Excellent weekend
Blog 031907
This past weekend pretty much had good times or news all the way around.
Friday night the snow and sleet was so bad work cancelled the night shift. My brother woke me up a little early to tell me. I got up but was fairly well out of it so I didn’t have much energy or initiative to do anything.
Somewhere along the line I had a weird dream about my dead aunt. She wasn’t a blood relative but essentially adopted my father without going through all the paper work. Things were done differently back in the 1930’s.
I think I played Call of Duty 2 all night and read my Essential X-Men vol. 5. The book really brought me back to the days where I was totally immersed in comic books. The X-Men have always been my favorite even though there were times where I dropped the book because of creators that just didn’t do it for me. The Essential X-Men vol. 5 reprinted some of my all-time favorite X-Men issues specifically the regular appearance of my all-time favorite comic book character Rachel Summers. Rachel is from an alternate X-Men future very much like that of the movie The Terminator. She was a terrific tragic character in that in her teen years she was forced into becoming a ‘hound’ a person that hunted down others, including friends and family, to be killed or killed them herself. So even among the X-Men she was an outcast despite being the daughter of Cyclops and Marvel Girl (Jean Grey/Phoenix). She would often fly off the handle and have to be stopped from killing villains and/or enemies because that was her trained nature. She was full of anger and rage and would often release it. It was so refreshing to see someone trying to be a hero do that and/or fail and need the help of others to get through life. I guess I related to that or it was wish fulfillment despite having a terrific family life when I was a kid.
I also loved the writing and the art. John Romita Jr.’s art is absolutely awesome during that X-Men run. These days his art seems rougher and not as cool to me which is disappointing. But! He still remains one of my all-time favorite artists. I would say at this time my favorite artists are the following: Alan Davis (tops!), Marc Silvestri, Arthur Adams and John Romita Jr. It’s no coincidence that all of these artists have had a huge influence on the way I draw.
Saturday was fairly busy. My brother had shoveled some of the snow off the driveway the night before. It really helped since we got nailed with 6 or 7 inches of snow. Unfortunately, sleet followed the snow creating a tough crust. So when I went out to shovel pretty much immediately after I got up, it was some of the toughest shoveling I had done in a long while. In fact, it was tough enough to where I gave up after creating a strip of visible tar the length of the driveway. And even that was covered with black ice. Oy! Some rock salt helped to eventually melt some of that ice away.
I got my taxes done later that day. I wasn’t sure what to expect for a refund because it was the first year I could use the interest on my house for a tax reduction. Last year I think I maybe claimed 2 months of tax interest so it really didn’t do much. I ended up getting twice what I got last year. Not a bad haul. I tried not to get my hopes too high because everyone had said the interest on the house would really come back in the form of a tax break. It helped but it didn’t fulfill the dreams of grandeur that I had envisioned.
My original plan was to go 50/50 with the tax refund. 50% as an extra payment on the principal of my house mortgage and 50% towards printing new copies to my comic. That will be changed to spending the refund in thirds. A third to the mortgage principal (almost three normal payments on the principal), a third to pay for the humidifier I had installed onto the central air heating unit and then a third to do various things, some comics related some not.
Later on during the night I went to see my sister sing at a reputable bar: a shirt and tie place. They sounded pretty good overall. My sister had one or two gaffs but nothing really noticeable. I didn’t realize that one band member toured with Cindy Lauper and another with the E-Street band. But I’m guessing that was years and years ago because they are in their 40’s, one or two maybe in their 50’s.
Sunday was a trip to Boston for a comic book con. Five of us packed into a tiny car and rode up. I was sandwiched in the middle of the backseat. We were so snug I could feel the dude on my left breathing. Yuck. The ride up and back was actually a lot of fun with lots of male-bonding going on. Of course, with my crew, that usually means making fun of each other. It wouldn’t surprise me if some feelings got a little hurt but most of it seemed fairly harmless.
We were in and out of the con pretty fast. We got there early but it was pretty full by the time we left. I bought about $20 of Heroclix figures and a comic book for $5. I didn’t think I had the comic but found out I did when I got home! Bleh! But at least my new copy doesn’t have pages falling out like my first copy. I did strike out on trying to find some other comics that I was looking for which was somewhat disappointing.
