My website used to update itself by automatically feeding anything I posted in my LJ, which was awesome because I am lazy. But the day after I handed out a bunch of business cards at the Expo, I took a look at my site and discovered it had broken. No other RSS adapter I could find would work either: LJ must have changed something, I guess.

So, the next best solution: a self-contained, separate blog. To which I'll have to manually, separately post, like it's 2005 or some shit.

So, in future, I'll be posting art there, at mikeintosh.net. Posts ABOUT drawing will also be there. Posts about watching cartoons, unnecessarily long words, and things I don't understand will be here, as usual.

I have no idea how secure that blog is, and will now begin taking bets to see how long it is before someone hacks the merry hell out of it.

Hoo, am I tired.



This year's Comic Expo was the first to run over two days, because last year's was packed full: 6000 people attended. It felt full, too; our table was frequently crowded. This year probably pulled in eight thousand--I'm just guessing--but spread out over two days it felt much more relaxed. Which I'm sure was nice for the attendees, but for us, sales were slow. Well, Lisa always does pretty well.



We lined up at the table along a spectrum: Marci was at one end, all cute and family-friendly and pure like the driven snow, and then Lisa, a little sassier, and then me darker yet, and finally Kyle and and his evil carnival of divination and sin.

Man, I wished I had comics to sell. Every time Michael showed someone the truncated one I died a bit, inside. But we networked with other folks about printers who are in town, or at least closer to it or, failing that, have phone numbers. I'll still upload books to Lulu so that people in Uruguay can order them, but that's it.

We also networked with the owners of the local comic book stores, who invited us to bring copies of Diaperman in. Which we would, if we hadn't sold out of the collection. But we did! --I think.



Derek France came by to chat us up about getting tables at Con-Version, and god help us, Kyle and I considered it. May Gord have mercy on us.

I guess I should have clicked the "Do Not Print At 6.63" W x 10" H And Then Cut It Down To 6 x 9 For Mysterious And Probably Intensely Stupid Reasons" checkbox. My bad.



I used their live chat to explain their error, and demand replacement books by the 25th. They asked that I e-mail pictures of the misprint to them and that they're very sorry but they have to follow their protocol about this, and that they'll e-mail me back in two business days. They could not give me a phone number to call to follow up if (when) they don't do that.

I guess I'm glad I have lots of practice dealing with stuff like this at work.


The reason is probably that I also ordered six of my sketchbook at its new 6x9 size, so they decided to cut the whole order to that size. Which certainly qualifies as Intensely Stupid.

Comic finished and ordered!

Sketchcards ordered. I wasn't originally going to bother having some for the Expo, but then I spent today setting them up, so I figured the hell with it and got the seven-day shipping on them. Last year I decided I didn't want business cards, and then I regretted that. Better to have them and not need them, than the alternative.

One more print finished today:

I'll probably try to crank out another one or two before the Expo.

The wedding trip is blessedly now booked--almost. The packages to the hotel we wanted from Calgary sold out before we had financing secured, unfortunately. However, the Toronto packages are still available. And, as it turns out, it's $800 cheaper to book a package leaving from Toronto than from Calgary, so we booked that. We'll get a separate flight to Toronto, stay there a couple of nights, see Niagara Falls and what not. And it feels great to have that done.

Rings still haven't arrived, but soon. I hope.

The wedding reception--which is June 21, the week after the wedding--has been moooostly taken care of. The B&B-slash-hall has been booked, for a year now actually. Since the event is still just in the barbecue-with-friends-in-someone-else's-house category, and not the do-the-whole-wedding thing, it makes it a lot easier to plan. Apart from the food, and the shuttling people to Bragg Creek and back.

Right now Lisa is assembling invitation prototypes. Artsy craftsy! And we're sorting out the guest list. Even eloping in a foreign country doesn't get you away from everything.

Took Sheba in for her glucose test yesterday, and it came back as 1.2, compared to 6.5 a couple of weeks ago when she had her teeth fixed, and 22 when she was first diagnosed with diabetes. I could pretty much tell, as she'd drank almost no water for the past three days. So the tech had me take her off insulin completely for a week--which seemed a little drastic to me, but I'm not a vet, and neither was I about to pass up the opportunity to sleep in Sunday morning. Unsurprisingly, going from six units of insulin a day down to zero has made Sheba queasy, sick and miserable, and I've spent the day keeping an eye on the poor kitty.

