kirabug’s idea files

Mmmmm, vegetarian-safe Kosher bacon-flavored salt.

OK, maybe not mmmmm. But, well, interesting.

I love it when a creature is tasty, delicious, and capable of redefining how we use existing technology. Though I think butter sauce will be optional with the x-rays.

Yesterday was Easter and I didn’t get around to putting up a Happy Easter message, so Happy Easter! Of course, April 2nd was the beginning of Passover and I neglected that as well, so Happy Passover! And Happy Equinox back in March. There, I think I’m caught up.

We spent the day at Nighthawk’s family’s Easter dinner and had a darn good time.

Today is the last of my 4 days off, so I’m trying to make it a full sweep of accomplished things on days off. Or something. My writing brain is clearly on vacation. I spent most of the weekend cleaning out the master closet so it could be painted and remodeled with non-1970’s-shelving, but it’s slow going. Fortunately my little sister came over Saturday and helped me with the big stuff, and we’re most of the way to where we need to be to get it started.

I’ve also been slowly finding and fixing locations where Night Fugues is still listed as Get Outta My Head, both on my own site and on the ‘net in general, so if you spot any, let me know.

And just as an experiment, I’m going to open up commenting to non-registered folks for a while to see how much spam and or idiocy we collect. If it’s abundant, I’ll go back to registration only, but well, it’s worth a shot.

Today I’m running laundry (all the clothes coming out of the closet, of course) and puttering around the house. Will work on comics tonight I think. I could get used to this staying at home and accomplishing crap thing, if only someone’d pay me for it. Ah well.

Anyway, it’s frequent forumgoer and now commenter Jamie’s birthday, so feel free to wish him well here (happy birthday, goofball!), whilst I go salvage my lunch from the overzealous toaster oven.

Work was, well, long. Very very long. But I managed to get a few last-minute items handled before coming home.

I came home to a sick husband, who’s caught some kind of cold/respiratory thing. Exhausted and achy myself I’m not sure I really did a very good job of taking care of him today. For that matter, I didn’t do much for myself, either.

The forum upgrade’s required a few small tweaks, plus Wordpress came out with a security update that I needed to install, but everything’s been successful so far. A few quick notes I forgot to mention before:

• When you register and post a comment, it sits in the moderation queue until I approve it. After that, so long as you don’t do anything to piss off the spam filter, your comments display immediately.
• I’ll probably eventually (maybe even shortly) start putting a “babble” thread up every day or two so folks can babble to each other even if I’m not actively posting.
• See the RSS and Comments RSS links in the left nav bar? If you want to keep up with the comments, those will give you overall views of what’s going on here, and each thread has its own specific comments RSS feed as well that you can check.

Anyway, I’m off until Tuesday so I’m hoping to relax, draw some comics, and gut a closet. And yell at the snow. And the Phillies. And maybe sleep now. Goodnight!

Someone asked me the other day what I do when I say I didn’t do anything a given weekend or evening. Well, there’s…

• writing or drawing the comic
• working on the Online Comics Day 2007 site
• working on this site
• reading comics
• reading books about drawing comics
• knitting
• playing Final Fantasy 12
• cursing at the laptop because it froze up
• taking walks with my husband
• date night
• playing Final Fantasy 3
• reading my email
• hanging out on the forum
• playing with the pudge dog
• playing Solitare Til Dawn
• watching Nighthawk play Oblivion
• baseball!
• and I’m sure a bunch of other stuff I’ve forgotten.

So my apologies that I haven’t been around much… some of this stuff will be dropping off the list as I either finish it or lose interest again. The comic and the blog aren’t going away, just sometimes I get quiet.

This post rambles. I have a bad headache and Tums are my friend.

Speaking of friends, one friend pulled me aside recently to ask whether I was offline more often because he’d done something to offend me. That’s not it — I just want to spend more time with my husband than with the computer. I’m sure I’ll have upticks in online time again sometime in the future, but I’m not sure I’ve hit my low point in this downtick yet, so don’t take it personally if I’m not on the forum or on IM after work. It’s just, well, I love him enough to have married him, so he gets first dibs on my time.

And speaking of Nighthawk, another friend pulled me aside recently to ask whether the current cancer comics indicate that Nighthawk’s health is in flux again. That’s an emphatic no. He’s doing very well — the cancer’s undetectable which means there’s a good chance it’s gone altogether, and everything else is good.

So why the cancer comics? Because a) even though he’s doing very well, I find I work through major emotional stuff best by writing, and what better topic than the item that kicked all this off? and b) there isn’t a whole lot out there on thyroid cancer. It’s a pretty rare cancer, and if we can pass on anything we learned to someone else who experiences it, that’s a good thing, to me.

But (and this should be obvious) this isn’t an autobiographical journal comic any more than Real Life is a purely autobiographical journal comic. “Inspired by occasional true events” is accurate. “Details what actually happened to me” is not. 90% of the stuff in the comic is crap I made up.

Milo’s a good example — none of the alien life forms I work with are that short.

It’s past my bedtime, and I’m not going to get the comic I was working on finished tonight. Tomorrow maybe.

Tomorrow’s date night with more Firefly. Yay!

I also created a new teeshirt design. Check it out by clicking that big store talk bubble up there in the top right corner. If you can’t tell which one’s the new one, you haven’t visited the store enough.

Well, goodnight!

Nighthawk got Firefly - The Complete Series for Christmas, since we hadn’t seen it and everyone talked about how good it was.

Wow. I’m hooked. We’re watching two episodes every Thursday and right now Thursday is my favorite day of the week. And the music! I love violins.

Anyway, it’s worth a look, if you’re even later to the party than I am.