Inkwell left me a present...

Apparently, I haven't been paying close enough attention to him, as he managed to throw up in the front window sill without me noticing. I'm not sure how long ago it happened, as I don't open the front window unless I absolutely have to. In addition, I'd built up a "cat castle" in front of the window, making it a safe space for him to get away from humans.

Well, he took advantage of it.

I just spent the last half hour scrubbing the area and vacuuming up the remaining chunks. It looks to me like it was a dinner, so it probably happened in the middle of the night sometime. It was dried enough that cleaning it wasn't too bad, it just required some scrubbing.

I have been in a major depression with some anxiety attacks for the past few months. It's been bad enough that I've been trying to stay inside and away from people. I'm going to have to break out of it soon. It's not a comfortable way to live. As a meme on Facebook said, "Depression is when you don't really care about anything. Anxiety is when you care too much about everything. And having both is just like hell."

In lieu of forcing myself to be creative, here's a summary of some of my recent Facebook posts - stuff that I found interesting enough to share.

Andy Borowitz again hits one out of the park with Nation with Crumbling Bridges and Roads Excited to Build Giant Wall. Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. We need leadership that will rebuild our infrastructure, not make stupid promises about walls on our borders.

U.S. Doctors Call for Universal Health Care. A single-payer system is the only moral system. Companies that profit from denying care, which includes most health insurance companies and many pharmaceutical companies, are basically evil. If the goal is increasing shareholder profits and not saving lives, then the companies should go away. Forever.

CharityWatch ranks lots of charities, including The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Foundation. Note the extremely low overhead of the Clinton Foundation, at only 12%. The charity gets an "A" rating because most of its money goes to help people. The numbers being used by conservative critics are not false... they simply count everything that isn't a grant as overhead. Since the Clinton Foundation assists people using other methods besides grants, the critics' numbers are misleading and basically a giant lie.

When we lived in Frankenhaus, one of the biggest problems we ran into was keeping the blackberries under control. Well, we have Luther Burbank to blame. I've spent many days at Luther Burbank Park, so I was a little surprised to read the history of the man. Kind of strikingly eye-opening, and not in a good way.

I quite liked this tweet:

So Sarkozy calls the burkini a 'provocation.' Whether women cover or uncover their bodies, seems we're always, always 'asking for it.'

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 25, 2016

In case you don't know the backstory, several seaside towns in France banned the "burkini", a full body covering suit that allows Muslim or similarly shy women to go to the beach without exposing themselves. At one beach, a woman wearing one was forced to strip by police. That's right. Police forced a woman being modest at the beach to strip. The French Supreme Court banned the laws, but they are apparently still being enforced and a disturbing percent of the population is just fine with it. On the one hand, I'm kind of relieved that another country is outdoing America for sheer stupidity, but on the other hand, really, France? Really?

Women can't win.

New DeLoreans are being built with original parts. These will reportedly have a much better engine. I'm just going to take the opportunity to note that I got to ride in a DeLorean on Back to the Future Day, something that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

On a very light note, the entire British Olympics team had an unfortunate airport problem. Oops.

I don't know if you'll be able to see this if you don't have Facebook, sorry, but Dee Snider did an acoustic version of "We're Not Gonna Take It" that is just amazing and done for all the right reasons. I'm going to try to embed the YouTube version:


Moving on, Phil Plait got really excited about a new astronomical discovery. What does it mean, practically? Not a lot for the average person, but it expands and changes our knowledge and potential understanding of the universe.

A teenager in Montreal showed himself to be a true man by calmly saving a woman from a kidnapper. If that story doesn't bring happiness to your heart, you're probably dead.

A post by a Fort Worth mother of a note from her child's teacher has gone viral. Basically, the teacher was informing parents that the children would not be assigned any homework - only work they didn't finish in class - and urged parents to do evening activities with their children that are proven to correlate with student success. Activities like reading together, eating as a family, playing outside and getting to bed on time. My response is positive. I didn't do homework. I always asked myself if I could pass it if it were on a test. If the answer was yes, I ignored any homework assignments. If the answer was no, I went to the teacher to get it fully explained to me so I could pass it on a test. Homework never figured into my understanding. It was all just busy work. Pointless and useless. If I understood it, why would I want to waste time and energy doing another 50 problems? If I didn't understand it, I couldn't see how struggling through 50 problems would help me in any way.