Well, maybe. They haven't called.

Lisa posted an ad on Craigslist to sell the dryer that had come with our house. It still works; we'd just gotten newer ones from Neil and Teri. She was contacted by a girl also named Lisa, who has actually not yet called.

Anyhoo, Lisa--our Lisa--was wondering why the e-mails from the other Lisa kept getting junked by Hotmail. Eventually she got Hotmail to unblock everything except the girl's website: michelleandlisa(dot)com. Hotmail does not approve, and neither might your workplace.

So she IMed me about it. "Malibu Stacy bought our dryer?" I asked.

But that's not the weird part. ( This is: )

I have four more pages of comic book left to ink--and then once I'm done that, about eight to scan, lay out, and letter. It might just be possible to finish by the Expo, maaaybe. What a load off that would be.

Speaking of the Expo, they've updated the guest list again. Finally, finally my life's dream can be realized: I can know if Iain's claim to have dated Tricia Helfer when he lived in Fort McMurray is even remotely based in fact.

Last week most of my tux arrived. We'd determined that the coat I want is only available for rental at the actual, physical stores we visited--and it costs $550 to do so at Black & Lee. Pft--for that much money I want to own it, and, tragically, wear it to LARP games. So I ordered it from uniformalwearhouse.com and for $370 got the penguin suit and a top hat and shoes and disappointing spats. Unfortunately, though the paperwork agrees that I bought a 2XL hat, the hat itself is only a large, and therefore insufficient to cover my buffalo head. I called them to have them ship out a replacement, which is something I have plenty of experience at, at work. There's still plenty of time. Since I'm returning things anyway I'm exchanging the spats, which were apparently only appealing in theory, for a bow tie.

The Batman cufflinks Lisa bought me for Valentine's Day fit perfectly.

What there isn't plenty of time for is my ring, which also came the wrong size. All of my other rings (I wear three) are size 11, so I felt confident in telling Lisa that she should order this one in an 11 as well. Turns out these rings are "comfort fit," a term which here means "will likely fly right the hell off if you whip your hand around." I'm not sure what's comfortable about that.

On Saturday Dad and I visited my grandparents, where I did, as planned, demonstrate the unsafety of the stairs in their house by flinging myself up and down them. I also demonstrated the unsafety of household appliances by displaying the branding I had given myself last weekend, with the toaster oven. As Lisa predicted, that was simply taken to prove that I am a spaz, not that they might hurt themselves. But then we caught Grandma climbing onto 60-year-old half-broken wooden furniture to reach her wall safe, and oh, did that give me ammunition. Ammunition for hours.

And now it is bedtime, so I must chart exactly how much water my crotchety, diabetic cat has converted into pee today, and then go to bed.

A couple of weeks ago, my wireless connection started to lose power in the living room. The neighbours probably got a new cordless phone, I figured, and I didn't think too much about it. Then, when my Macbook woke up from sleep it couldn't find the network at all, unless I took it upstairs and plugged it in. Then it worked, until it didn't again.

Lisa's iBook and the Wii still connected without any trouble, so I thought it was just me, and I reinstalled the OS three times. Then my Airport started to reboot whenever I connected to my AirDisk, which was actually a huge relief because that gave me something to point to.

I haven't had the Extreme for a full year yet, so Apple will fix it. I took it over to MyMacDealer on Monday, where the service counter guy apologetically showed me that my Future Shop receipt does not have the Airport's serial number. It has the word SERIAL: on it, and then the Airport's UPC code, which is not the serial number. The UPC number is the same for every Airport and doesn't do anything to prove when I bought that one. Which Apple, reasonably enough, needs to see before they'll fix it for free.

That meant a trip to Future Shop. Faboo.

We'd just been in the service-monkey line recently, since Lisa's old Palm had a magenta splotch on the screen and she wanted to take advantage of Future Shop's foolish commitment to replace it while there was still something to replace it with. She walked away with the only remaining Palm that Future Shop had, probably anywhere. But it took a hell of a long time and many explanations.

Today there wasn't anyone in the monkey line, which was lucky. I explained that my Airport had gotten squirrely, and that Apple would fix it if I could prove when I bought it, so I needed a receipt that actually had the serial number on it, please, and a date. Either today or June, when I'd bought it, whichever.

