i woke up this morning and realized that i hate mornings. more than that, i hate work. scratch that. i don't hate work, i hate my job. i hate having to scrape myself from the cozy comfort of sleep to shackle myself to a desk and make someone else money. i know it's the way of the world, but it drives me nuts. puts a real burr in my saddle, so to speak. work…it's a bitch.

this weekend went pretty well. it snowed quite a bit thursday night, so brooksie and i did what any reasonable people would do…we went to the bar. we had a couple of drinks and discussed some of the songs we've been working on. the place was pretty dead (one would assume because of the snow), so we settled up the tab and went home. friday was just general laziness. i renewed the tags on my car. i ate q'doba. i didn't do much else, really. i started the arduous process of actually finishing joycam project, but didn't get very far.

friday night brooksie and i headed back out to the bar, with much better results. we hung with paul and mr. norman for a while and acheived our goals of getting suitably drunk. remember: it's important to set goals.

saturday i woke up before noon, which is a genuine miracle for me on a day off. beyond waking up, i decided to actually get out of bed and go out and do stuff. the previous night when i was working on joycam project made me realize i needed a scanner pretty badly. i did some research, found a really good scanner for a really good price and headed out to do some shopping. also on my list was a new phone to replace the piece of crap that died after only about 2 months of service.

a little shopping and a quick lunch from mcdevil's and i was back home with my new goodies. i hooked up the scanner since i had to wait for the phone to charge. i didn't get much time to mess with either, since i had to head off to band practice, but i think the scanner was a nice purchase, overall.

big problem i had when i got home was that my new phone would ring when a call came in, but i couldn't answer the call or get a dialtone. this is exactly the same problem i was having with the old phone, so i came to the pissed off conclusion that the phone company just didn't fix my jack when they came to repair the damage that the painters had done. this pissed me off, since i essentially just dropped more money on a phone i didn't need. i really like the new phone, so i split the difference and gave the old phone (that i never really liked) to brooksie to replace his cordless phone that was blown up by lightning a few months ago. then we rigged up some lengthy cabling to get my phone connected upstairs. i'll probably call the phone company later and try to get them to come out and fix my jack, since i'm sure the problem is outside, anyway.

after all was said and done, brooksie and i decided to watch donnie darko.

and now it's sunday and i'm sitting at work. i hate this place.

man…there's this creepy dude that sits right by the door into the office. every time i come through that door, he turns around and stares at me. i know that's normal if you sit next to a door that's constantly opening and closing, but jesus…this guy is just creepy in that wormy little nerd way. either way, i wish the little bastard would stop. or move away from the door. creepy little fucker.

so…we went out bowling with some friends for the girl's going away party, the other night (photos and video here). a lot of fun was had, a lot of beer was consumed, a few strikes were thrown (one of which is actually on video). pitchers of beer were only $5, so needless to say, we drank a lot of 'em.

while we were boozing and bowling, a friend of mine that works at a local comic shop looks over at me and says "didn't you have everyone at the chicago con draw hellboy for your sketchbook?" i confirmed that that was, in fact, exactly what i did. he says "man…i think you were mentioned in the introduction to the new hellboy weird tales trade."

so the next day, i go into the shop to see what the hell he's talking about. lo and behold and lots of cool other revelatory words, i'm mentioned as a "young writer" (despite having nothing actually published) and he talks about my sketchbook a bit. since i wasn't mentioned by name, i wasn't convinced that it was me, so i wrote scott allie (the hellboy editor and the one who wrote the introduction) a little email and he sent this back to me:

Yep. Didn't wanna mention names, as one time I did that and the person got angry, when I thought he'd think it was cool. You never can tell.
S

so…yeah. i feel super fucking cool. totally. the funny thing about this whole thing…i bought the singles of the weird tales books, so i didn't even really consider picking up the trade. i flipped through it and noticed the stories were out of order and marvelled at the sketchbook pages, but i never looked at the introduction until after said friend mentioned it to me. now i have to go out and buy the fuckin' thing.

oh yeah…there's also a new show over at transmission3000. oxes. recorded in france. it's bitchin'.

have a happy new year, suckers.