tag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300davemerrilldavemerrilldavemerrill2024-03-07T16:04:51Ztag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:975347spring 2024?2024-03-07T16:04:51Z2024-03-07T16:04:51Zpublic0Is it spring yet? It's been a super mild winter. When's the last time I posted here? November? yeesh.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />Of course they say it may snow on Sunday, so anything is possible!<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=975347" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:975048juku and related events2023-11-10T15:58:31Z2023-11-10T15:58:31Zpublic0Looked at the calendar and noticed that it's 2023 which means twenty one years ago I was part of a group that put together what we called a "comics album" in an attempt to become published cartoonists and get our work out into the world. It was called JUKU and you can still find it via resellers on Amazon for wild prices. It came up in a conversation about printing on the Bluesky and Elin W. was complimentary about it, which was nice. After it came out in 2002 we sold a bunch, and then when we did the next round of conventions in 2003 everyone asked where the next one was. There wasn't going to be any next one because finishing that thing simply blasted the desire to make comics out of three of our five JUKU participants. That's part of why Shain and I started Mister Kitty, was that we wanted to make comics and get them in front of others, not sell buttons and t-shirts and stickers and magnets. <br /><br />Wow, it's November already! That JUKU thing has been sitting in my "drafts" here for two months. <br /><br />YES we went to AWA, that was my home-to-Atlanta vacation for the year. The con went well, people were happy to be there, the reg lines were a lot shorter, events went smoothly. It's the last AWA in that Galleria/Waverly facility so there's some bittersweetness to the show. Lots of memories in that place. Got to visit with a bunch of friends and do some shopping and walk in the woods in the warm weather. <br /><br />I came home with a good solid case of the con crud. Actually I've been sniffling and sneezy pretty much constantly all summer and fall, always worried I was going to get sick, so actually getting sick was kind of a relief. Not COVID, I tested four times. Probably got it from my brother, who'd been at a show in North Carolina the previous weekend.<br /><br />We aren't going south for Xmas this year and it is like a Xmas gift I gave myself; not having that trip hanging over my head is a blessing from Santa Claus. <br /><br />Had a great conversation on the Bluesky and I want to detail this while it's fresh in my mind; the marines are recruiting at NYAC and people are miffed about it, and I said something about now that anime cons are the size of state fairs the same kind of slap-chop aluminum siding hot tub salesmen are there to sell stuff to crowds, it's what happens when you get big crowds. And some stranger wandered into my mentions to drop a load of anger about back when SDCC send C&D letters to conventions that were also calling themselves "Comic-Cons." And when I said, yeah, conventions should come up with their own names, well, he didn't like that.<br /><br />Anyway the gist of the debate was that I was questioning this dude's statement that "dozens" of conventions had had to close down and lay off "tons" of staffers because of SDCC's legal action. Because I simply don't think that's true. Dude was not going to be bringing any examples to the table because he wanted to remain anonymous. And okay, that's fine, but when I'm showing up with my real name and real conventions I'm staffing in my bio, and with specific examples of conventions that had to change their names because they wanted to call themselves Anime Expos and Otakons, and they changed those names and kept right on chugging along, and this dude is all "I work for a show but I won't tell you what it is," well, sir, as I said, you have me at a disadvantage. <br /><br />Some OTHER total stranger wandered into the conversation to deduce exactly what convention this dude was talking about and how it was killed by COVID, not SDCC. Which dude did NOT like. That was after some legal-twitter names like Akiva Cohen wandered in to explain how SDCC was legally correct. Did not expect to see him in the conversation. <br /><br />Anyway the conversation is over, I'm sure dude is still angry about his show that got smashed by those a-holes in San Diego, whatever, buddy. Next time come up with your own name.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=975048" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:973843exhausted2023-08-04T15:01:56Z2023-08-04T15:01:56Zpublic1Just want to throw this out there, this is a thing that happened to me on June 24. That's the Saturday I was doing a screening at Eyesore. I figured I'd get a haircut and Shain knew a place on Dundas that was cheap and good. So we got on our bikes and headed up to Dundas. Maybe a mile and a quarter, uphill. It was in the mid 70s and muggy that day; uncomfortable, but it didn't seem too extreme. Definitely didn't feel "hot."