So, it's been a pretty crazy couple of weeks. After going down to the Calgary Comic Expo at the end of April, and meeting up with Jennie Breeden, we found ourselves being invited to the Emerald City Comic Convention in Seattle! After a whirlwind week of planning, we rented a car, drove to Chiliwack on Friday, and then did the rest of the drive on Saturday morning. The convention was AWESOME. Even though we were just sharing a corner of a table, we made enough to cover all the expenses of the trip and then some. We're definitely going back next year (in fact, we already paid for a table). Jennie was great, and we really owe her one for letting us borrow table space! We got to meet lots of awesome people, including Scott Kurtz himself, who came over to shake Alina's hand and ask us about our Project Wonderful ads on his site!! We went out for EXCELLENT sushi with Jennie and her friends on Saturday night, and on Sunday we went for supper with a whole bunch of webcomics people, including Jennie , Kris Straub and his girlfriend Erica, Sam Logan and his friends, Jeph Jacques , Brad Guigar , Dave Malki and his wife, Aaron Diaz , and a few others I've probably forgotten. We stayed pretty late, and were dead tired driving back across the border to stay the night in Chiliwack again (we were tenting in a campground). Then all day Monday was driving through the rockies back home.

It was a ton of fun, and we're SO going to do it all again next year.

Current Mood: happy

Well, classes are done, assignments are handed in, marking and teaching are finished. I can finally concentrate on experimental work, and it feels SOOOO good. And, added bonus: no more coursework EVER. I'm DONE.

The convention this weekend was awesome... Alina sold about 600 dollars worth of books and prints, and we got to meet cool people like Jennie Breeden. The weeks leading up to it were stressful, but it was worth it. I don't think we'll get to too many other conventions this year, but it's nice that we've got product for them. We're also planning to have a book release party some time in the next few months, where Alina can do signings and sketches for our various friends who want books. We should have them available on the website pretty soon as well. :-)

Let's see, what else is new... Todd is visiting, which is cool, and he's finally got a job in Saskatoon starting next month, so he'll probably come visit a lot more often, too. We all got to visit with my cousins in Calgary while we were there for the con, and that was nice. Alina is very much looking forward to having some free time in the near future, now that the Con rush is over with.

That's about it for now. Gotta get back to work.

Current Mood: lazy

I hate this time of year. Classes end this week, so I've got to get my grant proposal for Dr. Nargang finished ASAP, and at the same time, it looks like Marty is going to assign us something for HIS section as well. On top of that, I have exams to proctor and then grade over the weekend. So it looks like yet another week of not getting any experiments done. I can't WAIT for this to be over. No more coursework again, EVER. Thank freaking GAWD.

I made a beef wellington tonight. It was pretty tasty. I've been slowly losing weight (too slowly, but oh well), and I had a lot of fun playing Frankie at the From Ashes game on Saturday. That's pretty much it for life at the moment. Fun!

On the other hand, I'm really pumped about my Shadowrun game. I think Donette is going to play, and that gives me 6 players, which is my limit. The group is really good... they've got a very stay-in-character style of play that I love. I'm also pretty happy with the ideas I have for the campaign, and I really like all the characters. This is gonna be fun. :-)

Current Mood: busy

So, more news. Thanks to Cenobyte, we found a good printer here on the prairies (it's in Regina) that's willing to give us a VERY good price for 1000 units. We've started a print run with them, which means we're definitely going to have books in time for the Calgary Expo. A few of our friends in town are talking about going down for the Expo as well, which will be great. Todd is talking about coming out as well. So we're pretty stoked about that. :)

The saga of my lost keys: I don't remember if I posted about this and I'm too lazy to go back and check, but I lost my keys in Friday Harbor (during a drunken after-the-bar party on some guy's sailboat). I was pretty sure I knew when I'd lost them, and sure enough the people I talked to were able to get ahold of the guy and get my keys back. They gave them to the conference organizer, who emailed me for my address and said he was mailing them to me. End of problem, right? Wrong. I just found out that he didn't mail them when he said he was going to... he mailed them just last Thursday. So who knows how long it's going to be before I get them back. Bleah. On the plus side, I borrowed a spare lab key so I can at least get into the lab when I beat Dave to work in the mornings.

Big news: Alina is thinking of going back to school. She knows she can probably get a good job at Bioware or some graphic design place if only she could polish up her portfolio, but she just hasn't had the TIME to work on it. The job she's at now is rather sucky, and she can get funding from her band (ie, they pay her tuition and give her living expenses, and she never has to pay it back). So I think the plan is, if the comic starts making her even just a little bit of cash (like a couple hundred a month) from merch sales, she can go back to school and finish her BFA, and have WAY more free time to work on comics and her portfolio, and we won't starve to death in the meantime. She's pretty excited about the idea of going back, especially since the U of A has design classes that she can take in addition to pure Fine Arts.

Later: Shadowrun post. I mean it this time. Right now I have to go grade papers for tomorrow. Oh, and my presentation went really well... I'm sorry I had to miss the game on Saturday, but staying home and working was a good move on my part.

Current Mood: pleased

Man, my titles are really helpful.

Well, it's been an eventful few days. I started walking this week... I'm trying to lose weight and my diet isn't really the problem (although I have been eating too many snacks lately, which I'm cutting down on). It's the total lack of excercise that has had me gaining in the past couple years. So I'm challenging myself to get a decent workout every day for the entire month of April. We'll see how it goes. All last week, I walked from the bus stop downtown to campus, a distance of about 3 kilometers. Saturday, Alina and I walked up and down 124th street in order to go out for lunch. Today I didn't get a walk in, but tromping all over IKEA was probably sufficient.

