Copying the Striptoonist

I'm taking a page out of the book of the Striptoonist today. This made me literally laugh out loud this morning. (And do a spit take all over my keyboard)

Stay Tooned

Just a reminder that the latest Stay Tooned Magazine is out. We got ours the day before yesterday and is it ever jam packed with great stuff. Get your copy today before they're all gone!

Summer Road Trip Part 2 - Toronto And The Demise Of A Laptop

So once I left Sandra I headed to Toronto. My plan was to spend the night and do some sightseeing in the downtown area. I had heard so much about the terrific art community there and was looking forward to exploring it. I also had hopes of going to the ROM - Royal Ontario Museum. Particularly lucky for me, I was going to be there on a Wednesday when admission is free :-) After downtown Toronto, I had planned to visit a store in Unionville where they sell Spanx. Let me stop right now and say that, if you are a woman who ever needs to feel "un-fat" or wears nice clothes for a living and is sick of the 3-4 rolls and lines that appear up and down your back in a nice dress, you need to discover Spanx. This is a company that has truly changed my life. However, the down side to Spanx is that there are very few places where you can go in and try them on and they are expensive enough that you really don't want to find out after the fact (and $) that you got the wrong size or that the item you thought would work great under that outfit actually doesn't. So this was also going to be a highlight of my day.

Well, there is a saying, "If you want to make God laugh, make plans".

I got to the hotel all right and the room was lovely and there was free wi-fi and I was happy.

The next morning, while downloading my Niagara Falls pics onto John's laptop, it froze. I tried to force quit everything and it refused. Then it started clicking. Then the screen went all blue. Then it started BEEPING. Like something out of Dr. Strangelove. Click, whirrrr, BEEP. Click, whirrrr, BEEP. Click, whirrrr, BEEP. Click, whirrrr, BEEP. 

Context: THIS IS THE COMPUTER JOHN WRITES ALL HIS STRIPS ON. He has NEVER let me borrow it before. Is everything backed up at home? I HAVE NO IDEA. I thought I was going to faint.

I thought to myself "a city the size of Toronto must have an Apple Store" so I got out the GPS unit and did a search. Thank goodness I had that unit. It not only told me there was an Apple store but gave me directions to it. (Its estimation of my driving time was a wee bit off - it seems to be unfamiliar with the gridlock traffic of Toronto) Well - no sightseeing in Toronto for me. No Museum. It was off to the Apple store. While en route I did get to see Toronto's Chinatown and Little Italy. 

An hour later I get to the Apple store only to see the place is packed and the big screen where they announce appointments to see a "genius" has the next available appointment listed as 6:00 p.m. (It is currently 10:00 a.m.) NOT GOOD. I must have looked like hell because pretty soon a nice manager lady approached me and said "Are you OK?" "Actually, no", I answered. I then proceeded to incoherently describe my series of noises and problems and tried not to fall apart. I must not have done that very well because she next asked if I need a hug. Here's how bad off I was - I said yes.

She says that, even though the "geniuses" are all booked up, she'll see what she can do and we take the laptop out of its triple padded carrying case. "Oh," she says, "this one's pretty old. I'm not sure how much we'll be able to help." 

Old. 

My Sunbeam mixer - that still runs perfectly great - is approximately 70 years old and this 4 YEAR OLD  computer is too old. Again, I thought I was going to faint.

"He has Applecare" I offer hopefully.  30 minutes later I will find out that the Applecare expired in July of 2008.

She sees what a mess I am, tries to calm me down and takes it into the back. When she returns I find out that a "genius" best guess is that the hard drive needs to be replaced.

"Does your husband have everything backed up?"

"I don't know, can data be retrieved off of the old hard drive?"

"Yes, but it's expensive."

"How much?"

"Well - at least a thousand dollars."

Gulp

"How much to replace the hard drive?"

"Probably about $350."

Gulp again.

"And I'm afraid that, because the unit is so old, we don't have the part in stock and would have to order it. How long are you in Toronto?"

"Today."

"Oh."