<br /><br />Anyway, once I got up the hill to Dundas I had to sit down. I was feeling light headed, that kind of feeling you get when you've been squatting to dig through a longbox of comics at a comics show and then you stand up suddenly, that head rush sort of light-headedness. So I sat down for a bit and caught my breath, and then we went up and down Dundas trying to find this hair stylist. <br /><br />We finally found the stylist and I locked my bike up. Feeling light headed again. While I was waiting for Shain to lock her bike up I went over and leaned against the wall to wait. <br /><br />Next thing I know, I am on the ground, waking up from what seemed like a really nice nap, and three complete strangers are asking me if I'm OK. Yup, I passed out like a junkie, right there on the sidewalk. Shain was still locking up her bike so I couldn't have been out longer than a few seconds. <br /><br />And no, I didn't bring water with me. I hadn't had any liquids other than that morning's coffee. So yeah. Dehydrated, exhausted, humid, hot - heat exhaustion. <br /><br />I bumped the back of my head, kind of scraped my leg and my arm, but otherwise I was OK. I sat up, called "Hey Shain, I think I had a medical emergency just now." She finished locking up her bike and came over and we went inside the salon, I took a seat and she went out to get me some Gatorade. <br /><br />The upside is that I got a really good haircut, only my second post-COVID cut (my first was a MagiCuts that was one of the worst haircuts I've ever had) and the salon lady sends everyone home with a bag full of boxes of Kleenex. No, I don't know why. But it's appreciated.<br /><br />After the haircut and some hydration and some calm sitting down time, we got back on our bikes and made it home, and I spent the rest of the afternoon drinking water and taking it easy. The Eyesore show went well - still super hot and humid and their space isn't air conditioned, but we had a lot of cold drinks for everybody. <br /><br />I've since done a lot more cycling through the city and so far I haven't had any more heat exhaustion episodes. I'm getting hydrated before we leave and I'm bringing water along and so far things are fine. <br /><br />Still deeply disturbed at my body basically shutting down on me. It's absolutely unsettling in a way I've never experienced. And, of course, heat exhaustion has gone from being a thing that might happen maybe sometime, to a thing that has happened to me, and will happen in the future if I don't look out for it. <br /><br />I'm told it's a thing we become more susceptible to as we age, so my warning to you all is, look out for that devil, keep him away with fluids, lots and lots of fluids.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=973843" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:973816mister kitty news2023-07-28T15:25:18Z2023-07-28T15:25:18Zpublic0Jeez, I didn't even mention this. So what happened towards the end of May was that our domain registration for mister kitty dot org came up for renewal. We renew it through our web host, GoDaddy. Well, for some reason GoDaddy didn't send the registration in on time, the web address became available, and somebody else grabbed it. So everything that was on mister kitty dot org became unavailable. <br /><br />This was kind of bad. We've had mister kitty dot org since what, 2006? 2007? A long time. We have a lot of readers for Stupid Comics that we've built up over the years who have bookmarked the site, who check it every week, who, you know, are there for us, and suddenly we're not there for them.<br /><br />GoDaddy could not get the dot org address back. What they did do is get us a dot net address. We're now at www.misterkitty.net So Shain had to spend a weekend going through the entire site and changing all the addresses to misterkitty.net anywhere there was a web address. It was a complete pain.<br /><br />Of course it happened right before Anime North so every panel I had a Mister Kitty slide inserted into, well, that had to be changed. The promo postcards all got thrown out and I printed some new ones. Every bit of social media had to get updated.<br /><br />Our numbers haven't recovered and I don't think they'll ever get back to where they were. The internet was a different place 15 years ago, it was a lot easier to get the word out and get people to look at your site and come back to it on a regular basis. All we can do now is to try to let people know we're now at www.misterkitty.net instead of the dot org. <br /><br />At some point the .org address might become available (we did grab the .ca address as a pre-emptive strike). Until that day we're going to be constantly reminding everybody that we're at mister kitty dot net now. <br /><br />It was a long day of conversation about whether or not we wanted to keep doing the site at all. The temptation to let it burn down and start over was pretty tempting. To just publish on the Patreon or just make it a substack or a wordpress blog? It would be easier. But I'm glad we kept a website. Too much of the internet is owned by two or three corporations all churning out the same corporate content, and having a space where we can publish whatever we want is still pretty attractive to old zine-makers like us. <br /><br />Anyway, remember, we're now <a href="https://misterkitty.net">misterkitty.net</a>. Bookmark the site, post it on your socials, tell your friends and family. Seriously, tell people.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=973816" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:973546summer is half over already!2023-07-26T15:12:33Z2023-07-26T15:12:33Zpublic1Oh my god! It's July 26 already! Jeez, what has been going on. <br /><br />We had Anime North and it went really well. Record numbers, no resultant COVID outbreaks, everybody seemed to have a good time. Shain and I worked Panels staff and spent some time in front of doors checking badges, getting attendees into lines, getting panelists set up and running. I really enjoyed it. You know, I've been doing the nerd convention thing for a long time. I've done pretty much every sort of job. After a while the veterans find themselves kicked upstairs to being the admin that stays behind desks or tables or in offices, coordinating and connecting and making calls and texts and emails and organizing while the show goes on. I've seen some con directors who spend the entire weekend in an office. And me, I'd rather be on the floor, on the front lines, interacting with the actual attendees, solving their problems, making their weekend run better. That kind of ground-floor action is where it's at. Especially at a show like Anime North where the fans are really a positive bunch, I don't know if it's