Wednesday night the training supervisor at the temple (where I serve one night a week as an ordinance worker) reminded me that a) this Sunday was the training film, b) everybody needs to see it about once every six months, and c) the new guys like me need to see it at their earliest convenience.

“Earliest convenience” is a funny misnomer. Training Sessions run at 7am, 9am, and 11am, but my congregation meets from 9am until noon. Thus, if I wanted to attend Sacrament meeting with my family, I needed to be at the temple, dressed out, at 7am. That pretty much dictates a 5:45am wake-up call.

The life of a full-time cartoonist has lots of “sleeping in” in it, especially lately. You might as well ask me to wake up on the moon.

Last night I couldn’t sleep. It was 1am before my lids grew heavy enough that the idea-hamster in my brain could quit running in circles and finally get off his wheel.

So… in my prayers before getting BACK into bed I said (and I paraphrase) “Lord, I’m not setting my alarm. If you want me at this training meeting tomorrow, you’ll need to pop me awake in time. If you DO, I promise I’ll go. But I have to be AWAKE, not this foggy ‘almost awake’ from which I can later remember looking at the clock, but from which I’m all but powerless to arise.”

Fellow-saints reading this know that this kind of “bargaining with the Lord” prayer is risky.

I realized as I uttered it that what I really WANTED was to sleep until 8am undisturbed, and that it would be WONDERFUL if I could do that with the peace of mind that comes with believing that it was okay to do. I also realized, with the certainty that comes from the still, small voice that occasionally answers prayers, that sleeping in was NOT going to happen.

5:30am, I popped awake, and the first thought into my mind was a quote for which I can’t find the reference: “The Sabbath day is a day for doing My Will, not thine own.”

So… I’m up, I’m dressed, and I’ve got time to spare to write about it.

I’m also pleased that the Lord hasn’t said anything like “No, Howard, You May Not Have A Nap After Church,” because I know I’m going to need one.

See? I told you I’m a religious nutcase.

–Howard

Well, I cranked out the inks on six strips this morning in the space of 1 hour and 50 minutes. I feel pretty good about that. My hand hurts, though.

Now it’s time to color them. And then script another week. And then pencil/ink/color. And then repeat… I’ve got to get 20 or 30 or 50 strips in the buffer so I can dig into the book work for a week or two at a time.

–Howard

I had a hard time getting to sleep last night. I’d tried for a couple of hours to write Schlock Mercenary scripts, and it just wasn’t working. Lying in bed I realized that I was fast coming up on a WORSE situation than the one I came home to last week: If I didn’t have scripts soon, the buffer would drop to two, and I wouldn’t have anything to draw on.

Fortunately, things broke loose this morning. I scripted a week, and after a break for lunch, I came back and pencilled the whole week. Here it is now, not even 4pm, and I have a full week scripted and pencilled and ready for inks. My goal, ambitious though it is, is to have these all inked and colored 24 hours from now.

My hand is a little tired at the moment, but I’m pretty sure that I can get four or five of the nine rows inked this evening. This is do-able, and if I do it I will have cranked out an entire week of schlock in two days. And that’s the speed I need to be able to work at. The days of single-digit buffers must end forever.

The “turbo-schlock” icon seems appropriate for this post.

–Howard

I saw Batman Begins, and I agree with the multitudes who are proclaiming it the best Batman movie ever.

It’s still not better than Spider-Man, though. See, I came out of Spider-Man wanting to be Peter Parker. I came out of Batman Begins wanting to be Commissioner Gordon. Let’s face it — Batman has it ROUGH. Besides not having any actual super powers (other than super-determination and super-wealth), he’s just slightly crazy.

Gordon, though… as an honest cop in a crooked town, and one of the few people Batman trusts, he’s a hero I can identify with.

No spoilers here. Move along.

–Howard