Family Reunions & Job Prospects

My Uncle Jim and Aunt Susie came through town on their big vacation trip, and we got to see them this last Thursday. They had us over to their RV for dinner (which was delicious, by the way) and we spent a long while talking and getting caught up, which was a lot of fun. It's been years since I've seen them, and this was Jenny's first time meeting them. We even remembered to get a picture of all four of us before we left.

Another job opened up at the library which Jenny is going to try for - it'll mean an increase in both hours and pay, and it would be split between two closer libraries, so much less of a commute. So, that sounds promising....

I'm still job hunting (of course), and am getting afraid that I'm going to have to lower my standards, just so I can find something for the time being and get some more money coming in. I haven't had any luck so far with the few jobs I've found to apply for, but I'm not giving up hope quite yet.

In the meantime, I've been trying to work on some art projects, with the goal of getting my portfolio updated and looking for commission work. I've also got some ideas for projects of my own - a couple of different web-comic possibilities and a series of illustrations I'm starting to do research for. Got to keep working!

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Daily Sketches

Just trying to loosen up. A sketch of Jenny, Supes, a couple of Teen Titans and Grundy.

I think every comic fan has their own little "dream book" ideas that they'd like to draw or write some day. One I'd love to do is a wacky Bizarro/Solomon Grundy team-up, with them fighting monsters and mad scientists and accidentally saving the world. I suppose I'd have to call it World's Worst....

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Happy Labor Day!

I hope everybody had a great (possibly 3 day) weekend. Jenny did have the day off from work, so we headed over to her folks' place to hang out all day and catch up on all the cable TV shows they tape for us. Not terribly exciting, but we're both still kinda sick, so we just wanted to take it easy.

Speaking of TV, new shows are starting this week, with the season premieres of House tonight and Bones on Wednesday. We hadn't really been watching House this last season, but we caught the last couple of episodes and some in re-run, and I think it's back on our list for now. The premiere of Prisonbreak was on last night and I went ahead and taped it, even though we missed most of it's last season as well. I'm sure there'll be a "what you missed" style re-cap first thing, so we might as well see if we still like it...

My parents were in town last week, and we were able to go out to dinner and hang out with them for a while and get caught up. They were up in Alaska for my nephew Kevin's wedding and are now making their way back home to North Carolina, seeing family along the way.

My Aunt and Uncle should be in town this week, if their planned schedule holds up, and we'll hopefully be seeing them this Thursday. I actually haven't heard from them for a while, so I'm not entirely certain that's still correct, but I guess we'll see what happens... :)

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Daily Sketches

Thought I'd try to use this as something of a sketch blog (in addition to a plain ol' normal blog). Was feeling kinda nostalgic, so here's some cheesy Marvel characters from the 90s (when I really started collecting comics), drawn tonight while watching Wrath of Khan for the billionth time...

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Photo Finish

Well, it's been a year, but I finally got the rest of the photos from our wedding scanned and uploaded to our Flickr account. I put them all in a "New Wedding Pictures" set, so they'd be easy to find, and they're here: New Wedding Pictures

These are the pictures taken by Tigger, Shane and Rita, and Jenny's parents. I know there's some more pictures out there that other people took, but that's what we've got so far. I'm in the planning stages of going through and scanning all of our photos (so they'll be archived in case of a fire or whatever) and putting a lot of them online. Besides just our normal pictures of people and things around town, Jenny has a whole bunch of cool photos from her trip to Spain and pics from our trip through Canada (lots of blurry animals).

I figure that with unlimited space available on Flickr, I might as well make the most of it. So, keep an eye out for more photos in the near future. I'd also like to start putting up pictures of our art (drawings and painting) as well as getting some good photos of the jewelry and lapidary work Jenny's been doing with her dad.

Jenny's sick right now, and has missed the last couple of days of work from it. Apparently it's a nasty sinus infection, and I'm afraid I might be getting whatever it is as well (big surprise). Fun. She seems to be getting better, so hopefully she'll be up and around soon.

Otherwise: still jobhunting; still really hot.

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Weather Report

I'm seriously getting sick of this August heat - it just saps all of the energy out of me to the point where I'm basically useless during the middle of the day. Which is why I'm typing this post now, at 2:00 in the morning....