a Canadian thing or what, but they are just polite and friendly and happy to be there in the crowd with everyone else. <br /><br />I did some checking around after the show and I saw exactly one person who tested positive for COVID after the convention. Masking was optional this year and I'd say it was maybe twenty-five or thirty percent masked. The Beguiling had pipe and drape around their booths and they were requiring masks for everyone who shopped there, and that worked fine for them. We had our masks on the entire time we were in the vendors hall, period, end of story. It got crowded in there. <br /><br />Since then we've been to the drive-in, I did an Eyesore screening of Japanese Ultraman/Space Giants/Spectreman/Giant Robot shows, I streamed it online a week later, and then a week after that we streamed "Warped By MTV 2". We went to the beach at Sibbald Point and we went to the beach at Chub Point north of Cobourg. We've done a bit of bike riding. We had a few waves of smoke from wildfires making their way through the city, making things spooky and apocalyptic and wheezy. We've been to the antique malls in Barrie and Cambridge and Woodstock and we've done a little woods walking and gotten a little mosquito bitten. <br /><br />Rolling into the back half of the summer the plans are to (a) hit the drive in again, (b) go to some more beaches, (c) have our anniversary dinner tomorrow, (d) go to the CNE, and (e) try to get out to Toronto Island again on the bikes. Before you know it summer will be over and it'll be back to sweaters and jackets. <br /><br />YES I got a Bluesky account and it is terebifunhouse.bsky.social and you can join me there. Twitter is now "X" and it's going down in flames like the end of a Dead Boys song.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=973546" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:973139gouty2023-05-02T15:39:13Z2023-05-02T15:39:13Zpublic0I was digging through my old posts to try and find the last time I had a GOUT ATTACK and I can't find it. Let's say it's been ten years. Well, I got one today, my right ankle is swole and hot and painful. Been trying to figure out what I did or ate or drank to deserve this, and I figure it's a combo of not taking my allopurinol for three days before my colonoscopy, and having a drink on Saturday? I dunno. I don't think I ate anything in the past week or so that triggers me. Anyway, it's a literal pain. That'll teach me to not ditch my meds.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=973139" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:972910April 22 2023!!2023-04-23T04:02:51Z2023-04-23T04:02:51Zpublic0so we went to Vancouver for a trip so Shain could see her family. Her sister lives there, her sister's son lives there with his wife and their new baby, and Shain's brother came up from California because his daughter's school was doing a thing in Seattle, and he rented a car and drove down there, saw his daughter just long enough to embarrass her in front of her friends, and then picked up his son at the airport and drove him back to Vancover. We were along on that trip and ate at a Taco Time by the Green River. You know, the one the Green River Killer is named after.<br /><br />It was a great trip, we stayed with the nephew and the new baby and the new baby is cheerful and generally pleasant. Vancouver seems to have swelled somewhat since I was there last. I mean, it's a big city, always felt like that, but today it feels larger, more scaled up, re-sized somehow. Maybe the Olympics will do that to a town.<br /><br />Everybody has pretty much given up masking everywhere, with a few exceptions. We masked on the plane along with a very few of our fellow passengers. The Japanese consignment shop in Vancouver had a mask policy in place and the proprietor was enforcing it, too. Some great stuff in that shop. <br /><br />We saw Shain's friend Teri and my pal Jesse and we did some shopping and a lot of eating. When we went down to Seattle the weather was beautiful blue skies, just right for eating a grilled salmon sandwich on the deck at Pike Place watching the crowds lining up to get into the first Starbucks. The next day it started raining and never really quit for that long, but hey, it's the PNW.<br /><br />Got right back and replaced the tire that caught some sort of Batman-dart style metal object the day before we left, and did a couple of days at work. Now I'm on my prep day before my colonoscopy tomorrow, which in practical terms means I don't get to ingest anything that isn't a clear liquid, and a lot of those clear liquids are designed to keep me close to the washroom until tomorrow. This is a routine thing for guys my age, in fact I should have had it done a few years ago. But, you know, COVID.<br /><br />Anyway it's nice to have a day at home where I can work on any one of the fifteen projects I have suspended in air as I tinker with them bit by bit. We're about a month out from Anime North and I'm nowhere near ready. Wheeee!<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=972910" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:972672april2023-04-10T14:59:40Z2023-04-10T14:59:40Zpublic0Wow, so Easter weekend came and went and we didn't do anything holiday related, we couldn't make Passover with Shain's family, so we just had a long weekend without any gotta-be-there-on-time commitments. And it was GREAT. Next, I plan to expand this policy to Christmas.