Has it really been since Christmas since I posted anything to this blog? Hoo-boy...
Well, it's been an interesting week. Jessi and I both really pigged out over the Christmas weekend... especially the 26th, when we got some real pizza -- three of them, actually, and finished them all off that same day. Well, okay, I ate quite a bit more than Jessi did, I fear... which could explain why I gained more than Jessi did this week.
Work was... different. We had two people out this week, as I probably mentioned before, and I came in at 9 am all week (my usual scheduled start time is 11, but I tend to get in anywhere from 10am to 10:45am most mornings anyway), and still didn't manage to get a full work week in (not too much short, though).
The co-worker whose husband is sick with leukemia came in on Thursday for a short visit... I really feel for her, and definitely understand what she must be going through, having gone through something similar with Barbara (I just hope it ends much better for her and her husband). I suspect that, at least on a subconscious level, I must've relived a few bad memories as a result of all this... and that led to last weekend's overeating. I'm back on track now, though.
Wednesday night, my parents stopped by for a short visit... my brother Karl (who lives with his family in New York) drew Jessi's name for Christmas, and it was Wednesday that the package he sent arrived at my parents' house, and they were nice enough to drive it down. I treated them to a bowl of homemade chili for their trouble.
This weekend, so far, has been fairly uneventful for the most part. Friday, I finally got started on the latest transcription work for the He-Man DVD's (it's a short tape... only about 2 1/2 hours of interviews, and I'm more than halfway through them now). Jessi hasn't been feeling well the past few days, and after Weight Watchers, she did not want to go for our usual walk with the dogs.
Oh, heck, I'm way out of order here with catching both of you regular readers up... Wednesday, Jaeger came to stay with us until Sunday -- you'll recall we watched him for five days a week or two or three back. Jessi was concerned when she planned to take the dogs for a walk that Jaeger wouldn't come for her, and didn't want to risk losing him at the walk, so she only took Krypto and KO with her then.
This morning, after breakfast, the dogs indicated they really, REALLY, needed a walk... so I took them. All three of them. By myself, since Jessi was sick. Our timing was good, however... we arrived at the park just as one of our meet-up owners arrived with his boxer, Hunter. The dogs got a good walk in, and then we headed home so I could get back to work on the transcription job.
During breaks from that, I did a bit of cleaning up, and also did some baking -- after all, it is Krypto's birthday today! He's one year old as I write this! We didn't have everything we needed for the regular birthday cake recipe for dogs, so I did some substitutions here and there, and created something new... and made a cake as well as mini-muffins. The dogs love 'em, so I must've done something right!
We're not doing anything special for New Year's Eve here... unless you count watching the Law & Order: Criminal Intent marathon on USA (which is, I'll admit, pretty special in and of itself, as we love that show)... nor are we doing anything else special today for Krypto's birthday. Tomorrow, however, is the scheduled boxer meet-up, and I'll bring that cake with me to that in case anyone shows up (Paul and Brigit, Claude the white boxer's owners, are out of town this week, and I know Hunter's owner is also out of town tomorrow, so there's a chance nobody will show at all except me -- plus, we changed the time of the meetups a month or so back to 9 am instead of 2 pm -- due to planning conflicts happening all the time -- and those who aren't part of the meet-up mailing list probably won't know about it. I plan to make a second appearance at 2 in case anyone shows up then).
We may have a few more Law & Order eps to watch tomorrow -- our new Digital Video Recorder will no doubt record eps we didn't get to see today, after all.
In other news... well, I can't think of any other news right now! I still hope to do that Iron Man review based on Essential Iron Man soon, and still have some eBay auctions left (not many JLU figures left to sell, there's one bid on the Thunder Agents portfolio, and nothing on the others or the TPBs... oh, and there's some cloisonne pins of Popeye, Thor and the Human Torch up for grabs, too), which I'm hoping a few more Buy It Now's will happen to help bolster my minimal available funds, so that I can do supplmental grocery shopping (why did I have to be so generous with last-minute Christmas shopping?).
Also, if you're looking for a "Year in Review" piece from me here... you won't find it. Maybe I'll do one next year, but for now, there are many others who are probably posting much better ones than I could manage right now!
Happy New Year!
Jon
Jon's Random Acts of Geekery is your five days a week destination for old-school geekery!
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Recent Reading...
Yeah, as you'll see as you scroll down, I'm posting a lot of stuff tonight.
Anyway... my current re-reading is ESSENTIAL IRON MAN VOL. 1. It's funny, I've read this at least once before, but there are things that I'm noticing I didn't notice before... and there are thoughts I'm having that hadn't been thought before.
So... I'm thinking that once I finish reading Vol. 1, I may scan some selected panels and do a post -- or series of posts -- examining these earliest of Iron Man stories... and I hope you'll find my thoughts of interest!
Jon
Anyway... my current re-reading is ESSENTIAL IRON MAN VOL. 1. It's funny, I've read this at least once before, but there are things that I'm noticing I didn't notice before... and there are thoughts I'm having that hadn't been thought before.
So... I'm thinking that once I finish reading Vol. 1, I may scan some selected panels and do a post -- or series of posts -- examining these earliest of Iron Man stories... and I hope you'll find my thoughts of interest!
Jon
THUNDER Agents Portfolio by George Tuska!
OK, I'll admit it... I've been a THUNDER Agents fan for a long time... at least since the 1980s, if not earlier, thanks to being exposed to them through the RBCC and other publications. I bought pretty much all the revivals that were done, and enjoyed some of 'em more than others, but I always found myself enjoying the original stories more.
It may surprise you to know that the only Archives I possess at this time are two of the THUNDER Agents volumes.
Anyway... some time ago, I picked up a copy of the THUNDER Agents portfolio done by George Tuska. I know I used to have the second portfolio, but I must've sold it a long time back, because I sure can't find it now!
I've been a fan of Tuska's work even longer, I think, than I've been of the Agents. There's just something about his style that's always appealed to me -- and that fact that he draws sexy babes might have something to do with it, too! For the life of me, I don't know why he never received the credit or acclaim I think he should have... did he have problems meeting deadlines that would've kept him on a regular title or something?
Anyway... here's the first plate of the THUNDER Agents portfolio, and this was also the only image you could see when looking at it in the plastic bag it was sold in:
It's a nice piece of art, but not the greatest... a more full-fledged battle piece might've worked better... heck, at least give NoMan something to do than just be in the foreground!
Now, for the rest of these, I'm pretty much guessing what order they're supposed to be in... this, at least, is the order one finds them in my set. So here's plate #2!
This plate, obviously, focuses on Kitten, one of the THUNDER Squad. Oh, heck, you know, some of you may not even know anything about the Agents... so let me give you a quick rundown, okay?
THUNDER stands for The Higher United Nations Defense and Espionage Reserves. This professor-type created several powerful gadgets which are used by the agents... Dynamo wears a belt that, when activated, gives him superstrength and limited invulnerability. Lightning has a disc that, when activated, gives him superspeed (but shortens his life every time he uses it). NoMan wears a cape which makes him invisible -- on top of that, he's an android -- or rather, the life force of a man in an android, and who can transfer that life force into a number of android duplicates, one at a time. There's also Raven, who wears wings that allows him to fly, and Menthor, whose helmet gives him ESP powers.
The THUNDER Squad was a trio of agents who didn't have any powers, and the only two I can recall by name are Kitten, the babe in the above plate, and Weed, who I always felt was Wally Wood, creator of the Agents, putting himself in the story. Dynamo's real name, by the way, was Len Brown -- which was also the name of the guy who wrote some (at least) of Dynamo's stories!
The Agents were created in the 1960s, and were published by Tower Comics in extra-thick comics selling originally for a quarter... there was the THUNDER Agents book itself, plus solo books featuring Dynamo and NoMan (at least), plus also the Undersea Agent, who had the most tenuous link to the group, so far as I'm aware.
The books didn't do all that well originally (I'm guessing spotty distribution, plus the fact that they were priced differently from other books, causing confusion at cash registers, plus coming out in a saturated market at the time were all factors in the series demise), but they're prized collectors' items today... and obviously, interest in them is still high!
OK, here's plate 3:
That's Dynamo busting in to save Kitten from the claws of The Iron Maiden, also known affectionately as "Rusty." The Maiden was a bad girl, but she had the hots for Dynamo, and the feeling was mutual! But so long as she stayed on the side of evil, nothing would come of their relationship -- but it did help Dynamo escape certain death a few times.
The above is plate 4, another shot of the Maiden... and if you think she's sexy when Tuska drew her, you oughtta see a Wood illustration!
Plate 5, above, shows the mutual lusting Dynamo and Rusty had...
Plate six shows a group shot... Menthor is the guy with the "O" on his head... and I have no idea why he's in this group shot, but Raven isn't... Menthor was one of the latter-introduced agents.
And here's plate 7... with Lightning rescuing Kitten (she sure got in trouble a lot, didn't she?).
Why weren't there any solo plates of NoMan, or Menthor? Why was Raven ignored entirely? Well... I'm guessing that even in the early 1980s, when this was published, it was still realized that hot babes sell product.
Why did I decide to scan these in? Well, I'd put up this portfolio for sale on eBay, and wanted to have the scans to remember them by if it sold. I ran the auction twice with no results, but sales slowed down so much just before Christmas, I think I'll relist them again... but haven't done so as of this writing! Don't worry, I'll let you know when this and other auctions are relisted!
Jon
It may surprise you to know that the only Archives I possess at this time are two of the THUNDER Agents volumes.
Anyway... some time ago, I picked up a copy of the THUNDER Agents portfolio done by George Tuska. I know I used to have the second portfolio, but I must've sold it a long time back, because I sure can't find it now!
I've been a fan of Tuska's work even longer, I think, than I've been of the Agents. There's just something about his style that's always appealed to me -- and that fact that he draws sexy babes might have something to do with it, too! For the life of me, I don't know why he never received the credit or acclaim I think he should have... did he have problems meeting deadlines that would've kept him on a regular title or something?
Anyway... here's the first plate of the THUNDER Agents portfolio, and this was also the only image you could see when looking at it in the plastic bag it was sold in:
It's a nice piece of art, but not the greatest... a more full-fledged battle piece might've worked better... heck, at least give NoMan something to do than just be in the foreground!
Now, for the rest of these, I'm pretty much guessing what order they're supposed to be in... this, at least, is the order one finds them in my set. So here's plate #2!
This plate, obviously, focuses on Kitten, one of the THUNDER Squad. Oh, heck, you know, some of you may not even know anything about the Agents... so let me give you a quick rundown, okay?
THUNDER stands for The Higher United Nations Defense and Espionage Reserves. This professor-type created several powerful gadgets which are used by the agents... Dynamo wears a belt that, when activated, gives him superstrength and limited invulnerability. Lightning has a disc that, when activated, gives him superspeed (but shortens his life every time he uses it). NoMan wears a cape which makes him invisible -- on top of that, he's an android -- or rather, the life force of a man in an android, and who can transfer that life force into a number of android duplicates, one at a time. There's also Raven, who wears wings that allows him to fly, and Menthor, whose helmet gives him ESP powers.
The THUNDER Squad was a trio of agents who didn't have any powers, and the only two I can recall by name are Kitten, the babe in the above plate, and Weed, who I always felt was Wally Wood, creator of the Agents, putting himself in the story. Dynamo's real name, by the way, was Len Brown -- which was also the name of the guy who wrote some (at least) of Dynamo's stories!
The Agents were created in the 1960s, and were published by Tower Comics in extra-thick comics selling originally for a quarter... there was the THUNDER Agents book itself, plus solo books featuring Dynamo and NoMan (at least), plus also the Undersea Agent, who had the most tenuous link to the group, so far as I'm aware.
The books didn't do all that well originally (I'm guessing spotty distribution, plus the fact that they were priced differently from other books, causing confusion at cash registers, plus coming out in a saturated market at the time were all factors in the series demise), but they're prized collectors' items today... and obviously, interest in them is still high!
OK, here's plate 3:
That's Dynamo busting in to save Kitten from the claws of The Iron Maiden, also known affectionately as "Rusty." The Maiden was a bad girl, but she had the hots for Dynamo, and the feeling was mutual! But so long as she stayed on the side of evil, nothing would come of their relationship -- but it did help Dynamo escape certain death a few times.
The above is plate 4, another shot of the Maiden... and if you think she's sexy when Tuska drew her, you oughtta see a Wood illustration!
Plate 5, above, shows the mutual lusting Dynamo and Rusty had...
Plate six shows a group shot... Menthor is the guy with the "O" on his head... and I have no idea why he's in this group shot, but Raven isn't... Menthor was one of the latter-introduced agents.
And here's plate 7... with Lightning rescuing Kitten (she sure got in trouble a lot, didn't she?).
Why weren't there any solo plates of NoMan, or Menthor? Why was Raven ignored entirely? Well... I'm guessing that even in the early 1980s, when this was published, it was still realized that hot babes sell product.
Why did I decide to scan these in? Well, I'd put up this portfolio for sale on eBay, and wanted to have the scans to remember them by if it sold. I ran the auction twice with no results, but sales slowed down so much just before Christmas, I think I'll relist them again... but haven't done so as of this writing! Don't worry, I'll let you know when this and other auctions are relisted!
Jon
Christmas Wrap-Up 2005
OK, so Christmas is pretty much over here... and I figured I'd do a (hopefully) short wrap-up of events...
Jessi was the big winner here, present-wise, as (and I think I've said this before) when we first got Krypto, she paid half of the cost, and I said that would cover her through the end of the year for birthday and Christmas presents. Since my family did a drawing this year, so we each bought for one other family member, I received one Christmas present this year, and that was a new sweater from my dad (it's a nice sweater, I plan to wear it tuesday when I go back to work).
Jessi got lots of fun stuff from me... inline skates, Friends Season 10 on DVD, the Friends version of Scene It, Shrek on DVD, and a few other odds and ends (what can I say, I'm generous to a fault). I know she's had some pretty crappy Christmases in her past, and I suppose this is my way of trying to make up for that to her.
Oh, did I say I only had one Christmas present? Well, I guess I should also say I got a nice one for myself, which we'd been paying for all year.... and that would be my weight loss! To give you an idea of what it's been like, here's a photo of Jessi and I taken at my parents' house on Christmas 2004:
Here's the one that was taken earlier today, Christmas 2005:
Is that a transformation or what? It's really hard for me to realize how much of a difference it's been sometimes... heck, the only thing I'm wearing in the first photo I can still wear today are the shoes and socks -- and to be honest, the shoes are feeling a little loose lately, too!
I think I'll have to print those pics out side-by-side to bring to this weekend's Weight Watchers meeting.
Eating-wise... despite how good we're looking there... well, Jessi's been saying lately, "It's not what you eat between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it's what you eat between Christmas and Thanksgiving." And we've been kind of pigging out a bit this weekend. I wouldn't be surprised if I have a gain this week.
Christmas Eve, we were just relaxing, it was too early for me to make the Papa Murphy's Thin Crust Delite pizza I'd bought for our Christmas Eve dinner, when Jessi asked if we had the ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies. After a bit of discussion, I got her to agree that if we wanted CC cookies, we'd just get the refrigerated cookie dough and make those -- I figured we'd have less cookies that way than if we made a regular batch. We got two different kinds... regular chocolate chip cookies, and ones with peanut butter cups. We baked them all before I baked the pizza...
...and as of now, so far as I know, there are only five chocolate chip cookies left. Yep, we ate all of 'em. And then we had Christmas dinner at my parents' house, and ate salted nuts, peanut M&M's, and I had a few pieces of Almond Roca.
Not good... so we'll be going back to our healthy eating with a vengeance the rest of the week!
Snow Dogs
The snow is gone now, but I remembered I'd promised to show you guys pictures of Krypto and KO playing in the snow a week or more back... so here they are!
As you can see, they had a lot of fun...
And it was difficult to get good shots of them with my digital...
Even when they were staying put, I could rarely get a decent angle on them...
But they had fun chasing snowballs I threw out into the back yard.
And just to make sure you know which is which... this one is KO:
And this one is Krypto!
Jon
Jessi was the big winner here, present-wise, as (and I think I've said this before) when we first got Krypto, she paid half of the cost, and I said that would cover her through the end of the year for birthday and Christmas presents. Since my family did a drawing this year, so we each bought for one other family member, I received one Christmas present this year, and that was a new sweater from my dad (it's a nice sweater, I plan to wear it tuesday when I go back to work).
Jessi got lots of fun stuff from me... inline skates, Friends Season 10 on DVD, the Friends version of Scene It, Shrek on DVD, and a few other odds and ends (what can I say, I'm generous to a fault). I know she's had some pretty crappy Christmases in her past, and I suppose this is my way of trying to make up for that to her.
Oh, did I say I only had one Christmas present? Well, I guess I should also say I got a nice one for myself, which we'd been paying for all year.... and that would be my weight loss! To give you an idea of what it's been like, here's a photo of Jessi and I taken at my parents' house on Christmas 2004:
Here's the one that was taken earlier today, Christmas 2005:
Is that a transformation or what? It's really hard for me to realize how much of a difference it's been sometimes... heck, the only thing I'm wearing in the first photo I can still wear today are the shoes and socks -- and to be honest, the shoes are feeling a little loose lately, too!
I think I'll have to print those pics out side-by-side to bring to this weekend's Weight Watchers meeting.
Eating-wise... despite how good we're looking there... well, Jessi's been saying lately, "It's not what you eat between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it's what you eat between Christmas and Thanksgiving." And we've been kind of pigging out a bit this weekend. I wouldn't be surprised if I have a gain this week.
Christmas Eve, we were just relaxing, it was too early for me to make the Papa Murphy's Thin Crust Delite pizza I'd bought for our Christmas Eve dinner, when Jessi asked if we had the ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies. After a bit of discussion, I got her to agree that if we wanted CC cookies, we'd just get the refrigerated cookie dough and make those -- I figured we'd have less cookies that way than if we made a regular batch. We got two different kinds... regular chocolate chip cookies, and ones with peanut butter cups. We baked them all before I baked the pizza...
...and as of now, so far as I know, there are only five chocolate chip cookies left. Yep, we ate all of 'em. And then we had Christmas dinner at my parents' house, and ate salted nuts, peanut M&M's, and I had a few pieces of Almond Roca.