Boston was weird. Depending what street you walked down on Sunday it was either fairly nice or you froze your ass off. When we first got out of the parking lot area we got out of the garage on the wrong side and had to walk around it to find the con location. I froze my ass off in the chilly gusts of wind. Then I rounded a corner. There was no wind and the sunlight made things fairly tolerable. I was doing the tourist bit looking at all the tall buildings trying to remember things for my Minutemen heroes. That comic book team is based in Boston.
The show had a lot of small name talents and my friends were in and out fairly quickly - maybe a hour – so I didn’t bother meeting anybody. Of course, most of the creators there are there to sell stuff not help competition. I get that a lot at comic book cons even from small publishers. They are just like me, trying to get their stuff mainstream and profitable enough to make a sweet buck.
After the con a couple of the crew really wanted to eat in Boston. I was vaguely against it because I had spent all my money(!) and I figured they would pick something stupid like a franchise joint that was easily available in our home region. We drove around lost taking a small circular tour of Boston that was sort of fun. A GPS cellphone was the target of our bashing at it seemed wrong half of the time with it’s directions and ‘recalibrating’ messages. A couple of seafood joints were closed so we ended up at this Irish joint. I think it was called O’Conner’s and Schmick’s or something like that. It was what I would call mid-class. The luncheon that two of the guys bought was $20. I got a turkey and ham sandwich that was $10. After dessert the finally tally for us five was $165 without tax. We were somewhat surprised. It didn’t help that I had only $6 in cash! Thankfully I was spotted some money. My $6 didn’t even cover my piece of Boston Crème pie! That was $7.
I was somewhat concerned because of the wait for our food. It seemed like a long time for us to get our chow and it wasn’t busy nor was I really hunger. Our food took longer to get to use overall than it did for a dad and his two young daughters to arrive well after us, get served and finish their meals and leave before as we were just getting our desserts served. But when it arrived I absolutely LOVED my sandwich! I was worried that it might not taste that great and that it was on normal sized toast. But the thing was PACKED with turkey and ham looking like a Dagwood sandwich straight out of a Blondie cartoon. It was a joy to eat. So even though I dropped $26 for lunch I was highly satisfied with the meal. It kept me filled for the rest of the day and we left Boston around 2:15pm.
We got back to the store sometime after 3pm maybe 4pm. A few of us decided to geek out to a game of Heroclix. Three of us played at 800 point teams a piece. My game started off fairly horribly. My strategies were okay but my dice rolling was horrible. I literally missed my first 9 attacks. So for the first 30 minutes I was fairly miffed at my futility. Because of my dice rolling futility, I lost half of my team while the other to guys lost one guy each to each other.
D had some hot dice and started pounding on me and T pretty good. So after awhile, me and T teamed up to put the kabosch on D. He was pissed. He wouldn’t admit it saying ‘it’s okay’ and the like but every other comment was how we were teaming up to beat on him. So we did until his team was very weakened and T sent his last remaining guy after me. I was able to finish him off and take out D for the win eventually. So then we had to hear D say ‘good game’ and then follow it up with 5 minutes of how me and T teamed up to take him out. The second part was true. What D refuses to acknowledge is that any time he plays a three player, everybody against everybody, if his former or current roommate plays, they team with D to wipe out the third guy before sending any appreciable forces after each other. This has happened to me twice but usually more often. Of course, D denies this vehemently with his selective memory and claims that his roommates ALWAYS go for him immediately but the rest of us agreed that was utter bullshit when D was out of earshot. Like all of us, D hates to be beat because we all have egos and we all think we are the superior player to the other guy. LOL! But that’s just us and the way we are. Unfortunately, at times it’s not ‘just a game’ and we get mad at each other for it. LOL! Maybe the term ‘grown men’ doesn’t apply to us despite our ages!
So in the end, Sunday ends up being logged in annals of history of a perfect reference to ‘the good ol’ days’ where fun and good times ruled the entire day.
I’m hoping this coming weekend at ConnCon is just as successful of a good time as Sunday was. We’ll see.