The monkey immediately fetched his higher-up monkey, who listened only a moment before asking me if they had any new Extremes in stock. I hadn't looked. They did--sort of, since the model had been updated with gigabit Ethernet a couple of months after I got mine. The supervisor-monkey ran through a return of my old one and a replacement with the new one--which seemed like a waste of effort and money when all I'd wanted was a piece of paper with some printing on it. But I wasn't going to argue.

Would I get away unscathed? It seemed unbelievable.

I was presented with a new Extreme and a receipt. Which didn't have a serial number on it. It had the model number on it.

"This doesn't have the serial number on it," I said to the low-ranking monkey. The higher-ranking monkey had left to do something else.

"You don't need it," he said.

What? "Yes, Apple needs it," I said.

"No, they don't need it any more," he repeated.

"Uh, yeah, they do," I said, "I just went through that with them. That's why I'm here."

"That was the old model," he said. "Now we don't put serial numbers on the receipts. They don't need it."

Apparently I was getting a $200 replacement for no reason then. Astonishing. I tried a different tack. "Can you just put the serial number on the receipt anyway, just to be on the safe side?"

"I have no way to put it on the receipt," he said.

I decided to gamble. Either the new one won't break within a year, or it will and I'll get Future Shop to replace that one too, since they're so happy to do that. To me, it'd be easier to just print numbers on paper, but what the hell.

Part of a written request left for me at work by a client:



I'm thinking a cheese wheel and a nuclear reactor. And pogs.

1. Took the cat in for repairs. Last year she turned eleven, so the Calgary Cat Clinic did a full workup on her, so that they'd have something to compare her future visits to. And, naturally, this year she turned twelve, so it was time for her checkup.

We've established that the reason she pulls the fur out of her back is because she's crazy, which is what everyone assumed right away anyway. She didn't do it at all during Christmas break, because we were home much of the time. Even though there were extra Redferns she doesn't like. And as soon as we went back to work, we were again presented with carpet fur. So that's that.

I did want her to get checked for urinary tract infections, as crotchety old cats tend to get that, and her pee combines with the cat litter to create an unbreakable epoxy that Spider-Man couldn't devise. It destroyed her first automatic litterbox, and would have destroyed the second if her diffidence about aiming hadn't made it unusable anyway.

I have no idea how the vet normally obtains urine samples from cats, but Sheba thoughtfully provided one all over the counter and the poor vet's smock, as she was getting her teeth examined. So that worked out pretty well for everyone who wasn't the vet or the assistant or the smock or the floor.

Then I took her comic book shopping where I bought this (kind of terrible) and this (not at all terrible). I try to drive her to both terrifying and non-terrifying places so that she won't know whether to yowl her head off, or not.

2. Did Comic Expo preparations. Last year we tried to write down everything we sold in a receipt book, which only worked when nobody was actually trying to buy things. So, not at all really. This year I plan to print out a one-page spreadsheet listing what I've got and what it costs so I can tick off how much of it I sell, which seems more efficient.

So I went through the tote to see how much I have left. Good news: a lot, so I don't have to order any. Bad news: a lot, which means I didn't sell much of it. I guess this year I'll concentrate on prints, and Diaperman 13, and I'll bundle the postcards together the way Lisa's doing and they'll either sell or they won't.

We're showing at the Comic Expo in April and Manitoba Comic-Con in October. We're quite excited about the Manitoba show, as they offer free Artist's Alley tables as a strategy to boost attendance, which sounds like a hell of a good idea to me. Also, it's the farthest east we've ever been.

We found brochure stands at Office Depot which work very well for the standard sized postcards, but are too small for the 8.5x6 oversized ones, unfortunately. We'll figure something out.



Yesterday I ordered art business cards through Vistaprint, since I hadn't wanted them last year and then regretted it. I also altered my book down to the 6x9 size, instead of comic book size which appeared to confuse people, and ordered a proof copy.

I'm now eleven pages through Diaperman 13, which puts me on fairly good track to finish in time to print it for the Expo, I hope. So long as Michael can stay ahead of me with his script-writing, anyway. Hurry up, Michael! I already wrote you an ending in that outline I sent, months ago!

I haven't done that much actual work on Diaperman, apart from sending Michael what I've got so far, and redrawing a terribly-done fight panel last night at his place.

And now, back to work!

There, done.



Now I have to get some comic book work done or I'm screwed. Thank blog it's just in black and white.