Not good... so we'll be going back to our healthy eating with a vengeance the rest of the week!
Snow Dogs
The snow is gone now, but I remembered I'd promised to show you guys pictures of Krypto and KO playing in the snow a week or more back... so here they are!
As you can see, they had a lot of fun...
And it was difficult to get good shots of them with my digital...
Even when they were staying put, I could rarely get a decent angle on them...
But they had fun chasing snowballs I threw out into the back yard.
And just to make sure you know which is which... this one is KO:
And this one is Krypto!
Jon
Friday, December 23, 2005
Last Pre-Christmas Entry (?)
OK, so far as I know, this'll be the last chance I'll have to blog until after Christmas... and I hope both my readers have an excellent and happy holiday, no matter what you observe (or don't observe)!
As I write this, there's less than half an hour to go on my current eBay auctions -- mostly JLU figures. It's probably a good thing I decided to not collect those, and sell them off, because while I was at Target today, I saw a bunch of additional releases -- which all seemed to have one repeat figure max, and two new figures, including some Green Lanterns, and more villains!
So, what toys am I collecting? Well, looks like it'll just be toys with Krypto... at least, for the time being.
In other news...
Just received a tape from Andy Mangels yesterday, meaning I'll have to squeeze in time over the weekend to do some transcriptions... dunno how I'll manage that, but I'll fit it in somewhere!
This past week has been a bit stressful at work, but not because of work per se... the husband of one of my co-workers is very sick, and details haven't been forthcoming. I really feel for my co-worker, as I was in a similar situation with my Barbara, and it didn't end well, as I'm sure most of you know. My best hopes and wishes go to them... and I hope things turn out well for them.
I've spent way too much money on Christmas shopping this year... again. It wouldn't be so bad if it was spread out over several paychecks, instead of a little on one, and a lot on the last one before Christmas! But oh, well, isn't Christmas all about giving?
Remember the link I gave you guys about Mr. Pop History earlier this week (or was it last week)? Check out this week's column... the additional info on 1970s cartoons based on TV shows was provided by yours truly!
I bought one item for me today with all my shopping... there's a band called the Fab Four, a Beatles tribute band, who's put out two Christmas CD's of holiday tunes done in the Beatles' style... I've heard a few tracks on the oldies station, and was lucky enough to find the first one they did used for three bucks! Woo-hoo! Too bad there's only a few days to play it before the holiday is over...
Well, that's about all I have for now... perhaps I'll have a bit of time to blog again on Christmas Eve!
Jon
As I write this, there's less than half an hour to go on my current eBay auctions -- mostly JLU figures. It's probably a good thing I decided to not collect those, and sell them off, because while I was at Target today, I saw a bunch of additional releases -- which all seemed to have one repeat figure max, and two new figures, including some Green Lanterns, and more villains!
So, what toys am I collecting? Well, looks like it'll just be toys with Krypto... at least, for the time being.
In other news...
Just received a tape from Andy Mangels yesterday, meaning I'll have to squeeze in time over the weekend to do some transcriptions... dunno how I'll manage that, but I'll fit it in somewhere!
This past week has been a bit stressful at work, but not because of work per se... the husband of one of my co-workers is very sick, and details haven't been forthcoming. I really feel for my co-worker, as I was in a similar situation with my Barbara, and it didn't end well, as I'm sure most of you know. My best hopes and wishes go to them... and I hope things turn out well for them.
I've spent way too much money on Christmas shopping this year... again. It wouldn't be so bad if it was spread out over several paychecks, instead of a little on one, and a lot on the last one before Christmas! But oh, well, isn't Christmas all about giving?
Remember the link I gave you guys about Mr. Pop History earlier this week (or was it last week)? Check out this week's column... the additional info on 1970s cartoons based on TV shows was provided by yours truly!
I bought one item for me today with all my shopping... there's a band called the Fab Four, a Beatles tribute band, who's put out two Christmas CD's of holiday tunes done in the Beatles' style... I've heard a few tracks on the oldies station, and was lucky enough to find the first one they did used for three bucks! Woo-hoo! Too bad there's only a few days to play it before the holiday is over...
Well, that's about all I have for now... perhaps I'll have a bit of time to blog again on Christmas Eve!
Jon
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
More About My Avengers
Since my posting (see below) on how I would tackle writing the Avengers, I found myself thinking more about it... and will probably do several more postings on this, despite the fact that nobody has left a single comment on the concept!
More about the Standby Avengers
One of the facets of Cap initiating the Standby/Reserve Avengers drive is, as I said before, to have some specialists available... but not just specialist singular... no, he'd be looking to create specialist sub-teams. Let's say that there's trouble in Atlantis... maybe Attuma (ok, brief interruption... just as a joke, I'd love to have Arnold Schwarzenegger play or voice a Marvel character, maybe in a cartoon... some underwater stuff would be going on, and somone would suggest to whoever Arnold was playing that maybe Attuma is behind it... to which he'd respond, "It's not Attuma!" Say it out loud in his accent... and if you don't get why I think it would be hilarious, you never saw Kindergarten Cop) is invading or something. The call comes to the Avengers for assistance, and Cap could call out a special reserve team comprised of members who can operate underwater well... like Namor (naturally), Stingray (assuming he's still alive), Nova (his helmet has that recycling air supply), Namorita, etc. Whatever the specific mission is, if there is a specialized team that would work well for it, Cap can call it up with the pressing of a button. Need a team to operate in a jungle environment? Call the Black Panther, Tigra, and so on. You get the idea. Same for outer space. No point in sending members who need special equipment they don't already possess when you have members who don't need it, right?
Rick Jones
Yeah, I haven't mentioned Rick previously. Since the cancellation of PAD's Captain Marvel, I don't believe Marvel is using Rick at all... and maybe they're not going to. I'd love to bring Rick into my Avengers book, although I don't have a real firm idea of what role he'd play. Maybe he'd be in charge of media relations... or perhaps he'd finally get his shot at being a super-hero himself! That's always been Rick's hope, from some of his earliest days (well, at least during the Kree-Skrull War, and even before that when he wanted Cap to take him on as the new Bucky). Rick's been accumulating collectibles for a while, as we've seen in Captain Marvel, and perhaps the day would come when Rick would realize that by using some of the cast-off stuff he's collected, he could become a super-hero himself! Dunno what his heroic identity name would be. I figure I'd use Rick in a story arc, and then if he worked well for me, keep him around.
Characterizations
Captain America -- He's the one guy who always knows what he's doing, and never has any doubts... at least, that's the impression everyone has, except for those who know him best. In reality, he does question himself, and has been known to ask those who he is closest to (like Iron Man and Thor) their opinions. When he's in command mode, nobody questions him... at least, not during combat situations. Hawkeye may question him after the fact, or even gripe a bit during things, but he knows Cap's got more on the ball than any three dozen guys. Cap doesn't spend much time in his Steve Rogers identity, even though most of the Avengers are aware of his real identity. He doesn't do much to unwind and relax, except for working out in the gym and training fellow Avengers, but Hawkeye would be trying to get him to loosen up a bit and do things just for fun. Cap's musical tastes are still locked into the 1940s, but he does listen to other music as well. We'll need to remember that, despite the cover dates of the comics starting with Avengers #4, he's been out of suspended animation for only about 10 years, so he missed out on the 50s through the 80s music scenes. He doesn't enjoy hard rock and roll, typically, but does enjoy folk music of the 60s, and some easier listening stuff (he particuarlly enjoys John Lennon's solo work, especially "Imagine").
Iron Man -- I have no idea if Marvel still portrays him as having no secret identity or not... but it doesn't matter. Shellhead is the top gadget guy in the Avengers, and tinkering on gadgets is his vocation and his hobby. Working out a way to get another .05% out of his repulsors is fun to Tony Stark, and we shouldn't forget about that. He doesn't tinker with items that are actively used -- for example, if Hawkeye's having problems with a trick arrow, Tony wouldn't mess with the one in Clint's quiver. But if, say, one of the Standby members was at the mansion, and happened to mention that their jetpack doesn't seem to get up to speed fast enough, if they have a few minutes, Iron Man would pop it open, make a few seemingly minor adjustments, and have it working better than ever. I wouldn't portray him as eager to mess with all the tech they find... but it's obvious he enjoys it, and he's definitely the go-to guy for gadget fixes. Iron Man's sense of humor tends to be more on the sophisticated side, but every now and then, he'll go for something a little lowbrow... especially if it would rattle the villain they're fighting.
Despite his long relationship with Captain America and Thor, I'd show him as having the best friendship with Jarvis. Jarvis has been in Stark's employ for a long time, and Tony trusts him implicitly. I might even go so far as to reveal that Jarvis was actually the first person to find out Tony was Iron Man, way back when -- because Tony would know he'd need someone at Avengers Mansion who could assist him if needed.
In many ways, though, Iron Man is kind of a cipher... he strikes people as being distant, which has more to do with wearing armor than anything else.
Thor -- The God of Thunder is a tricky character to write. He does tend towards arrogance (although not to the extent of Hercules), and he knows just how powerful he is compared to most of his fellow Avengers. However, we should always bear in mind why he's on the team... they are the closest peers he has on Earth, and his respect for his teammates is obvious. How do you earn Thor's respect? If Captain America says you are good enough for the Avengers, that will do it. But just because he respects you, that doesn't mean you're his friend. If you've battled alongside him, you can call him "Goldilocks" in jest... but not before. If someone besmirches the name of the Avengers, he's the first one to be chomping at the bit to smite them.
More later!
Jon
More about the Standby Avengers
One of the facets of Cap initiating the Standby/Reserve Avengers drive is, as I said before, to have some specialists available... but not just specialist singular... no, he'd be looking to create specialist sub-teams. Let's say that there's trouble in Atlantis... maybe Attuma (ok, brief interruption... just as a joke, I'd love to have Arnold Schwarzenegger play or voice a Marvel character, maybe in a cartoon... some underwater stuff would be going on, and somone would suggest to whoever Arnold was playing that maybe Attuma is behind it... to which he'd respond, "It's not Attuma!" Say it out loud in his accent... and if you don't get why I think it would be hilarious, you never saw Kindergarten Cop) is invading or something. The call comes to the Avengers for assistance, and Cap could call out a special reserve team comprised of members who can operate underwater well... like Namor (naturally), Stingray (assuming he's still alive), Nova (his helmet has that recycling air supply), Namorita, etc. Whatever the specific mission is, if there is a specialized team that would work well for it, Cap can call it up with the pressing of a button. Need a team to operate in a jungle environment? Call the Black Panther, Tigra, and so on. You get the idea. Same for outer space. No point in sending members who need special equipment they don't already possess when you have members who don't need it, right?
Rick Jones
Yeah, I haven't mentioned Rick previously. Since the cancellation of PAD's Captain Marvel, I don't believe Marvel is using Rick at all... and maybe they're not going to. I'd love to bring Rick into my Avengers book, although I don't have a real firm idea of what role he'd play. Maybe he'd be in charge of media relations... or perhaps he'd finally get his shot at being a super-hero himself! That's always been Rick's hope, from some of his earliest days (well, at least during the Kree-Skrull War, and even before that when he wanted Cap to take him on as the new Bucky). Rick's been accumulating collectibles for a while, as we've seen in Captain Marvel, and perhaps the day would come when Rick would realize that by using some of the cast-off stuff he's collected, he could become a super-hero himself! Dunno what his heroic identity name would be. I figure I'd use Rick in a story arc, and then if he worked well for me, keep him around.
Characterizations
Captain America -- He's the one guy who always knows what he's doing, and never has any doubts... at least, that's the impression everyone has, except for those who know him best. In reality, he does question himself, and has been known to ask those who he is closest to (like Iron Man and Thor) their opinions. When he's in command mode, nobody questions him... at least, not during combat situations. Hawkeye may question him after the fact, or even gripe a bit during things, but he knows Cap's got more on the ball than any three dozen guys. Cap doesn't spend much time in his Steve Rogers identity, even though most of the Avengers are aware of his real identity. He doesn't do much to unwind and relax, except for working out in the gym and training fellow Avengers, but Hawkeye would be trying to get him to loosen up a bit and do things just for fun. Cap's musical tastes are still locked into the 1940s, but he does listen to other music as well. We'll need to remember that, despite the cover dates of the comics starting with Avengers #4, he's been out of suspended animation for only about 10 years, so he missed out on the 50s through the 80s music scenes. He doesn't enjoy hard rock and roll, typically, but does enjoy folk music of the 60s, and some easier listening stuff (he particuarlly enjoys John Lennon's solo work, especially "Imagine").
Iron Man -- I have no idea if Marvel still portrays him as having no secret identity or not... but it doesn't matter. Shellhead is the top gadget guy in the Avengers, and tinkering on gadgets is his vocation and his hobby. Working out a way to get another .05% out of his repulsors is fun to Tony Stark, and we shouldn't forget about that. He doesn't tinker with items that are actively used -- for example, if Hawkeye's having problems with a trick arrow, Tony wouldn't mess with the one in Clint's quiver. But if, say, one of the Standby members was at the mansion, and happened to mention that their jetpack doesn't seem to get up to speed fast enough, if they have a few minutes, Iron Man would pop it open, make a few seemingly minor adjustments, and have it working better than ever. I wouldn't portray him as eager to mess with all the tech they find... but it's obvious he enjoys it, and he's definitely the go-to guy for gadget fixes. Iron Man's sense of humor tends to be more on the sophisticated side, but every now and then, he'll go for something a little lowbrow... especially if it would rattle the villain they're fighting.
Despite his long relationship with Captain America and Thor, I'd show him as having the best friendship with Jarvis. Jarvis has been in Stark's employ for a long time, and Tony trusts him implicitly. I might even go so far as to reveal that Jarvis was actually the first person to find out Tony was Iron Man, way back when -- because Tony would know he'd need someone at Avengers Mansion who could assist him if needed.
In many ways, though, Iron Man is kind of a cipher... he strikes people as being distant, which has more to do with wearing armor than anything else.
Thor -- The God of Thunder is a tricky character to write. He does tend towards arrogance (although not to the extent of Hercules), and he knows just how powerful he is compared to most of his fellow Avengers. However, we should always bear in mind why he's on the team... they are the closest peers he has on Earth, and his respect for his teammates is obvious. How do you earn Thor's respect? If Captain America says you are good enough for the Avengers, that will do it. But just because he respects you, that doesn't mean you're his friend. If you've battled alongside him, you can call him "Goldilocks" in jest... but not before. If someone besmirches the name of the Avengers, he's the first one to be chomping at the bit to smite them.
More later!
Jon
More About My Avengers
Since my posting (see below) on how I would tackle writing the Avengers, I found myself thinking more about it... and will probably do several more postings on this, despite the fact that nobody has left a single comment on the concept!
More about the Standby Avengers
One of the facets of Cap initiating the Standby/Reserve Avengers drive is, as I said before, to have some specialists available... but not just specialist singular... no, he'd be looking to create specialist sub-teams. Let's say that there's trouble in Atlantis... maybe Attuma (ok, brief interruption... just as a joke, I'd love to have Arnold Schwarzenegger play or voice a Marvel character, maybe in a cartoon... some underwater stuff would be going on, and somone would suggest to whoever Arnold was playing that maybe Attuma is behind it... to which he'd respond, "It's not Attuma!" Say it out loud in his accent... and if you don't get why I think it would be hilarious, you never saw Kindergarten Cop) is invading or something. The call comes to the Avengers for assistance, and Cap could call out a special reserve team comprised of members who can operate underwater well... like Namor (naturally), Stingray (assuming he's still alive), Nova (his helmet has that recycling air supply), Namorita, etc. Whatever the specific mission is, if there is a specialized team that would work well for it, Cap can call it up with the pressing of a button. Need a team to operate in a jungle environment? Call the Black Panther, Tigra, and so on. You get the idea. Same for outer space. No point in sending members who need special equipment they don't already possess when you have members who don't need it, right?
Rick Jones
Yeah, I haven't mentioned Rick previously. Since the cancellation of PAD's Captain Marvel, I don't believe Marvel is using Rick at all... and maybe they're not going to. I'd love to bring Rick into my Avengers book, although I don't have a real firm idea of what role he'd play. Maybe he'd be in charge of media relations... or perhaps he'd finally get his shot at being a super-hero himself! That's always been Rick's hope, from some of his earliest days (well, at least during the Kree-Skrull War, and even before that when he wanted Cap to take him on as the new Bucky). Rick's been accumulating collectibles for a while, as we've seen in Captain Marvel, and perhaps the day would come when Rick would realize that by using some of the cast-off stuff he's collected, he could become a super-hero himself! Dunno what his heroic identity name would be. I figure I'd use Rick in a story arc, and then if he worked well for me, keep him around.
Characterizations
Captain America -- He's the one guy who always knows what he's doing, and never has any doubts... at least, that's the impression everyone has, except for those who know him best. In reality, he does question himself, and has been known to ask those who he is closest to (like Iron Man and Thor) their opinions. When he's in command mode, nobody questions him... at least, not during combat situations. Hawkeye may question him after the fact, or even gripe a bit during things, but he knows Cap's got more on the ball than any three dozen guys. Cap doesn't spend much time in his Steve Rogers identity, even though most of the Avengers are aware of his real identity. He doesn't do much to unwind and relax, except for working out in the gym and training fellow Avengers, but Hawkeye would be trying to get him to loosen up a bit and do things just for fun. Cap's musical tastes are still locked into the 1940s, but he does listen to other music as well. We'll need to remember that, despite the cover dates of the comics starting with Avengers #4, he's been out of suspended animation for only about 10 years, so he missed out on the 50s through the 80s music scenes. He doesn't enjoy hard rock and roll, typically, but does enjoy folk music of the 60s, and some easier listening stuff (he particuarlly enjoys John Lennon's solo work, especially "Imagine").
Iron Man -- I have no idea if Marvel still portrays him as having no secret identity or not... but it doesn't matter. Shellhead is the top gadget guy in the Avengers, and tinkering on gadgets is his vocation and his hobby. Working out a way to get another .05% out of his repulsors is fun to Tony Stark, and we shouldn't forget about that. He doesn't tinker with items that are actively used -- for example, if Hawkeye's having problems with a trick arrow, Tony wouldn't mess with the one in Clint's quiver. But if, say, one of the Standby members was at the mansion, and happened to mention that their jetpack doesn't seem to get up to speed fast enough, if they have a few minutes, Iron Man would pop it open, make a few seemingly minor adjustments, and have it working better than ever. I wouldn't portray him as eager to mess with all the tech they find... but it's obvious he enjoys it, and he's definitely the go-to guy for gadget fixes. Iron Man's sense of humor tends to be more on the sophisticated side, but every now and then, he'll go for something a little lowbrow... especially if it would rattle the villain they're fighting.
