Comics with people I know

OK, the Spark collection doesn’t seem to have shipped, so I didn’t get to look at it and see if it’s a hardcover. I did pick up the first Girl Genius collection (which shipped last week but I didn’t feel like buying it then); Authority: Kev, which was mildly amusing but has convinced me that I’ve seen Garth Ennis pull all his best tricks, and am unlikely to get much new enjoyment out of anything he produces.

I got Weasel #5, which I liked, but would have enjoyed more if I’d read 1-4 just before it; the continuing story, “Ripple”, ended a bit abruptly, so the fourth installment was actually the meatiest, and I felt let down having waited all these months for an anti-climatic ending.

Naughty Bits #36 mentions the lovely and talented mamishka on page 2, and depicts her painting a mural at Bothell Books; and I suspect the be-hatted woman in the middle top panel on page 3 might be annathepiper. I’ve emailed Roberta Gregory to check (and to pass her a link to more info about a news item she mentioned).

Hot Point, day 5, session 3

Today was my fifth day on the Hot Point Fitness plan, and the last of the three days this week I needed to go to the gym and shove metal around for a couple of hours. My weight, as of this morning: 283 pounds. My calves still ached from Tuesday’s session, but I managed to soldier through, and even was able to do five or six reps of the “toe touch” abdominal exercise, when I’d not been able to do any on Sunday.

Over on Usenet, Nancy had said that Pearl Paint had gotten Coloraid paper back in stock, and so might be recovering. I went over to see if they’d started getting any 15x20 illustration board back in, but they hadn’t (Still lame!), except for Crescent hot press watercolor board (OK, maybe a bit less lame), of which I bought one sheet. I also got a small pad of Cryla acrylic paper, and then went down to the 2nd floor and went nuts over brushes. Thirty bucks on brushes! Actually, that isn’t that nuts when you consider how much good paintbrushes can cost. I lusted briefly over the Winsor & Newton Series 7 Kolinsky sable brushes (arguably the best brushes being produced commercially), and while they’re really nice, they cost the world. The smallest Series 7 brush, the 000, which has a teensy tuft of brush about the size of a zit, cost $10. The size 6 brush was over $50. I didn’t feel so bad blowing $12 on a good-sized Chinese watercolor brush with an amazing spring and feel, and the others I bought were still cheaper, mostly in the $1-3 range.

(My spellchecker doesn’t recognize “teensy”, but suggests “teentsy” as a replacement. Merriam-Webster’s net.dictionary agrees with me that teentsy isn’t a word but teensy is.)