I’m back. I’m exhausted. I slept in this morning, and then took a nap after breakfast… for two hours.

I doubt I’ll get any cartooning done, but I’m good with that. Today is a recovery day.

–Howard

Yesterday was devoted to preparations for Penguicon. I’m pretty sure I’m ready now. My bags are packed, and they’re in the car.

Oh, and my stomach is threatening to secede.

See, I found out I’m on the “hot sauce tasting” panel, and I realized that I’m not “in training” at the moment. My p-gates are wide open, fully stocked with the neurotransmitter that tells my brain I have something too hot in my mouth.

So chalain and I went to lunch at the local Thai place with Rodney. I was going to order the five-star curry, but we got to talking with the waitress, and discovered that there are actually around 20 stars on that scale. There’s no point trying to train yourself for hot food in one go, and not going for something actually HOT. I had the five-star last week and never broke a sweat.

This time I broke a sweat. I also made the mistake of eating quickly, and not fully chewing all those fresh peppers. Now I’m busy depleting p-trans throughout my tract, which means that this morning my stomach feels like I drank a barrel of boiling oil. Fortunately I’ve been here before and I know that no actual damage is being done — there are some nerves firing, and the signals they send are worrisome, but I happen to know who pulled the fire-alarm.

Punk kid.

Anyway, I’ve just bounced up to about 75% of my usual training level. Bottled hot sauces are not likely to give me any measure of grief come Saturday.

–Howard

That’s a wasps’ nest, dead. Our guess is they built it last year, and hadn’t yet recolonized it this year. The hole in it was unavoidable — the nest had been built around numerous vines, and we couldn’t get behind it to cut the last of them free.

One more picture behind the cut.

I scripted 9 rows this morning, and then proceeded to pencil them all and ink four of them. Let’s see… that’s 22 rows done in one day. Not bad.

I would have gotten more done, but my phone rang halfway through inking the fifth. I was at The Keep, and it was 6:00pm-ish, and Patches (my three-year-old) was sad and wanted to know where Daddy was.

We talked on the phone, and he said he wanted to play The “Hey” Game. And I realized that while I probably COULD crank out another two or three strips, my hand was hurting, and so was my son. Time to call it a day.

I drove home, and the moment I walked through the door he grabbed his blanket and ran into my room and plopped down on the bed. The “Hey” Game goes like this: I lie down to take a nap, and he comes in and offers me one of his treasured blue blankies. I snuggle it, then he steals it back, and I say “Hey!”

Repeat.

There are variations. Sometimes he throws the blanket across the bed and I have to try to catch it. Sometimes he steals my spot on the bed before I can get there, and I’m expected to lie down on Sandra’s side of the bed and complain loudly (“HEEEY!!!”) Usually The “Hey” Game ends when I announce that I really would like to get on with the nap, and he gives me a hug, heads out of the room, and shuts the door. This evening I wasn’t about to take a nap starting at 6:30pm, so we played until I actually started to get tired enough to take a nap, at which point I got up and had some dinner. Gleek participated in the game, too, gleefully throwing blankets around, and by the time I left the two of them were happily playing with each other.

This is why I left Novell 18 months ago, even though I didn’t know it at the time.