Okay, maybe not. But today’s installment of Real Life was written, drawn, and saved off for upload in my presence.

Sandra and I hung out with Greg and Liz Dean in their new hideout. They got this cool apartment in Tony’s old missile silo somewhere in an unspecified Dakota. North, South, I’m not sure. (Okay, they live in Sacramento, but I’m not supposed to tell you that.)

We had sushi for lunch, and Liz made an awesome corned beef and cabbage thingy for dinner. I whipped out some sketches, and then provided Greg with fodder from which he generated the strip I linked to above.

Greg and I obviously have a lot in common, what with both of us being cartoonists (even if the only paper he ever comes near is what issues forth from his printer). Liz and Sandra also have a common interest — they both manage the business end of the cartoonist.

Umm… that came out wrong.

You know what I mean — accounting, business planning, stapling the cartoonist to his desk until the requisite work for the day has been done — that stuff.

Anyway, it was a great meet-up. We all had fun, learned a lot, and I watched Greg crank out a strip with Illustrator at a rate that was, quite frankly, astounding. Damn him and his CTRL-C/CTRL-V. Sure, he had to draw those pictures ONCE, but watching him surf his archives for poses to re-use… *sigh* I can only aspire to pretend to a shadow of such cartooning efficiency.

I’m just going to have to go out and buy Illustrator.

I’m back from Fuddruckers. Greg, Jim, Andy, Graeme, Madeline, and Eric — thanks for a great evening. I had fun, even if, strictly speaking, I was having a bit more caffeine than I ought to.

Now that the last of it has left my system, I’m going to go to bed. Graeme — it’s a good thing I didn’t take you up on that Target Masters offer this time. I started fading about 5 minutes after starting the drive back to Livermore. Handing me firearms would have been a bad idea on several counts.

Where was I? Oh. yeah. I’m going to bed now. Gnight!

–Howard

I’m feeling a lot better today. Sure, part of that is the double-dose of ibuprofen I took around noon to put a cork on the muscle pain, but hey, I’m moving around on my own.

I’m wearing my BOOTS!

So… I’m going to Fuddruckers in a couple of hours. I know it’s super-short notice, but if any of you reading this journal don’t also read the Schlocktroops community, here’s your heads-up: 5:30pm, Dublin Fuddruckers (2mi east of the 580/680 interchange). Details are in the Schlocktroops LJ Community.

The human body really is an amazing thing. Yesterday I was half-sure I was going to die. Today I feel good enough that I can’t believe how bad it was yesterday, and keep questioning my memory. “Was it REALLY that bad, you big faker? Look at you, walking around, and typing, and wearing your boots and stuff.”

Sandra told me that she didn’t feel like she was doing all that much for me, and couldn’t understand why I wanted her to be there with me. Then she read my LJ post with all the TMI in it, and realized “this is probably what it was like for Howard when I was in labor.”

Yeah, right. For my 24-hour flu to compare in magnitude to her passing entire CHILDREN, I’d have to be vomiting through my urethra. But yeah, being with Sandra during labor and delivery, I didn’t feel like I was doing all that much at the time, even though to her it was incredibly important.

Should there be a TMI warning on this post? Eh. Let’s just click the “Update Journal” button…

I just checked, and it would appear that five hundred and two of you Live Journal users have “friended” me. Cool! It seems like just last week I was happy to announce 400.

In other news, the last 10 hours have been awful. I hate, hate, HATE stomach flu.

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