What with needing to be on the road Monday morning, I decided to finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in one sitting. I finished at about 4:00am.

It really was quite good. Sure, there are problems with Rowling’s prose here and there, and her plotting is a little formulaic, but I usually don’t read just for the prose, and formulaic plotting is my favorite kind. I had a great time reading the book, and was quite pleased at the way she tied things up.

Today, however, I am going to require a nap.

My trip to Comic-Con is complicated by the fact that I’m hauling a rather extensive booth display with me… in my 2003 New Beetle.

There is room in the vehicle for the display, but there would be a lot MORE room (for things like my luggage, and the books I need to sell at least 100 of in order to break even) if I could just get the passenger seat out.

I noodled around online, web-hounding as best I could, and found nothing. Then I called “Jimmy’s Love Bug,” where I bought the car, and their mechanic gave me pretty clear directions.

For the sake of bettering teh intarweebs, I shall post those directions here, further clarified by the fact that I have followed them.

1) TOOLS: You will need a socket wrench with an extension, a torx screwdriver, a small-blade pocketknife, a small pair of snips or scissors, a replacement wire-tie (for putting the seat back), a small hammer, and probably a third hand.

2) Begin by removing the rail covers on either side of the seat. Move the seat all the way forward and get in the back to do this. Take the knife and pop off the plugs that cover the torx screws. Unscrew them with the torx screwdriver. The rail covers will now slide off, but may need to be bent a bit (they’re plastic, it’s okay.)

3) Now it’s time to free the seat from the rails. Move the seat all the way back, and look under the front of the seat for the block of metal bolted to the upthrust tab from the body of the car. Unwind the nuts with the socket wrench, and then tap the bolt-heads with the hammer. The seat should now be free, constrained only by the wiring harness — don’t slide it all the way out yet, though… you’ll rip the wires.

4) Snip the wire-tie holding the cable in place. This will give you more room to work, and it has to come off regardless. Now you can remove the seat from the rails and tip it back to get under it. If you find that you don’t have enough slack to get under the seat from the front, fold the seat all the way forward, out of the rails, and use your third arm (or your friend) to hold it against the dash. Now pop the rear hatch and (I’m not kidding) get upside-down in the back seat, feet sticking out of your car, and get your head and hands under that seat where you can use them. Bring your pocketknife.

5) Unhook the three plugs. The front (towards the front of the car) yellow one is easy. The middle green one requires the pocketknife — you need to gently lift some tabs to get the plug free. The back yellow one has a hinged cover, and then at the top of the plug there’s a tab you can’t really see that you’ll need to pry back with your finger.

6) Unhook the white harness clip at the far back of the assembly. Check and make sure that the wires are all free of the seat. The seat can now be removed, provided you are strong enough to wrestle it out of the car. I suggest going through the door, rather than trying to lift it out through the rear hatch.

7) Tuck the cable and the plugs into the rail at the center of the car so you don’t crush them when you start piling stuff into your cargo-enabled Beetle.You may want to duct-tape the wire in place. Don’t worry — sticky stuff on the outside of the rails will not affect the seat at all.

8) NOTE: When you start the car, you’ll see that the yellow “airbag” light turns on. I think this means that the car has figured out there is a seat missing, and has disabled the airbags. WEAR YOUR SEATBELT. It’s more effective than the airbag anyway.

I’d write instructions about putting it all back together, but I haven’t had to do that yet, so it would be fiction. I do fiction, but in other places.

I saw Ratatouille with my good friend R.J. yesterday afternoon.

I came home and nearly ate myself sick. No, that’s not the message of the movie, but I didn’t have time to cook something for the palate — my belly was screaming.

It’s a wonderful film, but I recommend doing one of the following:

1) Eat a good meal before going.

2) Have dinner reservations for someplace nice and tasty afterwards.

Back in 2003 I hired a colorist, Jean Fioca (used to be Elmore). Having someone else handle the coloring was wonderful, and Jean was great at it. A lot of the coloring tricks I use now I learned looking at her work on my characters.

I’m considering hiring a colorist again. I’m busy enough to justify it, and would love to see somebody willing and able to express themselves through the colors, rather than just going through the motions the way I do. But don’t send in your resumés just yet… the colorist I want to hire is already getting on the job training. She did the flood filling and shading on the last two rows of today’s strip, and almost all the floods for next week. She’s still learning the swatches, and doesn’t know which backgrounds to drop in without coaching from me, but I can tell already that she’ll work out fine if I can keep her interested.

I am going to have to raise her allowance.

My 12-year-old daughter, whom you may know from sandratayler‘s Live Journal as “Kiki,” is my apprentice colorist. She has had some classical art training using pastels and watercolors, but has next to no Photoshop experience. That didn’t stop her from pencilling, scanning, coloring, and shading a picture of Link last week, using Adobe Photoshop Elements. She was coloring using a technique she copied from me — lassoing areas to be shaded and darkening them with the flood tool and swatches that looked right. And the shading DID look right. The girl has a good eye.

Sandra was concerned. “She’s been working on that piece for DAYS now, Howard.”
I checked to see what she was actually working on. “It’s not a problem. She’s trying to darken her pencil lines, and they’re in the same layer as the colors. She’s going pixel by pixel.”
I told Kiki what she was doing wrong, and suggested that since correcting line art in this way was no fun at all, maybe she’d have more fun coloring some clean line art for me. For pay. She was sitting next to me at my computer within 15 minutes.

Naturally, I have some concerns:
1) I don’t want her art style to be mere mimicry of my own. I have to encourage her to experiment — at least once she has the basics down.
2) We are going to have to strike a balance between “Kiki’s Style” and “Staying On Model.”
3) Criticism of Schlock Mercenary may extend to the work she does, and she is not nearly thick-skinned enough to be reading some anonymity-emboldened, blogtarded wannabe tear her work apart.
4) Saddling a 12-year-old with this level of responsibility is a life-changing thing. She may end up with a job skill, or even a full-blown career. Then again, digital art may end up forever poisoned for her.
5) She is not old enough to be famous. Or so says me, anyway. I don’t mind fanboys stalking me down at the comics shop, but the first fanboy who stalks my baby girl is going to to discover that he can breathe through the gurgling hole where his nipple-piercing used to be.

I’m not asking for advice. I already have approaches for numbers 1-3 above, and Kiki and I will be talking about #4. Number five… well, let’s just say that if I have to go to jail because I killed my colorist’s stalker, the comic strip will end. No stalking, okay?