There are only a handful of comic strips that I adore; Calvin & Hobbes and Mutts, for example, are two that just make me smile at the thought of them. And another one of my all-time favorites is the old, classic Peanuts from the ’50s through the ’70s, thanks to reading the collections from my local library back in the day. So when Tom Spurgeon linked to this advertising flyer from the 1950s with ads for the strip? Love it. Here’s one of said strips for your amusement, too:
While training for the Columbia Triathlon, earlier in May I was feeling some soreness on the right side of my knee when I was cycling. While running or swimming it didn’t bother me, but cycling did something not quite right to that muscle. I chalked it up to not being used to biking for that distance (it was after all much farther than I’d ever pedaled before), iced it and took some anti-inflammatories, and didn’t worry.
Post-triathlon, though, it was still bugging me, so I took some time off from even my spinning class to let it get back to normal. After yesterday’s rowing machine session started bothering it (clearly it depends on just how much it bends, since rowing and cycling bend the knee much more), though, I mentioned it to my doctor today. Next thing I knew, after work today I was getting an x-ray at Virginia Hospital Center. (Weekdays at 6pm? No waiting for an x-ray.)
Tragically? So far as I can tell, I have not yet developed super powers as a direct result of the x-ray. I’m always a tiny bit disappointed on that front. I think comic books lied to me over the years. Hmph. (I’ll let you know if it turns out to be anything serious. I’ve also got some PT scheduled for starting next week to strengthen the muscle since it’s probably just a bad strain. But we shall see.)
Sadly, this already is my life. This does not bode well for my future.
For the past few years, I tracked which movies that I saw in the theatre. It was fun to look back and see how many (and what) I’d seen, and this year I decided to take it a step further and add books and graphic novels into the mix, with the help of Goodreads. (I also decided to allow movies I saw on DVD, even though that tally turned out to be just one.)
I ended up tying 2007′s movie tally with 20 films, and amusingly enough that was also the number of novels I read. As for graphic novels… well, let’s just say the final tally was a wee bit higher.
Movies:
Books:
Is it possible to feel like you’ve been travelling without ever leaving the area? I feel like I haven’t been home for the past week, even though I was. There’s a trail of debris all over the place to prove it, in fact. But with 953 different things on my plate at once, I don’t think I ever stopped moving for more than a few minutes to appreciate being home.
But, that’s all over for now. The craziness of September seems to be firmly behind me, having culminated in the Small Press Expo (SPX), which I’ve helped run since 1998. It’s a labor of love, certainly; it eats up chunks of time (although not as much as before since I’ve reduced my role to primarily just the Ignatz Awards) but at the end of the day I get to see so many lovely and wonderful friends that it’s worth it. Of course, I don’t ever get to spend enough time with any of them, which sucks a little bit. But even a few minutes chat is better than nothing at all.
I’ve also vowed to start scanning in my wine sketches once more. I know, I’ve said this before. But I mean it this time. Really. It was invigorating being around so many talented artists all weekend long. I also took some photos at the show that—especially the ones on Sunday using a prime lens—I’m pretty happy with.
Aside from two meetings for work later this week, it is nice to look ahead and see on my schedule… nothing. (Well, almost nothing. I’ve got two runs in the morning for the weekend, and some stuff starts showing up next weekend. But it’s not like last week for instance where every day had a to-do list the length of my arm.) I’m hoping to spend Thursday night in front of the television because I don’t have other things that must be accomplished first.
I think this is what I’d really like to accomplish in the next two weeks:
Will I accomplish them all? I hope so. I also challenge everyone else to follow this list for the next two weeks. I think it’s going to be fun.
I’m not sure how I can be burnt out from doing too much while not really accomplishing anything, but I’ve come to the grim conclusion that it seems to be my life these days. It has been nice to check some items off of the list, though, and move closer to getting other things completed. (Although even things that take up time can still be sad to see go away.)
I did have the last of my “lap swimming class” through Arlington last night, which I’d signed up for primarily because the rec center near my office was overrun with kids camp all summer long. It was strange (to me), though, in that we started with nine people and by the end would have anywhere from two to four people show up. Last night was just me and one other guy. I admit it, I missed two classes (one due to work, one due to sickness) but it was more than just that in terms of absences. The instructor had even said early on that adult swim classes had a steep attrition rate but this was a little out of control. On the bright side, we each had an entire lane to ourselves, how nice is that? The final two weeks we were told to “just go and swim as much as you can without stopping” and I was pleased with the end results: 34 laps in 35 minutes last week, and 39 laps in 40 minutes this week. Nice steady pace with no burning desire to stop. It’ll be nice to have Monday nights back, but I will miss having my own lap lane ready and waiting for me.
Over for SPX, the Ignatz Ballot is out in the wild, and the jury this year did a fantastic job. I’ve been very slowly lining up presenters, so hopefully I can get that done in the next week or two with lots of time to spare. It’s hard to believe the show is just a month away (yikes) but I’m whittling away at my remaining parts, which feels good.
On the downside, though, my home has lately been looking like a disaster area in various stages of disrepair. I’d hoped to really roll up my sleeves and get rid of stuff a couple of weekends ago but it just didn’t happen. I think I’m going to have to just draw up a schedule for myself even if it’s as simple as, “Tackle these two shelves this weekend” so it doesn’t look quite so daunting. (Once I get rid of some things, I will then have room for the other things scattered around my home.) Doubly so for if/when Charlie and I get a place together, this is a process that needs to be taken care of.