Well, I tell her that I have a reservation for that night in Kingston and she contacts a tech in Kingston to see if he can fix it while I'm there. He can do the work but doesn't have a replacement hard drive. I tell her I'll be in Syracuse NY the following day and she contacts the Apple Store there to see if they can help. While they also don't have the part, they can order it. Unfortunately, it cannot arrive before I will be in Olean the day after Syracuse. I am unwilling to abandon my plans to visit Margaret Friday (see previous post) so, at this point we decide to give up and I'll just take the best care of it that I can until I get back to my home turf where we can deal with things better. Even though she wound up not being able to help me, I cannot say enough in praise of this woman - she really tried everything she could think of to fix the situation. I wish I had thought to ask her name.

So scratch happy day in the Toronto area. I DID make it to that Spanx store and I did get to try things on which turned out to extremely helpful in narrowing down the bits of their product line that work best for me. I also left with two beautiful pashmeena shawls and a cool scarf, which rescued the day a little bit. Also, while walking around Unionville, I happened upon this sign. 

I was in a hurry to get to Kingston so I didn't go in - now I'm dying to know what a "cake gallery" actually is :-)

So most of the day was awful because I knew I was going to have to tell John everything at some point. I decided to wait until after I checked into the bed and breakfast in Kingston and got myself settled. Waiting turned out to be a good idea because the B & B was WONDERFUL. If you have any reason to go to Kingston Ontario you should stay at Arabella on the Lake. 

When I arrived, the host was not there but had put an envelope on the door with a letter and my key. She said there was lemon cake on the sideboard and I could put on a pot of tea if I liked and to make myself at home and use the fireplace or the hot tub if I wished. There was a beautiful deck with hot tub right on the shore of Lake Ontario, a fireplace in both the living room and my guest room, a small fridge with bottled water in the room, comfy plush bathrobes. I was in heaven. Not only that, the place is small enough - only two other rooms - and the other guests were all out to dinner, so I had the whole establishment to myself, which was exactly what I needed on the heels of the day. I settled myself in tried to shake off the worst of my anxiety (lemon cake, tea, and hot tubs help a lot in this area) and braced myself for the call to John. 

As it turned out, I really should have called him earlier and saved myself some stress because he was absolutely wonderful about the computer, said he was pretty sure anything that wasn't backed up was unimportant, and felt terrible that I had been so stressed about it. He truly is a wonderful man and a great husband. My biggest fear was that I had lost several scripts for upcoming strips (he had pulled these off before I left) or that there were all his big graphic design jobs on it. That was really my biggest fear because once these jobs are complete, they represent hours and hours of production work and are next to impossible to recreate. Fortunately, when John upgraded his graphics computer last year, he stopped putting these accounts on the laptop. Talk about relief. 

So the bad news is that I did not enjoy Toronto. The good news is that it will give me an excuse to go back, and take John with, and truly explore what I am sure is an awesome city. At least I already know my way around and know a good hotel! 

And I will definitely be returning to Arabella on the Lake - here are some pics.

My room. Fireplace #1 is on the right hand wall and the deck is through the patio window/door.

The front entryway.

The kitchen.

The kitchen another view.

The living room with fireplace #2.

Part of the back deck. The deck from my room and the hot tub are out of frame.

I did take advantage of these chairs as the sunset progressed. And not too may bugs either :-)

The water was actually not too cold. This was the perfect amount of beach for wading a little.

I tend to fall out of hammocks so I did not give this one a try :-)

I was in the "sunset room" which has a personal deck and window to this wonderful view.

Thanks for everything, Donna - I'll be back!