Despite his long relationship with Captain America and Thor, I'd show him as having the best friendship with Jarvis. Jarvis has been in Stark's employ for a long time, and Tony trusts him implicitly. I might even go so far as to reveal that Jarvis was actually the first person to find out Tony was Iron Man, way back when -- because Tony would know he'd need someone at Avengers Mansion who could assist him if needed.
In many ways, though, Iron Man is kind of a cipher... he strikes people as being distant, which has more to do with wearing armor than anything else.
Thor -- The God of Thunder is a tricky character to write. He does tend towards arrogance (although not to the extent of Hercules), and he knows just how powerful he is compared to most of his fellow Avengers. However, we should always bear in mind why he's on the team... they are the closest peers he has on Earth, and his respect for his teammates is obvious. How do you earn Thor's respect? If Captain America says you are good enough for the Avengers, that will do it. But just because he respects you, that doesn't mean you're his friend. If you've battled alongside him, you can call him "Goldilocks" in jest... but not before. If someone besmirches the name of the Avengers, he's the first one to be chomping at the bit to smite them.
More later!
Jon
More about the Standby Avengers
One of the facets of Cap initiating the Standby/Reserve Avengers drive is, as I said before, to have some specialists available... but not just specialist singular... no, he'd be looking to create specialist sub-teams. Let's say that there's trouble in Atlantis... maybe Attuma (ok, brief interruption... just as a joke, I'd love to have Arnold Schwarzenegger play or voice a Marvel character, maybe in a cartoon... some underwater stuff would be going on, and somone would suggest to whoever Arnold was playing that maybe Attuma is behind it... to which he'd respond, "It's not Attuma!" Say it out loud in his accent... and if you don't get why I think it would be hilarious, you never saw Kindergarten Cop) is invading or something. The call comes to the Avengers for assistance, and Cap could call out a special reserve team comprised of members who can operate underwater well... like Namor (naturally), Stingray (assuming he's still alive), Nova (his helmet has that recycling air supply), Namorita, etc. Whatever the specific mission is, if there is a specialized team that would work well for it, Cap can call it up with the pressing of a button. Need a team to operate in a jungle environment? Call the Black Panther, Tigra, and so on. You get the idea. Same for outer space. No point in sending members who need special equipment they don't already possess when you have members who don't need it, right?
Rick Jones
Yeah, I haven't mentioned Rick previously. Since the cancellation of PAD's Captain Marvel, I don't believe Marvel is using Rick at all... and maybe they're not going to. I'd love to bring Rick into my Avengers book, although I don't have a real firm idea of what role he'd play. Maybe he'd be in charge of media relations... or perhaps he'd finally get his shot at being a super-hero himself! That's always been Rick's hope, from some of his earliest days (well, at least during the Kree-Skrull War, and even before that when he wanted Cap to take him on as the new Bucky). Rick's been accumulating collectibles for a while, as we've seen in Captain Marvel, and perhaps the day would come when Rick would realize that by using some of the cast-off stuff he's collected, he could become a super-hero himself! Dunno what his heroic identity name would be. I figure I'd use Rick in a story arc, and then if he worked well for me, keep him around.
Characterizations
Captain America -- He's the one guy who always knows what he's doing, and never has any doubts... at least, that's the impression everyone has, except for those who know him best. In reality, he does question himself, and has been known to ask those who he is closest to (like Iron Man and Thor) their opinions. When he's in command mode, nobody questions him... at least, not during combat situations. Hawkeye may question him after the fact, or even gripe a bit during things, but he knows Cap's got more on the ball than any three dozen guys. Cap doesn't spend much time in his Steve Rogers identity, even though most of the Avengers are aware of his real identity. He doesn't do much to unwind and relax, except for working out in the gym and training fellow Avengers, but Hawkeye would be trying to get him to loosen up a bit and do things just for fun. Cap's musical tastes are still locked into the 1940s, but he does listen to other music as well. We'll need to remember that, despite the cover dates of the comics starting with Avengers #4, he's been out of suspended animation for only about 10 years, so he missed out on the 50s through the 80s music scenes. He doesn't enjoy hard rock and roll, typically, but does enjoy folk music of the 60s, and some easier listening stuff (he particuarlly enjoys John Lennon's solo work, especially "Imagine").
Iron Man -- I have no idea if Marvel still portrays him as having no secret identity or not... but it doesn't matter. Shellhead is the top gadget guy in the Avengers, and tinkering on gadgets is his vocation and his hobby. Working out a way to get another .05% out of his repulsors is fun to Tony Stark, and we shouldn't forget about that. He doesn't tinker with items that are actively used -- for example, if Hawkeye's having problems with a trick arrow, Tony wouldn't mess with the one in Clint's quiver. But if, say, one of the Standby members was at the mansion, and happened to mention that their jetpack doesn't seem to get up to speed fast enough, if they have a few minutes, Iron Man would pop it open, make a few seemingly minor adjustments, and have it working better than ever. I wouldn't portray him as eager to mess with all the tech they find... but it's obvious he enjoys it, and he's definitely the go-to guy for gadget fixes. Iron Man's sense of humor tends to be more on the sophisticated side, but every now and then, he'll go for something a little lowbrow... especially if it would rattle the villain they're fighting.
Despite his long relationship with Captain America and Thor, I'd show him as having the best friendship with Jarvis. Jarvis has been in Stark's employ for a long time, and Tony trusts him implicitly. I might even go so far as to reveal that Jarvis was actually the first person to find out Tony was Iron Man, way back when -- because Tony would know he'd need someone at Avengers Mansion who could assist him if needed.
In many ways, though, Iron Man is kind of a cipher... he strikes people as being distant, which has more to do with wearing armor than anything else.
Thor -- The God of Thunder is a tricky character to write. He does tend towards arrogance (although not to the extent of Hercules), and he knows just how powerful he is compared to most of his fellow Avengers. However, we should always bear in mind why he's on the team... they are the closest peers he has on Earth, and his respect for his teammates is obvious. How do you earn Thor's respect? If Captain America says you are good enough for the Avengers, that will do it. But just because he respects you, that doesn't mean you're his friend. If you've battled alongside him, you can call him "Goldilocks" in jest... but not before. If someone besmirches the name of the Avengers, he's the first one to be chomping at the bit to smite them.
More later!
Jon
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Ohmigosh... Comics Content!
Yeah, I'm going to talk comics in this entry... which I've rarely done in the past few weeks...
My Avengers
I've probably mentioned that I haven't been buying any of Marvel's Avengers comics in some time... actually, shortly after Busiek left the revived book is when I stopped. Kurt's run was, in my humble opinion, the last great run of the book (although towards the end, I felt even he was running out of steam). He really got the book right, I feel... and I fear sometimes we won't see the book "right" again.
But regardless of that... here's how I see the Avengers, and how the book should be.
The Team
As many others before me have said, you can't have the Avengers without Captain America. It just doesn't feel like the team! (kind of like if you had the Defenders without the Hulk, if you will) Cap should always be front and center in any Avengers grouping, acting as team spokesman and, yes, as team leader. The guy's the best strategist in the Marvel Universe, and is probably the only super-hero whom the public almost universally admires and believes.
Who else would be on the team? I think a seven-member roster works best, although if I were to write the book, I'd keep the teams going on missions to no more than five or six, unless it's a major threat. There's always been lip service paid to the idea of one Avenger remaining on monitor duty at all times, but the only time it's been a factor is when the writer wanted a character to bail from monitor duty (the Beast has done this a time or two, to help out the X-Men). Having a seven-member team with rotating monitor duty so that five or six are available to go on missions works for me... heck, you could have one on monitor duty, and one member absent entirely from the issue because they're busy with events in their own book!
So, aside from Cap... who's on the team? Well, I've always been a fan of the classic line-up from the Englehart era, so I'd put Thor and Iron Man there -- but those two would likely be the ones most often absent due to their own activities. These two members provide the tech know-how and sheer power the team needs.
That's three... I need four more, right? In the past, the Vision would've been one of my members, as well as the Scarlet Witch, but both characters have been messed up way too much to deal with, so they're out.
Goliath and the Wasp. Yes, I said it. Sure, Hank and Tony both provide science know-how, but I'd want to focus Hank's expertise on biology, and Tony on tech. Yeah, I know, Hank built Ultron, but his field is supposed to be biochemistry, and that's where he should be. The Wasp would be there because 1) She's a fun character, 2) It works well to have her and Hank play off each other, and 3) We need women on the team!
Two more members? Well, let's throw in Songbird. Why? Partly because in AVENGERS FOREVER, she was included in the group, so at some point in the future, she's supposed to be on the team, and this would get her in there. Captain Marvel (or whatever Genis is calling himself these days) is also supposed to be a future member, but I'd save him for a time (although more on that below).
Last member? Hawkeye. But isn't he dead? Or has he come back to life yet? In the afore-mentioned AVENGERS FOREVER, there was no reaction from Songbird or Captain Marvel about him being alive -- no, "But you're dead in my era!" thoughts or anything. To me, this indicates that his death isn't permanent. And besides, if DC can bring Green Arrow back from the dead, Marvel can bring back Hawkeye (although I'd prefer it if we could find a way to show that Hawkeye didn't really die in the first place -- perhaps he was just so greviously wounded it took him some time to be treated for his wounds... maybe even suffered from amnesia or something).
So, that's my core group, right? But there are a lot of other super-heroes I'd love to use on the team... so how do I use them?
Well, there's the hoary Reserve Avengers thing I could use... but I almost think it would be better to rename the status Standby Avengers. If you're a Standby Avenger, that means you'd be available at any time to get the call to go on active duty, whether it means supplementing the main team, or even forming a temporary team with one of the active Avengers on a one-time basis. I'd have Cap making contact with former Avengers and potential new members for this new status, and recruiting new members this way... with the understanding being that if an active member has to drop out of active membership, a Standby would be called to take their place.
This idea also opens up some interesting possibilities -- like I said, Cap's a strategist, and he could determine not only how to best use his active team, but also when he might need a specialist. Need someone who can go really, really fast for a specific mission? Call Quicksilver and see if he's available. If he's not, contact Nova.
Yeah, Nova. It's been shown that he wants to be an Avenger, and I'd probably use him in the first Standby storyline that came up. And I like Nova, even if I don't always like how he's been used.
The Stories
Naturally, the first story would have to be an "Old Order Changeth" kind of thing, but we need something going on other than changing the membership. Cap would learn about something that's going to be coming up in the near future, and he would of course know he'll need to re-align the whole team in order to prepare for it. Maybe it's a future planned invasion by Kang, utilizing an army of alien races from all over the Marvel Universe, because he's sick and tired of the Avengers always beating him, and it's about time he finished them off once and for all. So Cap finds out this is coming up several years in advance, and starts preparing for it. Whatever it is, it's got to be something huger than big. Maybe Cap finds out because the Tomorrow Man has come back to fight the Avengers, and he lets slip something about knowing Kang was going to conquer this era in a few years, and that he wants to take over first... whatever.
From there, we use Cap recruiting a major Avengers army, and cataloging abilities, powers and skills while we have other cool stuff happening. We can see how the Avengers' working relationship with other groups, like the Fantastic Four and SHIELD, actually work, but not get bogged down in detail there. Establish additional Avengers bases all over the world -- not necessarily full-fledged mansions, mind you, but smaller bases that have medical facilities, dorms, meeting rooms, labs, and so forth -- none of these would be as deluxe as Avengers Mansion, but would provide a "home away from home" for an away team to use as a base of operations. No matter how fast the Quinjets are, it's still a big planet, and the days are gone when we can just accept that Quicksilver can run all over the world several times a day, or that the Torch can fly cross-country in a few hours. These Avengers Outposts would be part of Cap's plans to prepare for this Big Event.
While things are under way for the big deal that Cap's reworking the group, there should be other big things, too... like a new Masters of Evil that would be a major kick-ass group. Perhaps Zemo or some other master villain, upon hearing what the Avengers are doing, want to do the same thing for the villains (even if they don't know why the Avengers are recruiting). What happens when all over the country, different locations are attacked by groups of seven or eight villains, each group different, all claiming to be the Masters of Evil?
Lastly, the Avengers has always been one of two books that really lets us explore the Marvel Universe (the FF is the other one). How long has it been since we've seen the latest in Atlantis? What are the Skrulls up to, or the Kree? What's the latest in the Savage Land? Those are just examples -- the Avengers should never be confined to New York City issue after issue after issue, you know? There are lots of super-heroes there, we shouldn't be portraying things as "Oh no, the Avengers are in California -- New York is unprotected! We only have the Fantastic Four, Dr. Strange, Daredevil, Spider-Man, SHIELD, etc. to protect us!" Heck, if the Avengers were going to be away from NYC for an extended period, why, Cap would simply call up some Standby members to form a temporary seven person team to cover for their absence!
Another part of the stories would be the training sessions -- they wouldn't necessarily be a main focus of a story, but there'd be at least a reference in each issue as we start things up. Even standby members get training, because Cap needs to know who would be the best Field Leaders in case he needs to send out different groups. This would let us have a lot of cameos of the standby members as they're coming or going from training sessions.
The Bottom Line
The whole idea here is to make the Avengers exciting again... not "kewl" or "rad" or whatever, but exciting! Make it a book that you finish reading the new issue and can hardly wait until the next one comes out... that people talk about on their blogs and review sites... and make it fun to read, too! Just because the Avengers are the super-hero elite of the MU, they are human (or humanoid, anyway)... there should be humor, natural humor. When not in combat, even Captain America could make a joke or two.
So, would I take on the assignment to write the Avengers, using these ideas? Well, yeah, of course -- but not until I could plot out several years' worth of ideas, knowing what I wanted to accomplish at each point as I built up to the Big Event -- and planning what to do beyond that. Once I had a solid foundation to begin my run with, then I'd be willing to start.
Jon
My Avengers
I've probably mentioned that I haven't been buying any of Marvel's Avengers comics in some time... actually, shortly after Busiek left the revived book is when I stopped. Kurt's run was, in my humble opinion, the last great run of the book (although towards the end, I felt even he was running out of steam). He really got the book right, I feel... and I fear sometimes we won't see the book "right" again.
But regardless of that... here's how I see the Avengers, and how the book should be.
The Team
As many others before me have said, you can't have the Avengers without Captain America. It just doesn't feel like the team! (kind of like if you had the Defenders without the Hulk, if you will) Cap should always be front and center in any Avengers grouping, acting as team spokesman and, yes, as team leader. The guy's the best strategist in the Marvel Universe, and is probably the only super-hero whom the public almost universally admires and believes.
Who else would be on the team? I think a seven-member roster works best, although if I were to write the book, I'd keep the teams going on missions to no more than five or six, unless it's a major threat. There's always been lip service paid to the idea of one Avenger remaining on monitor duty at all times, but the only time it's been a factor is when the writer wanted a character to bail from monitor duty (the Beast has done this a time or two, to help out the X-Men). Having a seven-member team with rotating monitor duty so that five or six are available to go on missions works for me... heck, you could have one on monitor duty, and one member absent entirely from the issue because they're busy with events in their own book!
So, aside from Cap... who's on the team? Well, I've always been a fan of the classic line-up from the Englehart era, so I'd put Thor and Iron Man there -- but those two would likely be the ones most often absent due to their own activities. These two members provide the tech know-how and sheer power the team needs.
That's three... I need four more, right? In the past, the Vision would've been one of my members, as well as the Scarlet Witch, but both characters have been messed up way too much to deal with, so they're out.
Goliath and the Wasp. Yes, I said it. Sure, Hank and Tony both provide science know-how, but I'd want to focus Hank's expertise on biology, and Tony on tech. Yeah, I know, Hank built Ultron, but his field is supposed to be biochemistry, and that's where he should be. The Wasp would be there because 1) She's a fun character, 2) It works well to have her and Hank play off each other, and 3) We need women on the team!
Two more members? Well, let's throw in Songbird. Why? Partly because in AVENGERS FOREVER, she was included in the group, so at some point in the future, she's supposed to be on the team, and this would get her in there. Captain Marvel (or whatever Genis is calling himself these days) is also supposed to be a future member, but I'd save him for a time (although more on that below).
Last member? Hawkeye. But isn't he dead? Or has he come back to life yet? In the afore-mentioned AVENGERS FOREVER, there was no reaction from Songbird or Captain Marvel about him being alive -- no, "But you're dead in my era!" thoughts or anything. To me, this indicates that his death isn't permanent. And besides, if DC can bring Green Arrow back from the dead, Marvel can bring back Hawkeye (although I'd prefer it if we could find a way to show that Hawkeye didn't really die in the first place -- perhaps he was just so greviously wounded it took him some time to be treated for his wounds... maybe even suffered from amnesia or something).
So, that's my core group, right? But there are a lot of other super-heroes I'd love to use on the team... so how do I use them?
Well, there's the hoary Reserve Avengers thing I could use... but I almost think it would be better to rename the status Standby Avengers. If you're a Standby Avenger, that means you'd be available at any time to get the call to go on active duty, whether it means supplementing the main team, or even forming a temporary team with one of the active Avengers on a one-time basis. I'd have Cap making contact with former Avengers and potential new members for this new status, and recruiting new members this way... with the understanding being that if an active member has to drop out of active membership, a Standby would be called to take their place.
This idea also opens up some interesting possibilities -- like I said, Cap's a strategist, and he could determine not only how to best use his active team, but also when he might need a specialist. Need someone who can go really, really fast for a specific mission? Call Quicksilver and see if he's available. If he's not, contact Nova.
Yeah, Nova. It's been shown that he wants to be an Avenger, and I'd probably use him in the first Standby storyline that came up. And I like Nova, even if I don't always like how he's been used.