This past weekend pretty much had good times or news all the way around.
Friday night the snow and sleet was so bad work cancelled the night shift. My brother woke me up a little early to tell me. I got up but was fairly well out of it so I didn’t have much energy or initiative to do anything.
Somewhere along the line I had a weird dream about my dead aunt. She wasn’t a blood relative but essentially adopted my father without going through all the paper work. Things were done differently back in the 1930’s.
I think I played Call of Duty 2 all night and read my Essential X-Men vol. 5. The book really brought me back to the days where I was totally immersed in comic books. The X-Men have always been my favorite even though there were times where I dropped the book because of creators that just didn’t do it for me. The Essential X-Men vol. 5 reprinted some of my all-time favorite X-Men issues specifically the regular appearance of my all-time favorite comic book character Rachel Summers. Rachel is from an alternate X-Men future very much like that of the movie The Terminator. She was a terrific tragic character in that in her teen years she was forced into becoming a ‘hound’ a person that hunted down others, including friends and family, to be killed or killed them herself. So even among the X-Men she was an outcast despite being the daughter of Cyclops and Marvel Girl (Jean Grey/Phoenix). She would often fly off the handle and have to be stopped from killing villains and/or enemies because that was her trained nature. She was full of anger and rage and would often release it. It was so refreshing to see someone trying to be a hero do that and/or fail and need the help of others to get through life. I guess I related to that or it was wish fulfillment despite having a terrific family life when I was a kid.
I also loved the writing and the art. John Romita Jr.’s art is absolutely awesome during that X-Men run. These days his art seems rougher and not as cool to me which is disappointing. But! He still remains one of my all-time favorite artists. I would say at this time my favorite artists are the following: Alan Davis (tops!), Marc Silvestri, Arthur Adams and John Romita Jr. It’s no coincidence that all of these artists have had a huge influence on the way I draw.
Saturday was fairly busy. My brother had shoveled some of the snow off the driveway the night before. It really helped since we got nailed with 6 or 7 inches of snow. Unfortunately, sleet followed the snow creating a tough crust. So when I went out to shovel pretty much immediately after I got up, it was some of the toughest shoveling I had done in a long while. In fact, it was tough enough to where I gave up after creating a strip of visible tar the length of the driveway. And even that was covered with black ice. Oy! Some rock salt helped to eventually melt some of that ice away.
I got my taxes done later that day. I wasn’t sure what to expect for a refund because it was the first year I could use the interest on my house for a tax reduction. Last year I think I maybe claimed 2 months of tax interest so it really didn’t do much. I ended up getting twice what I got last year. Not a bad haul. I tried not to get my hopes too high because everyone had said the interest on the house would really come back in the form of a tax break. It helped but it didn’t fulfill the dreams of grandeur that I had envisioned.
My original plan was to go 50/50 with the tax refund. 50% as an extra payment on the principal of my house mortgage and 50% towards printing new copies to my comic. That will be changed to spending the refund in thirds. A third to the mortgage principal (almost three normal payments on the principal), a third to pay for the humidifier I had installed onto the central air heating unit and then a third to do various things, some comics related some not.
Later on during the night I went to see my sister sing at a reputable bar: a shirt and tie place. They sounded pretty good overall. My sister had one or two gaffs but nothing really noticeable. I didn’t realize that one band member toured with Cindy Lauper and another with the E-Street band. But I’m guessing that was years and years ago because they are in their 40’s, one or two maybe in their 50’s.
Sunday was a trip to Boston for a comic book con. Five of us packed into a tiny car and rode up. I was sandwiched in the middle of the backseat. We were so snug I could feel the dude on my left breathing. Yuck. The ride up and back was actually a lot of fun with lots of male-bonding going on. Of course, with my crew, that usually means making fun of each other. It wouldn’t surprise me if some feelings got a little hurt but most of it seemed fairly harmless.
We were in and out of the con pretty fast. We got there early but it was pretty full by the time we left. I bought about $20 of Heroclix figures and a comic book for $5. I didn’t think I had the comic but found out I did when I got home! Bleh! But at least my new copy doesn’t have pages falling out like my first copy. I did strike out on trying to find some other comics that I was looking for which was somewhat disappointing.
