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spring 2024?
Mar. 7th, 2024 10:31 amIs it spring yet? It's been a super mild winter. When's the last time I posted here? November? yeesh.
We stayed here for Xmas and it was, uh, great! The stress of driving 900 miles south and then 900 miles north again, it just wasn't there. The "where do we stay, will the car hold out, what is the weather going to do, can I just throw this on my credit card and not worry about it until January" all simply didn't happen. We had friends over on Christmas Eve and it was honestly a present in and of itself to have someone in the place who was happy to leaf through our old anime stuff and was knowledgeable enough to enjoy it.
I did a streaming Anime Hell on NYE and since then we've done two dubbed anime movie watch-alongs that have been a lot of fun. It doesn't cost me anything and I can get as large if not a larger crowd than doing a live event, and I don't have to set anything up or poster anything anywhere, so I kind of prefer it? Let's be real. The last live event I did at Eyesore was lightly attended, sure, fine, but someone came in, looked around at the back room and the folding chairs and the dim screen and he said, this is it? I thought this was going to be a, you know, a real cinema. All I can do is say, yeah, this is it. This is the back room of a video store. I'm not saying there isn't a value in the experience of showing stuff to a small crowd in the back room of a video store, but it's a lot of work and expense that I don't have the time or money for.
Gonna be honest: the post-COVID inflation has been kicking my ass for two years now. My pay raises have been dribs and drabs of "cost of living increase" percentages for years and years, if that; our company was always in the process of merging or being merged or selling or being sold, there was always some crisis that prevented real raises. Our first department manager retired, we were taken over by a new manager who never got around to performance reviews, they left and we got a new manager who never got around to performance reviews, THEY left and we got a new manager, and then we got merged and sold and bought and merged and bought again. The last meaningful pay raise that was above the rate of inflation was way back with manager #1.
Now I don't wanna complain too hard. I've been continuously employed for two decades at a time when layoffs for everybody everywhere are the norm rather than the exception, in an industry that conventional wisdom says should be dead, buried, and have weeds growing out of the cemetery plot by now.
And that one thing that keeps me going is that phrase "wait 'til next year" and this year, well, we DID get bought by a Canadian company, we're no longer the weird foreign branch ignored by the home office in Chicago, we're all here. This new company... well, I don't wanna say they pay better but it looks like they do. They're moving their shop on the other side of the DVP over here, those presses and employees are all coming to us, and that shop is a union shop and that means we're gonna be a union shop. We actually had employee evaluations again and at some point in the next month or so we're going to be getting some sort of increase in pay, and this is where all the bold talk of the new era is going to have to actually show some results in my pay stub.
So in practical terms, my disposable income has been pretty much zero for a while and I'm hoping that turns around soon so at least I can quit worrying about money for a bit. Staying home for Xmas? I don't want to say that decision was 100% me not wanting to drop $500 on gas. Let's say it was seventy-five percent. It really was a blessing to just nope out and stay home, it honestly was.
This has probably been the warmest winter ever, which is nice for us and terrible for the world as a whole and I don't know what to tell people to do about it other than to get ready for a warm summer? I've actually taken the bike out a few times this year which is usually not a thing that happens until April or so.
Watched a lot of movies at home, haven't been to the theater since... Godzilla Minus One? Which is terrific, easily the best Godzilla film I've ever seen in a theater, which I know is damning with faint praise, but it really is great.
Anime North is happening again in May, the Nerd Market at U of T is happening again April 7, AWA has been moved back to December, my plans for the rest of the year are to ride my bike, hike in some woods, go to the beach, maybe go to someplace like Kingston or London or Montreal. Maybe get out to Boston at some point. Finish my current comic project (inking page 6 right now) and move on to the next project. Those are my 2024 goals.
Of course they say it may snow on Sunday, so anything is possible!
We stayed here for Xmas and it was, uh, great! The stress of driving 900 miles south and then 900 miles north again, it just wasn't there. The "where do we stay, will the car hold out, what is the weather going to do, can I just throw this on my credit card and not worry about it until January" all simply didn't happen. We had friends over on Christmas Eve and it was honestly a present in and of itself to have someone in the place who was happy to leaf through our old anime stuff and was knowledgeable enough to enjoy it.
I did a streaming Anime Hell on NYE and since then we've done two dubbed anime movie watch-alongs that have been a lot of fun. It doesn't cost me anything and I can get as large if not a larger crowd than doing a live event, and I don't have to set anything up or poster anything anywhere, so I kind of prefer it? Let's be real. The last live event I did at Eyesore was lightly attended, sure, fine, but someone came in, looked around at the back room and the folding chairs and the dim screen and he said, this is it? I thought this was going to be a, you know, a real cinema. All I can do is say, yeah, this is it. This is the back room of a video store. I'm not saying there isn't a value in the experience of showing stuff to a small crowd in the back room of a video store, but it's a lot of work and expense that I don't have the time or money for.
Gonna be honest: the post-COVID inflation has been kicking my ass for two years now. My pay raises have been dribs and drabs of "cost of living increase" percentages for years and years, if that; our company was always in the process of merging or being merged or selling or being sold, there was always some crisis that prevented real raises. Our first department manager retired, we were taken over by a new manager who never got around to performance reviews, they left and we got a new manager who never got around to performance reviews, THEY left and we got a new manager, and then we got merged and sold and bought and merged and bought again. The last meaningful pay raise that was above the rate of inflation was way back with manager #1.
Now I don't wanna complain too hard. I've been continuously employed for two decades at a time when layoffs for everybody everywhere are the norm rather than the exception, in an industry that conventional wisdom says should be dead, buried, and have weeds growing out of the cemetery plot by now.
And that one thing that keeps me going is that phrase "wait 'til next year" and this year, well, we DID get bought by a Canadian company, we're no longer the weird foreign branch ignored by the home office in Chicago, we're all here. This new company... well, I don't wanna say they pay better but it looks like they do. They're moving their shop on the other side of the DVP over here, those presses and employees are all coming to us, and that shop is a union shop and that means we're gonna be a union shop. We actually had employee evaluations again and at some point in the next month or so we're going to be getting some sort of increase in pay, and this is where all the bold talk of the new era is going to have to actually show some results in my pay stub.
So in practical terms, my disposable income has been pretty much zero for a while and I'm hoping that turns around soon so at least I can quit worrying about money for a bit. Staying home for Xmas? I don't want to say that decision was 100% me not wanting to drop $500 on gas. Let's say it was seventy-five percent. It really was a blessing to just nope out and stay home, it honestly was.
This has probably been the warmest winter ever, which is nice for us and terrible for the world as a whole and I don't know what to tell people to do about it other than to get ready for a warm summer? I've actually taken the bike out a few times this year which is usually not a thing that happens until April or so.
Watched a lot of movies at home, haven't been to the theater since... Godzilla Minus One? Which is terrific, easily the best Godzilla film I've ever seen in a theater, which I know is damning with faint praise, but it really is great.
Anime North is happening again in May, the Nerd Market at U of T is happening again April 7, AWA has been moved back to December, my plans for the rest of the year are to ride my bike, hike in some woods, go to the beach, maybe go to someplace like Kingston or London or Montreal. Maybe get out to Boston at some point. Finish my current comic project (inking page 6 right now) and move on to the next project. Those are my 2024 goals.
Of course they say it may snow on Sunday, so anything is possible!
