Month: July 2005 (Page 1 of 2)

I need to finish the cover for the preview minicomic of the second book. I know what I want to say with the cover, but I Just. Can’t. Get. It. On. Paper.

I fucking can’t. I’ve been thinking about it for weeks. Trying different layouts, different angles, different approaches. I’ve done literally a hundred different thumbnails, and I’ve got fuck-all to show for it.

I spent today reading comics and looking at books trying to get something, anything to work. Nothing. Bupkis. I feel like such a failure. This is not the first day I’ve lost to this kind of abject frustration. This is the third. I am crushed by the weight of my own suckage.

I’m going to go clean the bathrooms and hope something clicks.

Fuck.

Damn, I want a cup of coffee.

Gor-Dammit! Wizard Magazine just announced that Alan Cummings hasn’t signed on to be in the new X-Men movie. Which means… no Nightcrawler. *sob*

I could live with that — his X2 performance was so amazing, it might be better to leave it standing alone — if they’d just release a good extra-articulated action figure of him in the standard black-leather X-uniform, instead of the dopey pajamas.

Then I’d have to buy a dozen.

And squee at them.

In my studio.

Now approaching Hour 36 without caffeine.

I decided it was high time for a detox when I felt sleepy, drank a triple cappuccino to wake up, and was still dragging.

This is not good. Especially when the triple came from The Fourth Coast, which are notorious for making strong drinks. I was drinking between one and three coffees or coffee drinks a day — morning, 3pm and 9pm, usually homemade in my cute little steam-driven Krups not-quite-real-cappuccino-maker.

I’m surprisingly fine. No headaches yet, and I feel great, if a little unfocused. I did go to bed at 11pm last night, which is about two hours early, no doubt because I didn’t have my usual evening coffee. I figure it’s just my bod finally returning to a normal cycle after hyperdrive.

Of course, this is just to reset my tolerance, so that I don’t need so much for it to be effective. I figure I’ll be slave to the bean again in another two weeks.

So Paul and I were sitting on the couch, minding our own business and watching Mythbusters (Human slingshot! Yay!) when another little brown bat goes flapping past my head. Gosh, they’re pretty in flight, but a little disturbing when they’re in your kitchen.

Another round of broom-grabbing and door-closing began. This time we were actually armed with our wits and fully awake, which helped the bat more than us, because this time we could think of other ways to get him out other than hitting him with stuff. We herded him around, opening windows and trying to get him to exit gracefully by turning out all the lights except one candle on the open window’s sill. That didn’t seem to work, and Paul finally trapped him in his studio and shooed him out an open window with the broom.

Brodie the cat also showed the first spark of intelligence I’ve ever witnessed in him. When we lost track of the fleidermaus for a while, Brodie found him lodged in a windowshade, and just sat there, patiently looking up at it until we figured out what he was trying to tell us.

We finally figured out that the bats are somehow getting up the back stairs through my studio, so I’ll be keeping that door shut full-time from now on.

Fresh Edamame, picked straight from the garden, heated briefly in the microwave, drained and served immedately with salt are some of the best things I’ve ever eaten. I’ve got to figure out a way to plant more next year. YUM!

I wanted to clean the house yesterday, really I did. I wanted to work on my book. But the humidity was so bad that it was all Paul and I could do to go swimming. Almost nothing got done except for lying about and whinging about the heat.

We got up this morning at 6am. It was already 80F outside. We’ve set up a rather Goldbergian arrangement of fans and our two windowshakers in hopes of getting the upstairs of the house down from furnace to mere sauna. We’re usually pretty good about heat, but this is damn near unbearable.

On the plus side, my tomato plants are eight feet tall and still growing. I wish I were joking. We’ll need a stepladder to harvest.

The System Administrator Song

I was up late last night, revamping the Vogelein website. I took a shower and headed to bed around 2:30am. I stopped by the studio to make sure everything was turned off, and what do I find circling my ceiling but a li’l brown bat. He’s going round and round, and both cats are sitting there stupidly watching him, looking as though they’re at an airshow. (Neither of them know what to do when they capture a junebug; that bat’d be no contest.)

So Paul and I engaged in bleary-eyed bat-wrangling until about 3am. Paul finally concussed the poor guy by whacking him midair with an old vinyl LP (I couldn’t make this stuff up). He was stunned, but still peeping. We carried him outside in a cardboard box and left him out there. Either he flew away or got et by the neighbor’s half-feral cat; either way, circle of life.

I really like bats. I’m not afraid of them at all, but I will say this: they certainly have the startle-factor in their favor.

Man.

I’m positive that the bulk-bagged wasabi peas carried by the Kzoo food coop are made by ninjas.

They’re hands-down the hottest wasabi peas I’ve ever eaten. Unlike regular wapeas, which I can down by the handful with little ill effect, one or two of these guys can reduce me to a blinking, snorting, teary-eyed pile of weak-kneed gaijin goo. They’re like swallowing little wasabi caltrops, designed to puncture my digestive system.

Can I stop eating them? Hell, no.

**Thniiiiiif**