If you haven't read the Hugo-winning Short Story "Cat Pictures Please", go check it out now. It makes me want to take photos of Inkwell and post them. If only I weren't so upset at him at the moment for his present he left in the windowsill...

Emerald City Comicon Report 2010 - Part II

If you attended the con, be sure to fill out the survey posted at the official website. As usual, I requested Nick Cardy and Ramona Fradon as guests.

Right, where was I? Oh yeah, wandering Artist Alley, away from Angela the Engineer (whose comic has just been added to my RSS reader, yay!). I would love to have a GPS track of my wanderings, as I sometimes turned around on a dime and headed off in another direction. Maybe someday I'll get myself a GPS that works inside and can do the job for me. That would be a fun thing to see after the fact. Anyway, we went to Troll Pete Abrams and then hit that back "corner" of the alley that was a little out of the way. In there we met Bob the Angry Flower, Eduardo Nuñez, Ryan Cody, and Ben Thompson. I really like Ben Thompson's t-shirt in this Troll image.

I then decided to brave the horrors of the media area again, so Lisa and I started to walk over there, past the concessions. In the middle of concessions we spotted the Doctor and a Dalek and I had to Troll them. I gave the Doctor's mother the "You've Been Trolled!" card.

I mentioned in yesterday's report what happened when I met with Leonard Nimoy's rep, who explained that part of the agreement they had with the convention was that there would be NO candid shots of Nimoy at all. The con staff had their hands absolutely full trying to prevent people from getting those shots, despite the signs posted everywhere stating the policy. After my depressing conversation with the rep, I headed down to see if I could get a shot of Wil Wheaton in his jersey for Carolyn. As you have seen, I got the shot. I called out to Wil to ask him to turn around so "I can get a picture of you in that jersey for my Canadian friend!" You can see his resigned reaction. I wasn't the only person standing there. Another half-dozen got pictures of him at the same time.

At this point, Lisa and I lost each other for a short time. I wandered by and met Keith Knight before finding Lisa near Kurt Busiek's table, which was our designated meeting spot for the con. We decided it was lunchtime, and pushed through the crowds, stopping at the Fantagraphics booth to Troll Gilbert Hernandez.

Lunch was chicken sandwiches (thank you Mom!) and bananas. We enjoyed our high-class parking garage meal while Lisa started reading her Linear Algebra book, which she then carried with her for the rest of the convention and read any time she stopped for more than 10 seconds. I ditched the Aquaman Hoodie because it was so warm on the con floor, and left evil twin reading her homework in the car and went back up to the floor to try to get some more images. It was time for my annual picture of Greg's Middle School Students.


An aside... Greg has requested fan help in keeping the program these kids are in alive. I donated a little on the last day, and I'll mention it again when I get to that point in my adventures. But This is a program worth saving, so if you have a little to spare, consider sending it their way.

About this time I decided to try to get a pic of James Robinson with Torvald. I'd already walked by his table earlier, when I Trolled Keith Knight, so I headed back there. The table had Keith Knight on the right, near a support column, next to Danielle Corsetto, who had a crowd much of the time I was there. Then James Robinson's table, then Kevin Maguire sat drawing mostly alone, with fans coming up to visit him every few minutes. Barry Kitson was at the end of the row. The DC Panel with Robinson had just ended, so I figured if I waited long enough, he would show up. What no one realized is that he hadn't had lunch, and decided to take a long break. So I Trolled Gavin, the Emerald City ComiCon staff member who was assigned to that section of the floor. And I Trolled Kevin Maguire, who did some Aquaman covers and whom I had talked with the last time he was in town. Barry Kitson was Trolled last year. I people-watched while standing in wait. And standing. And standing. Evil twin wandered by, then away again. People lined up behind me, then gave up and left. I persisted, mostly because it was a pretty good place to watch people from and because I was extremely tired. If I'd realized ahead of time the problems it would cause my feet, I may have given up standing as well, but I stayed until Robinson finally showed up an hour later and Trolled him. Then I Trolled Danielle, whose line had kept getting longer and longer as I waited for Robinson.

