Why so Quiet?

My wonderful fans may have noticed that I’ve been relatively inactive in recent weeks. Shouldn’t this be a time to get super active? We are less than a week from our big appearance at the Alternative Press Expo. Well, I’ll try to pick it up this week with some drawing, hype and fun.

But in case you’re wondering what I’ve been up to instead of spending my time on the internet, it’s been several things really. Chiefly I’ve spent a lot of effort moving into a house. I’ve been apartment living since I started at UC Berkeley in 2005, so it’s very nice to be back in a house, in a decent neighborhood. That being said, it’s a lot of work. The old tenants left me several things to clean up and fix, and I’m still not quite done moving out the small stuff from the old place or cleaning it.

I am mostly done unpacking…my stuff. What I didn’t mention is my family decided to move in with my 77 (or 78, she isn’t sure) year old grandma, and her move (which of course became my move) has been a real bitch. And she has tons left to unpack. Part of the reasons for moving in together was her loneliness, worries of her health, helping both our sides financially, and thinking it would be good for our son (who wouldn’t want a built in babysitter?).

Unfortunately she had a minor stroke on our first night in the house and had to be hospitalized. So that weekend I moved my stuff and hers on Saturday, stuck around the hospital until very late at night, tried to do some unpacking, spent Sunday unpacking and moving the rest of my grandma’s stuff (she has way too much), picked her up from the hospital, went back to unpacking, and I’ve been tired ever since.

It has been a rough adjustment living together, as she has a tendency to get on my nerves and the stroke (and other recent health issues) seem to have really weakened her, making her suddenly very dependent on help.

Besides that, Comcast has been a mess and taken several visits and over a week to still not finish installing/fixing my cable, internet and phone. At least the net seems fixed as of last night. Quite annoying as they seems fairly unorganized and each tech says something different.

In addition I’ve been engrossed with A Dance with Dragons, the fifth book in George R. R. Martin’s series A Song of Fire and Ice. I’ve really enjoyed reading the series since I received it as a gift for Father’s Day (I never claimed to be a fast reader, and they are long) and talking about the series constantly with super-fan Alex. So I really wanted to get caught up and finish this latest book. I finished it last night. I gotta say, I didn’t love it. The series had a great first book, a damn good second book, an amazing third book, a weak forth book and this fifth book, while a definite improvement over fourth book was still fairly weak. It had a lot of cool parts, to be sure, but overall it felt like not much happened and what did happen wasn’t that good. The latter part of the book was particularly disappointing, as was the way that stories from the fourth were never really advanced much (if at all).

Beyond that, work has been consuming lately, in ways I’d rather not discuss. Oh yeah, and all the new seasons of shows started on TV this week as well.

So there you have my many excuses for my inactivity. I could go on, but hopefully that’s enough for you. It’s enough for me!

Hopefully that will all change starting today.