Category: Life

Busy Vacation
Day Two of Three:
- Picked up a cheap memory stick reader so I don’t have to keep using my laptop as an intermediary to get files from the camera to my main workstation.
- Completed my “trial balloon” entry for Quacked Panes, then discovered how badly I’d misunderstood the setup of Inkblot & Webcomic. Remedied those misunderstandings and successfully posted the “zeroth” comic, mainly so I could make sure that the layout basically works, and all that jazz.
- Cleaned the downstairs toilet in anticipation of guests on Saturday.
- Photographed, wrote, assembled, exported, uploaded and scheduled the first official QP comic. (You can see it Monday, folks.)
- Realized how hot it is in my room (I blame my lack of awareness on the excitement from the creative process), looked at the weather reports, wiped the sweat from my brow and decided to just give up and put the A/C unit into the window. Three years of practice made this the easiest setup so far… which means I probably overlooked something. If there’s a loud crash in the middle of the night, we’ll know.
It’s coming up on 4:30pm. I think I’m going to take part of the rest of the day to just goof off, then try cranking out one more comic tonight. Tomorrow I want to get at least two more done; that’ll bring me up to two weeks’ worth of content. I’m going for a Monday/Thursday release schedule, and while I’m still fine-tuning the process I want to make sure I’m working a bit ahead.

I went through a bit of an anxious stretch this morning, hitting the “I can’t do this I’m not good enough I’ll run out of material in no time I suck everything sucks why do I do this to myself” wall. Luckily, knuckling down (after a brief pep-talk and some good advice from the lovely Kylanath) and forcing myself to finish the “trial balloon” comic seems to have worked out the worst of those preflight jitters. I even managed something of a punch line in a comic that wasn’t originally meant to have one. This afternoon’s efforts made me even happier, so right now? I’m feeling good.

And cooler, now that the A/C is running. Ahhhhhhh…
28 May, 2009
As The Dust Settles

I started my day with some cleaning. I emptied the garbage cans in my bedroom and bathroom, then started in with clearing off the main desk. Why? Because it just might make a workable set for photographing rubber ducks, of course! (As if anything else would motivate me to wading through years’ worth of paperwork and other detritus. Seriously!)

Eager to show off the fruits of my labors, I reached for my camera.

Say, why don’t we get some ducks into that shot?

It took five minutes for me to locate one of the nine, however. Turns out that he’d been forgotten in my backpack for a few weeks, since the last time I took the ducks out-and-about (intending to do some outdoor shooting which never quite happened). Oops. Adding injury to insult, he’s a bit the worse for wear:

Some of the paint on his bill rubbed off from being jostled around in my bag all that time. You can imagine how delighted I am at the results of my own negligence.

The show, however, must go on. We’ll deal with it. Now I just have to convince him not to eat my brains while I sleep by way of retaliation…

27 May, 2009
I May Have Overdone Relaxing In May

I felt good about all that I accomplished in April, so I told myself not to worry so much about May. All I needed to do this month was get my stress levels under control and finish prepping for the webcomic launch.

Well, I’ve accomplished one of those things! I’m remarkably stress-free right now!

I haven’t completely slacked off on the other thing, either. Unfortunately it’s all background work up to this point, though with this coming Wednesday through Friday off from work, the words “principal” and “photography” are front-and-center on the To-Do list. The plan is to launch within the first week of June with at least three weeks’ worth of material (figuring on a two-comics-per-week schedule).

Some of the background material may wind up on my wiki at some point. I’m weighing the benefit of having it on the web where I can get at it from anywhere versus the detriment of publicly giving away all of the secrets.

Then again, it’s a webcomic about rubber ducks. I mean, seriously. How can there be spoilers, right? Let’s keep some perspective about this!

On a related note: Another thing I’m trying not to stress about? How quickly I’m going to run out of jokes…

25 May, 2009
Feeling Old, Being Quiet, Giving Props

I made one of my rare trips into the BurgerVille near work this morning. While there, I realized something which made me feel a bit old: My first job was located at the St. Johns BV in North Portland… 20 years ago this coming autumn.

Well then.