The Stories
Naturally, the first story would have to be an "Old Order Changeth" kind of thing, but we need something going on other than changing the membership. Cap would learn about something that's going to be coming up in the near future, and he would of course know he'll need to re-align the whole team in order to prepare for it. Maybe it's a future planned invasion by Kang, utilizing an army of alien races from all over the Marvel Universe, because he's sick and tired of the Avengers always beating him, and it's about time he finished them off once and for all. So Cap finds out this is coming up several years in advance, and starts preparing for it. Whatever it is, it's got to be something huger than big. Maybe Cap finds out because the Tomorrow Man has come back to fight the Avengers, and he lets slip something about knowing Kang was going to conquer this era in a few years, and that he wants to take over first... whatever.
From there, we use Cap recruiting a major Avengers army, and cataloging abilities, powers and skills while we have other cool stuff happening. We can see how the Avengers' working relationship with other groups, like the Fantastic Four and SHIELD, actually work, but not get bogged down in detail there. Establish additional Avengers bases all over the world -- not necessarily full-fledged mansions, mind you, but smaller bases that have medical facilities, dorms, meeting rooms, labs, and so forth -- none of these would be as deluxe as Avengers Mansion, but would provide a "home away from home" for an away team to use as a base of operations. No matter how fast the Quinjets are, it's still a big planet, and the days are gone when we can just accept that Quicksilver can run all over the world several times a day, or that the Torch can fly cross-country in a few hours. These Avengers Outposts would be part of Cap's plans to prepare for this Big Event.
While things are under way for the big deal that Cap's reworking the group, there should be other big things, too... like a new Masters of Evil that would be a major kick-ass group. Perhaps Zemo or some other master villain, upon hearing what the Avengers are doing, want to do the same thing for the villains (even if they don't know why the Avengers are recruiting). What happens when all over the country, different locations are attacked by groups of seven or eight villains, each group different, all claiming to be the Masters of Evil?
Lastly, the Avengers has always been one of two books that really lets us explore the Marvel Universe (the FF is the other one). How long has it been since we've seen the latest in Atlantis? What are the Skrulls up to, or the Kree? What's the latest in the Savage Land? Those are just examples -- the Avengers should never be confined to New York City issue after issue after issue, you know? There are lots of super-heroes there, we shouldn't be portraying things as "Oh no, the Avengers are in California -- New York is unprotected! We only have the Fantastic Four, Dr. Strange, Daredevil, Spider-Man, SHIELD, etc. to protect us!" Heck, if the Avengers were going to be away from NYC for an extended period, why, Cap would simply call up some Standby members to form a temporary seven person team to cover for their absence!
Another part of the stories would be the training sessions -- they wouldn't necessarily be a main focus of a story, but there'd be at least a reference in each issue as we start things up. Even standby members get training, because Cap needs to know who would be the best Field Leaders in case he needs to send out different groups. This would let us have a lot of cameos of the standby members as they're coming or going from training sessions.
The Bottom Line
The whole idea here is to make the Avengers exciting again... not "kewl" or "rad" or whatever, but exciting! Make it a book that you finish reading the new issue and can hardly wait until the next one comes out... that people talk about on their blogs and review sites... and make it fun to read, too! Just because the Avengers are the super-hero elite of the MU, they are human (or humanoid, anyway)... there should be humor, natural humor. When not in combat, even Captain America could make a joke or two.
So, would I take on the assignment to write the Avengers, using these ideas? Well, yeah, of course -- but not until I could plot out several years' worth of ideas, knowing what I wanted to accomplish at each point as I built up to the Big Event -- and planning what to do beyond that. Once I had a solid foundation to begin my run with, then I'd be willing to start.
Jon
Monday, December 19, 2005
Monday Night Blogging
A number of random things to talk about tonight...
Recently Read: Squadron Supreme
Well, that should be recently re-read, at any rate... this may be my third time through the TPB reprinting the Mark Gruenwald-written miniseries, and I'm amazed every time at what I missed on previous readings. No, I won't go into details on what I caught this time... but I do find myself wishing that the follow-up graphic novel had been included in the TPB.
Anyway... it's a great story, and one that certainly deserved reprinting (the copy I have is the third printing, believe it or not). I don't know if previous prints included the Alex Ross cover or not... but this one does.
I never had all the issues of the original mini-series... it came out while I was in the Navy, when I was home-ported out of Guam, and it was rare I could get all the comics each month that were coming out, having to get them at the newsstands or Stars & Stripes bookstores. As such, until I bought this TPB, I'd never read the whole story before.
Of course, I'm familiar with the backstory of the SS... Marvel's JLA analogues, and so forth, and I've always liked them as far back as I can recall. Reading this TPB, however, I'm once again reminded that I'm not able to identify who the inspiration of the villains were... and I am assuming they were inspired by DC villains. Master Mayhem, aka Emil Burbank, seems to be based on Lex Luthor, for example, and Minx on Catwoman. Others, though, stymie me... like Remnant and Pinball. I did a search to see if there were annotations on the web, but was unsuccessful.
The Work Day
It was a decent day at work. Since we have someone out on vacation, I came into work at 10 (which is, admittedly, only about a half hour earlier than I usually get there). There was a minimal amount of work to begin with, but we managed to stay busy most of the day, and I got in 8 hours and 15 minutes today, which is good. Nothing really of interest to mention, except that the Dining Guide rebuild that I did last week went live.
eBay Auctions
All the items I've sold have been paid for, save for one... and that one is in a dispute status now. Bizarrely, it was the item that sold for the lowest price that I'm having a problem geting paid for! There was one item -- the TwoMorrows Miracleman book -- that was won by someone with a low rating, but that person paid in plenty of time, and there's nothing waiting to be shipped.
I did spend a bit of time last night, as I think I mentioned, offering Express Mail shipping for anyone who wanted to buy for Christmas presents... but as of the last time I checked, only one item up right now has a bid. Of course, anything can happen, right?
Currently Reading
Just tonight, I started my latest re-reading of the Kree-Skrull War... just a few pages into it so far. After I read that, it's probably going to be time to go to the Essentials -- maybe Avengers, maybe FF... or maybe Cap or Iron Man or Hulk!
And that's about it for now...
Jon
Recently Read: Squadron Supreme
Well, that should be recently re-read, at any rate... this may be my third time through the TPB reprinting the Mark Gruenwald-written miniseries, and I'm amazed every time at what I missed on previous readings. No, I won't go into details on what I caught this time... but I do find myself wishing that the follow-up graphic novel had been included in the TPB.
Anyway... it's a great story, and one that certainly deserved reprinting (the copy I have is the third printing, believe it or not). I don't know if previous prints included the Alex Ross cover or not... but this one does.
I never had all the issues of the original mini-series... it came out while I was in the Navy, when I was home-ported out of Guam, and it was rare I could get all the comics each month that were coming out, having to get them at the newsstands or Stars & Stripes bookstores. As such, until I bought this TPB, I'd never read the whole story before.
Of course, I'm familiar with the backstory of the SS... Marvel's JLA analogues, and so forth, and I've always liked them as far back as I can recall. Reading this TPB, however, I'm once again reminded that I'm not able to identify who the inspiration of the villains were... and I am assuming they were inspired by DC villains. Master Mayhem, aka Emil Burbank, seems to be based on Lex Luthor, for example, and Minx on Catwoman. Others, though, stymie me... like Remnant and Pinball. I did a search to see if there were annotations on the web, but was unsuccessful.
The Work Day
It was a decent day at work. Since we have someone out on vacation, I came into work at 10 (which is, admittedly, only about a half hour earlier than I usually get there). There was a minimal amount of work to begin with, but we managed to stay busy most of the day, and I got in 8 hours and 15 minutes today, which is good. Nothing really of interest to mention, except that the Dining Guide rebuild that I did last week went live.
eBay Auctions
All the items I've sold have been paid for, save for one... and that one is in a dispute status now. Bizarrely, it was the item that sold for the lowest price that I'm having a problem geting paid for! There was one item -- the TwoMorrows Miracleman book -- that was won by someone with a low rating, but that person paid in plenty of time, and there's nothing waiting to be shipped.
I did spend a bit of time last night, as I think I mentioned, offering Express Mail shipping for anyone who wanted to buy for Christmas presents... but as of the last time I checked, only one item up right now has a bid. Of course, anything can happen, right?
Currently Reading
Just tonight, I started my latest re-reading of the Kree-Skrull War... just a few pages into it so far. After I read that, it's probably going to be time to go to the Essentials -- maybe Avengers, maybe FF... or maybe Cap or Iron Man or Hulk!
And that's about it for now...
Jon
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Sunday Night?!?!?
Wow... it is certainly bizarre to me that so much time has passed between postings this past week or two... considering how much I used to put into this. Hopefully, by the end of the year, I'll get things moving here again (and maybe get some of the regular readers of this blog who may have stopped checking in to check daily again).
Saturday
Of course, Saturday began with our Weight Watchers meeting... I had a slight gain this past week, and I expect this coming Saturday will be more of the same. But as Jessi's been saying this weekend, "It's not what you eat between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it's what you eat between Christmas and Thanksgiving." I blame the holiday luncheon at work on Thursday for the slight game.
After the meeting, we ran home, and changed clothes to walk the dogs. It was a very, very cold morning (heck, it's been freezing around here lately!), so we bundled up as much as possible before taking the dogs out. After that, we went home and had breakfast, and then, I packaged up a few items that had been paid for in my eBay sales so I could run 'em to the post office (which appeared to be a big mistake, but more on that shortly). Jessi wanted to make a run to Value Village to look for shirts, so I figured I could drop her off there and she could shop while I was at the post office.
I was hoping everything I was shipping would be going Priority Mail, because then I could've used the automated postage center, but alas, there were a few Media Mail shipments (the APC doesn't do media mail). As it was, there were six or seven people waiting for the APC. So I stepped into the post office, and took a ticket (they do a number system, like at a deli, so there's no line to stand in)... I was number 84. I looked up at the sign, and it said they were on number 40.
I called Jessi and let her know it could be a while before I was finished there... but as it was, I ended up getting out of there in about half an hour! At least a fourth of the people who were ahead of me apparently got tired of waiting and left, so those numbers got skipped... and those who stayed didn't waste a lot of time debating the method of shipment (heck, by this point, you've got to ship Priority Mail to get it where it's going before Christmas... and after Tuesday, you'll have to go with Express Mail!).
So, I met Jessi back at Value Village (we didn't buy a thing there), and walked over to the Dollar Tree (didn't buy anything there, either), then I went into Fred Meyer to pick up a few necessities, and went home so we could start getting ready. You see, we had planned to drive down to Chehalis to meet up with one of Jessi's former co-workers and her husband and child for dinner. Jessi wanted to go early, because there are outlet malls and the like around there, and figured we might get some Christmas shopping done!
Now, we're both kind of dressed up, casual but dressy, if that makes any sense. Jessi was wearing a white sweater, and when we were window shopping at this one strip mall, we walked into a Fashion Bug store, where Jessi looked at a few new sweaters (they had a sale... buy one, get one for $1). She decided she didn't want to spend the money for that now, so we left, and went to the next store. Well, two stores later, we find this place that's offering some free samples of these various dips and jellies... and Jessi tried this grape jelly... and spilled a very tiny bit of it on her sweater. Of course, this meant that she could not wear this sweater to meet her friend, so it was back to Fashion Bug to buy two sweaters anyway.
We killed a bit more time after that, and then met up with her friend and their house. We went to dinner with them to Applebee's -- which I think I've mentioned before that they have a Weight Watchers section on their menu. However, since Saturday is our flex point day, we both decided to order off the regular menu. The Philly cheese steak sounded really good to me, so I ordered that, while Jessi had a grilled club house sandwich.
The Philly cheese steak was not worth the points... I should've gone for the Asian chicken roll-up that I'd originally considered. I make better cheese steak sandwiches using Steak-ummm... well, at least, I used to, anyway.
No dessert for either of us, or Jessi's friends. It was a good evening overall, and we headed back home and I checked on the status of my auctions before going to bed.
Sunday
Our friends who walk their dogs with us on the weekends were all headed out of town today, so we didn't take our dogs for a walk -- probably just as well, as we were meeting my brother Jeff and his wife, Kristi, for lunch up in Des Moines. So, we got up, had breakfast, got ready, and headed up north. Jessi met their dogs, Riker and the Tucker (Riker's a German Shepherd, I forget what Tucker is -- and I could have 'em mixed up, for all I know). For lunch, I was hoping for Subway -- it's fairly cheap, and it's also healthy and tasty -- but nobody wanted that, and we ended up going to Applebee's again -- this time, the one near Southcenter, in Seattle. Well, Tukwila, technically. This time, I had the Asian chicken roll-up, and Jessi had a grilled chicken sandwich. Yeah, we kind of over-flexed this weekend, I think, and I'd imagine we'll both show a gain on Saturday morning.
After lunch, we did some window shopping at Southcenter (okay, now it's Westfield Southcenter, but nobody calls it that), and then came back home... where I made up a big batch of chicken strips for this week (I may be working late a few nights, so wanted to be sure Jessi had something quick and easy ready for dinner if she got too hungry to wait for me to get home first), and used the last of our pumpkin to make a crustless pumpkin pie.
I also updated all my auctions, relisted what hadn't sold on Friday, and put up a few more items -- offering Express Mail shipping on all of them, to help people buy stuff for Christmas gifts!
Then, after Jessi went to bed, I checked my nightly websites, and wrote this up!
Jon
Saturday
Of course, Saturday began with our Weight Watchers meeting... I had a slight gain this past week, and I expect this coming Saturday will be more of the same. But as Jessi's been saying this weekend, "It's not what you eat between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it's what you eat between Christmas and Thanksgiving." I blame the holiday luncheon at work on Thursday for the slight game.
After the meeting, we ran home, and changed clothes to walk the dogs. It was a very, very cold morning (heck, it's been freezing around here lately!), so we bundled up as much as possible before taking the dogs out. After that, we went home and had breakfast, and then, I packaged up a few items that had been paid for in my eBay sales so I could run 'em to the post office (which appeared to be a big mistake, but more on that shortly). Jessi wanted to make a run to Value Village to look for shirts, so I figured I could drop her off there and she could shop while I was at the post office.
I was hoping everything I was shipping would be going Priority Mail, because then I could've used the automated postage center, but alas, there were a few Media Mail shipments (the APC doesn't do media mail). As it was, there were six or seven people waiting for the APC. So I stepped into the post office, and took a ticket (they do a number system, like at a deli, so there's no line to stand in)... I was number 84. I looked up at the sign, and it said they were on number 40.
I called Jessi and let her know it could be a while before I was finished there... but as it was, I ended up getting out of there in about half an hour! At least a fourth of the people who were ahead of me apparently got tired of waiting and left, so those numbers got skipped... and those who stayed didn't waste a lot of time debating the method of shipment (heck, by this point, you've got to ship Priority Mail to get it where it's going before Christmas... and after Tuesday, you'll have to go with Express Mail!).
So, I met Jessi back at Value Village (we didn't buy a thing there), and walked over to the Dollar Tree (didn't buy anything there, either), then I went into Fred Meyer to pick up a few necessities, and went home so we could start getting ready. You see, we had planned to drive down to Chehalis to meet up with one of Jessi's former co-workers and her husband and child for dinner. Jessi wanted to go early, because there are outlet malls and the like around there, and figured we might get some Christmas shopping done!
Now, we're both kind of dressed up, casual but dressy, if that makes any sense. Jessi was wearing a white sweater, and when we were window shopping at this one strip mall, we walked into a Fashion Bug store, where Jessi looked at a few new sweaters (they had a sale... buy one, get one for $1). She decided she didn't want to spend the money for that now, so we left, and went to the next store. Well, two stores later, we find this place that's offering some free samples of these various dips and jellies... and Jessi tried this grape jelly... and spilled a very tiny bit of it on her sweater. Of course, this meant that she could not wear this sweater to meet her friend, so it was back to Fashion Bug to buy two sweaters anyway.
We killed a bit more time after that, and then met up with her friend and their house. We went to dinner with them to Applebee's -- which I think I've mentioned before that they have a Weight Watchers section on their menu. However, since Saturday is our flex point day, we both decided to order off the regular menu. The Philly cheese steak sounded really good to me, so I ordered that, while Jessi had a grilled club house sandwich.
The Philly cheese steak was not worth the points... I should've gone for the Asian chicken roll-up that I'd originally considered. I make better cheese steak sandwiches using Steak-ummm... well, at least, I used to, anyway.
No dessert for either of us, or Jessi's friends. It was a good evening overall, and we headed back home and I checked on the status of my auctions before going to bed.
Sunday
Our friends who walk their dogs with us on the weekends were all headed out of town today, so we didn't take our dogs for a walk -- probably just as well, as we were meeting my brother Jeff and his wife, Kristi, for lunch up in Des Moines. So, we got up, had breakfast, got ready, and headed up north. Jessi met their dogs, Riker and the Tucker (Riker's a German Shepherd, I forget what Tucker is -- and I could have 'em mixed up, for all I know). For lunch, I was hoping for Subway -- it's fairly cheap, and it's also healthy and tasty -- but nobody wanted that, and we ended up going to Applebee's again -- this time, the one near Southcenter, in Seattle. Well, Tukwila, technically. This time, I had the Asian chicken roll-up, and Jessi had a grilled chicken sandwich. Yeah, we kind of over-flexed this weekend, I think, and I'd imagine we'll both show a gain on Saturday morning.
After lunch, we did some window shopping at Southcenter (okay, now it's Westfield Southcenter, but nobody calls it that), and then came back home... where I made up a big batch of chicken strips for this week (I may be working late a few nights, so wanted to be sure Jessi had something quick and easy ready for dinner if she got too hungry to wait for me to get home first), and used the last of our pumpkin to make a crustless pumpkin pie.
I also updated all my auctions, relisted what hadn't sold on Friday, and put up a few more items -- offering Express Mail shipping on all of them, to help people buy stuff for Christmas gifts!
Then, after Jessi went to bed, I checked my nightly websites, and wrote this up!
Jon
Friday, December 16, 2005
Crap... Friday Already?
Well, let's see what I have to say today...
What I've Been Doing: Nothing spectacular has happened since Tuesday's post... work is great, as always -- I suppose I should mention that I did some spec work on one of our weekly sections that's proven to be a good use of my time, though...
