Little Blogging, Traveling

We just got back from college traveling and a lovely get together at Tom Richmond's house. I am heading out again straight away tomorrow at sunrise and so probably won't really be blogging until I'm done traveling. Grab the end of summer while you can! It's slipping away :-)

Tall Tale Radio Interview

Recently John and I had the great privilege of being interviewed by Tom Racine of Tall Tale Radio. You can hear the interview here. If you have never listened to Tom's podcasts, you are really missing something special. Not only does he have a great set of pipes for radio, (i.e. one of the best voices out there) he is a truly talented interviewer. He obviously loves cartooning and knows the business well. He does his research and asks great questions as well as putting you at ease right away. If there is a down side to his approach it would be that you are so comfortable talking to him you might forget it's going to be public and make an idiot of yourself. (Which I sincerely hope I didn't do - I don't have the nerve to listen to it yet). In a recent interview with Stephan Pastis of  Pearls Before Swine, an interview that was planned to last 20 minutes ran for over 70. Stephan later blogged about this in his post "For Some Reason I Wouldn't Stop Talking". See, it's not really Stephan's fault, Tom just has that effect on you :-)

So thank you so much Tom for the great interview and for being a fan of Edison. While we loved the In-n-Out Burgers we had with you, we are looking forward to taking you to our local drive-in burger joint where the burgers are roughly the size of your head. (We're talking midwestern beef here.) So let us know when you'll be out this way. And for those of you discovering this blog for the first time via Tall Tale, welcome to Behind the Scenes. You'll want to check out the archives for pictures of our time at the Reubens and some other "inside comics" stuff. 

Throw Away Panel 8/16

Here is the rest of today's strip.

Great Summer Movie and Another of John's Talents

I get to brag about my talented husband yet again and also plug a movie. Last night some girlfriends and I went to see Julie and Julia, the movie about Julie Powell and Julia Child. What a great film! Several reviews and programs I have encountered have made the point that they though there was too much "Julie" and not enough "Julia". I have to disagree. While I love Meryl Streep as much as the next person, and her presentation of Julia Child was superb, I was equally interested in the Julie Powell story and thought Amy Adams was terrific. As I understand it the film was not meant to be a bio-pic of Julia Child as much as a depiction of Julie Powell's idea of Julia Child and what that version of J.C. meant to her life. As such, the J.C. bits were largely there to illustrate the aspects of her life that were accessible to Julie. GO SEE IT!

So now the bragging. We actually own Julia Child's wonderful "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and, while I make crepes and boef bourguignon from it, John is really the one who does the majority of the gourmet cooking around here. I think probably his favorite J.C. recipe is the French Onion Soup. He makes it a lot. Real food is very important to us and we have worked very hard to have regular family dinner at least 5 nights out of 7. John is the driving force behind this and, subsequently does a lot more of the cooking than I do. Although, I have noticed that he cooks a lot more when he has several graphics jobs going on - I suspect  it's his way of playing hooky from work :-) 

Goofy Posting

Well, I'm learning things about blogger all the time. It appears that, if you start a post in July and don't finish and publish it until August, when you finally do publish it, it appears in the chronological position in which you first started it -  i.e. July.Of course there is probably some way to fix this but I have neither the time nor the brain space. To see the post about our garden either scroll down the page or click here.

Glassblowing

While I was in college, I had the opportunity to get involved with glassblowing. It quickly became one of my favorite media to work in. Since leaving college, glass studio time has been hard to come by, but I now am excited to have a place to blow regularly and am producing work again. You can read more about my journey through glass and view some of my work here.

Foreign Sales

In all the years John pursued syndication, it never occurred to me that his strip would appear in foreign newspapers. I don't know why I didn't think of it, but I didn't. As it stands now, Edison appears in South Africa, Guam, Trinidad, Jakarta and, most recently, Saudi Arabia. I'm not sure if it is being translated or running in English. It appears as though it may be being carried by university papers and on military bases.  If anyone out there is currently reading Edison in a foreign paper, I'd love to hear from you. 

In the water

Well, it took a lot of work and there's still plenty of work for next year but, after nearly two years in drydock, the boat is back in the water. Now John can sit back and enjoy some free time. Ha - I almost believed that :-)

One of my favorite things about this boat is that it is 40 years old - think of it as restoring a 69 classic car. Anyway here are some pics of the finished product.

The cockpit with some of the new and/or restored wood.

Most of the wood used to look like this (this is on our neighbor's boat)

The new compass - we can navigate again! Also, more restored wood.

Restored and repainted hatch cover.

More restored woodwork in the cabin along with the new cushion covers.

Cabin interior with new cushion covers - my grandmother's featherweight sewing machine really came through.

Under sail.

Not too windy a day, but I had to put my lifejacket back on after this shot-don't mess with the coast guard on the Great Lakes :-)

Some of the "teeny" boats we share the marina with. Not enough papers for that yet :-)

Gill Cameo

Today's strip features Norm Feuti's terrific webcomic character Gill. Gill is currently on hiatus as Norm deals with some other projects but we're all hoping he will be back in September. Norm's post about the hiatus is here.