Meeting With Cartoonists Part 3

 Margaret Shulock (Six Chix, Sticks, Snuffy Smith, Apartment 3-G)

After a couple of days tooling around the Lake Ontario, I made my way down to the Allegheny Mountains to visit Margaret Shulock. As you can see from the above list, Margaret is one busy lady! Along with her own strip, Sticks and being the Tuesday Chick for Six Chix, Margaret also writes for Snuffy Smith and Apartment 3 G. You can see a blog post she did about writing for continuity strips here. I really don't know how she does it - it's challenging enough producing your own strip but writing a strip like 3-G where you have its long standing character arcs etc. already in place is a whole other animal. I had never met Margaret in person but felt I knew her a little through our blogs and some emails and such so I took a shot and asked if she'd be up for a visit. I'm so glad I asked because we had a great time. I stayed there literally all day :-) and never felt as though she was itching to be rid of me. That either means it went well or I am socially clueless :-) I should mention that Margaret's friend Peg also dropped in for a time and we got to visit as well. Peg is a weaver and jewelry maker and you can find her blog and her beautiful work here and here. Peg and I discovered a mutual affection for scarves - I knit and crochet mine, she weaves hers. I also occasionally make jewelry but I have to say nothing as nice as Peg's.

I had such a nice time at Margaret's that I, again, forgot to take any pictures. Therefore, Stephanie Piro (another extremely talented member of Six Chix) has given me permission to "borrow" some of the pics she took when she visited Margaret a couple of weeks earlier.

If you follow Margaret's blog, you know all about this black mailbox.

Margaret with her dog Gaby and fellow Six Chix cartoonist Stephanie Piro in front of all the wood MARGARET HAS CHOPPED HERSELF. 

Thank you again Margaret - I had a lovely time and I'm going to think of you especially every time I put a log on our fire.

BTW, John wants to know where you got your fabulous axe - his is on its last legs.

Meeting With Cartoonists Part 2

Meeting Cartoonists Part 2 - Sandra Bell Lundy (Between Friends)

14 hours after arriving home from Minneapolis, I piled the two younger kids into the car (just enough time to do laundry and repack for leg 2) and headed out to Buffalo New York. My sister graciously invited my kids to spend a few days at her place in CT, giving me an excuse to drive around and explore the Lake Ontario region.  So my sister and her husband and I took the kids to Niagara Falls after which I got to cross into Canada and meet with Sandra for lunch. Can you still call it lunch if you stay until almost supper time? Because that's what we did :-) We met at the historic Angel Inn at Niagara on the Lake - I heartily recommend you go there if you've never been. They have great food, terrific ambience and history, (a ghost also I think, if you spend the night there) and waitresses with the patience of saints as you sit in their station for hours. I think we talked about everything and I had such a great time. I cannot thank Sandra enough for taking so much of her valuable time to play hooky with me :-) After we were done, Sandra helped set me on my way to Toronto where I was spending the night (more on Toronto in a later post). Unfortunately, I did not think to take a single picture :-(     so these pics of Niagara falls will have to suffice. 

Summer Road Trip Part 1 - Meeting Cartoonists

Meeting Cartoonists part 1: Party at Tom Richmond's House. 

Pictured left to right: The Lovely Anna, Tom Richmond, Cedric Hohnstadt, Me and John, Jerry Van Amerongen and Linda Houden, Nicole and Kelly McNutt, Mike Edholm, Roxanne Prichard and Jim Horwitz.

My 3000 + mile summer road trip began when John and I and the kids went up to Minneapolis to take son #1 to orientation at the University of Minnesota, where he shall spend the next four (hopefully only 4 - we can't afford 7) years becoming an engineer/productive member of society/taxpayer. That's if there are any jobs in four years. Let's all cross our fingers, shall we?

Anyway, we were so very, very lucky to be able to co-ordinate with Tom Richmond (Mad Magazine and NCS 2nd Vice President) and his lovely wife Anna at a cook out the same weekend at their home. Making it also an informal meeting of the NCS North Central Chapter meant that we got to meet and hang out with many  folks from the cartooning business and their families. 

It was  a wonderful party with great company, great drinks (Tom's famous Mojitos) and even greater food (All prepared by expert cook and supreme hostess Anna) and we had a terrific time. It is always fun to meet in person folks whose work you have admired and also some you have only encountered through places like the Daily Cartoonist. Also I find that conversations among cartoonists are never boring. In fact, there are so many razor sharp wits around, laughter is almost continuous. So thank you again to Tom and Anna for opening their home and yard and thank you also to all those who took time out of their busy lives (and some who drove considerable distance) to attend - we had a truly great time! (More pictures etc. can also be found here and here.)