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=972672" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:972295sale! Sale! Sale!2023-03-13T15:04:24Z2023-03-13T15:04:24Zpublic0The nerd yard sale at the U of T went fine. Parking is terrible on campus, exacerbated by the giant construction project they have going on in what used to be the quad. We got set up about five minutes before opening, there was a giant line of nerds looking to buy nerd stuff, three "free" tables were sellers or anybody could drop off unwanted merch, and generally a good vibe. Met some AWO listeners who'd heard me on the podcast and a Twitter friend who'd clued me into a Space Battleship Yamato PS2 game at a Value Village last year. <br /><br />Sales went OK. I think we sold one (1) comic book, all the Atari stuff, both anime DVDs, half the manga, and those silly Devilman figures got gone early. Took the remainder of the manga to the BMV after the show. I did sell three Souvenirs, which is nice. <br /><br />Had the usual visitor of some guy who paws through all the merch and thinks loudly about wanting to buy the merch, says he's going to come back later to buy the merch, and never buys the merch. Of course.<br /><br />There is nowhere open in the Hart House building to buy coffee on Sundays, and the nearest cafe is inside a library that is only open for U of T students. So I had to walk all the way down to College to get coffee. Ugh. <br /><br />It was swell to get rid of a big chunk of junk. Dunno what we're going to do with those comics though. Tabling at shows is a pain in the butt, but shows are the only place I might ever get any sort of return on these books. Key issues they definitely are not, they are the kind of weirdo nonsense we pick up for Stupid Comics, old Superboys, coverless Archies, etc.<br /><br />Used the profits to get lunch and groceries and kitty litter (a new kind that's basically wood pellets, and so far they haven't used it.) Then we watched the Oscars with the On Cinema Oscars Special on another monitor so we could see what shenanigans Heidecker and Turkington got up to. Seeing Ke Huy Quan and Harrison Ford hug each other on stage felt like the universe trying to get itself back on track after six or seven confused years, if that makes any sense. <br /><br />YES we watch the Oscars every year, if only to watch highly paid performers screw up their lines on live TV. This year Elizabeth Banks came out with laryngitis and a guy in a bear suit.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=972295" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:971303happy new year 20232023-01-20T16:11:51Z2023-01-20T16:11:51Zpublic1So yeah! We are 3 weeks into the new year and unlike LAST year, I didn't get the COVID. In fact I think everybody we saw on the trip dodged that particular bullet. Which is funny because seeming everybody ELSE in the world got it- this last wave was the one that nailed two reasonably careful co-workers and a bunch of my social media follows and friends of friends. <br /><br />Judging from the wastewater surveillance Ontario peaked again around Dec. 28 and has been dropping ever since. That Dec. 28 peak was higher than the Halloween peak and the July 1st peak, but not as high as the April peak. Do the math, we're due for another peak in March? <br /><br />At work one of my co-workers is in the "let everyone get it and get over it" mindset - her kids have had it twice already, which should put the lie to her own words, but I am DONE arguing with people about this. I am still gonna wear my mask in the grocery store and in indoor spaces. <br /><br />We did go to the movies and see the Shin Ultraman, which is great, I really enjoyed it. Probably going to get out to the movies more now. Masked. At home, we watched Glass Onion, which is fun, and Everything Everywhere All At Once is the movie Marvel's been thinking it's been making for the past two or three films, but way better. Land Of The Minotaur/The Devil's Men is boring and filled with stupid characters wandering around Greece, entering a temple, and being murdered by Peter Cushing's cult members, but it has a Brian Eno soundtrack and an end song sung by Paul Williams, so go figure. The documentary "Heavy Petting" is by the guy who made Atomic Cafe and is filled with vintage educational/instructional films about sex ed and dating, so you know it's right in my box o' interests. <br /><br />Still waiting to hear back from my doctor about all the x-rays and ultrasound I had done of my left shoulder which has been hurting since Halloween. The pain has been slowly decreasing over time but it's still hampering pretty much everything. I have a little exercise routine I do mornings that I have NOT been doing on account of this injury and I can feel my upper body strength just withering away. <br /><br />Anyway, that's the new year so far!!<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=971303" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:971097december trip2022-12-31T15:40:24Z2022-12-31T15:40:24Zpublic0SO! we had a trip. We left Toronto on Thursday the 22nd, had great weather to Detroit, crossed the border with no problems, stopped at Jeffrey's in Findlay and at a Skyline south of Wapakonetka for dinner. When we got to Greg and Melissa's place it was 40 degrees (F) and raining. An hour later it was 30 and snowing, and then it was 20 and snowing, and then it was 15 and snowing. Friday morning was bright and cold and icy.<br /><br />We shoveled out around the car, made sure it cranked, got everything loaded in spite of the trunk being frozen shut, put toe warmers in our shoes, and headed out. YES the first place we slipped and slid into was out of gas. YES the roads were slippery and people were out and about with no idea of how to handle snow and slush and ice. Lots of trucks and vans in the ditch. Flipped over SUVs, dead semis, mini-vans blocking traffic for miles while they tried to get traction to get up a hill. It was white-knuckle driving all the way to Lexington, where the roads cleared a bit. <br /><br />By the time we got to Knoxville it was dark, but the roads were fine, and stayed fine the rest of the way to Chattanooga, where we visited with Grant and Marie and their son. I want to say it was about 11pm when we got to Atlanta, where the temperature was still in the teens. Saturday was Xmas Eve and we did a little shopping around Smyrna. Jason came over and we ordered some Xmas pizza. Sunday was Xmas and