Barely able to walk now, I wandered with Evil Twin around the convention. We saw an awesome orange Aquaman shirt, and Lisa said that if I had that on she wouldn't have to worry about finding me now that I wasn't wearing the hoodie anymore. At this point, I was wearing my Best Ever Aquaman Panel t-shirt. We stopped by to see Kurt again, and he pointed out my shirt to Len Wein, who agreed that it was the best Aquaman panel, and that was hands down the best killer shark he'd ever seen.

As an aside, I did hit the ECCC Booth to get an Owly T-shirt based on the awesome Owly in Seattle drawing that I actually use as a desktop image whenever con season rolls around. But the pink ladies design was a massive turn-off for me. On the website it didn't look so bad, but in person I realized that I wouldn't be caught dead in it. So I got an XL Child's size, which was in a better color. I don't know how much I'll wear it, though, because it's VERY tight on me. Even if I lose a lot more weight it'll still be pretty tight.


Moving on, I Trolled Renee Witterstaetter, but never did manage to Troll Mark Texeira next to her. I had a chance on Sunday, but he was drawing and it wasn't a good time to interrupt. I'd already Trolled Michael Golden in 2007. I also stopped by John Aegard's table and giggled a bit and Trolled him. I need to buy some of his pamphlets, but I'm not sure what to do with them. Certainly put one in my car, I guess. Probably the pirate one.

We visited and Trolled Susan Tardif and Rich Ellis of Periscope Studio and Evil Twin picked up Cat Walk (a preview) by Susan Tardif and Mike Cassella. We then met Stephen JB Jones (designer on Batman: Brave and the Bold) and Trolled him with some difficulty. Then we visited and Trolled Jeff Ellis at the Cloudscape Comics table. I'm going to say now that for the first time ever at this con I ran into a person who was genuinely afraid of Torvald, like little-hubby-Eric was so long ago. In fact, I ran into two people who were frightened, though one overcame it long enough to be Trolled. This isn't a surprise to me, as Torvald can be a little creepy in person. But there is a reason I try to ask nicely before I hand over the troll. I don't mean to scare people!

Right... moving on, we wandered a bit more and found the Boom! Kids booth so I could get a Muppet Show special comic with Miss Piggy in front of the Space Needle. The artist for the cover was Amy Mebberson and I got my book signed and Trolled her as well. She was drawing the COOLEST little cards, each with a muppet on them, for $10 a pop. While I watched she drew a fantastic Animal. Lisa noticed that she had business cards with art on them, and I snagged a fourth Doctor one. I spotted an art card with a muppet version of Death on it (as seen in this blog entry). Then Evil Twin Lisa and I started talking about the Doctor as a muppet. Amy looked up long enough to say, "stop giving me good ideas!" and then got back to drawing. If I should see her at a future con, I think I may have to indulge in an art card. Amusingly, hubby-Eric thought so too, because when I told him about her art he expected me to pull one out to show him. D'oh! Missed opportunity!

I went back to the media area for one last look. The crowds weren't so bad for a moment, and Erin Gray was completely alone. So I wandered up and asked if I could take a Troll picture. She explained that she was charging $10, and her keeper chimed in to say it was for charity, so I agreed. Actually, I would've agreed even if it wasn't for charity, because $10 is a reasonable amount to charge for a photo op. And Erin Gray was one of my childhood heroes as Colonel Wilma Deering on Buck Rogers. And she continues to fight the good fight with charity work against domestic violence, so she's still my hero. If each of the media guests were only charging $10 for a photo, I might have been able to Troll more of them. *sigh*

Another wander brought me back to the Periscope Studio area, where I Trolled Jeremy Barlow. I was feeling a little down and out, but managed to Troll Brian Azzarello, who was talking with a very high class woman, dressed as snazzily as I've ever seen anyone dressed at a convention. This turned out to be Heidi MacDonald, who I had to Troll.