Tom Richmond and our #2 son.

Kelly McNutt and his wife Nicole.

Tom and Jerry :-)     (Jerry Van Amerongen)

Back to Blogging

Well, I'm back to blogging I hope. I have Jury duty this week so it might still be sporadic. I was excused for the day so that means I will probably do several posts today in my copious free time. I spent much of the last 4 weeks traveling and then settling kids into new routines - some of which I will be writing about but in several installments as there was so much. Coming up: Summer Road Trip part 1 - Meeting Cartoonists.

Who is the Striptoonist?

Who is this "Striptoonist"? I have no idea but I am thrilled to see a blog that gives kudos to strips rather than snark. I really hope this site catches on - keep up the good work, whoever you are. And thanks to Piers Baker's blog for alerting me to the existence of the Striptoonist in the first place.

Stay Tooned

We have a new button, over in the right hand column, for the wonderful magazine "Stay Tooned". Brainchild of John Read, this is a fabulous magazine for anyone interested in comics or the comics business - if you have a loved one in the cartooning business, get them a subscription - you can never start looking too early for great Christmas gifts :-)

The current issue - number 4 - has a special focus on Mad Magazine and legendary artists Jack Davis, Sergio Aragones, Paul Coker, Duck Edwing, Tom Richmond. Ted Rall, Scott Nickel and John Kovaleski. This issue also features the first installment of John's "Journey to Syndication" story (originally published in John's Lab Notes). John feels incredibly honored to be sharing paper with such giants in the industry.

The first three issues are sold out and can only be purchased as part of a full subscription set for new subscribers so you better grab issue 4 (just available as of September) before they're all gone. 

Wild Wild West

Well I'm back from my two week road trip. I'll be blogging about it later but right now it's deadline time and I am madly coloring strips to send out. I'm taking a tiny break however because, as I color, I usually have the TV on - most frequently to METV which broadcasts old TV shows almost exclusively - and I had to acknowledge the debt we owe the station when it comes to material. Fans of the strip know that today wraps up a two week storyline revolving around the 1960's show Wild Wild West which starred Robert Conrad and Ross Martin. As it happens I am currently watching (or rather, listening to) "The Night Of The Juggernaut". With all the old shows currently available on METV and Netflix, don't be surprised if other shows turn up in Edison's Holographic adventures in the future :-)

It also turns out there is a great WWW fan site here. Enjoy!

Back to Work!

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.

Confession

I realize this does not paint me in a flattering light, but here goes.

This is, in fact, my basement. 

Most particularly the air hockey table that has seen approximately 12 hours of actual air hockey activity and about 23 months as a storage surface/laundry center. As in sorting all the laundry on it, keeping all the laundry baskets on it, and occasionally the extra room to actually fold laundry on it. It is also the prime destination for all things Christmas when I can barely cope with taking the decorations down, let alone sort them all back out into their various boxes and put them away. There is, in fact, a whole wall of storage closets in my basement but, as I send things on their merry way down the stairs, they often get piled up in front of the closet doors in such a way that they will no longer open, rendering the closets next to useless.

Now I realize that many people have basements, or attics, that look like this. What made it fodder for the strip is the fact that the rest of my house looks pretty organized and together. (Let me rephrase that - when the kids are all in school for the day and can't get anything back out, then the house looks pretty together. Summer is right out. The entire house is a disaster from top to bottom. I have learned to embrace this reality and simply wait for September.) What really pulled the "Dorian Gray" element in was when I was prepping the house to have people over. It is truly amazing how much stuff you can throw into paper bags and stuff into closets or send to the basement in order to create the "ultimate entertaining environment" illusion.

Of course, I have to hope that none of the folks I have over actually read the strip or this blog or my cover is completely blown :-)

And heaven forbid any of our guests actually want to play air hockey.