Boston was weird. Depending what street you walked down on Sunday it was either fairly nice or you froze your ass off. When we first got out of the parking lot area we got out of the garage on the wrong side and had to walk around it to find the con location. I froze my ass off in the chilly gusts of wind. Then I rounded a corner. There was no wind and the sunlight made things fairly tolerable. I was doing the tourist bit looking at all the tall buildings trying to remember things for my Minutemen heroes. That comic book team is based in Boston.
The show had a lot of small name talents and my friends were in and out fairly quickly - maybe a hour – so I didn’t bother meeting anybody. Of course, most of the creators there are there to sell stuff not help competition. I get that a lot at comic book cons even from small publishers. They are just like me, trying to get their stuff mainstream and profitable enough to make a sweet buck.
After the con a couple of the crew really wanted to eat in Boston. I was vaguely against it because I had spent all my money(!) and I figured they would pick something stupid like a franchise joint that was easily available in our home region. We drove around lost taking a small circular tour of Boston that was sort of fun. A GPS cellphone was the target of our bashing at it seemed wrong half of the time with it’s directions and ‘recalibrating’ messages. A couple of seafood joints were closed so we ended up at this Irish joint. I think it was called O’Conner’s and Schmick’s or something like that. It was what I would call mid-class. The luncheon that two of the guys bought was $20. I got a turkey and ham sandwich that was $10. After dessert the finally tally for us five was $165 without tax. We were somewhat surprised. It didn’t help that I had only $6 in cash! Thankfully I was spotted some money. My $6 didn’t even cover my piece of Boston Crème pie! That was $7.
I was somewhat concerned because of the wait for our food. It seemed like a long time for us to get our chow and it wasn’t busy nor was I really hunger. Our food took longer to get to use overall than it did for a dad and his two young daughters to arrive well after us, get served and finish their meals and leave before as we were just getting our desserts served. But when it arrived I absolutely LOVED my sandwich! I was worried that it might not taste that great and that it was on normal sized toast. But the thing was PACKED with turkey and ham looking like a Dagwood sandwich straight out of a Blondie cartoon. It was a joy to eat. So even though I dropped $26 for lunch I was highly satisfied with the meal. It kept me filled for the rest of the day and we left Boston around 2:15pm.
We got back to the store sometime after 3pm maybe 4pm. A few of us decided to geek out to a game of Heroclix. Three of us played at 800 point teams a piece. My game started off fairly horribly. My strategies were okay but my dice rolling was horrible. I literally missed my first 9 attacks. So for the first 30 minutes I was fairly miffed at my futility. Because of my dice rolling futility, I lost half of my team while the other to guys lost one guy each to each other.
D had some hot dice and started pounding on me and T pretty good. So after awhile, me and T teamed up to put the kabosch on D. He was pissed. He wouldn’t admit it saying ‘it’s okay’ and the like but every other comment was how we were teaming up to beat on him. So we did until his team was very weakened and T sent his last remaining guy after me. I was able to finish him off and take out D for the win eventually. So then we had to hear D say ‘good game’ and then follow it up with 5 minutes of how me and T teamed up to take him out. The second part was true. What D refuses to acknowledge is that any time he plays a three player, everybody against everybody, if his former or current roommate plays, they team with D to wipe out the third guy before sending any appreciable forces after each other. This has happened to me twice but usually more often. Of course, D denies this vehemently with his selective memory and claims that his roommates ALWAYS go for him immediately but the rest of us agreed that was utter bullshit when D was out of earshot. Like all of us, D hates to be beat because we all have egos and we all think we are the superior player to the other guy. LOL! But that’s just us and the way we are. Unfortunately, at times it’s not ‘just a game’ and we get mad at each other for it. LOL! Maybe the term ‘grown men’ doesn’t apply to us despite our ages!
So in the end, Sunday ends up being logged in annals of history of a perfect reference to ‘the good ol’ days’ where fun and good times ruled the entire day.
I’m hoping this coming weekend at ConnCon is just as successful of a good time as Sunday was. We’ll see.
posted by DungeonMasterJim at 11:45 AM
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