The newspaper I work for publishes their weekend entertainment guide on Thursdays, instead of the usual Fridays, which I think is amazingly smart. There's always a two-page spread called the "Dining Guide," which is paid advertising that kind of looks like articles about the various restaurants. Now, I don't know how many of you are familiar with desktop publishing programs, but when these two pages were originally created and built, we were using Quark Xpress, and for each restaurant, there were three components to their article -- the heading, the text itself, and a line under part of the heading. These three elements -- separate objects, although grouped together -- had a tendency to get misaligned from each other. Not only that, but the columns of text also managed to get misaligned, or even altered so that some restaurant's articles were slightly wider than others'.
The dining guide, like our Wednesday ads and the weekend section (which prints Wednesday morning, actually) all has to be completed on Tuesday by 5 p.m. Since we switched from Quark to InDesign almost a year ago, we've been dealing with converting old ads to InDesign, and in some cases, we've found better ways to build them than we did before... but the Dining Guide has been the same. Tuesday night, however, I copied the completed Dining Guide to my desktop, and spent some time here and there over the past few days rebuilding it, so that each page of the Dining Guide is one block of text, with four equal columns, no separate line element (it's a formatted line that can't be separated from the text), so we'll be consistent from one week to the next. This also makes it much easier when we have to break up an entry from one column to the next. Everyone who's seen this -- including my boss and her assistant -- are very impressed with my work on this, and happy about it.
In addition, I'd also been told that the advertising department wanted to redesign the heading we use on those pages, so I did that as well... and that, too, is getting a good response so far.
My boss told me this is one of things she appreciates most about me -- when things are slow, I don't just sit around, I always find something to do that's productive.
I hope she remembers this in February, when my next review is scheduled!
eBay:
So far, the auctions ending tonight have been kind of slow, still... although it's hard to really judge, as there have been a few "Buy It Now" purchases -- including an additional one this morning, after I'd reduced the starting bid and BIN price on my Justice League Unlimited three-packs a dollar. Guess I'll be making a post office run later today -- there are, after all, two items to ship right now!
One of the most bizarre things I've seen on eBay is when items are being watched. Sellers can tell how many people have their auction on a watchlist, but that doesn't necessarily mean bids! I've had items with two or three or more people watching that closed with one or no bids! I do wish that eBay would send a reminder to people about four hours before an auction ends -- and maybe require them to either place a bid or have the auction removed from their watchlist. It does get frustrating to see so many people "watching" an item, and then not sell it!
My feedback rating is climbing, slowly but surely. As I write this, it's at 72, and there are still 21 auctions that have been shipped which I'm still waiting on feedback for.
Pop-Ups:
I don't know if I've griped about this before, but I hate pop-ups... and they're everywhere! You know all those news sites I provided links for? Pretty much all of them have pop-ups -- many of which I close before I even see what is being offered. It seems to me there's got to be a better way for these sites to earn revenues.
So why don't I use a pop-up blocker? Because I'm on an older version of the Mac system software, and I can't get a free blocker (I believe the OSX version of Netscape has the capability built in to it, but I'm still on OS9). And yes, I am just cheap enough that I don't want to pay for a blocker to remove those pop-ups.
Going Into The Weekend:
Saturday, of course, always begins with Weight Watchers and walking the dogs. Saturday night we're supposed to go to Chehalis to have dinner with one of Jessi's friends and her husband, and Sunday we're supposed to go to Des Moines to my brother Jeff's house so Jessi can meet his dogs. Hopefully, tonight's auctions will not only pick up, but the winners will pay quickly, so I have money to put gas in the car so we can get to those places!
Jon
What I've Been Doing: Nothing spectacular has happened since Tuesday's post... work is great, as always -- I suppose I should mention that I did some spec work on one of our weekly sections that's proven to be a good use of my time, though...
The newspaper I work for publishes their weekend entertainment guide on Thursdays, instead of the usual Fridays, which I think is amazingly smart. There's always a two-page spread called the "Dining Guide," which is paid advertising that kind of looks like articles about the various restaurants. Now, I don't know how many of you are familiar with desktop publishing programs, but when these two pages were originally created and built, we were using Quark Xpress, and for each restaurant, there were three components to their article -- the heading, the text itself, and a line under part of the heading. These three elements -- separate objects, although grouped together -- had a tendency to get misaligned from each other. Not only that, but the columns of text also managed to get misaligned, or even altered so that some restaurant's articles were slightly wider than others'.
The dining guide, like our Wednesday ads and the weekend section (which prints Wednesday morning, actually) all has to be completed on Tuesday by 5 p.m. Since we switched from Quark to InDesign almost a year ago, we've been dealing with converting old ads to InDesign, and in some cases, we've found better ways to build them than we did before... but the Dining Guide has been the same. Tuesday night, however, I copied the completed Dining Guide to my desktop, and spent some time here and there over the past few days rebuilding it, so that each page of the Dining Guide is one block of text, with four equal columns, no separate line element (it's a formatted line that can't be separated from the text), so we'll be consistent from one week to the next. This also makes it much easier when we have to break up an entry from one column to the next. Everyone who's seen this -- including my boss and her assistant -- are very impressed with my work on this, and happy about it.
In addition, I'd also been told that the advertising department wanted to redesign the heading we use on those pages, so I did that as well... and that, too, is getting a good response so far.
My boss told me this is one of things she appreciates most about me -- when things are slow, I don't just sit around, I always find something to do that's productive.
I hope she remembers this in February, when my next review is scheduled!
eBay:
So far, the auctions ending tonight have been kind of slow, still... although it's hard to really judge, as there have been a few "Buy It Now" purchases -- including an additional one this morning, after I'd reduced the starting bid and BIN price on my Justice League Unlimited three-packs a dollar. Guess I'll be making a post office run later today -- there are, after all, two items to ship right now!
One of the most bizarre things I've seen on eBay is when items are being watched. Sellers can tell how many people have their auction on a watchlist, but that doesn't necessarily mean bids! I've had items with two or three or more people watching that closed with one or no bids! I do wish that eBay would send a reminder to people about four hours before an auction ends -- and maybe require them to either place a bid or have the auction removed from their watchlist. It does get frustrating to see so many people "watching" an item, and then not sell it!
My feedback rating is climbing, slowly but surely. As I write this, it's at 72, and there are still 21 auctions that have been shipped which I'm still waiting on feedback for.
Pop-Ups:
I don't know if I've griped about this before, but I hate pop-ups... and they're everywhere! You know all those news sites I provided links for? Pretty much all of them have pop-ups -- many of which I close before I even see what is being offered. It seems to me there's got to be a better way for these sites to earn revenues.
So why don't I use a pop-up blocker? Because I'm on an older version of the Mac system software, and I can't get a free blocker (I believe the OSX version of Netscape has the capability built in to it, but I'm still on OS9). And yes, I am just cheap enough that I don't want to pay for a blocker to remove those pop-ups.
Going Into The Weekend:
Saturday, of course, always begins with Weight Watchers and walking the dogs. Saturday night we're supposed to go to Chehalis to have dinner with one of Jessi's friends and her husband, and Sunday we're supposed to go to Des Moines to my brother Jeff's house so Jessi can meet his dogs. Hopefully, tonight's auctions will not only pick up, but the winners will pay quickly, so I have money to put gas in the car so we can get to those places!
Jon
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
And... It's Tuesday Already!
Sheesh... where does the time go? (I know, time keeps on slippin' slippin' slippin'... into the future)
Not much in the way of the eventful from the past few days... work was fine, Jessi and the dogs are doing fine.
Monday night I added some new auctions... portfolios, like THUNDER Agents Set One, Batman by Mike Zeck, Superman Better Than Ever, and Batman: The Animated Series. All start at $9.99 -- so point your browser to eBay and search for seller jon8229! And if portfolios aren't your bag, maybe one of the action figures or trade paperbacks will be more in your interest area!
Jon
Not much in the way of the eventful from the past few days... work was fine, Jessi and the dogs are doing fine.
Monday night I added some new auctions... portfolios, like THUNDER Agents Set One, Batman by Mike Zeck, Superman Better Than Ever, and Batman: The Animated Series. All start at $9.99 -- so point your browser to eBay and search for seller jon8229! And if portfolios aren't your bag, maybe one of the action figures or trade paperbacks will be more in your interest area!
Jon
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Sunday Night... and I'm Exhausted!
OK, all I told you about this weekend so far was the 100 pound loss total from Weight Watchers, right?
The rest of the day from there... Jessi and I took the dogs for a walk, and it was freakin' cold (it was freakin' cold this morning, too).
Did I mention that I bought my nephew Brady a Krypto toy for Christmas? Probably did.
Anyway... after the walk, we came home, had breakfast, and then I took new photos for the auctions I started on Friday. Why new photos? Because the ones I took Thursday were pretty bad... blurry, awful things. So I replaced them, except for the auctions where someone used Buy It Now, which was nice to see!
A lot of my buyers have paid via PayPal already, which is also nice -- especially since two of them were just short of my submitting a non-payment notice on them!
Anyway... Saturday afternoon, we headed up to Puyallup for my niece Jessica's birthday party, which was all right. We had turkey and ham sandwiches with salad (green and pasta). We pretty much blew our flex points there.
After the party, we went to South Hill Mall in Puyallup to do some Christmas shopping, and didn't buy a thing.
This morning, we walked the dogs (only doing one lap, because as I said, it was freakin' cold), had breakfast, and then went out to do a combination of Christmas shopping and card delivery -- you see, we'd printed up these Christmas cards, and instead of mailing them all out, we just delivered most of them in person. We had a great photo taken while we had snow, and used it -- I'll have to share that with you guys (I still have to share the pix of the dogs playing in the snow!).
I did get some Christmas shopping done, but we're still a ways to go to finish... and I haven't decided what I'm getting Jessi yet. Unless things pick up with the auctions very, very soon (yeah, that's right, I spent the money I made from last week's auctions already), I may have to wait until the next paycheck (which will be, like, two days before Christmas) to get her present.
Anyway... in the midst of this, we brought the dogs to PetSmart to get their photo with Santa (and yeah, I'll have to get it scanned and show it to you guys, too).
Back home, we had homemade burritos and squash for dinner (low-calorie burritos, mind you), and then I made up some low-cal pumpkin bread, which finished baking after Jessi went to bed. While it baked, I packaged up the stuff that had been paid for, so I can get it shipped in the morning. Also in the morning, I have to bring Krypto to the vet for a deworming and fecal check-up (purely routine).
And yes, I do realize I've posted virtually nothing comics-related in quite some time... and I'll have to do something about that soon, won't I?
Jon
The rest of the day from there... Jessi and I took the dogs for a walk, and it was freakin' cold (it was freakin' cold this morning, too).
Did I mention that I bought my nephew Brady a Krypto toy for Christmas? Probably did.
Anyway... after the walk, we came home, had breakfast, and then I took new photos for the auctions I started on Friday. Why new photos? Because the ones I took Thursday were pretty bad... blurry, awful things. So I replaced them, except for the auctions where someone used Buy It Now, which was nice to see!
A lot of my buyers have paid via PayPal already, which is also nice -- especially since two of them were just short of my submitting a non-payment notice on them!
Anyway... Saturday afternoon, we headed up to Puyallup for my niece Jessica's birthday party, which was all right. We had turkey and ham sandwiches with salad (green and pasta). We pretty much blew our flex points there.
After the party, we went to South Hill Mall in Puyallup to do some Christmas shopping, and didn't buy a thing.
This morning, we walked the dogs (only doing one lap, because as I said, it was freakin' cold), had breakfast, and then went out to do a combination of Christmas shopping and card delivery -- you see, we'd printed up these Christmas cards, and instead of mailing them all out, we just delivered most of them in person. We had a great photo taken while we had snow, and used it -- I'll have to share that with you guys (I still have to share the pix of the dogs playing in the snow!).
I did get some Christmas shopping done, but we're still a ways to go to finish... and I haven't decided what I'm getting Jessi yet. Unless things pick up with the auctions very, very soon (yeah, that's right, I spent the money I made from last week's auctions already), I may have to wait until the next paycheck (which will be, like, two days before Christmas) to get her present.
Anyway... in the midst of this, we brought the dogs to PetSmart to get their photo with Santa (and yeah, I'll have to get it scanned and show it to you guys, too).
Back home, we had homemade burritos and squash for dinner (low-calorie burritos, mind you), and then I made up some low-cal pumpkin bread, which finished baking after Jessi went to bed. While it baked, I packaged up the stuff that had been paid for, so I can get it shipped in the morning. Also in the morning, I have to bring Krypto to the vet for a deworming and fecal check-up (purely routine).
And yes, I do realize I've posted virtually nothing comics-related in quite some time... and I'll have to do something about that soon, won't I?
Jon
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Friday, December 09, 2005
Going into the Weekend...
OK, first of all... I realized that my post regarding the anniversary of John Lennon's death was actually a day early. Blame Fred Hembeck -- his blog's posting was read by me on Wednesday night, and I wasn't thinking what the actual date was.
No blog entry from me last night, you likely noticed... why? Well, I was busy taking a bunch of photos for new eBay auctions -- there's a lot of very cool stuff up for sale by me, from the Radio Control Speed Racer Mach 5 to all my Justice League Unlimited figures (all still on the card) to a bunch of trade paperbacks and other stuff. You should get a listing of all my current auctions by clicking here.
Don't forget, there's still the relistings of the comics that I had up for auction -- only one of which has a bid at this time (strangely, though, there are a lot of watchers on those auctions, which close in less than 24 hours as I type this).
Anyway... after taking the pix and transferring the to the computer (and then to Flickr), I wrote up the descriptions and so on for the new items, but by the time I got them all written, it was too late to post them, so I did that tonight.
Work was pretty good yesterday and today... but hey, I love my job, you know?
This morning, I woke up at 7:30 instead of my usual 8:00 -- the dogs were getting rambunctious! Even though it was nice having Jäger here this past week, I'm glad Kathy's back and taken him home again -- he decided a few nights ago he wanted to sleep on the bed, too -- and two adult humans plus three boxers don't fit that well on a queen-sized bed!
After I got home from work, Jessi and I decided to go out and do a little Christmas shopping... especially since tomorrow is my niece Jessica's birthday party, and I needed my present for my nephew, Brady (my youngest brother Karl's son, they're all in New York, and I got Brady's name in the drawing) purchased and wrapped so I could turn it over to my parents, or whoever's taking responsibility for shipping Karl, his wife Julie, and their kids Emma and Brady's presents back there.
Brady, for his young age, shows remarkable good taste... he loves Spider-Man, Star Wars.... and watching Krypto, the Superdog on Cartoon Network! So for his Christmas present, I bought him the two-pack of toys with Krypto and Kevin (which I already have in my own collection). I was hoping to just get Krypto, and get him another figure, too, but Toys R Us was out of just Krypto.
We then went to Tuesday Morning to see if we could find anything there on our shopping list -- Tuesday Morning is kind of a clearance store, and it's always different stuff every time we go there!
Then, we got home, I made us a light dinner, Jessi headed off to bed, and I posted my auctions!
Tomorrow, of course, is Weight Watchers Weigh-In day... will I make my 100 lb. loss? Tune in tomorrow to find out!
Jon
No blog entry from me last night, you likely noticed... why? Well, I was busy taking a bunch of photos for new eBay auctions -- there's a lot of very cool stuff up for sale by me, from the Radio Control Speed Racer Mach 5 to all my Justice League Unlimited figures (all still on the card) to a bunch of trade paperbacks and other stuff. You should get a listing of all my current auctions by clicking here.
Don't forget, there's still the relistings of the comics that I had up for auction -- only one of which has a bid at this time (strangely, though, there are a lot of watchers on those auctions, which close in less than 24 hours as I type this).
Anyway... after taking the pix and transferring the to the computer (and then to Flickr), I wrote up the descriptions and so on for the new items, but by the time I got them all written, it was too late to post them, so I did that tonight.
Work was pretty good yesterday and today... but hey, I love my job, you know?
This morning, I woke up at 7:30 instead of my usual 8:00 -- the dogs were getting rambunctious! Even though it was nice having Jäger here this past week, I'm glad Kathy's back and taken him home again -- he decided a few nights ago he wanted to sleep on the bed, too -- and two adult humans plus three boxers don't fit that well on a queen-sized bed!
After I got home from work, Jessi and I decided to go out and do a little Christmas shopping... especially since tomorrow is my niece Jessica's birthday party, and I needed my present for my nephew, Brady (my youngest brother Karl's son, they're all in New York, and I got Brady's name in the drawing) purchased and wrapped so I could turn it over to my parents, or whoever's taking responsibility for shipping Karl, his wife Julie, and their kids Emma and Brady's presents back there.
Brady, for his young age, shows remarkable good taste... he loves Spider-Man, Star Wars.... and watching Krypto, the Superdog on Cartoon Network! So for his Christmas present, I bought him the two-pack of toys with Krypto and Kevin (which I already have in my own collection). I was hoping to just get Krypto, and get him another figure, too, but Toys R Us was out of just Krypto.
We then went to Tuesday Morning to see if we could find anything there on our shopping list -- Tuesday Morning is kind of a clearance store, and it's always different stuff every time we go there!
Then, we got home, I made us a light dinner, Jessi headed off to bed, and I posted my auctions!
Tomorrow, of course, is Weight Watchers Weigh-In day... will I make my 100 lb. loss? Tune in tomorrow to find out!
Jon
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
A sad anniversary...
As I write this, it's nearing the end of the anniversary of the death of John Lennon.
It's always a sad observance for me, and more often than not, I try not to think about it overmuch, as it's very depressing.
Have I ever mentioned here before just how huge a Beatles fan I am? The first records I remember ever owning were Beatles 45's... Help/I'm Down, Act Naturally (forget the other side), a number of others, that I played over and over. I was probably 8 or 9 when I had those, and made the mistake of placing them in a metal record rack that, one day, got more than its share of sunlight, warping the records beyond playability.
It was probably not long after that I bought my first Beatles album... but ah, I get ahead of myself.
I'm pretty certain that I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan... probably not the first time or two they were on, but almost every time after that (my family were religious Sullivan watchers). I don't recall seeing them on any other special... but I may well have. I distinctly recall watching "Help!" when it aired on NBC -- it must've been shown once a year for a while.