In the meantime, Evil Twin Lisa found some cool buttons (including an Einstein button) for herself and a friend, and debated getting a book from the Wasted Talent table. She lamented that she couldn't find a Newton button, because a friend shares Newton's birthday. When we happened by the table that was selling the science buttons I asked if he had Newton. He said he was sure of it, and started digging until he found one for Lisa. For my effort, Lisa bought me a couple of new buttons to add to my con bag. Then we learned that the buttons were drawn by Angela the Engineer, so Lisa finally decided to purchase the anthology that Angela had contributed to (since the Wasted Talent book isn't out yet). We went back to Angela's table to buy it.

I'm sure I'm leaving lots of stuff out...

I finally had enough at about 5 pm, with an hour of con left to go. I was invited to a dinner, but I would have to take a bus back since Lisa had the car. And one of these years I'm going to have to attend the masquerade somehow. Maybe I'll have to figure out a way to take the bus, or actually stay at a local hotel instead of the next town over.

On the way out I Trolled an Ewok, who was posing for other photos. Then Lisa and I headed to Hotel Mom&Dad for a home-cooked meal. Lisa surprised me, as well. She left to grab some snacks for us and bought that bright orange Aquaman T-shirt for me, which I wore the second day of the convention.


At some point I talked with Brad Guigar at the Halfpixel booth who saw the Troll and said, "Now I know I'm at the Emerald City ComiCon!"... Dave Kellett drew me a pug sketch, which was one of only two sketches I got at the con... The crowds were so insane that we didn't actually get to many booths on the media side of the con... The last Stan Lee signing was apparently moved to another room, giving those of us left a chance to move around... Lisa and I had trouble finding Heidi and James, but we did find the HERO Initiative booth eventually... There was a very long line for Geoff Johns all weekend... I missed Joe Quesada entirely... I missed out on a lot of chances to get really good costume pictures on Saturday. I should've been more bold, because there were some truly awesome costumes around... Tally for the day: 32 Troll pictures, 31 of them with people for a total of 35 people Trolled, and one sketch.

Ok, that's it for Saturday's reports. Next up: Solo Sunday at the con!

Emerald City Comicon reports: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006: part I, part II, part III, part IV, 2007: part I, part II, part III, part IV
2008: part I, part II, part III, part IV, 2009: part I, part II, part III, part IV, 2010: part I
All my blogged con reports and San Diego 2000.

Emerald City Comicon Report 2010 - Part I

I can't believe it's actually been eight years. Eight years since that first show at the stadium, bigger than the ComiCard shows, but not yet giant. Seven years since I met Kurt Busiek and many others at the second year of ECCC. In year three I missed the first day of the con, the only day of ECCC I've missed so far. I started bringing Torvald in 2006, and also wrote a four part convention report. Three years ago, I trolled many people and wrote another four part convention report. Two years ago I continued to Troll people and wrote yet another four part convention report. Last year I Trolled Battlestar actors and Bacon, and yes, wrote another four part convention report. Wow. Eight years.

This year I took Torvald the Troll again, and the pictures are up on his site. Anyone who has been Trolled and wants a larger size of their image, please contact the troll at Torvald at Gjovaag com. The more recent the picture, the sooner I'll be able to find it. I do not have originals for some of the oldest images, sorry.

As I still live three hours away from Seattle, I did the over-the-mountains and through-the-woods trip to Hotel Mom&Dad again this year. I came over on Friday and rested up from the trip so that Saturday wouldn't be too hard. Sadly, a bit of bad news on Wednesday had taken me down emotionally, so it was extremely difficult to get into con-mode this year. In addition, my husband did not attend this year, so I was solo on Sunday at the con. Add in problems my evil twin is having in one of her classes that turned her into a truly grumpy evil twin on Saturday, and I wasn't at my best for the first day of the convention. I only broke down once, but it was fortunately in front of Suzanne and Karin, and they helped cheer me up a bit.