as some of the family was unable to make it over due to reasons, it was decided to postpone gifts and family dinner until Tuesday, so we didn't do a whole lot other than try to walk around the block in the subzero weather, and did some driving trying to find somewhere open for dinner. <br /><br />Boxing Day Monday, Matt B. had a whole bunch of folks over for lunch and we spent most of the slightly warmer day over there catching up with a whole slew of Atlanta friends. Tuesday we drove to Athens to visit Bizarro Wuxtry and Devlin. Stopped at two antique malls on the way and both were either closed forever or in the process of remodelling and therefore closed. Got back to Smyrna in time to prep our part of dinner and we had a big family dinner and unwrapped presents. Wednesday Julia and Brian dropped their dog Hugo off with us while they went out of town so we spent a lot of time playing fetch and watching him destroy tennis balls, and then we did some antique malling and Marietta Diner-ing with with the SIL. <br /><br />Thursday we packed up and hit the road again back north. We went through Blue Ridge, which was jam packed with tourists, and Pigeon Forge, which was jam packed with tourists, and then to 40 and 81 and we spent the night in Beckley WV. Friday AM we got up, enjoyed the warm sunshine, went to an antique mall that again was closed for remodeling, drove up 77 to 19 to Fayetteville and visited an actual open antique mall, and then to 79, to 90, and to a Buffalo that seems to have recovered from the snow. Crossed the border at Ft. Erie, went to the Flying Saucer diner in a tourist-choked Niagara Falls. We were home to a warm and rainy Toronto by 10pm!<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=971097" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:970829December already?2022-12-05T16:05:35Z2022-12-05T16:05:35Zpublic0Yes! The last half of the new season of JoJo's has started. What I like about JoJo's is that by this point if you (a) aren't steeped in the lore, and (b) haven't been prepared by your steeping in the lore for the tone of the series, you will be mightily confused. Let's just say that the first half of this batch has "rods" (the air-dwelling cryptids captured on camera but invisible to the naked eye), Wilson Bryan Key's "Subliminal Seduction" hypothesis, the Seven Dwarfs calling Mazinger Z a "show off," and a deep south lynching scene straight out of an EC comic. The series is definitely a vibe, as the kids say.<br /><br />Spent Sunday under the sink trying to diagnose and fix a leak in the - let's keep this straight - the supply line to the hot water tap in the second sink in the bathroom. This is a leak we'd noticed in August, and right when I was going to tackle that job, the kitchen sink drain line got clogged and I spent the weekend bailing water and calling plumbers. I put a bucket under the bathroom sink and went on about my business, and the leak got leakier and leakier and Sunday I figured I'd tackle it.<br /><br />So the first thing you do is turn the water off, and as it happens when you turn the water off it shuts off the water for the entire bathroom, not just that sink. So I did that - no toilets or showers for a bit, guys - and then I unscrewed the line from the wall, and then I had to uninstall the faucet to unscrew the line from it. So now I know how to install a Tebisa single-hole faucet. Anyway, because we live in a condo built in 2008, Tebisa is one of those brands that has non-standard parts. Some of the light fixtures were the same way, can't find parts for them. Neither the Home Hardware nor the Canadian Tire carries that particular kind of line. So, either I put an entire new faucet in, or I just put the old line back on, put the bucket back down, and spend the day driving between Rona and Home Depot and Lowe's. <br /><br />I put the old line back on, tightened it back down, and so far the leakage has been minimal. I believe I can buy the correct line from Amazon and I might just do that in the new year. For now I think it will be OK. It's a good bucket under there. <br /><br />Saturday was the Anime North staff brunch up at Dragon Pearl, a vast improvement over the former buffet place on Dixie that was host for the buffets for a few years. Got to catch up with a bunch of staff and talk about con gossip and plans for 2023, and the food is good too. Spent the rest of Saturday finishing up the Anime Hell New Year's Eve broadcast, which will be happening starting at 10pm Eastern time on Dec. 31 at my twitch channel which is twitch.tv/terebifunhouse. <br /><br /><br /><img src="https://64.media.tumblr.com/b4ee31d44e0996da1350236d1160c383/d071c0bd919f8d5a-19/s540x810/1a9b82526f254f4e7d450aba0264f9802aa367c1.jpg" /><br /><br /><br />Last week I had a doctor's appointment for my left shoulder, which hurts like a sonofabitch. Doc thinks it's tendonitis, and I am having an X-Ray Wednesday to see if anything's detectable in that fashion, and then I'm going to start begging for cortisone shots. <br /><br />Last weekend's Saturday we went out walking in the woods in Hamilton, might be the last woods walking we have before things get wet and sloppy but not cold enough to freeze solid. Other than that things have been pretty standard - work is busy but not too busy, we're prepping for the Atlanta trip for Xmas. Put new headlights in the car, that was a thing I did. <br /><br />I went into it fully expecting to ditch but it turns out Andor is great, just a big dose of unshaven brick dust-covered sweat, painfully white electric-floor prison corridors, frosty moorland campsites, and that concrete 1970s brutalist-meets-unisex design that evokes the original Star Wars, THX-1138, and what we'd like a Blake's 7 reboot to look like. No space wizards, no podracing, no winky nods reminding us of what it was like to play with action figures, just a Rebellion from the ground up. <br /><br /><br />The new season of Pop Team Epic is maybe not as mean spirited as the first season? Are they choosing nicer strips? The new season of Golden Kamuy is, I dunno, more of the same enough to make me sit there and say, come on, I don't need to see backstory of the weird blind guy with the leather ear enhancers, let's get on with it. <br /><br />Have not seen any of the big nerd movies of the fall/winter season, and from what I can tell I'm not missing much. Still have not seen a new film in theaters since January of 2020.