Alternately, gods of the lottery system, the Virginia Lottery is at something hugely ridiculous right now like $252 million. I know that supposedly more money brings more problems, but I am willing to give that a shot and see what happens. Then I can spend my days doing research on important things. Like if squirrels can really talk out of their butts or not.
While I’m at it, I need to figure out something else to do with the never-ending supply of peaches from my CSA. I love peaches but I am starting to burn out on them. I cannot eat them fast enough. (Well, I suppose I could but it would be fairly disastrous.) Maybe I should make some sort of smallish peach cobbler? I suppose there are worse fates in life.
Oh, and if the heat could drop about 10 degrees I’d be appreciative. I’d like the option to run after work instead of having to get up super-early to avoid melting.
I was just reading a press-release about Viz launching their upcoming SIGIKKI website, which is going to serialize all sorts of comics from Japan. The pre-launch series running right now, Children of the Sea, is fairly fantastic, with strange things going on with the ocean and teenagers. The official launch for SIGIKKI rolls out over the next two weeks.
Of all the new series that will show up at the site, it’s this one that starts showing up on July 23rd that I’m really excited about.
Saturn Apartments By Hisae Iwaoka
A touching, character-rich vision of an intriguing new world.
Far in the future, humankind has evacuated the Earth in order to preserve it. Humans now reside in a gigantic structure that forms a ring around the Earth, thirty-five kilometers up in the sky. The society of the ring is highly stratified: the higher the floor, the greater the status. Mitsu, the lowly son of a window washer, has just graduated junior high. When his father disappears and is assumed dead, Mitsu must take on his father’s occupation. As he struggles with the transition to working life, Mitsu’s job treats him to an outsider’s view into the various living-room dioramas of the Saturn Apartments.
To me it’s got everything—an interesting setting, and what sounds like a combination of a mystery (the vanishing father), drama (having to inherit something unwanted), and sociological examination (the observing of other people’s lives). It sounds like there’s an almost infinite number of potential stories to be told here. Hopefully it’s as good as it sounds!
(Any books in particular that you’re dying to read based on the description alone?)
I cannot stop chuckling at these old comics.
I believe I’ve mentioned before that over the past year or so, I’ve become a big fan of NPR and its local station WAMU. On Saturday, when I was driving home after the Washington Sinfonietta’s concert, I had the radio on (I think it was “All Things Considered”) and I got a very pleasant little shock. A woman was talking about her comfort food tradition involving spoonfuls of sweetened condensed milk, and how it stemmed from someone sending a can to her and her mother. (And how she would ask her mother about the war in Hungary every time she was allowed one of the spoonfuls.)
I was thinking to myself, “Where have I heard this story before?” and then a split-second before they mentioned the storyteller’s name, I realized where. It was the lovely Miriam Katin, whom I know through comics. She’d actually turned that story into “The Seven Sweet Spoonfuls of Understanding” which ran in one of the Monkeysuit anthologies. Even hitting to home some more, it was seeing her comics there that made me comment in a review of mine that she should really submit something to one of Drawn & Quarterly’s anthologies. Which she did… and not only had a story published there (which was then nominated for an Eisner Award the following year!), but her debut graphic novel We Are On Our Own as well. It’s a small, small world!
(You can listen to the story online at this link. It’s well worth it!)
And secondly, I was looking at WAMU’s schedule today and saw a note that they were making minor schedule adjustements in 2009. I clicked on that link, and the changes were mostly on early Sunday mornings, in part to fill the hole from two cancelled shows: The Infinite Mind, and Calling All Pets. And I have to admit that my first response to the latter being cancelled was, “Awwwww!” Except that, well, I never actually listened to more than the last five minutes of it. It was usually what was playing as I drove to my running group early in the morning.
It was a split second later that I then realized that what I really cared about was not so much that Calling All Pets was on, but rather, that Car Talk was not on. Seriously, I think I wrote off NPR for years because every time I turned it on, it was the weekend and it was Car Talk. Ugh, ugh, ugh. I’m sure there are people reading this who listen to it every week, and to them I say, “Better you than me.”
There are many, many reasons why I love making spicy black bean soup in my slow cooker. First, it makes my entire apartment smell like spices and deliciousness and when I come home from work (or running, or anywhere else) and it’s cooking away, I just get all excited. Second, I always have tons of left-overs, the majority of which goes into my freezer in plastic containers so that I can pull one out at a moment’s notice, heat it up, and have tasty homemade black bean soup.
But right now, at the start of the process of making the soup, I’m at another one of the reasons. When I put the dried black beans in a container and fill it up with water, I actually get a little giddy when a few hours later, almost all the water is gone (even though the beans were originally submerged by several inches of water) and there’s just a cascade of beans staring at me. Inevitably I add more water, some more of which will get absorbed. And tomorrow morning, when I dump the remaining water out, it’s going to be indigo colored and make me grin as it goes down the drain.
Easy to please, that’s me. (The recipe is after the jump at the bottom of the post.)
On an unrelated note, with the marathon in three weekends (my ankle feels much better today, by the way!), I’m trying to see how far ahead I can get with my reviews for Read About Comics. Now normally I’m writing a week ahead, so that this weekend I wrote reviews for November 10-14. For this weekend and the two remaining weekends before the trip up to Philly, though, I’m going to try and write one extra review that gets held in reserve. That way, when the marathon actually hits, I’ll be so far ahead that I can take a full week off from writing and there won’t be a blip on the schedule at all. We’ll see how that goes.
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