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This... has been a rough few days. I'm honestly glad I can go to work to recover. NOT THAT I DON'T LOVE MY FAMILY, BECAUSE I DO, GODDAMMIT. But seriously? Oy. Got no sleep on from Saturday to Sunday because The Wif was a-smited by a plague and I got Kiddo duty. Thankfully, the library was open before MLK day and we went forth and checked out books and played with trains and other kids and hopped on numbers and letters and had a good ol' time.

Monday was me trying to not pass out watching kiddo while Ne and Dwan worked out. And then shopped. For nigh six hours. I then went out to see the joyfest that is Munich. An awesome movie that combines the weighty subject matter of Israel and Palestine with secret agents trying to kill terrorists. I don't think I felt preached-to at all in that movie, which is always a bonus. The ending was a bit ambiguous and not exactly satisfactory, but then again, maybe it shouldn't be, eh?

Tuesday was a brief respite with kiddo at pre-school and Ne and I having dinner together for once. Then it was us boys again for a little while until bedtime. After which, I promptly sat at my drawing table and got next to nothing done, though I did learn that the Japanese comics artists CLAMP get about 120 - 150 pages of finished comic art done a WEEK. That's almost one page EVERY HOUR! HOLY FUCK!

Needless to say, this kind of resonnated with me and forced me back to my drawing table at around 3:30am this morning when I woke due to "intestinal distress." I actually managed to layout and pencil FOUR whole new pages, with which I'm pretty okay with. I think I'll need to go back and redo some of the eyes, as they're off the original models I was using from my sketchbook (the initial design is a little cuter). The pages have all the things people expect from quality storytelling: open vistas, brilliant dialog, imps being smacked with hammers. Good times. Can't wait to actually ink and scan in some of this stuff. That should be a hoot. Seems like I might actually finish before February if I can keep having good 4-pages-at-a-shot days.

Right now, I'm at work on 2 hours of sleep because I had to take Little Dude to language therapy today. I'm already trying to load up on the caffiene which probably bodes ill.

A little rain must fall.

Tonight's been my first night on the new shift (I'm on 'til April so's I can learn the MVS stuff from the Last Master, as it were), and damn is it different. It's so... quiet. And very, I don't know, cold. I mean, I never really hung around the OPS guys even before the promotion, but there was always this sense (largely because I created and cultivated it) of a bullpen. People would stand up and shout things, we'd cut up a little and there'd be this sense of communication even though there were little half-cubicle partitions. It was a relaxed but professional atmosphere.

Here... well, it's a whole different ball game. Apparently a quiet one.

I might feel better after my damned electric razor/beard trimmer is fully charged and I can feel a bit less like a renegade wookie. Seriously. I'm starting to venture into desert island cast-away beardhood now. Hopefully said razor will actually work and I won't have to go to a barber with half my face chewed off or something. :P

On the upside, I finished up the rough pencils for all 4 pages of the Snow White & Red Rose deal... now I just have to think of more story. I mean, I have an idea-slash-direction, I'm just a little unsure how to get it out. Ugh. I'm thinking that this may be a 12-page story rather than a full 24 pages. Or maybe I'm just being whiny and toddlerish.

I'm about half an hour away from completing my first day in my new position. Thus far... not impressed. Maybe it's because there wasn't much going on tonight, but it seems like this "promotion" is going to be a snore-fest. More than likely, what with some new business coming in, it's gonna pick up like gangbusters and I'll be talking to more CIO's and VP's than I can shake a stick at. Time will tell.

Maybe I'm still running on all cylinders from this past week. For those not in the know, the one-month-old daughter of a very good friend of ours caught group B strep and died of meningitis last week. Ne and I were there for several days, coming home after the funeral. Truth to tell, I'm still somewhat shocked by it all. An infant dying of late onset group B strep seems like something that just shouldn't happen in this day.

In other news as I lead the entry away from tragedy, the Mazda finally gave out. Several somethings in the transmission must have decided to let go, because whenever the car wasn't off or in neutral, it sounded like a horrible metal game of yahtzee. With more dice. Alas, the transmission for the 13-year-old car would've cost more than the actual car itself so we decided to junk it...

and you'd think that would be easy, but no. Apparently some salvage yards only take more widely known domestic names. This is, I shit you not, the conversation I had with one of them:

Me: "Yeah, I have a Mazda Protoge I'd like to have junked."
SalvageDude: "Sorry, we don't do furrin cars."
Me: "...It's made by GM."
SalvageDude: "Yeah, but it ain't a name like 'Ford' or 'Chevy.' It still sounds furrin."
Me: "Oooookay."

The week finally culminated in us picking up Little Dude from the grandparents. He's (allegedly) been identifying his ABC's for Oma. Not that he can't identify some letters, but he's 2 and a half, not Longfellow. ;-)