In other news of monumental importance, after a breakneck round of posting during April I seem to have suffered another round of ennui as regards the writing and photography output. I’m still doing background prep for the Quacked Panes launch, though, and I haven’t abandoned the project in the slightest. The work which needs doing now, though, isn’t terribly interesting or visible… thus, nothing to write about here.

And since I’ve been feeling generally “blah” anyway, there hasn’t been much to say about much of anything else. Such is life.

To end on an upbeat note: Nicole at Barberama is awesome, and while you’re in the neighborhood you must check out the Russell Street Bar-B-Que. The Little Grey Duck has spoken!

13 May, 2009
Gimme gimme gimme fried chicken…

Instead of dwelling on all of the things in life lately which make me want to hunker down in my room and shut out the world for, oh, a month or two… let’s talk about a positive accomplishment. While you may not find it impressive, consider that it took several minutes of internal debate, clear instructions and some encouragement from Kyla to pull it off.

I fried up some chicken to add to my pasta-and-cheese.

I hit the store on Saturday and picked up some ingredients for my (in)famous baked pasta-and-cheese dish, the one that only the kids and I actually enjoy eating. I figured that either I’d feed the kids during their visit, or I’d make it up and use it for lunches. Since Kyla came up with awesome nosh while the kids were over, my fixings were promptly earmarked for the work week.

Part of Kyla’s recipe involved chicken breast meat, but she didn’t use all of it. When she left this morning she was going to take the last two hunks of meat but I made an off-hand remark about what it might be like to add chicken to the pasta-and-cheese. “Well, you could fry it up,” she said.

“No, I can’t. This is me, remember? Mr. No-can-cook?”

“Yes, you can.”

To shorten a rambling post, I kept the chicken and she went home for day. Following her instructions I sliced the chicken meat into reasonably small chunks, pan-fried those in butter (adding a liberal sprinkling of lemon & herb seasoning I found in the cupboard), and… they turned out pretty good.

It took five full minutes for me to work up the nerve to turn on the stove, however.

Let’s see how many anxiety triggers we cleared this afternoon: Using a sharp knife (never mind cutting difficult-to-handle, for me, foodstuffs). Making sure I cooked the meat thoroughly. Making sure I didn’t burn anything or anyone. Trying something completely new, unsupervised.

Am I a sad, pathetic example of humanity? Most of the time, yes. But today I prepared tasty chicken bits which, once drained and added to the pasta dish, worked superbly. (Yes… I enjoyed a small plate of the freshly-made product. It would’ve been a shame not to!) And I have lunches for four of the next five working days, assuming I remember that they’re in the refrigerator each morning…

Oh, yeah: Bonus points if you can name the tune in the post title without cheating.

26 April, 2009
Duck Bathing And Color Correction

In anticipation of taking more pics of my modest collection of not-actually-rubber ducks, I decided to clean up some of the critters that’ve been… ahem… collecting dust for a while now. Spruce them up, you see. Ready them for the limelight, or at least the flashbulb. So I gave seven of the nine “main” ducks a quick dip in warm, soapy water and a good rinsing, followed by gentle patting-down with a towel.

Why only seven? Well, one of the stars of our show is Rusty, the cast iron duck. I don’t think he’s interested in watersports. Bad for his complexion, don’t you know. The other abstainer is our newest addition to the flock, a lovely Chinese-themed fellow that Kyla gave me this past weekend. He’s squeaky clean… thus far.

I also learned something about Rubba Ducks. Turns out that because of their unusual composition, over time some of them start to get… a bit sticky. Treatment with dishsoap and considerable patience can keep the condition under control, but he’s never going to be the sort you cuddle and carry around for kicks. Then again, he’s the one with the lip ring. I doubt that he wants cuddles.

Speaking of flashbulbs, I need to come up with a good indoor lighting system. Incandescent and CF bulbs aren’t going to cut it, as evidenced by the picture you see here of our starting lineup:

My color-adjustment skills aren’t up to the task of showing you that the towel is actually a nice deep green color. Ugh. Apparently I have a long way to go before indoor photography is a viable option… and as Dad warned me, the built-in flash is probably the weakest feature on the otherwise-splendid Pentax *ist DL.

One thing at a time. Progress is being made.

7 April, 2009