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=970829" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:970008September!! September 2022 already!2022-09-07T16:27:51Z2022-09-07T16:27:51Zpublic0What have we been up to? Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe were great, Los Straitjackets played with Nick, which I wasn't expecting. Massey Hall was jam packed. We stayed masked up all the time. Our seats weren't terrific, but they were kind of last minute. Went to Chinatown and got a late dinner afterwards<br /><br />Let's see, what else has been going on...<br /><br />we drove up to Wasaga Beach Provincial Park and had a beach day on the 21st. Wasaga Beach is the longest freshwater beach in the world! There's a boardwalk and hot dogs and arcades and beach bars and surf shops, all the tacky beach stuff of a Myrtle Beach or a Daytona compressed into two blocks of central Ontario Georgian Bay shoreline. The park is next to all this and was less crowded than the civic beach, so that's where we went. <br /><br />Vic Mignogna the "R. Kelly Of Anime" lost his appeal, so there was a three day explosion of chud brains all over Twitter which has since died back as the right wing offenderati find something new to get offended about, and millions (well, hundreds) of alt accounts are silenced forever.<br /><br />Project Z Fansubs remastered the Corn Pone Flicks versions of "Grandizer Vs Great Mazinger" and "Mazinger Z Vs Devilman," meaning you can enjoy our parody subtitles in high-def. I had the opportunity to replace some jokes in "Mazinger Z Vs Devilman" and was happy to do it, those jokes did NOT age well. <br /><br />Didn't do a whole lot for my birthday, which was Friday the 26th, but I did take the day off and I rode around the waterfront and Ontario Place until I got dehydrated and had to sit quietly for a bit. Saturday was our day to go to the CNE, and we did that, but before we did that, the kitchen sink suddenly decided it was going to stop draining. A blockage in the pipe downstream from our sink meant that any water we put into the sink was going to stay right there until it overflowed out of the sink or the dishwasher, but that any time anybody upstairs used their sink or their dishwasher, it drained out of the stack and into our unit. So a lot of bailing and dumping and dumping and bailing. I took the P-trap off the sink and let everything drain into a series of dollar store buckets and tubs while we waited for the plumber to call us back, which, it being a weekend, was Monday. <br /><br />Monday the plumber came out, cleared the clog, told us to run sinkfuls of really hot water down the drain every once in a while, put a new P-trap on the sink, and was out of there. <br /><br />That Sunday night we rode our bikes to see Comedy Bang Bang in better seats at Massey Hall, as Scott Auckerman interviewed Peanut Parton, Keith Keith, Power Wheels Beth, and founding Sugarhill Gang member Cal Solomon. Went to Fran's afterwards. thank goodness Fran's survived. <br /><br />Tuesday was Shain's birthday and we went back out to the CNE, which was less crowded than it had been on Saturday. Still busy, though. People REALLY wanted the CNE back. It's been very trafficky in the neighborhood the entire time but that last week got really bad. One night there was a TFC game as well as the CNE going on, and my attempts to get home at 10pm were thwarted three blocks from our building. I just parked on a side street and walked home, when the traffic finally emptied out around 12:30am I retrieved the car. Why people drive into Liberty Village for events is anybody's guess.<br /><br />The next weekend, Labor Day weekend, Saturday we drove out to Grand Bend for another beach day - also super busy, but there's a park to the north of downtown that also has beach space and is less crowded. I think our beach tent might have seen the last beach - it's one of those little pop-up things that folds down into a circle, at least it's supposed to. Eventually the plastic ribs break. Sunday was gloomy so we did a little shopping and some TV watching - finally caught up with that "Cats" movie that really serves to show off the weaknesses of inserting human faces onto CG characters and the musical "Cats" in general, which is mostly characters introducing themselves. Monday we biked down to carb up at our tourist comfort food destination The Old Spaghetti Factory, and then biked up the Don River trail to Riverside Park, up the stairs, up the hill, and back through downtown home. <br /><br />WE HAVE BEEN WATCHING: Only Murders In The Building, What We Do In The Shadows, Star Trek Strange New Worlds, She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, Space Battleship Yamato 2205 (solid New Yoyages rejigger with selected bits of Yamato III worked into the mix, much more successful than 2202), and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean. Golden Kamuy starts back up next month. Lots of TV to enjoy, we're kind of wallowing here. <br /><br />October will be here before we know it, AWA's at the end of October, I'm doing Super Happy Fun Sell on Thursday, Anime Hell on Friday and panels about 1972 and 1982. Look out!