Anyway, Lisa and I headed out with plenty of time to spare and made it easily to the convention center. Parking was a breeze, but Lisa noticed a spot that she could've parked in that she missed. I promised myself that I'd get that spot on Sunday. The walk into the center was easy, and we quickly got up to the holding pen for fans. The convention staff learned from last year and directed people to different spots if they were pre-paid, buying tickets, or exhibitors. It all worked out. Those of us with our lovely badges were put into one of the conference rooms until the show floor opened, allowing free access for the dealers to get in without having to pass by the lines. All said, much better than the first day of last year.

Once the doors opened, the main problem for Lisa and I was staying together long enough before someone stepped between us. Lisa was often blocked off by a stormtrooper or fanboy while I zipped along. Luckily, I was wearing my Aquaman hoodie for the first couple of hours, and the bright orange made me easy to find.

I found Stan Lee's rep quickly, and he was very negative about the Troll. To be fair, he was also being buffeted by about a zillion eager fans, so it wasn't easy for him to stop and talk for a second. As it turned out, I never even saw Stan Lee during the con. Not even from a distance. So, no Torvald pic. I believe I could have done it, but the odds and my mental state were against me.

As for Leonard Nimoy... well, I'll just jump out of order for a moment. I managed to find and talk with his rep later in the day, and he was very clear that I needed to pay $60 for any picture with Nimoy, period. I did not have that much money in my con budget for one picture, so I did not get a Nimoy pic. I did, however, get to see Nimoy several times from a distance. No, I never got to meet him. Right when we got in, the crowds were so insane I didn't get very close at first. In fact, I had to get out of the media area because I started having a crowd-induced panic attack.

Lisa and I wandered a little to get the lay of the land... or rather pushed through the dense crowds trying to keep together and yet still make progress, and ran across the Girl Genius Booth, where Cheyenne and Alice were settling in. Cheyenne, I am happy to say, looked very much alive though distressingly pale. He suggested I start the day's trolling with the Hugo Award for Girl Genius, and I took his suggestion quite seriously.

After Trolling Hugo, we continued to wander until we found Kurt Busiek, and Trolled Len Wein who was sitting next to him. I'm still stunned that Len wasn't beseiged by fans the entire con. C'mon, it's freakin' Len Wein! This is one of the first times I was disgusted that there weren't crowds around a creator.

Lisa and I then wandered down Artist Alley to figure out where everybody was located. I spotted Jill Thompson, but she was still setting up. So we moved on. We stopped by and said hello to Greg Hatcher and his students. We both checked out a lot of books and artwork, but weren't buying yet. Eventually I got up the nerve to take out my camera again, and the next victim was Dan Wickline, writer on Grimm Fairy Tales. Then I went back to Troll Jill Thompson, Scary Godmother.


I first met Jill at San Diego 2000 when I went to commission a couple of sketches from Mark Crilley. It was great to finally see her for her, and not while hunting for somebody else! We've made watching Scary Godmother a regular Hallowe'en tradition.

Next up we headed to the Periscope Studio part of the alley, looking for old friends. I've met most of the gang at one time or another, and Jeff Parker both drew the illustration on my business card and wrote me into a story as a dual race of aliens. This weekend when I chatted with him about it and told him how hard it was to find the book, he teased me about it, saying that I couldn't find it because it had that unfamiliar "Marvel" in the corner of the cover instead of "DC". The first order of business was to take another Troll picture of Colleen Coover to replace the not-terribly-flattering image of her from a few years ago. She was happy to pose, and this image turned out great.

The real goal of visiting Periscope was to meet Erika Moen and let her know that hubby-Eric really enjoyed Dar and read it in one sitting. I got a picture of Erika and Matt with Torvald. Evil Twin Lisa got an unexpected compliment when I said that Lisa wasn't likely to enjoy Dar, and Erika gasped and asked if Lisa was under 18. Nah, she just likes her entertainment PG.


