Several thoughts are competing right now for “first in the day’s Journaling.” I’m going to lead with the one that I think deserves to be first:

1) My readers are wonderful. They’re the best comic readers in the WHOLE WORLD. If it wasn’t for them being willing to buy stuff, I wouldn’t be able to do this full-time, and if the first hour of pre-orders are any indication, they’re willing to buy stuff.

2) Pre-orders are open, and you can get a sketch edition for the next 22.75 hours. Head over to store.schlockmercenary.com before it’s too late.( Yeah, you probably already knew this, but this thought was clamoring loudly to be #1, and I had to really WORK to push it to #2)

3) If you want to play “how many books has Howard sold,” the first order number of the day was #1203. Feel free to report your order number here, and marvel over the enthusiasm and good will of Schlock readers (see #1 above).

4) I need to do something today besides clicking “refresh” on the store’s administration page. I’m really anxious to hit the break-even point. It may look like I’m rolling in dough, but until I’ve sold oh, about 571 books the print run won’t have paid for itself. Only then will I relax, knowing that the next few months’ of cartoonist salary are being socked away. (If your order number is 1774, your order and every one thereafter is in the “paying the salary” category.)

It rained today. I got wet.

Oh, and we discovered that my HP LaserJet 4m printer, age 13 & 1/2 years, will not power up anymore. I think the brownout we had killed it dead, which is odd, because it’s on a surge-protected line. I guess the printer had it coming.

Every Schlock Mercenary strip you’ve ever read — EVERY LAST ONE — began life as a script that was printed with that printer. It’s the end of an era, I tell you. (Maybe I can sign the printer in sharpie and sell it to a museum…)

It’s also just a little bit inconvenient. I’ve only got four scripts left to pencil before I have to print more, and I’ve nothing to print them with. So… I’m buying a new printer, and paying for 2-day shipping. There goes the first $500 of pre-order revenue, right there. I’m buying a Hewlett-Packard Color LaserJet 2605DN. 12pp per minute, and supposedly good for 2500 b/w pages on the black cartridge. The color cartridges are less likely to last as long, as they’re only rated for 2000 pages — at 5% coverage, saith the fine print. I think that means I can print exactly 20 pages each of full-fill cyan, magenta, and yellow. After that I get to spend $240 on refills. But who knows? Maybe I can sell a few “Limited Edition Prints” and keep myself in toner indefinitely.

Hope springs eternal. Which is nice, because when it rains, I get wet.

Today was the Elders’ Quorum annual “Guns & Pizza” event. This year, because of budget restructuring, we only had about $40 to work with for pizza, which does not buy pies sufficient to feed 20 guys.

No problem. I volunteered to make double-decker dutch-over pizzas for all. The ingredients hit our budget for $35, and this morning I loaded up five dutch ovens with the help of Cort, Will, and Brian.

I wish we’d taken pictures. We made straight pepperoni, BBQ chicken,ham & pineapple, supreme, and pizzagna pizzas, and it turns out that five dutch ovens is exactly how many will fit in TurboSchlock’strunk.

The pies were assembled between 8:30 and 9:30, but we didn’t start cooking them until about 11:30. That means they had time to rise. Sure enough, three of them rose enough that during cooking they brushed the tops of the ovens — which I had thoughtfully brushed with olive oil against just such a possibility.

We had a good crowd show up, and they managed to eat 80% of the pizza (mostly by overeating – each of these pies will feed eight). I was quite pleased with everything except the pizzagna. SOMEBODY (we’ll name no names) forgot to add basil, even after talking about how important spices would be on this most experimental of pies. It turned out kind of bland. Maybe somebody should have added a little salt, too.

Oh, and the guns — Mostly we shot skeet. I was exhausted after eating, so I headed home before they headed up to the pistol and rifle range. I hit maybe half of what I shot at, which stinks, but at least I nailed the very first skeet I drew a bead on. After close to two years of no practice, that felt really good.

The full convention report is here.

Unsaid bits:

1) I’m short on sleep in a bad way.
2) I think I’m sick — my throat hurts and my ears are a little achey.
3) I made a new icon from artwork obtained. It easily takes 20 years off of my face. Thanks, Shauna!
4) It’s really, really nice to be home.