Sunday was supposedly our hottest day of the year (at one point it said it was 107), and I really hope the weatherman is right for once. Tonight we got a little bit of rain, but it came with hail, 70 MPH winds and lightning strikes... which, of course, started more wildfires. Thankfully none of the fires were near us this time, but it is kind of rediculous - we finally get some rain, and things catch on fire?

It might actually be cooling off a bit later in the week (down to the 70s), but then most likely warm back up for the weekend. Yay. More rain is supposed to also come as the week progresses (fingers crossed).

Speaking of rain - we did have a really awesome thunderstorm just over a week ago, during the opening ceremony of the Olympics. It was probably the biggest lightning display I had seen since we got down here and was really impressive. Jenny got a few pictures of the sky lit up, which I'll post up on our flickr account soon.

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Science Fiction

We caught the new X-Files flick ("I Want To Believe") on Sunday, thanks to Jenny's dad who took us to see it. Jenny and I both consider ourselves pretty big fans of the series, so we definately wanted to see this one in the theatre - gotta support it, in hopes of a sequel. Good thing we went when we did, as it's already down to one showing in the local cinema, and will probably be gone by the weekend....

I really enjoyed it - it was closer in tone to the early "mystery-of-the-week" episodes, and had none of the grand alien conspiracy overtones of the later seasons. The first movie was all about the aliens, and I did enjoy it (more than a lot of those later episodes), but the new movie really stood up on it's own as a solid mystery/suspense/thriller.

Unfortunately, I think they made a mistake releasing it when they did, as there was no way it was going to compete with some of the big summer blockbusters in the theatre right now (e.g. Dark Knight, Mummy 3), especially since it really could be watched on the small screen without losing anything from the experience. All in all though, it was still a great film which was definately worth my money - which is getting harder and harder to say nowadays.

In other sci-fi entertainment news, we've been watching the DVDs of the Sci-Fi channel's Eureka TV series. Jenny borrowed the first season from her parents, just to give it a shot (since we don't have cable, we'd only seen ads, but no episodes), and it ended up being really funny. The special effects can be a bit iffy at times (that's the Sci-Fi channel for you), but the wacky storylines and great cast chemistry more than makes up for it. Season 2 just came out, and luckily Jenny's dad bought it and watched the whole thing already. So now we're borrowing it and quickly burning through the discs.

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New Comics

We finally went to The Comic Book Shop and picked up our books from the last 4 weeks. We hadn't planned on letting them pile up like that, but things kept coming up on Wednesday (new comic day) each week and we just never made it in.

With money being tight and gas prices (and everything else) on the rise, we're actually considering cutting back on the comic titles we buy. It's really a shame, though, since it's really our main form of entertainment, our only "vice" if you will. We rarely go to the movies or eat out (unless it's the value menu at Wendy's), and don't really go out otherwise. I don't remember the last time we bought a CD or DVD.

We figure some of the books we'll drop we can start collecting in trade paperback form instead - easier to store, read and eventually pack and move. Just have to wait for them to come out. Well, atleast I've got this giant stack of comics to read for the time being.

In other news, it is now 100 degrees. Gah. I give up, the A/C is coming back on....

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Miscellania - weather, movies

It's warmed back up again, but there's a possibility of thundershowers this weekend, so my fingers are crossed for that. Just have to make it to the end of the week without dying from heat stroke. I've been trying to avoid turning the A/C back on (it's been over a week now), since our electric bill doubled last month (most likely) from having it on 24/7.

Since we've been trying to cut down on our spending, we've been checking out a lot of books from the library (convenient, since Jenny works there), and also DVDs. Just watched Little Miss Sunshine, which had been on our to-see list for a while. It was... OK. Parts were really funny, and then it would flip flop to more of a so-serious-it's-painful type of film. I'm glad I saw it, but I'm also glad it was free.

We checked out 3:10 to Yuma as well, but haven't got a chance to watch it.

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Finally Cooled Off....

The wind's picked up and it's actually comfortable today. First day in a long time that I was able to turn the A/C completely off. Just opened up all the windows and got some (much needed) fresh air through the apartment. Feels nice.

It also looks like it might even rain tonight, which would be great. We definitely need it. It is kinda funny that we've been here for 4 years and still haven't really acclimated to the heat - still Alaskans at heart, I guess.

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