<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=970008" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:969525fast trip to ny2022-08-02T15:31:45Z2022-08-02T15:31:45Zpublic0yesterday was the civic holiday so we took a fast trip across the border to mail a package to Neil Nadelman and to do a little shopping. Target looks like a bomb went off in there; 5 Below has better graphic tees, Tops is still great, we went to an antique mall out in Clarence and didn't find anything, but we got some lunch at a custard stand down the road which was great. The wait at the Rainbow Bridge was a solid hour so we went to the Peace Bridge which was a more manageable 20 minutes. <br /><br />Sunday we biked downtown to lunch; The Barn diner at Queen & Bathurst is closed permanently, which is a shame. Queen Mother is still open though. Wound up watching CUJO on the cable TV and boy that's a mid 1980s Stephen King movie, it's Petaluma CA trying to be Maine (set-dressed with Olympia and Coors beer) and you spend the entire movie infuriated at the clueless ad exec husband who drives a Jag while sticking the wife and kid with a Pinto. I know that's the point, but still. <br /><br />Saturday was the first Caribbean Carnival back in the city since 2019 and it pretty much locks our neighborhood down. We had to get out to go to the Oakville Drive-In and it took us an hour to do what usually takes 20 minutes, most of which was trying to get past the traffic pinch points where the lack of left turn signals meets the sewer construction meets the thousands of people trying to get in or out of Liberty Village. <br /><br />We saw NOPE and THE BLACK PHONE at the drive-in. Both are good! NOPE isn't as "heavy" as Peele's other films, but still demonstrates he's absolutely running where M. Night stumbles along. There's an anime reference in the movie that will bring a smile to your face. THE BLACK PHONE is like IT meets SILENCE OF THE LAMBS meets DAZED AND CONFUSED, a period serial-killer movie mixed with supernatural elements that works mostly because of the strong performances of the young cast.<br /><br />This week: back to work. Next Monday we're seeing Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe!<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=969525" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:969395july update2022-07-26T15:40:13Z2022-07-26T15:40:13Zpublic2So that happened! "That" being June and July. This past week has been the first time since May I've been able to sort of gear back and not be so busy. Let's see, what happened? <br /><br />June 17-19 was TCAF and that meant June 17 we went down late at night and set up our table. Went home and did not sleep. Anxiety, my schedule being thrown off, you name it. Saturday and Sunday Shain and I traded time at the table, pitching comics to strangers, listening to the pitches of our table neighbors, doing the TCAF thing. I enjoyed it and we sold quite a few comics - people either bought my comics, or bought Shain's comics, they did not buy both. Everybody was masked and the vendors all had to show vax certifications. We didn't make enough to cover the table fee, but whatever. Anyway Shain had been riding her bike down to meet me and on Sunday her bike got stolen right in front of the library in the middle of the crowds of that library's busiest weekend of the year. So there's that. She got a new bike, she likes the new one a lot, it's a better bike, but still. It's a pain.<br /><br />The next weekend I flew to Atlanta for my mom's memorial. The travel to and from was a nightmare of delayed flights and sitting on runways for hours, but the memorial itself went about as well as these things can go. A lot of friends and relatives showed up, neighbors brought food, after the service we had a lot of people over to the house and there was a lot of catching up and reminiscing. I spoke at the service and got through my prepared remarks without breaking. Most of what I said was lifted from my sister's obituary. Not a lot of masking going on in the church or at home or in restaurants, but I guess we all got out of it OK - nobody reported any illness after the service. <br /><br />Two weeks later it was Anime North time. That two weeks I spent putting together Anime Hell and a panel about 1982 and a panel about the fan conventions in Toronto that happened before Anime North. Research on that last one was difficult - how a literary SF convention can last for 20+ years and barely leave a historical mark is fascinating in a "what are they trying to hide" sort of way - but the panel went well, with a larger audience than I thought would show up, all seemingly interested in how the Delta hotel they were currently in used to be called the Skyline and how it hosted Star Trek conventions back in the 90s.<br /><br />Everybody at AN was vaxxed and masking was observed fairly faithfully. In the run up to the show, and after the show, I had a few social media friends get a little confrontational about how we shouldn't be having any conventions right now because of COVID. I agree, somewhat. Right now we're in another wave - the positivity rate seems to be climbing, while the wastewater signal is levelling off, so who knows - and this BA strain is really contagious. Obviously it's wise to avoid groups. <br /><br />At the same time, it's 2022. Most of us have had three doses, we know good masks work to prevent infection, and we're past the point where force majure is going to get organizations out of being liable for deposits and reservations if shows are cancelled. Right now, either Anime North has a convention with its vax and mask policies, which are above and beyond the province's rules and above and beyond the rules of any of the other immense events happening in Toronto right now (sports events, concerts, gatherings of every kind), or Anime North cancels, refunds everybody's tickets, kisses one hundred and eighty thousand dollars in deposits goodbye, declares bankruptcy, and never has another convention again. That's the choice facing Anime North, and they chose to have a show. <br /><br />Nine days after Anime North wrapped, it looks like we dodged whatever bullets were flying; so far I've heard of two people getting COVID from the show (one person whose food was sneezed on in the Harveys and another who got dragooned into doing line work all day in the poor ventilation of TCC South). I've tested negative, my pal Neil, with whom I put together a classic anime room for Sunday of the show, has been testing negative, nobody among my circle has reported feeling bad at all. Tired, yes. Bad, no.