Why IKEA? Alina and I finally decided to upgrade her computer setup. She's been at our kitchen table with my old computer and monitor, and it's WAY inconvenient. She has to sit weird to use the keyboard, and the old monitor is so huge it essentially takes up the whole table. So, today we bought a 19" wide-screen monitor on sale at Futureshop, and a 30 dollar computer mini-desk from IKEA. We're going to take the old monitor out to be recycled some time this week. Now Alina has a much better setup, and we get the kitchen table back. To celebrate, I made roast beef and yorkshire pudding for supper and we actually ate in the dining room. Woot!

I was going to talk about my new Shadowrun game, but I think I'll leave that for later in the week. For now, I have a big pile of papers left to grade, and a presentation to give on Tuesday.

Current Mood: busy

So, I was intending to post something here after my trip to Washington state, but that didn't happen, for whatever reason. So, for those who didn't know, I went to a scientific conference at Friday Harbor (on San Juan Island, very near to Victoria BC)... the Society for Developmental Biology northwest regional meeting. I didn't have anything to present, but it was a fun time. It was the first conference I've ever been to that had a keg of beer at the poster sessions. Much drinking at the local pub ensued after the sessions ended as well, and Dave (my supervisor) kept buying our meals the whole time, so it ended up costing me very little. Science + beer = awesome.

Alina's book has FINALLY gone to the printers, and we're keeping our fingers crossed that the printing will be done in time for the convention. I'm starting to suspect that our limited run of 100 books won't be enough, and we'll end up having to print a second run locally, which will mean printing at least 1000 books (but the sales from the first 100 should pay for the second run, thankfully). I'm excited to see how they turn out. Alina is finally rebuilding her buffer, which is a relief as well.

I've been sick a bit recently, with the flu that's been going around, but it hasn't stopped me from getting some work done, which is a relief. With any luck I'll have some momentum behind my experiments by the time summer rolls around and be able to go hard all the way through to September. We'll see how that works out.

I've also started up another Shadowrun campaign, which is nice... it's good to be gaming a little again, and socialize with people a bit more. We've been far too hermitish since we moved here. I'm looking forward to the summer and having no classes or teaching to worry about.

Current Mood: complacent

So, Weregeek is now at its new home at www.weregeek.com. Check out the new site design!

In other news, Alina is still working her butt off every moment she's not working in order to get her book finished, I've got an ear infection that makes me deaf in my right ear and am on huge doses of antibiotics, and I also have a presentation to give on Wednesday and an exam to mark on Friday. And I have to be on campus by 7:45 tomorrow morning to proctor said exam. And I want to get an experiment done this week if at all possible. So yeah, that's pretty much our lives right now.

Current Mood: tired

Alina has been REALLY busy lately with her book... she's trying to get it done in time to have it printed for the convention. Have I mentioned the book before? I don't think so. Basically, we're taking the first 100 strips of Weregeek and putting together a collected volume. It's not going to be big, as far as trade paperbacks go (only 54 pages) but it's got quite a bit of new content and I think overall it'll be a worthy purchase for 15 bucks or so. We're going to get 100 printed for now, and think about doing more if the demand is there.

In other news, there's no real news. I've been working on Alina's new site, doing homework and marking at work, slowly getting my experiments off the ground, and generally not having a life. I went to Jackie's birthday party last weekend, and that was the most socializeing I've done in months.

Oh, one thing that's new... I'm going to be starting up a Shadowrun tabletop game again. I've got 5 players lined up and I'm pretty excited to get it going. It's been ages since Alina and I got to do any tabletop. :-)

Current Mood: sleepy

So, recent news:

Alina and I are going to the Calgary Comic Expo in late April. This is the first REAL major comic convention Western Canada has ever had... we're talking projected attendance of around 10,000 this year, with guests like Kevin Sorbo (Hercules!), George Takei, Bill Willingham, Jennie Breeden, Ed the Sock and many others. We have a table booked to share with Tarol Hunt of Goblins fame, which is cool. Alina is planning a book and various other products, so if you happen to be in Calgary, or might consider going there on the weekend of April 26th-27th, by all means stop by!

On a related note, if anyone who reads this blog would like to help support Alina's comic for free, please visit this link and vote for her at Top Webcomics. The higher she goes on the list, the more free advertising she's been getting. Vote on there once a day to keep her rating maxed out! She just made it onto the first page (the top 100) this week, and she's had an enormous return in new hits on the site, and I'd like to keep that going. So bookmark it and vote daily! :)

In science news, my cell culture experiments are working and I'm really psyched to start collecting some real data. I've been nominated for a teaching award for the class I TA-ed last semester and everything is generally going well. I'm going to a conference in March, and hopefully next year I'll have a decent poster and go to SEVERAL conferences. We'll see how that goes for me.

Current Mood: chipper

I'm all annoyed at work because one of my coworkers left half of her chores from last week undone, and now I'm going to have a TON of things to do on MY week. Very very displeasing.

I've only just today been eating somewhat normally again. I was on solid food by Monday night, but my system was still pretty delicate. I think I'm mostly better on that front now. Just a lingering cough and cold.

I have a genetics assignment due tomorrow, but I think I'm going to ask for an extension. I need to get some major rest tonight and I don't want to have that hanging over me. I'm sure I can have it done for Monday quite easily, and I'm sure the Prof won't care.

I want to go home, but I don't want to take the bus. That means waiting for Alina to get done her work orientation. Hopefully, it'll be soon.

Current Mood: bored