Erin Esurance is hot.

In other news, I think I found my tux. But I can't post a link to it because Black & Lee's website has currently been replaced by a horrible animated GIF from 1996. I'm not kidding. Go see.

I will be purchasing, and not renting, primarily so I can wear the coat, which has tails, to LARP. That is not a joke.

Actually it kind of is.

Tonight I went to product testing, where I was paid $30 to eat various things. Among them was the most godforsaken macaroni and cheese ever. Under How can this product be improved? I wrote "Use cheese!" And under Other comments I wrote "Please do not sell this to anyone ever." I didn't even realize that the crusty stuff on it was supposed to be bread crumbs until question 89 asked me what I thought of the bread crumbs. (Answer: disquiet.)

Along with the $30 they provided everyone with a blank sheet of paper and a sharpened wooden HB pencil. The pencil is for filling out the questionnaire, of course, but I have no idea what the paper's for; I've never seen anyone use it. Naturally, when faced with paper, I am compelled to doodle:

Instructions:

1. The first article title on the Wikipedia Random Articles page is the name of your band.

2. The last four words of the very last quotation on the Random Quotations page is the title of your album.

3. The third picture in Flickr's Interesting Photos From The Last 7 Days will be your album cover.

4. Use your graphics programme of choice to throw them together, and post the result.



Yoinked from mister_sable

There, I think I'm done now. I tried to make it brighter and airier than usual. Still a person dressed almost entirely in black, of course.



I'm very much enjoying Christmas break which I am now officially halfway through. I intended at the outset to get a lot of work done on Diaperman 13, to get it done by the Expo. I have inked two and a half pages of it so far, which isn't no progress, but I haven't made a lot of progress. I'm hoping to accomplish more next week.

Had a great Christmas: I got a suitcase from my sister, Tick Vs. Season Two and a future Batsignal from my parents, and $50 from my grandparents. Which I haven't done anything with. (Actually, come to think of it, my boss gave me $100 and I haven't done anything with that either.) Kyle gave me a gargoyle and Jason gave me a collectable card game he transparently hopes to be invited to. And Lisa gave me Doctor Who Season 3, a clockful of Batman for the bathroom, and some minty chocolates which are not for the bathroom.



And of course we bought each other a TV and HDPVR. As things have turned out, the TV is more for me and the PVR is more for her, as she loves being able to pick and choose things to record a week in advance, and she loves no longer having to remember when Ugly Betty is on.

Right now she's not watching it, though. Right now she's glued to the Pokemon Diamond game I bought her, which seems to have been popular.

And the season of giving continues: the BBC gave me a new Doctor Who Christmas Special (click the link to watch online, provided you live in the UK; if you don't, adjust your proxy settings accordingly). My orthodontist will be giving me lower braces next week. And, just now, I have given you all an image of a heavyset man in his jim-jams in flagrante delicto with a cardboard box.

No need to thank me.

Lisa bought me a sticker at Comic-Con, and I just finished off a sketchbook, which means that I now have a new sketchbook on which to stick the sticker.

Anyway, in the interest of generating prints for the comic expo, I wanted to draw my own martini girl. Who more logical to fit inside a martini glass than the Wasp?

Colour to follow.

Kyle kept confusing this with a champagne flute. Don't try to wedge your butt into a champagne flute ever.

Also shrunken genitalia. Great. I got two of these things so I wouldn't have chemicals leaching into my drinking water. I guess now I'll just lap it from local streams and rivers.

Here's the same information dated from a year and a half ago.

Thus far I am mightily enjoying the 42" Sharp LCD TV that Lisa graciously agreed that we could buy each other for Christmas. I'm also figuring out the Shaw HDPVR, which is somewhat slow going as it came with one manual to plug it in, and one manual to use the Super Special Shaw Remote (which I don't, as we have a USB-driven Harmony remote), but no manuals that actually explain how to use the on-screen TV guide and whatnot. I muddled through most of it, but I don't seem to be able to get the data for, and therefore tell the PVR to record, shows that are airing after the current day. For example, the PVR doesn't yet know that Supernatural airs Thursday nights, so I can't get it to record Supernatural until it actually is Thursday night, when the PVR will find out about it. Presumably.

Which kind of defeats the purpose as I can't record things unless I'm home that night to tell the PVR to record them, in which case I might as well just watch them.