 8, and Sarah took the time to go shopping.
We all ate breakfast together when we got back, I made blueberry pancakes as a fun little treat. Then it was time to make a decision about what we were going to do. We could go to the pool for a little bit with Lori and Kenny or we could go to the movies.
We decided, because of the time frames, to go to the movies. We saw Ocean’s 13. Pretty good, not as good as the last one (my favorite) though. And, we had about 10 minutes of the movie, just when it was getting good, where the sound went out. But what are you going to do? Ask for a two dollar return ticket? I don’t want to put the movie theater out of business.
From there, we dropped the girls off at the baby shower. The guys came back, dinked around in Best Buy and looked at tv’s and computers and guy stuff. On the way back to pick up the girls, I stopped for some Culver’s. Very good on such a hot day.
We had some lunch back at the house and just hung around and talked. It is unbearable outside. All you have to do is take two steps and the backs of your knees are like little rivers. We decided to go to church tonight for sure, so we headed out aroudn 5:30.
After church we had a little excitement, which I don’t think I should go into detail here. I’ll just say that we had to spend a little time outside and some angry wasps were involved.
Sarah started dinner soon after we got back inside, we had pork, corn on the cob, and a homemade cherry pastry desert and celebrated Ryan’s birthday. It was an embarrassingly late celebration, but he is a really good sport.
After dinner, it was time for a little bit of Phase 10 with a time limit. Ryan won, stinker.
Then I went out to get a movie, returning Miami Vice and got Let’s Go To Prison. It was one of the only things on my queue that I thought may be appealing to everyone, and be kind of lite in subject matter for so late in the night. It was absolutely horrid.
Nobles down for a visit
Today was a productive day at work.
I knew there were plenty of things to do before our guests arrived tonight. I made a call to the guy who bought the Mr. Do! from Rob Caroll to talk about some photos.
I then sent out an email to Canon about upgrading my scanner to work with Vista 64 bit. Then there were a ton of the little time consumers that add up. I had to clean the guest room, take care of letting out the dog and feeding him, and unload the dishwasher.
The main task for tonight, well, I can’t get into that. I had to do some writing and some updating:) But, by the time the Nobles arrived, I didn’t finish what I needed.
Once they got here, and unloaded, we sat around and chatted. We talked about stuff that boring grown ups talk about, things that are going on in our lives. For us it’s our dog, for them it’s mostly school and professional growth.
We played some Yahtzee for awhile and had some rousing debates about Christian music and responsibilities of grown ups!
With a bottle of wine in me, and the night mostly behind us, we popped in a movie. I am sitting here typing this, and we’ll all be konking soon I am sure. Hey, we’re old now.
Barry Bonds Hits Home Run 756, Beating Hank Aaron
I watched Barry hit is 71st home run in the second where he broke Mark McGwire’s fledging Home Run record, but I didn’t get to see him do it last night. Nor did I care.
But he did finally do it, and the pressure is off of him. Barry Bonds has finally broken Hank Aaron’s 33 year standing home run record of 755 home runs.
I wanted Barry to retire a couple of years ago, and with his knee injury I thought he may never make it here. But in some respects, he may have a season or two left of teetering out. He may hit as many as 30 homers this year, which is still a decent amount even among normal players.
The question for me, is how long will he be around. He has hinted about playing next season but for who? The Giants suck, largely I believe because of Barry and how much of their daily lives revolve around him. Now that there is no record, will the resign him? Or will he go to an American League team where he can DH?
Will he stay around long enough to hit 800 home runs? I would say that would depend on next season, if he stays around, and where he is. If he has a decent season next year and gets within close striking distance, I would say just like Barry, he’ll stick around just to reach 800 home runs.
I just really hope Alex Rodriguez continues to stay healthy and in the hunt so that Barry doesn’t own this record for more than ten years. He is hardly the humble, grateful player you want to own the record or nearly as stand up of a guy as Hank Aaron.
Rodriguez is no Aaron either, but he’s a lot better than Barry, and not a bad guy.
Movies, vacation, Mr. Do! artwork and Mr. & Mrs. Pac-man Pinball
Today was one of those days that you feel like you are having a permanent brain fart.
I felt like I had been really productive all week on my week off. I didn’t work on all of the things I pictured, but you know, I never do. Things always come up, and you have to address them when you are married, own a home, and have a dog.
In the morning I had the option to go in and do my first practice for ensemble (singing in front of church). I am still on the fence about committing, I still have a lot of decisions I want to make about other things about committing. But, if someone keeps asking, I would probably cave.
Sarah was going to be at Wheeler all day, which made me sad. Instead of going anywhere, I sat around and watched a movie, Last Kiss with Zack Braff. Pretty decent…
Then, I took the dog for a walk. I got to call Emily and see how things were going for her and wedding planning.
When I got back, I got the resolve to do the remaining tracing I could do on my Mr. Do artwork. I added it to the blog and moved onto something else.
I knew I had to make a call to an arcade contact, we hadn’t talked in awhile and I had to talk to him about some artwork and other stuff, so I took an hour to do that.
Then, I just had my brain fart. I knew I wanted to watch some baseball on tv, but I also knew I could work during that time. But, I didn’t. I even took a little nap since the dog got us up so early.
Later on Jessica called, so we talked for a little bit. I uploaded some new galleries, and managed the ones I had on my Picasa album, adding my photos of the Mr. Mrs. Pacman Pinball and our vacation photos.
I don’t remember what I did after that. I know I relaxed, maybe played some Ms. Pac-man, read some RSS feeds, probably worked on adding more content to the WordPress blog. I got some photos later on that helped me trace a couple more pieces for my Mr. Do artwork, so I did that too and updated the image on the blog.
Sarah came home just after 10. We hung out together watching some tv for a little bit, and ate the popcorn she brought home. I missed her today, wish she could have been around.
We got to bed at a decent hour, I watched part of SNL with Shia Lebouf, but that was it.