Anyway... my first Beatles album was "Revolver," which I bought used at a church rummage sale, believe it or not. My second album was "Introducing the Beatles," the Vee-Jay album, which I got at a record store at the Tacoma Mall that no longer exists (it was next to the also no-longer-existing Toys Galore, where I got my first ventriloquist dummy).
My next Beatles-related purchase would've been an 8-track-tape of the Beatles Live at the Star Club in Hamburg... but I know I had been recording Beatles songs off the radio for quite some time before (and after) that, like when one of the radio stations did an all-Beatles weekend.
The summer between junior high and high school, I worked for Stan Johnson, a man from the church my family went to, who was running for office. The money I made campaigning and canvassing for him was used to purchase a black-and-white TV, as well as a stereo that had radio, cassette, 8-track, and record player all in one. I also bought the Red and Blue collections (you know, the two-record sets '63-'66 and '67-'70, or something like that). After that, I think Sgt. Pepper was next on my purchase list, but I could be mistaken.
Like I said, I was a huge Beatles fan... and a few of my friends were Beatles fans as well.
I still remember the day John was killed. John was my favorite Beatle, and not just because I'm Jon... his music just spoke to me in a way that Paul or George or Ringo couldn't (not that I didn't like their stuff, too). When Double Fantasy came out, I loved all the songs I heard from it... especially "Starting Over".
That night, long ago, I was in my bedroom, talking on the phone to my then-best friend. I had my own telephone in high school, and I heard my family's phone ringing. I went to answer it, and it was a friend of my youngest brother's, who told me what had happened. I immediately turned on the radio, and sat there, in shock.
I couldn't believe it... and the more I heard, the harder it was to believe. Why would someone shoot John? No matter what came out about his murderer, it still made no sense to me... as if there could ever be any sense in it.
I had started teaching myself guitar that year... I was a senior in high school, and had purchased a copy of "Beatles Complete" (a songbook that wasn't complete by any means... and a lot of songs weren't in the right key, either) as well as a "Beatles Guitar Course" book. I was making pretty decent progress, but after John's death, I dedicated myself even more to learning guitar (sadly, as good as I got at one point, I haven't even picked up a guitar in a long time). Of course, I played Beatles songs, especially John's songs.
Even after I went into the Navy, I still wanted more Beatles stuff... especially books about the Beatles, although I knew that at one point in each book, I'd hit the point where the group broke up... or for more recently-written books, the point where John was killed.
And every single time, I hoped that this time around, things would end up differently.
It's been 25 years since John's been gone... and sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday. It's sad to realize that John's been gone longer than I was aware of him when he was alive.
Jon
It's always a sad observance for me, and more often than not, I try not to think about it overmuch, as it's very depressing.
Have I ever mentioned here before just how huge a Beatles fan I am? The first records I remember ever owning were Beatles 45's... Help/I'm Down, Act Naturally (forget the other side), a number of others, that I played over and over. I was probably 8 or 9 when I had those, and made the mistake of placing them in a metal record rack that, one day, got more than its share of sunlight, warping the records beyond playability.
It was probably not long after that I bought my first Beatles album... but ah, I get ahead of myself.
I'm pretty certain that I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan... probably not the first time or two they were on, but almost every time after that (my family were religious Sullivan watchers). I don't recall seeing them on any other special... but I may well have. I distinctly recall watching "Help!" when it aired on NBC -- it must've been shown once a year for a while.
Anyway... my first Beatles album was "Revolver," which I bought used at a church rummage sale, believe it or not. My second album was "Introducing the Beatles," the Vee-Jay album, which I got at a record store at the Tacoma Mall that no longer exists (it was next to the also no-longer-existing Toys Galore, where I got my first ventriloquist dummy).
My next Beatles-related purchase would've been an 8-track-tape of the Beatles Live at the Star Club in Hamburg... but I know I had been recording Beatles songs off the radio for quite some time before (and after) that, like when one of the radio stations did an all-Beatles weekend.
The summer between junior high and high school, I worked for Stan Johnson, a man from the church my family went to, who was running for office. The money I made campaigning and canvassing for him was used to purchase a black-and-white TV, as well as a stereo that had radio, cassette, 8-track, and record player all in one. I also bought the Red and Blue collections (you know, the two-record sets '63-'66 and '67-'70, or something like that). After that, I think Sgt. Pepper was next on my purchase list, but I could be mistaken.
Like I said, I was a huge Beatles fan... and a few of my friends were Beatles fans as well.
I still remember the day John was killed. John was my favorite Beatle, and not just because I'm Jon... his music just spoke to me in a way that Paul or George or Ringo couldn't (not that I didn't like their stuff, too). When Double Fantasy came out, I loved all the songs I heard from it... especially "Starting Over".
That night, long ago, I was in my bedroom, talking on the phone to my then-best friend. I had my own telephone in high school, and I heard my family's phone ringing. I went to answer it, and it was a friend of my youngest brother's, who told me what had happened. I immediately turned on the radio, and sat there, in shock.
I couldn't believe it... and the more I heard, the harder it was to believe. Why would someone shoot John? No matter what came out about his murderer, it still made no sense to me... as if there could ever be any sense in it.
I had started teaching myself guitar that year... I was a senior in high school, and had purchased a copy of "Beatles Complete" (a songbook that wasn't complete by any means... and a lot of songs weren't in the right key, either) as well as a "Beatles Guitar Course" book. I was making pretty decent progress, but after John's death, I dedicated myself even more to learning guitar (sadly, as good as I got at one point, I haven't even picked up a guitar in a long time). Of course, I played Beatles songs, especially John's songs.
Even after I went into the Navy, I still wanted more Beatles stuff... especially books about the Beatles, although I knew that at one point in each book, I'd hit the point where the group broke up... or for more recently-written books, the point where John was killed.
And every single time, I hoped that this time around, things would end up differently.
It's been 25 years since John's been gone... and sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday. It's sad to realize that John's been gone longer than I was aware of him when he was alive.
Jon
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Linkblogging!
Haven't done this in a while... so here's some links that I check regularlly!
There are two blogs that I check at least twice a day... firstly, there's Peter David's blog, which I could really just check once a day and be fine with.
Then, there's Mark Evanier's News From Me, which I sometimes check three times a day, as he posts so much there!
Then, there's the ones I always check once a day, in the mornings:
The Imponderables blog doesn't always have much about the Imponderables themselves, but there are often some interesting links to be found there.
Fans of Mike Gold might want to check out Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mind to see what he's up to lately. Sometimes he goes a day or two or three without posting... even once a week sometimes.
From there, I'm usually going to World Famous Comics, specifically to the TonyPoll page, to see what my buddy Tony Isabella has for his latest poll, which runs once a week. While you're there, you should also read Tony's Online Tips, which is usually updated three times a week. My other regular stop at World Famous Comics Monday-Friday is the Daily Megaton Man reruns, featuring Don Simpson's classic parody character.
From there, I see what Bob Greenberger and Tom Peyer have going on in their blogs -- and I doubt you'll find two blogs that are more different than each other than those two!
My last morning blog stop Monday-Friday (although, to be honest, I sometimes check it a second time during the day) is Cartoon Brew, although one could argue it's more of a news site.
After those blogs, it's on to news! My first stop for news is always Comic Book Resources,
followed by Comics2Film,
Silver Bullet Comics,
Toy News International,
and Newsarama.
On Sunday or Monday, I'll see what's up with The Pulse.
In the evenings, after 10 pm or so Pacific Time, there are other blogs I check, starting with Fred Hembeck's blog, which I've linked to before from here, and it's a good read (even if he hasn't deigned to add my own blog to his link list -- not that I ever expected he would!). The great thing about Fred Hembeck's blog is that he'll remind me when his own column is updated elsewhere, and provides a link to that -- as well as links to a few other regular columns, like Peter Sanderson's!
Next up is the infamous Dial B for Blog, by Robby Reed, probably the fastest-growing blog on the net -- and you probably didn't need me to tell you about it, did you?
From there, I usually check out This Is Broken, followed by King's Chronicles, so I can see what Paul Dini's up to lately.
Then, it's on to Comics Should Be Good and hope for another segment on comic book urban legends, then I'll check the utterly bizarre blog Batfatty vs the Chocodiles, which used to be updated way more often than it is lately... but if you haven't checked it out, do so, and look through the archives for some freakishly weird Batman merchandise!
From there, it's The Comics Treadmill,
followed by The Absorbascon,
Suspension of Disbelief,
The Comics Reporter,
Bloggity-Blog-Blog-Blog, and finally,
Lady, That's My Skull.
I keep a fairly large set of bookmarks, too... and I really should share some of these with you later this week... but I haven't checked what Fred Hembeck and Robby Reed, or the other comics bloggers, have to say tonight yet!
Jon
There are two blogs that I check at least twice a day... firstly, there's Peter David's blog, which I could really just check once a day and be fine with.
Then, there's Mark Evanier's News From Me, which I sometimes check three times a day, as he posts so much there!
Then, there's the ones I always check once a day, in the mornings:
The Imponderables blog doesn't always have much about the Imponderables themselves, but there are often some interesting links to be found there.
Fans of Mike Gold might want to check out Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mind to see what he's up to lately. Sometimes he goes a day or two or three without posting... even once a week sometimes.
From there, I'm usually going to World Famous Comics, specifically to the TonyPoll page, to see what my buddy Tony Isabella has for his latest poll, which runs once a week. While you're there, you should also read Tony's Online Tips, which is usually updated three times a week. My other regular stop at World Famous Comics Monday-Friday is the Daily Megaton Man reruns, featuring Don Simpson's classic parody character.
From there, I see what Bob Greenberger and Tom Peyer have going on in their blogs -- and I doubt you'll find two blogs that are more different than each other than those two!
My last morning blog stop Monday-Friday (although, to be honest, I sometimes check it a second time during the day) is Cartoon Brew, although one could argue it's more of a news site.
After those blogs, it's on to news! My first stop for news is always Comic Book Resources,
followed by Comics2Film,
Silver Bullet Comics,
Toy News International,
and Newsarama.
On Sunday or Monday, I'll see what's up with The Pulse.
In the evenings, after 10 pm or so Pacific Time, there are other blogs I check, starting with Fred Hembeck's blog, which I've linked to before from here, and it's a good read (even if he hasn't deigned to add my own blog to his link list -- not that I ever expected he would!). The great thing about Fred Hembeck's blog is that he'll remind me when his own column is updated elsewhere, and provides a link to that -- as well as links to a few other regular columns, like Peter Sanderson's!
Next up is the infamous Dial B for Blog, by Robby Reed, probably the fastest-growing blog on the net -- and you probably didn't need me to tell you about it, did you?
From there, I usually check out This Is Broken, followed by King's Chronicles, so I can see what Paul Dini's up to lately.
Then, it's on to Comics Should Be Good and hope for another segment on comic book urban legends, then I'll check the utterly bizarre blog Batfatty vs the Chocodiles, which used to be updated way more often than it is lately... but if you haven't checked it out, do so, and look through the archives for some freakishly weird Batman merchandise!
From there, it's The Comics Treadmill,
followed by The Absorbascon,
Suspension of Disbelief,
The Comics Reporter,
Bloggity-Blog-Blog-Blog, and finally,
Lady, That's My Skull.
I keep a fairly large set of bookmarks, too... and I really should share some of these with you later this week... but I haven't checked what Fred Hembeck and Robby Reed, or the other comics bloggers, have to say tonight yet!
Jon
Tuesday Night
Wow, I didn't really update anything since Saturday night, did I?
Well... Sunday was a typical Sunday around here, or at least it started out that way! Jessi and I took Krypto and KO for their walk at 10 instead of 9, meeting our friend Kathy and her boxer, Jäger, plus two of her son's boxers, Jane and Yoshi (Yoshi is Jäger's brother, Jane was a rescue). We did a two-mile walk with them. In theory, Sunday was our scheduled Boxer Meet-Up day, but we didn't see anyone else there (the weather was somewhat inclement... still a bit of snow on the ground, and it was still a bit chilly, so we didn't expect anyone -- plus, we changed the time of the meet-up at the last minute, so some people may have shown up at 2 instead).
Kathy is spending this week in Salt Lake City, I believe, and she was putting her son's boxers (the two mentioned above, plus one other one who's not that well socialized) plus Jäger and her dachsund, Emily in boarding while she was out of town, but we offered to take Jäger for the week (Emily's kind of a pirhana with legs, and our dogs, especially Krypto, don't know enough to leave her alone). She came by later Sunday afternoon with Jäger, as well as her Betta, Clem (we've watched Clem before... when he's over here, his tank is put in the main bathroom next to our own Betta, Swimmy -- don't blame me, I didn't name him).
Naturally, with their boxer friend here, KO and Krypto were all hyper, and the three of them pretty much played non-stop until bedtime.
Saturday night had us watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, although since finding out a few things about the show (like that Ty doesn't stay on-site the entire week -- he hops between two different work sites... there's other stuff I've already forgotten about), we've kind of lost interest in the show. It's much the same way I lost interest in Changing Spaces, after my friend Vicki (who works for Discovery Channel) told me the woman who hosts that show is an obnoxious drunk.
Monday, naturally, I was back at work, after stopping at the post office to ship out eBay purchases that had been paid for... and it was a typical Monday. Jessi ended up going to sleep at 9, instead of her usual 10 (she did this Sunday, as well as tonight) because she's been getting up at 5 a.m to go to the YMCA for an early morning work-out. Today, another day of shipping, and then going to work (although I ended up being at work a bit longer than typical for a Tuesday). When I got home from work, we had dinner and watched Law & Order and some Friends re-runs.
And that pretty much brings you up to date!
Jon
Well... Sunday was a typical Sunday around here, or at least it started out that way! Jessi and I took Krypto and KO for their walk at 10 instead of 9, meeting our friend Kathy and her boxer, Jäger, plus two of her son's boxers, Jane and Yoshi (Yoshi is Jäger's brother, Jane was a rescue). We did a two-mile walk with them. In theory, Sunday was our scheduled Boxer Meet-Up day, but we didn't see anyone else there (the weather was somewhat inclement... still a bit of snow on the ground, and it was still a bit chilly, so we didn't expect anyone -- plus, we changed the time of the meet-up at the last minute, so some people may have shown up at 2 instead).
Kathy is spending this week in Salt Lake City, I believe, and she was putting her son's boxers (the two mentioned above, plus one other one who's not that well socialized) plus Jäger and her dachsund, Emily in boarding while she was out of town, but we offered to take Jäger for the week (Emily's kind of a pirhana with legs, and our dogs, especially Krypto, don't know enough to leave her alone). She came by later Sunday afternoon with Jäger, as well as her Betta, Clem (we've watched Clem before... when he's over here, his tank is put in the main bathroom next to our own Betta, Swimmy -- don't blame me, I didn't name him).
Naturally, with their boxer friend here, KO and Krypto were all hyper, and the three of them pretty much played non-stop until bedtime.
Saturday night had us watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, although since finding out a few things about the show (like that Ty doesn't stay on-site the entire week -- he hops between two different work sites... there's other stuff I've already forgotten about), we've kind of lost interest in the show. It's much the same way I lost interest in Changing Spaces, after my friend Vicki (who works for Discovery Channel) told me the woman who hosts that show is an obnoxious drunk.
Monday, naturally, I was back at work, after stopping at the post office to ship out eBay purchases that had been paid for... and it was a typical Monday. Jessi ended up going to sleep at 9, instead of her usual 10 (she did this Sunday, as well as tonight) because she's been getting up at 5 a.m to go to the YMCA for an early morning work-out. Today, another day of shipping, and then going to work (although I ended up being at work a bit longer than typical for a Tuesday). When I got home from work, we had dinner and watched Law & Order and some Friends re-runs.
And that pretty much brings you up to date!
Jon
Tuesday Lunchbreak Update!
Just a short post here... eBay auctions ended fairly well, and most of my winners have already paid. I think I've shipped something like 20-25 packages so far!
Currently, there are 26 items that I've relisted, without buy it now prices, and most of them have had the starting price knocked down a buck or two -- search for ebay user jon8229 if you want to check 'em out -- odds are you'll be able to get 'em for the starting price!
I'll post more tonight.
Jon
Currently, there are 26 items that I've relisted, without buy it now prices, and most of them have had the starting price knocked down a buck or two -- search for ebay user jon8229 if you want to check 'em out -- odds are you'll be able to get 'em for the starting price!
I'll post more tonight.
Jon
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Saturday Night Update!
Well, the Saturday night eBay auctions ended, and I have to say that I was very pleased with the results. Nothing really sold for that much more than I expected (indeed, many closed with only one bid), but it'll add up to a nice chunk of change.
In addition to those, there were a number of people who took advantage of the Buy It Now price on a few auctions, which was pretty much set at the cover price of the books (most of the auctions started at $1 per book). The money realized from these sales will come in very handy over the next few days, let me tell you!
But I'm getting way ahead of myself in reporting the events of the day, aren't I? We woke up this morning to a very cold and slippery day... the snow we had the other day had melted a bit over Friday, and on Saturday morning, the streets were like ice. The drive to Weight Watchers took a bit longer than normal -- we weren't doing any more than 35 on the interstate, and we passed by at least 4 accidents on the freeway. Of course, we made it there safely -- one can't spend six winters in Wisconsin without learning how to drive in these kind of conditions, after all!
Weight Watchers was good news for me, and bad news for Jessi... but I won't tell you how bad the news was for her. Instead, I'll report on me... bizarrely enough, I managed to lose 3 lbs this week -- when I'd only been losing about .1 to .5 max for several weeks. What makes this extremely bizarre to me is that 1) We had our Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday last weekend, 2) We'd been eating lots of leftovers during the week, 3) I hadn't exercised at all beyond the walking of the dogs last weekend, 4) I'd snacked on more than a few M&M's at work this past week (several salespeople keep a bowl of various M&M's at their desks, and when my energy is ebbing at work in the evenings, I've been known to graze a bit -- especially when someone has peanut butter M&M's), and finally, 5) Friday, before heading to work, I ate a Jumbo Jack with Cheese (if you don't have Jack In The Box, it's equivalent to a Whopper with Cheese, I guess). This brought my total weight loss to....
...99.2 lbs. Just .8 lbs short of 100. Just as an experiment, I emptied my pockets of wallet, cell phone, keys, etc, and found they added up to 1 lb, and they would've let me get away with it for the weigh-in, but I knew that Jessi didn't have a good week, and besides, if I "cheated" and emptied my pockets this week, I'd have to do it every week.