We wandered into the next aisle where we met Angela Melick, who, as it turns out, is an engineer. Just like evil twin Lisa wants to become. Working in a very similar field, even. And writing a webcomic about her adventures. Lisa was impressed by Angela's professionalism, and delighted about the upcoming book. She walked away gushing about Angela and wishing that she could have that book right now. I'm going to stop here, and jump forward to Saturday night. Lisa needed to study a little more of her Linear Algebra, but the instant we got home she popped open her computer and started reading Angela's webcomic Wasted Talent. And giggling. For the first time since I'd arrived on Friday, Lisa outright laughed in real joy. For that alone I feel a great deal of affection for the webcomic and the creator who made it. Go, take a look.

There's a lot more, but I'm tired and ready to stop for the day. So that's it for the moment. More coming soon.

Emerald City Comicon reports: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006: part I, part II, part III, part IV, 2007: part I, part II, part III, part IV
2008: part I, part II, part III, part IV, 2009: part I, part II, part III, part IV.
All my blogged con reports and San Diego 2000.

Friday, Saturday, Busy Busy Busy Days

On Friday hubby-Eric and I took a little road trip out to Eastern Washington. I can't really tell you much about that, except the weather was gorgeous and I got carsick. Besides getting carsick, I really enjoyed the trip.

Bright and early Saturday morning, Eric and I went down to visit my evil twin, and together we all went to the Race For the Cure. We met a friend or two down there, and walked the viaduct along with thousands of other people. Evil twin Lisa took a picture of hubby and I while we walked:

After the walk, our group, now five in number, went back to my parents' house. We played on Lisa's Wii Fit, were fed a wonderful lunch by my mother (THANKS MOM!) and ran some errands and such. We also made sure we had... um... the latest Doctor Who.

After playing around on the Fit (which I want even more now, if that's possible), we all piled into the car and drove down to KBTC where we volunteered for the Doctor Who pledge drive.

Hubby-Eric was "talent" at the pledge drive, as he's been before, but this time he got to anchor the pledge breaks with William. Here's a pic of him once he'd been gussied up a bit by a fellow fan:

Both Lisa and I did our usual behind the scenes work. I monitored the "green room" and made sure nobody walked off with a computer or somebody's bag. Lisa helped tally the totals on the breaks. Before the drive started, we all sat down and watched "Turn Left" (the newest Doctor Who) as a big ol' group of fans.

While we goofed around between breaks, Lisa took some pictures of me, including this one which I altered slightly from the one that appears in the photostream. You can see a lot more pictures, including some fairly embarrassing ones, over in that Flickr stream, by the way.

Some idle final thoughts... Friday's trip could very well change our lives, and in some ways already has... I loved playing on the Wii Fit, especially once it told me my Wii age is 28 instead of 40-something like last time... One of our group made a Mii named "Killer" and the Wii said her Wii age was 61, Ouch... Mmmmmm, sloppy joes for lunch!... The weather for the Race for the Cure was perfect... I ate too much over the weekend and need to be really good the rest of the month to stay under my weight limit... Killer was the only one of the five of us who had trouble walking the Race for the Cure route... Elmo and Big Bird destroyed my little remaining innocence... Watching new Doctor Who in a big group was both fun and annoying... I really like the Wii Fit step aerobics, but the jogging was also great... While I am Lisa's Evil Twin, she's apparently my Evil Twin as well. I'm not sure either of us is the good twin... Once again, many thanks to the people who donated for Race For the Cure! Our little group raised a decent amount of money... Regardless of what happens, I hope to do the Puget Sound Race for the Cure again next year... If you didn't get a chance to donate on Saturday, KBTC is still accepting pledges. I recommend the TARDIS mobile phone charm, it was cool (even if it doesn't work with my phone)...

And lastly, my Evil Twin will be trying to ride her bike 150 miles for charity thie September. I'm going to try to post a reminder about it every week or two until the date. If you want to help Lisa in the MS 150 then donate here. She's trying to get $500 in donations so she can get a jersey, but needs at least $250 in donations to be allowed to ride.