Recovering

We've been back from our mini-vacation for a few days now, and we're still just now getting back on our feet. Between Jenny being sick, then me being sick, then going away for 4 days and then her being sick again, we've just been kinda wiped out for the past few weeks. The house is in shambles (atleast in my opinion - in reality it still looks pretty nice), since I haven't had the time and/or energy to clean and we've been too tired or busy to do much other than just go to work and watch TV. That should be changing soon, though, as Jenny finally got fed up with Michaels and put in her 2 week notice today. She's through putting up with horrible schedules, incompetent supervisors and a revolving door of coworkers. She's planning on getting a new job, but she's going to enjoy her respite as well. The funny thing is that when she took this job, it was originally supposed to be the "little part time job on the side" that she took to bring in a little extra money while we got back on our feet after moving. She always had planned on quitting as soon as something better came along, but nothing ever did...

I would still like a better/different job, but I'm learning to live with this, atleast for the moment. Brian is going to be leaving soon (end of June), so while I won't be getting any sort of promotion, I am going to finally be learning some new things so I can take over some of his extra tasks when he's gone. Atleast it's something to do instead of answering the phones.

So, our "vacation" was amazingly fun - we got to see our friends Shane and Rita (who we really appreciate letting us stay at their apartment) as well as my brother Dave (who took us out to dinner at the Pyramid Alehouse); we spent both days at the Emerald City Comic Con, where we got to see a bunch of our favorite artists and writers, bought some cool stuff and generally had a whole lot of geeky fun; and we even got to go to the zoo! Shane and Rita's apartment was just a couple of blocks from the Woodland Park Zoo, so we spent the day on Monday walking around there until closing time. This pushed back when we eventually started the drive back, but it was totally worth it. Here's a group picture of the happily family (Shane, Rita and Roscoe):

I'd hazard to say that our overall Con experience this year was much better than last year, although we didn't do much more in the way of planning and we got there late in the afternoon both days.... I'm thinking that we'll attempt to hit the show early in the morning atleast the first day next year, mainly so we can get at the top of artists' sketch lists before they fill up (as they inevitably do). As it is, I ended up only getting one sketch this year, but it was from the one person I wanted to meet more than any other: David Mack! He produces the most beautiful painted and multimedia work for his books; you can see some examples of his art on his website: Davidmack.net. I do have to say that he is perhaps the absolute nicest professional I've ever seen. He's smiling all the time, wants to talk to everyone there, and goes out of his way to make sure everyone who comes by his table walks away with a good experience. I've also seen this sentiment shared by other folks on-line, so it can't just be my blind fan-boy view of things. Here's a pic Jenny took of myself and the good Mr. Mack:

It's definately not one of the biggest Cons, but it's a decent size show. It's also mostly still just about comics, as opposed to the big Cons in L.A. or New York which are more multimedia spectacles now. Spokane is even trying to get a convention started here now. It's not going to be much this year, but I'm planning on going to support them, and I figure it'll be a good place to meet other artists and fans from the area. Here's their MySpace page for more info: 1st Annual Spokane Comic Convention. And here's a shot of a portion of the Seattle show floor, for some perspective on the size:


In other trip news, while we were originally thinking of heading back to Alaska in June to see peoples and go to Jenny's 10 year reunion, she's since decided that she really doesn't care that much about the reunion, and we'd both rather go back to visit later (say, August), which we may still do. Especially if we'll be living on one income for a little bit while Jenny is jobless, we'll definately want to save our money where we can.