Last night, because of the interest that was expressed at last week's meeting, I prepared a sign-up sheet, and was going to announce the first of a projected series of cooking classes for my fellow WW members who wanted to learn the secrets of my cooking low-point foods... and then the list fell out of my pocket while we were heading to the meeting, and I didn't find it until afterwards... so that'll be rescheduled and re-announced next week (more on that later, I'm sure).
On our way back from Weight Watchers, we decided it was just too icy to even think about taking the dogs for their walk at 9, which is our usual time. The off-leash area we take them to is behind the Department of Ecology, and from prior experience, we knew that many places we usualy walk the dogs would be very slippery, and we wanted to wait and see if it would warm up enough that there wouldn't be any ice to slip on. Our friend Kathy took her dogs at that time, though (she later told us she only did one lap, when we usually do 2 or 3, because it was so slippery).
So, we went home, and I made us breakfast, then I checked the eBay auctions (I did that several times during the day, I'll admit), got the mail I forgot to get yesterday, and saw that our next-door neighbors were putting up their Christmas lights.
I'd intended to get our lights up last weekend, but I found that I didn't have the money to get the hooks to put them up on. Jessi bought the hooks we needed last Sunday, but by the time we got home from that store, it was too dark for me to put them up. During the week, I wasn't home early enough to put them up after work, and I didn't feel like doing it before work. So, I felt inspired by our neighbors, and spent about half an hour to 45 minutes first putting up the hooks, and then stringing up the lights.
Now, our display isn't impressive enough to make the newspaper's "Tour of Lights" listings, but for the first time I'd put up Christmas lights outside, I don't think they looked bad at all (fortunately, I had indoor/outdoor lights already, and only one string of lights wasn't working). Maybe I'll get a photo and show them to you guys, if there's any interest at all.
After I did that, and let my hands thaw out (no gloves), Jessi and I bundled up and took the dogs for their walk. We did two laps, and then came home for lunch. For me, lunch was a Weight Watchers frozen pizza, and Jessi had Fiber One and fat-free yogurt. Kathy stopped by while we were eating lunch, because she had something she needed to talk to Jessi about (I forget what), and after that, Jessi went to the YMCA (she'd just joined it recently) to meet our friend Amanda to go swimming.
While she swam, I took advantage of the time to watch Season 4, Episode 4 of Coupling on BBC America On Demand. I don't know if any of you have seen this -- maybe you just saw the Americanized version on NBC -- but I've found Coupling to be one of the funniest of the current Britcoms. I followed that up with Season 1, Episode 1 of Monty Python's Flying Circus, again courtesy of BBC America On Demand. Now, if only they'd add Red Dwarf to the On Demand library...
Anyway, after watching those shows, I was feeling very tired, so I tried to take a nap. I only half-succeeded... I did get some rest, but I don't believe I ever truly fell asleep. It's probably just as well, as when I do nap, I tend to stay up that much later that night (and it's already getting past my bedtime as I write this anyway).
So, Jessi got back from the Y, and was surprised to see me attempting to nap. We needed to think about dinner, so I started thawing some chicken, and suggested we have grilled chicken salad for dinner and baked potato. Unfortunately, I spaced on the baked potatoes. While the chicken thawed, we went to Fred Meyer because Jessi needed a combination lock for use at the Y, and I wanted to get the salad, salad dressing, and Bac-O's for the salad. Dinner was good -- a salad is always a nice change of pace, I think!
After dinner, I made up another crustless pumpkin pie, which, to be honest, we ended up eating all of (with our neighbors' help) tonight. There's still a lot of pumpkin left, so I'll likely bake another one sometime Sunday.
Sunday is also supposed to be our boxer meet-up, and I've been negligent about informing the group that we're changing our time from 2 pm to 9 am -- so I sent out an email to the group, and hopefully, we'll get the word out to everyone else somehow who's not subscribed to the group. The 2 pm time has just been too inconvenient, thanks to family functions and the like, and we're usually out at 9 am anyway with Kathy and her boxer Jäger (currently joined by three other boxers that belong to her son, including Jäger's brother) and Paul and Bridget and their boxer, Claude --- and we tend to be about half the group on average anyway. But even that time may shift tomorrow, depending on what the weather's like -- if it's wet and nasty, nobody will show up anyway, no matter what time we have it.
I may make pumpkin pancakes for breakfast, just for a change of pace.
We're also planning a drive up to Spanaway with our friends Dan and Amanda and their son, so we all (well, everyone but me) can go ice skating from 2:30 to 4:30. Why aren't I ice skating? Well, I don't do anything that involves strapping something onto my feet to make me move -- skates or skis. I've never really been fond of roller skating, never had an interest in skiing at all... and honestly, I really don't like falling on my hindquarters!
Dan, Amanda, and Anders (their son) may have dinner with us on Sunday, after which I'll have even more auctions ending (with the last group of current auctions closing Monday night).
I'm debating whether or not to even bother relisting the auctions that closed without bids -- I'll have to look at them on a case-by-case basis, I think, and even then, I'll wait until Monday night to relist what I'll relist, and then with a five-day auction so they'll end on Saturday (if I figured that right).
In other news... by the time anyone sees this, there should be a new Cover Stories column up at the WF Comics website. This week's theme is taken from one of my favorite lines in Raiders of the Lost Ark -- "Snakes... why did it have to be snakes?" Check it out, and if you haven't already, check out the archives to catch up on the columns you missed! then again, some of you reading this blog for the first time likely found it via the link at that column anyway.
I'm planning on doing some linkblogging sometime this week, as it's been a while since I shared some of my daily stops with you guys.
Jon
In addition to those, there were a number of people who took advantage of the Buy It Now price on a few auctions, which was pretty much set at the cover price of the books (most of the auctions started at $1 per book). The money realized from these sales will come in very handy over the next few days, let me tell you!
But I'm getting way ahead of myself in reporting the events of the day, aren't I? We woke up this morning to a very cold and slippery day... the snow we had the other day had melted a bit over Friday, and on Saturday morning, the streets were like ice. The drive to Weight Watchers took a bit longer than normal -- we weren't doing any more than 35 on the interstate, and we passed by at least 4 accidents on the freeway. Of course, we made it there safely -- one can't spend six winters in Wisconsin without learning how to drive in these kind of conditions, after all!
Weight Watchers was good news for me, and bad news for Jessi... but I won't tell you how bad the news was for her. Instead, I'll report on me... bizarrely enough, I managed to lose 3 lbs this week -- when I'd only been losing about .1 to .5 max for several weeks. What makes this extremely bizarre to me is that 1) We had our Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday last weekend, 2) We'd been eating lots of leftovers during the week, 3) I hadn't exercised at all beyond the walking of the dogs last weekend, 4) I'd snacked on more than a few M&M's at work this past week (several salespeople keep a bowl of various M&M's at their desks, and when my energy is ebbing at work in the evenings, I've been known to graze a bit -- especially when someone has peanut butter M&M's), and finally, 5) Friday, before heading to work, I ate a Jumbo Jack with Cheese (if you don't have Jack In The Box, it's equivalent to a Whopper with Cheese, I guess). This brought my total weight loss to....
...99.2 lbs. Just .8 lbs short of 100. Just as an experiment, I emptied my pockets of wallet, cell phone, keys, etc, and found they added up to 1 lb, and they would've let me get away with it for the weigh-in, but I knew that Jessi didn't have a good week, and besides, if I "cheated" and emptied my pockets this week, I'd have to do it every week.
Last night, because of the interest that was expressed at last week's meeting, I prepared a sign-up sheet, and was going to announce the first of a projected series of cooking classes for my fellow WW members who wanted to learn the secrets of my cooking low-point foods... and then the list fell out of my pocket while we were heading to the meeting, and I didn't find it until afterwards... so that'll be rescheduled and re-announced next week (more on that later, I'm sure).
On our way back from Weight Watchers, we decided it was just too icy to even think about taking the dogs for their walk at 9, which is our usual time. The off-leash area we take them to is behind the Department of Ecology, and from prior experience, we knew that many places we usualy walk the dogs would be very slippery, and we wanted to wait and see if it would warm up enough that there wouldn't be any ice to slip on. Our friend Kathy took her dogs at that time, though (she later told us she only did one lap, when we usually do 2 or 3, because it was so slippery).
So, we went home, and I made us breakfast, then I checked the eBay auctions (I did that several times during the day, I'll admit), got the mail I forgot to get yesterday, and saw that our next-door neighbors were putting up their Christmas lights.
I'd intended to get our lights up last weekend, but I found that I didn't have the money to get the hooks to put them up on. Jessi bought the hooks we needed last Sunday, but by the time we got home from that store, it was too dark for me to put them up. During the week, I wasn't home early enough to put them up after work, and I didn't feel like doing it before work. So, I felt inspired by our neighbors, and spent about half an hour to 45 minutes first putting up the hooks, and then stringing up the lights.
Now, our display isn't impressive enough to make the newspaper's "Tour of Lights" listings, but for the first time I'd put up Christmas lights outside, I don't think they looked bad at all (fortunately, I had indoor/outdoor lights already, and only one string of lights wasn't working). Maybe I'll get a photo and show them to you guys, if there's any interest at all.
After I did that, and let my hands thaw out (no gloves), Jessi and I bundled up and took the dogs for their walk. We did two laps, and then came home for lunch. For me, lunch was a Weight Watchers frozen pizza, and Jessi had Fiber One and fat-free yogurt. Kathy stopped by while we were eating lunch, because she had something she needed to talk to Jessi about (I forget what), and after that, Jessi went to the YMCA (she'd just joined it recently) to meet our friend Amanda to go swimming.
While she swam, I took advantage of the time to watch Season 4, Episode 4 of Coupling on BBC America On Demand. I don't know if any of you have seen this -- maybe you just saw the Americanized version on NBC -- but I've found Coupling to be one of the funniest of the current Britcoms. I followed that up with Season 1, Episode 1 of Monty Python's Flying Circus, again courtesy of BBC America On Demand. Now, if only they'd add Red Dwarf to the On Demand library...
Anyway, after watching those shows, I was feeling very tired, so I tried to take a nap. I only half-succeeded... I did get some rest, but I don't believe I ever truly fell asleep. It's probably just as well, as when I do nap, I tend to stay up that much later that night (and it's already getting past my bedtime as I write this anyway).
So, Jessi got back from the Y, and was surprised to see me attempting to nap. We needed to think about dinner, so I started thawing some chicken, and suggested we have grilled chicken salad for dinner and baked potato. Unfortunately, I spaced on the baked potatoes. While the chicken thawed, we went to Fred Meyer because Jessi needed a combination lock for use at the Y, and I wanted to get the salad, salad dressing, and Bac-O's for the salad. Dinner was good -- a salad is always a nice change of pace, I think!
After dinner, I made up another crustless pumpkin pie, which, to be honest, we ended up eating all of (with our neighbors' help) tonight. There's still a lot of pumpkin left, so I'll likely bake another one sometime Sunday.
Sunday is also supposed to be our boxer meet-up, and I've been negligent about informing the group that we're changing our time from 2 pm to 9 am -- so I sent out an email to the group, and hopefully, we'll get the word out to everyone else somehow who's not subscribed to the group. The 2 pm time has just been too inconvenient, thanks to family functions and the like, and we're usually out at 9 am anyway with Kathy and her boxer Jäger (currently joined by three other boxers that belong to her son, including Jäger's brother) and Paul and Bridget and their boxer, Claude --- and we tend to be about half the group on average anyway. But even that time may shift tomorrow, depending on what the weather's like -- if it's wet and nasty, nobody will show up anyway, no matter what time we have it.
I may make pumpkin pancakes for breakfast, just for a change of pace.
We're also planning a drive up to Spanaway with our friends Dan and Amanda and their son, so we all (well, everyone but me) can go ice skating from 2:30 to 4:30. Why aren't I ice skating? Well, I don't do anything that involves strapping something onto my feet to make me move -- skates or skis. I've never really been fond of roller skating, never had an interest in skiing at all... and honestly, I really don't like falling on my hindquarters!
Dan, Amanda, and Anders (their son) may have dinner with us on Sunday, after which I'll have even more auctions ending (with the last group of current auctions closing Monday night).
I'm debating whether or not to even bother relisting the auctions that closed without bids -- I'll have to look at them on a case-by-case basis, I think, and even then, I'll wait until Monday night to relist what I'll relist, and then with a five-day auction so they'll end on Saturday (if I figured that right).
In other news... by the time anyone sees this, there should be a new Cover Stories column up at the WF Comics website. This week's theme is taken from one of my favorite lines in Raiders of the Lost Ark -- "Snakes... why did it have to be snakes?" Check it out, and if you haven't already, check out the archives to catch up on the columns you missed! then again, some of you reading this blog for the first time likely found it via the link at that column anyway.
I'm planning on doing some linkblogging sometime this week, as it's been a while since I shared some of my daily stops with you guys.
Jon
Friday, December 02, 2005
Snow Day... and Lots of Random Thoughts
So, yesterday, it began snowing here in Western Washington. At first, it was melting as soon as it hit the ground, but then it did, indeed, start sticking. As of this morning, there was an inch or two of accumulation.
Now, personally... I've seen more than enough snow to last a lifetime. Six years in Wisconsin (with six Wisconsin winters) can do that to a guy. Jessi, however, loves the snow (even if she doesn't love driving in it, but she's got a good, reliable car).
The dogs... well, "love" isn't a strong enough word for it. This was the first appreciable snowfall that KO's ever experienced, and the first snowfall that didn't melt immediately that Krypto's dealt with... and they are having a ball with it. When I let them outside, they start charging around like maniacs, frolicking and playing! It's difficult to convince them to come back inside... and when I do get them in, it's usually not more than five or ten minutes before they ring the bell on the back door (as they just did, as I'm writing this) to let me know they want out again.
Oh, haven't I told you about the bell thing yet? Our dogs are trained to ring a bell when they want or need to go outside. Jessi started it when she first got KO, because in her apartment, she couldn't see the front door from the kitchen or living room, so there were times KO would go stand at the door, wanting to go out, but she wasn't aware of it. Someone gave her the idea to hang a bell on the door, and when she took KO out to go potty, she'd ring the bell. After a few days of this, she'd actually lift KO's paw to hit the bell with. Soon enough, KO got the idea in her head that bell = go outside.
I think Krypto learned it even faster, because he had his "big sister's" actions to go by (dogs seem to learn faster from each other than from people, I've noticed). Krypto and KO both ring the bell now when they want out, and it always amazes people who've never heard of that before when they see it in action.
Aside from the snow, I've also been working on teaching Krypto to roll over. This is a trick I'd started teaching him before, but it's difficult to teach one dog a trick when there's another dog who also wants the treat being offered as a reward. He's doing very well with it now, and I think by the end of the weekend, he should have it down cold.
Jessi started her new job full-time yesterday, as a Health Advocate for Head Start. She'd been doing it on a part-time basis, doing her previous job part-time as well, and she's very excited to be doing this new job all the time now (she definitely prefers it).
Currently Reading: Comic Books and Other Necessities of Life, by Mark Evanier.
My eBay auctions are doing all right... not real exciting so far, but I think they'll pick up substantially this weekend. A few auctions already have more than one bid, so we'll just have to wait and see where they go. If you want to get caught up on some current stuff fairly cheap, go to eBay and search for seller jon8229 -- I'm offering winners their choice of Media Mail or Priority Mail shipping!
Oh, I almost forgot... took a few pictures of the dogs playing in the snow... I'll have to upload them to the computer and see if I can mess with the settings so you can make out my white dog in the snow!
That's about it for now...
Jon
Now, personally... I've seen more than enough snow to last a lifetime. Six years in Wisconsin (with six Wisconsin winters) can do that to a guy. Jessi, however, loves the snow (even if she doesn't love driving in it, but she's got a good, reliable car).
The dogs... well, "love" isn't a strong enough word for it. This was the first appreciable snowfall that KO's ever experienced, and the first snowfall that didn't melt immediately that Krypto's dealt with... and they are having a ball with it. When I let them outside, they start charging around like maniacs, frolicking and playing! It's difficult to convince them to come back inside... and when I do get them in, it's usually not more than five or ten minutes before they ring the bell on the back door (as they just did, as I'm writing this) to let me know they want out again.
Oh, haven't I told you about the bell thing yet? Our dogs are trained to ring a bell when they want or need to go outside. Jessi started it when she first got KO, because in her apartment, she couldn't see the front door from the kitchen or living room, so there were times KO would go stand at the door, wanting to go out, but she wasn't aware of it. Someone gave her the idea to hang a bell on the door, and when she took KO out to go potty, she'd ring the bell. After a few days of this, she'd actually lift KO's paw to hit the bell with. Soon enough, KO got the idea in her head that bell = go outside.
I think Krypto learned it even faster, because he had his "big sister's" actions to go by (dogs seem to learn faster from each other than from people, I've noticed). Krypto and KO both ring the bell now when they want out, and it always amazes people who've never heard of that before when they see it in action.
Aside from the snow, I've also been working on teaching Krypto to roll over. This is a trick I'd started teaching him before, but it's difficult to teach one dog a trick when there's another dog who also wants the treat being offered as a reward. He's doing very well with it now, and I think by the end of the weekend, he should have it down cold.
Jessi started her new job full-time yesterday, as a Health Advocate for Head Start. She'd been doing it on a part-time basis, doing her previous job part-time as well, and she's very excited to be doing this new job all the time now (she definitely prefers it).
Currently Reading: Comic Books and Other Necessities of Life, by Mark Evanier.
My eBay auctions are doing all right... not real exciting so far, but I think they'll pick up substantially this weekend. A few auctions already have more than one bid, so we'll just have to wait and see where they go. If you want to get caught up on some current stuff fairly cheap, go to eBay and search for seller jon8229 -- I'm offering winners their choice of Media Mail or Priority Mail shipping!
Oh, I almost forgot... took a few pictures of the dogs playing in the snow... I'll have to upload them to the computer and see if I can mess with the settings so you can make out my white dog in the snow!
That's about it for now...
Jon
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Holy Crap, It's Thursday!
My, the time does fly sometimes, doesn't it?
