Leaving Off and Starting Out

Finally, here’s the final post where I wrap up my recap of the highlights of our San Diego trip and I throw in a little introspection. Follow the cut, my friends, it’s good to see you.

San Diego loses cred

Novus didn’t open on Sundays. Walking to each of the potential places we could eat that I had scoped out over the time we’d been there, there was one restaurant open at 8 in the morning that served breakfast. We were not paying $7 for eggs (the other spot was a coffee shop, and only had sandwiches during the week). Even Just Burgers was closed, to my dismay. I spent at least an hour walking around out there. At 9 the grocery store opened and I got a salad for Emily.

20 Pounds

The night before we decided to pack up because we had a relatively early flight. I had been a little worried about getting a 20 lbs bag of oranges at the market (they were really good, judging from the sample, so it definitely seemed worth it). Here’s why. We found out that not only does American Airlines charge $15 to check baggage regardless, but it’s an additional $50 (!) for anything over 50lbs. So it was a puzzle, presented here in my worst Tim O’Brien impression. We had to fit everything we had brought with us, with the exception of the snacks we had eaten. We had to fit all the comics and freebies we had gotten from the con, including the formidable Bottomless Bellybutton and Bone. There was room for all this stuff. Then we had to fit 20 lbs of California home grown oranges, and that is where there were some troubles. Lugging our very full suitcase down to the little bathroom scale in the weight room downstairs, it was just over 50 lbs.

I had been the bad kind of picky eater until recently, and the most fruit I ate was pretty much apples. So Sunday morning, I think it would be safe to say that I ate more oranges than I had in my entire life. We had to lose the weight, and we sure weren’t throwing out that orange gold. We ate as much as we could, stashed some more oranges in the carry-on, and managed to lose 10 lbs.

Going Back

Our bags arrived safely in Cleveland, which was relief because we met a family there who had been on the plane for 8+ hours and had misplaced 2 of their 3 pieces of luggage. When we saw that big 70s floral pattern come onto the conveyor belt, I knew that it was all over and we had flown nearly across the country and everything we cared made it there too without incident.

When I reached for the bag, someone else went for it as well. Who in the world would have a big old suitcase like this? Turns out it was our driver. After the long 4 days since Wednesday, we didn’t recognize each other and so, not finding us, he went on to his next client. We managed to get a hold of him though and he came back to get us.

When we got home, Ursa almost didn’t recognize us. When we let her out, she ran to us, keeping low to the ground, wagging and wiggling. She was so overwhelmed by our return that she started crying and would periodically run around the house making funny whining noises. The cats came out and hovered around us, and Stash has been out much more than he has in a long time.

What It All Means

It’s been over a month back from San Diego now, school has started up again, we’ve been working triple time on getting this house project finished within the next month or two, and San Diego seems pretty far away. The specifics are losing definition, but I can still call them up when I want to.

I feel like I made a lot of campaign promises about how things were going to be after I got back, and well, few could be more disappointed than I am that not very many of them have been honored. This blog has been silent and Spoilers fell of the wagon again. I still very much believe in what I set out to do (finish Spoilers and maintain a regular blogging schedule, interact with the comics community) but I have to admit I was a bit over-eager when I laid out my grand plan of How it was Going to Go Down. Allow me to splain.

I feel like I found myself in San Diego, at Comic Con. I mean, as humble an experience as it might have been, speaking professionally, I was still there as a comics artist, and there were other comics artists there, and comics critics and everyone involved in the living world of comics. It’s one of those feelings that you don’t even comprehend its absence until all of a sudden it’s there with you. This feeling was something that I usually pay lip service to, but here it was incarnatio – that I am an artist and I am supposed to make comics. (Not to discredit anything I’m talking about, but I think my language might be influenced some from the residual effects of watching TransGeneration –which looks like they made a follow up to, which is exciting).

Readers of my blog in its previous presentations might remember how much I talked about the New that was going on (and someday I’ll repost some of my better writing here). I was going through a major transition period of my life that really captivated my interests, being a long time fan of the bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story (You thought FLCL was about aliens?). Anyway, I’m on the other side of that now, taking stock of things, and I can consider Comic Con one of the first landmarks.

From Now

So what are we going to do? I still fully plan on using this blog a lot, and of course I’m going to finish Spoilers, hopefully before it enters its 4th year of production. I’ve started putting together at least two projects that will come after that and I’ve got a lot of ideas for what to do here. All these things will happen at some point in the future. It wasn’t a mistake to tell you all what I was going to do. Where I was mistaken, though, was believing that I could do it all when I said I would.

Here’s the deal. I’m totally dedicated to you and comics, but no good will come from fighting the tide of life. So when I get some time, which looks like it will be after we’ve gotten the house past Phase 1 (it’s taken over a year!) in the next couple of months, I will be hitting you up for some attention. I’ve got a Twitter and a Facebook – I’ll keep you posted.

Hearts for real.

PS I am not ignoring Andy’s loquacious comment on my last San Diego report. It was a very good point and I think I have a good response to it, but I’d like to address it properly, so it might end up being a longer post (Not as long as these have been[that might not be true]).