In writing that last journal entry, I remember that one of the people who helped us move the drafting table was my neighbor’s son Ben. I barely knew him, but he sure was helpful, and genuinely enjoyed carting the table into our home and down two flights of stairs. This is the same Ben who later committed suicide. I couldn’t call up my memory of him at the time I learned of his death, but now I’ve stepped right into the middle of it.

I’m not sure whether to think of this as a landmine or a forgotten patch of flowers, here in the untracked forests of my mind. At least now I know where it is.

When we purchased the drafting table I use, we thought we needed to take it apart in order to move it. As it turns out, we didn’t HAVE to, but we did anyway, and in taking it apart that first time, we discovered just what “unwinding” means.

There’s a spring in the table that supports the drafting surface, and enables the user to, with the flip of a switch, effortlessly raise and lower the surface. This spring, under constant tension for (probably) decades, does 90% of the work.

Well, when we removed the drafting surface, that spring unwound all at once. GRRRRTTT! We had no idea what that sound meant, but suspected it wasn’t good. A little investigation once the table was down in the basement proved out some of my suspcion. Nothing was broken, but that spring would need to be wound, by hand, to a couple hundred pounds of tension (or whatever the measurement unit is for springs). So a tool was fashioned for the job, and I hand-cranked that spring while others supported the table. A little trial and error showed how much to wind it up before dropping the surface into place. The answer: uncomfortably lots. Once or twice it let go while I was winding it up. GRRRRTTT and everyone jumped.

So, now you know the story of the drafting table spring. When I’m “wound up” on a project, that noise, and the associated half-second earthquake-in-miniature, is my benchmark for what it’s going to take to unwind me. There’s no slow release. Once you lift the load off, once the teeth on the struts clear the gears affixed to the spring, it lets go. Last night at midnight I finished a week’s worth of 14-hour days. Today, with the exception of some coloring for Schlock Mercenary, has been pretty non-productive. It went GRRRRTTT.

I did have a nice nap.

A silly comment from this morning… I made deep-fried sourdough french toast with a side of sausage. As I was prepping my plate I commented to Sandra:

“It seems a little dangerous to put butter on something I just deep-fried.”

Then I put butter on it. It was really, REALLY good.

–Howard

So here’s what it comes down to… the GWAVAMan comic book for Brainshare has to go to the printers on Friday. The schedule I concocted gave me until a week from Friday.

I’m done with the layout, and can finish the inking tonight if I push. The cover is already done. Photoshopping and assembling the remaining three pages (it’s a single-fold promotional comic, geared towards getting people to visit a dozen different vendors in the BrainShare Solutions Lab) is by far the largest of the remaining tasks, because this thing needs to be SHINY.

The only hitch here is that I need to color a week’s worth of Schlock Mercenary on Saturday. If I can finish GWAVAMan on time, that won’t pose a problem. If I slip until Monday (no point sending things to the printer on Saturday or Sunday) there’s 3 hours of additional work on my plate Saturday, and my weekend is a working one.

Still, the crack of the whip feels kind of good. At least, right NOW it does. I need to quit writing about it, and draw some pictures…

–Howard