I've been remiss with my blogging... because it's been busy! My last paycheck went way too fast, and to come up with needed money, I've been putting up lots of eBay auctions -- there were 60 altogether, although before I had them all up, one of them sold via "Buy It Now" -- and I'm hoping to see a few more of those happen soon.
The first three to close end tomorrow night, late... and then a lot more will close the night after that. So far, of the 59 that are left, only 8 have bids -- and a lot have watchers. We'll have to see how things shake down over the next few days, even after I relist stuff that closes without bids (haven't decided if I'll offer BIN on the relists).
None of these books are from any period earlier than the early 90s -- and most of them are from the last year or two. I may put up some 70s and early 80s books, it just depends on how things go.
Aside from ebay... we're experiencing trash woes here. Thursday is our garbage collection day, and with last Thursday being Thanksgiving, we didn't get our garbage picked up -- although we were told it would be. So last night, we not only had our over-filled can out on the curb, but we also had two large bags of trash, plus another garbage can mostly filled with yard waste.
It appears that everything was taken except the extra can -- so I'll have to transfer stuff out of that can into the other can, so it can be taken next week -- and that'll be messy.
****
I've come to the conclusion that, no matter what you do, Thanksgiving leftovers (and by extension, Christmas dinner leftovers) will never last equally. Some foods will be finished off quickly, while others will take longer. So, you could easily (for example) finish off the green bean casserole and leftover gravy and mashed potatoes, while still having lots of turkey and dressing left. Or any other variation. We're down to about 1/2 a cup of gravy left, lots of stuffing, and lots of turkey (we didn't have green bean casserole this year, but we did have candied sweet potatoes -- and those are long gone). This is a phenomenon that I recall experiencing with every turkey meal I've ever cooked.
****
Did I mention that we weighed Krypto this past weekend, and the scale says he weighs 68.8 lbs? By comparison, KO, who'll be 2 in February, stays in the 45-48 lb. range. Krypto will be 1 on December 31, in case you're curious... and boxers can continue to grow until they're 18 months old.
I look at pictures of when we first got Krypto, and am amazed that he was ever that tiny... I'd imagine that parents get the same feeling with their children, just not in such a short time!
****
Work is going fairly well this week -- at least, it's going pretty smoothly. This looks like another week that I'll be a little short on hours (hence the ebay auctions, among other reasons), as I haven't even had 8 hours any single day this week, and I'd imagine tonight will be no differently.
****
And that's about it for this set of random thoughts!
Jon
I've been remiss with my blogging... because it's been busy! My last paycheck went way too fast, and to come up with needed money, I've been putting up lots of eBay auctions -- there were 60 altogether, although before I had them all up, one of them sold via "Buy It Now" -- and I'm hoping to see a few more of those happen soon.
The first three to close end tomorrow night, late... and then a lot more will close the night after that. So far, of the 59 that are left, only 8 have bids -- and a lot have watchers. We'll have to see how things shake down over the next few days, even after I relist stuff that closes without bids (haven't decided if I'll offer BIN on the relists).
None of these books are from any period earlier than the early 90s -- and most of them are from the last year or two. I may put up some 70s and early 80s books, it just depends on how things go.
Aside from ebay... we're experiencing trash woes here. Thursday is our garbage collection day, and with last Thursday being Thanksgiving, we didn't get our garbage picked up -- although we were told it would be. So last night, we not only had our over-filled can out on the curb, but we also had two large bags of trash, plus another garbage can mostly filled with yard waste.
It appears that everything was taken except the extra can -- so I'll have to transfer stuff out of that can into the other can, so it can be taken next week -- and that'll be messy.
****
I've come to the conclusion that, no matter what you do, Thanksgiving leftovers (and by extension, Christmas dinner leftovers) will never last equally. Some foods will be finished off quickly, while others will take longer. So, you could easily (for example) finish off the green bean casserole and leftover gravy and mashed potatoes, while still having lots of turkey and dressing left. Or any other variation. We're down to about 1/2 a cup of gravy left, lots of stuffing, and lots of turkey (we didn't have green bean casserole this year, but we did have candied sweet potatoes -- and those are long gone). This is a phenomenon that I recall experiencing with every turkey meal I've ever cooked.
****
Did I mention that we weighed Krypto this past weekend, and the scale says he weighs 68.8 lbs? By comparison, KO, who'll be 2 in February, stays in the 45-48 lb. range. Krypto will be 1 on December 31, in case you're curious... and boxers can continue to grow until they're 18 months old.
I look at pictures of when we first got Krypto, and am amazed that he was ever that tiny... I'd imagine that parents get the same feeling with their children, just not in such a short time!
****
Work is going fairly well this week -- at least, it's going pretty smoothly. This looks like another week that I'll be a little short on hours (hence the ebay auctions, among other reasons), as I haven't even had 8 hours any single day this week, and I'd imagine tonight will be no differently.
****
And that's about it for this set of random thoughts!
Jon
Monday, November 28, 2005
Monday Night...
...well, I did it.
On Sundays (sometimes Monday mornings), I get an email from Olympic Cards & Comics telling me what's coming out the following week. Then, I reply to it to let Gabi know what items on that list I want pulled for me this week.
This week, there was, I believe, one item... Teen Titans Go! based on the animated series. I let Gabi know that, in addition to this, I would continue to get Justice League Unlimited and Infinite Crisis (I'll also be getting 52).
The money I don't spend on new comics will be going towards stuff like Essentials and the like
In the meantime... I've been getting current comics (well, from the past few years) put up as eBay auctions, most of them starting at $1 a book or less, sold in lots! If there's something you've been wanting to catch up on and I've been reviewing, go to ebay and search for seller Jon8229 -- and bid!
Jon
On Sundays (sometimes Monday mornings), I get an email from Olympic Cards & Comics telling me what's coming out the following week. Then, I reply to it to let Gabi know what items on that list I want pulled for me this week.
This week, there was, I believe, one item... Teen Titans Go! based on the animated series. I let Gabi know that, in addition to this, I would continue to get Justice League Unlimited and Infinite Crisis (I'll also be getting 52).
The money I don't spend on new comics will be going towards stuff like Essentials and the like
In the meantime... I've been getting current comics (well, from the past few years) put up as eBay auctions, most of them starting at $1 a book or less, sold in lots! If there's something you've been wanting to catch up on and I've been reviewing, go to ebay and search for seller Jon8229 -- and bid!
Jon
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Turkey Day the 2nd!
So, today, Jessi and I had our own, private Thanksgiving dinner (the one we get to have leftovers from, and prepared in a healthier manner). I believe I mentioned we'd purchased a pre-cooked turkey -- and I won't be doing that again, believe me!
It's not that the pre-cooked turkey was bad or dry or anything like that (although it did warm up unevenly)... you just can't do in-the-bird dressing with a pre-cooked turkey, so our dressing was cooked out of the bird... and Jessi doesn't like out-of-the-bird dressing. So it will fall upon me to eat it all (and honestly, I made too much).
We also had low-calorie candied sweet potatoes (which came out very well, even though I didn't have the fake brown sugar to use with the recipe I had, and substituted a bit of diet coke to help make up for the lack of color), mashed potatoes (but no leftovers of that, as we only had some small potatoes left, and I cooked 'em all - will have to buy more tomorrow), and the first homemade gravy I've ever made that came out well, and I didn't cheat to make it, either (as in, adding store-bought gravy to what I was making). The secret? I used cornstarch instead of flour -- made all the difference in the world!
And we had crustless pumpkin pie for dessert. A good meal!
I have been tired the entire day... well, at least, since getting back from walking the dogs this morning, anyway. Actually, tired isn't the word... exhausted may be more apt a description. Yes, I got up early for Weight Watchers today (lost another .5 lbs), but that shouldn't have affected me that much! Despite being tired, though, I couldn't take a nap.
And there may be some unconscious lack of desire to nap -- because every time I've taken a nap in the past five years, I ended up staying as much later than normal as I slept earlier in the day, and that just messes up my routine way too much!
So now, it's 9:16 (as I'm writing this section), and Jessi and the dogs are all already asleep, yet I'm still up. Sheesh.
Finished my latest re-read of The Comic-Book Book today. Haven't decided what I'll re-read next yet. Maybe one of the trade paperbacks or something.
Nope, I'm not posting mini-reviews tonight, either... to be honest, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm losing interest in new comics, even those by people whose work I admire, or books featuring characters I've always been fond of. None of the books I read yesterday really excited me at all. Perhaps this means I should start cutting way back on what I'm getting... on the DC side, I'm about ready to drop all the books but Infinite Crisis, and then just get 52 after that, assuming I haven't lost interest there entirely. At Marvel, I'm ready to drop all the titles I'd been getting, not that there's that many of 'em to begin with.
Perhaps the thing for me to do is to just stop buying new comics entirely, and just get TPBs at the comic shop, and keep with my usual back issue buying at comics shows.
So, fair warning there, okay? Of course, I could end up just changing my mind tomorrow... but more and more, I find my interest is more from comics from the 30s to the 70s, and not much beyond that -- the only 80s books I'm even interested in getting are Roy Thomas' All-Star Squadron and Infinity, Inc. -- and if DC would just do TPB collections of those books, I'd be set!
Oh, well... I guess I'll pop out to the garage, have a smoke, and see if I feel like going to sleep yet.
Jon
It's not that the pre-cooked turkey was bad or dry or anything like that (although it did warm up unevenly)... you just can't do in-the-bird dressing with a pre-cooked turkey, so our dressing was cooked out of the bird... and Jessi doesn't like out-of-the-bird dressing. So it will fall upon me to eat it all (and honestly, I made too much).
We also had low-calorie candied sweet potatoes (which came out very well, even though I didn't have the fake brown sugar to use with the recipe I had, and substituted a bit of diet coke to help make up for the lack of color), mashed potatoes (but no leftovers of that, as we only had some small potatoes left, and I cooked 'em all - will have to buy more tomorrow), and the first homemade gravy I've ever made that came out well, and I didn't cheat to make it, either (as in, adding store-bought gravy to what I was making). The secret? I used cornstarch instead of flour -- made all the difference in the world!
And we had crustless pumpkin pie for dessert. A good meal!
I have been tired the entire day... well, at least, since getting back from walking the dogs this morning, anyway. Actually, tired isn't the word... exhausted may be more apt a description. Yes, I got up early for Weight Watchers today (lost another .5 lbs), but that shouldn't have affected me that much! Despite being tired, though, I couldn't take a nap.
And there may be some unconscious lack of desire to nap -- because every time I've taken a nap in the past five years, I ended up staying as much later than normal as I slept earlier in the day, and that just messes up my routine way too much!
So now, it's 9:16 (as I'm writing this section), and Jessi and the dogs are all already asleep, yet I'm still up. Sheesh.
Finished my latest re-read of The Comic-Book Book today. Haven't decided what I'll re-read next yet. Maybe one of the trade paperbacks or something.
Nope, I'm not posting mini-reviews tonight, either... to be honest, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm losing interest in new comics, even those by people whose work I admire, or books featuring characters I've always been fond of. None of the books I read yesterday really excited me at all. Perhaps this means I should start cutting way back on what I'm getting... on the DC side, I'm about ready to drop all the books but Infinite Crisis, and then just get 52 after that, assuming I haven't lost interest there entirely. At Marvel, I'm ready to drop all the titles I'd been getting, not that there's that many of 'em to begin with.
Perhaps the thing for me to do is to just stop buying new comics entirely, and just get TPBs at the comic shop, and keep with my usual back issue buying at comics shows.
So, fair warning there, okay? Of course, I could end up just changing my mind tomorrow... but more and more, I find my interest is more from comics from the 30s to the 70s, and not much beyond that -- the only 80s books I'm even interested in getting are Roy Thomas' All-Star Squadron and Infinity, Inc. -- and if DC would just do TPB collections of those books, I'd be set!
Oh, well... I guess I'll pop out to the garage, have a smoke, and see if I feel like going to sleep yet.
Jon
Friday, November 25, 2005
Friday Night!
Well, the day didn't quite go exactly as expected, but pretty close...
When I woke up this morning, Jessi still wasn't back from her early-morning workout and shopping trip... but she got home about 5 minutes after I was up. It was raining pretty hard, and we were thinking about taking the dogs for a walk anyway, but a call from our friends Paul and Bridgit (fellow white boxer owners) canceled that idea entirely. So I made breakfast for us, I took a quick shower, and we did some grocery shopping.
I really need to remember to not go grocery shopping with Jessi again. Please don't take this as a criticism of Jessi, but just about every time I've gone grocery shopping with Jessi (or, for that matter, shopping for stuff for the house), I tend to go quite a bit over budget.
After getting back from grocery shopping and getting everything unloaded and put away, I headed off to work. It was a pretty slow day, even slower than I'd expected, and despite not showing up until 10:45, I was finished at 2:00 -- hardly seemed worth it to show up, you know?
I'd gotten a call from Jessi at about 1:30 saying that she and her friend Kathy were going to get their nails done soon, so I didn't bother calling her when I got off work. I did, however, stop at the comic shop, buying four weeks of comics (which didn't end up being as expensive as I expected -- thanks to no more Countdown to Infinite Crisis miniseries!). I ended up reading most of the stack before Jessi got home shortly after 4 (she decided to do a bit of window shopping after getting her nails done -- she didn't head for home until I called to see why she wasn't home yet!), and then we got together with Kathy and her boxer brood to walk the dogs (unfortunately, it being after 4 before we started, we missed out on the clear skies, so it was clouding over, getting colder, and it started getting dark already, so we only did a 1-mile walk instead of the usual 3). Getting back home, I got things ready for dinner, after which I did some preliminary cooking for tomorrow.
You see, since we don't collect leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner at my parents, we've been doing our own individual Thanksgiving dinner. Last year, it ended up being three weeks before Thanksgiving (at least, that's how Jessi remembers it -- I could've sworn it was the Saturday after T-giving, but she remembers these dates better than I do), this year, it's the Saturday after! So, I prepared a batch of low-calorie stuffing (not that different from standard stuffing -- used Sara Lee bread that's only 1 point for 2 slices and fat-free chicken broth, but other than that, it was pretty much standard stuffing recipe). I considered getting the sweet potatoes prepared, but figured that could wait for Saturday.
We won't have to spend all day cooking, because Safeway had turkeys that were already cooked -- they just have to be warmed up, which apparently takes less than 2 hours. You can't stuff them, so the dressing will have to be cooked individually. We'll have turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy (hopefully I'll do a better job of making homemade gravy than I've done in the past), and sweet potatoes, with crustless pumpkin pie for dessert!
No comics mini-reviews from me tonight -- but I should get to them over the weekend... Sunday night at the latest!
Oh, almost forgot... Krypto got his first birthday card today, from PetSmart (his birthday isn't until December 31) -- this was thanks to my signing up for a PetPerks card when they started that up, and with the card was a coupon for $6 off the purchase of any dog toy. I picked a smallish soccer ball with rope attached to it (Krypto and KO love playing with soccer balls -- and I'm not sure why) priced at $13.50 -- and the cashier ended up giving it to us free! I don't know, maybe I completely misinterpreted the coupon, but I don't think so -- but I don't believe in arguing with an employee who's insisting on giving me more than I expected!
Jon
When I woke up this morning, Jessi still wasn't back from her early-morning workout and shopping trip... but she got home about 5 minutes after I was up. It was raining pretty hard, and we were thinking about taking the dogs for a walk anyway, but a call from our friends Paul and Bridgit (fellow white boxer owners) canceled that idea entirely. So I made breakfast for us, I took a quick shower, and we did some grocery shopping.
I really need to remember to not go grocery shopping with Jessi again. Please don't take this as a criticism of Jessi, but just about every time I've gone grocery shopping with Jessi (or, for that matter, shopping for stuff for the house), I tend to go quite a bit over budget.
After getting back from grocery shopping and getting everything unloaded and put away, I headed off to work. It was a pretty slow day, even slower than I'd expected, and despite not showing up until 10:45, I was finished at 2:00 -- hardly seemed worth it to show up, you know?
I'd gotten a call from Jessi at about 1:30 saying that she and her friend Kathy were going to get their nails done soon, so I didn't bother calling her when I got off work. I did, however, stop at the comic shop, buying four weeks of comics (which didn't end up being as expensive as I expected -- thanks to no more Countdown to Infinite Crisis miniseries!). I ended up reading most of the stack before Jessi got home shortly after 4 (she decided to do a bit of window shopping after getting her nails done -- she didn't head for home until I called to see why she wasn't home yet!), and then we got together with Kathy and her boxer brood to walk the dogs (unfortunately, it being after 4 before we started, we missed out on the clear skies, so it was clouding over, getting colder, and it started getting dark already, so we only did a 1-mile walk instead of the usual 3). Getting back home, I got things ready for dinner, after which I did some preliminary cooking for tomorrow.
You see, since we don't collect leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner at my parents, we've been doing our own individual Thanksgiving dinner. Last year, it ended up being three weeks before Thanksgiving (at least, that's how Jessi remembers it -- I could've sworn it was the Saturday after T-giving, but she remembers these dates better than I do), this year, it's the Saturday after! So, I prepared a batch of low-calorie stuffing (not that different from standard stuffing -- used Sara Lee bread that's only 1 point for 2 slices and fat-free chicken broth, but other than that, it was pretty much standard stuffing recipe). I considered getting the sweet potatoes prepared, but figured that could wait for Saturday.
We won't have to spend all day cooking, because Safeway had turkeys that were already cooked -- they just have to be warmed up, which apparently takes less than 2 hours. You can't stuff them, so the dressing will have to be cooked individually. We'll have turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy (hopefully I'll do a better job of making homemade gravy than I've done in the past), and sweet potatoes, with crustless pumpkin pie for dessert!
No comics mini-reviews from me tonight -- but I should get to them over the weekend... Sunday night at the latest!
Oh, almost forgot... Krypto got his first birthday card today, from PetSmart (his birthday isn't until December 31) -- this was thanks to my signing up for a PetPerks card when they started that up, and with the card was a coupon for $6 off the purchase of any dog toy. I picked a smallish soccer ball with rope attached to it (Krypto and KO love playing with soccer balls -- and I'm not sure why) priced at $13.50 -- and the cashier ended up giving it to us free! I don't know, maybe I completely misinterpreted the coupon, but I don't think so -- but I don't believe in arguing with an employee who's insisting on giving me more than I expected!
Jon
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