<br /><br />I have seen so far two interesting reports of CO2 levels at the show and it seems the TCC South building was the worst, with levels getting into the 3000ppm+ range. Which is bad. So there's that. Mask up kids, Covid ain't done with us yet.<br /><br />Since AN, there's been one weekend. That Saturday we went to a beach on Lake Erie and beached out for a day, and that Sunday I worked. This coming up weekend is a long weekend and we might go to Niagara and maybe into Buffalo for some cross border shopping. But first, coming up is our 20th wedding anniversary, which is Wednesday. By all rights we should be in Japan for this anniversary, but life has its own plans. Anyway, I have dinner reservations here.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=969395" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:968147trip '222022-05-03T16:14:18Z2022-05-03T16:14:18Zpublic2so we just got back from Boston. Here's what happened on our trip! <br />Friday we packed up and hit the road. Shain starts a new contract in a week and wanted to get some vacation time in beforehand, and we hadn't seen our pals in Boston for a while, so that became our goal. Traffic on the QEW was lousy so we detoured, but eventually got to Queenston/Lewiston and crossed into the US with normal pre-covid clearances. We got on the NY Thruway I-90, stopped once for gas, and it was around Herkimer that our battery light came on. <br /><br />We've had the car 15 years and this is the first time this has happened - even when I've had batteries die on me, that light has stayed off. Otherwise things seemed normal so we kept on going. We stopped for gas again 111 miles later at a Love's just this side of the Massachusetts border - I figured it was a good place to stop in case it didn't start again, a truck stop would have someone who knew of local garages. It cranked back up again, battery light shining brightly. So, throwing caution to the wind, off we went. <br /><br />90 miles later is when the car died. The radio went, the lights dimmed, the car lost power. Yup, it's the alternator. I hit the hazards and we pulled over to the side of I-90. We were still weighing our options when a Mass. State Patrol cruiser pulled up behind us, put out a flare, and called Interstate Towing. <br /><br />Interstate towed us to a Firestone in Auburn, the nearest garage that does electrical work. Shain texted Prairie and Mike, who drove out from Boston to pick us up, we dropped off the key in the lock box at the Firestone, and we rode into Boston chastened by our automotive failure. This was the first time that car has EVER been towed anywhere, in 15 years of driving. <br /><br />So we got a late dinner at Doublechin, got to bed super late. Got up Saturday and phoned the Firestone; they're gonna do what they need to do and they'll call us when it's ready. Neil and Carol came over and we did some driving around, some Outer Limits comic shopping in Waltham, some thrifting, some video gaming, and we were in Marblehead when the Firestone called at 6 to say the car was ready, can we be there in 15 minutes? No, no we cannot, see you tomorrow. We got a late Italian dinner in Winthrop and Neil took us back to Mike and Prairie's. <br /><br />Sunday we got up and Prairie drove us back out to Auburn to pick up the car. A new battery and alternator and $$$ monies later, it cranked right up. We made a little caravan around Worcester for brunch, a visit to comic shop/toy store "That's Entertainment", and then we were off to Cambridge to meet my pal Josephine whom I hadn't seen in like 25 years. So when we cranked the car up to go to Cambridge, we noticed the battery light very faintly trying to come back on. WHAT THE HELL.<br /><br />So we made it to Cambridge with no issues. We made it to Kowloon's in Saugus with no issues. That little light kept on keeping dimly on. We made it to Arlington with no issues, and we made it back to Mike and Prairie's with no issues. <br /><br />Monday it was time to go home. We said goodbye to our long-suffering hosts and the still amazing drivers of Boston and headed back out on I-90, back to Auburn and that Firestone to find out what was wrong and why that dang light was still dimly shining. We got to Auburn and saw some more Interstate Towing trucks handling a big jacknifed tractor trailer accident. Keep up the good work, boys. <br /><br />Firestone did a little Toyota service bulletin research, did see that there is sometimes a dim battery light after an alternator change, and we walked around the mall, visited Big Lots, and got some Dunkin' until we figured the car was ready. We walked back over just as they were pulling it out of the lot. <br /><br />They checked the alternator, they checked the battery, everything is putting out the correct volts and amps and doing what it needs to do. It might be some sort of wiring fault somewhere down in the electrical system, it might be that the Yaris feels there's something not quite right about aftermarket alternators, who knows. Their advice was that the car was going to operate normally and to have it checked out by people who know more about Toyota electrical systems when we get home. So we headed out on I-90 again, and the car was fine, that battery light dimly shining.<br /><br />We stopped in Little Falls NY to stretch our legs and look at the antique center in the scenic valley of the Mohawk River, where some kind of abandoned structure looms on the cliffs. I've always wanted to take pictures of this so we got as close as we could, which meant driving three feet from the river on a road full of fallen rocks and potholes. <br /><br />We stopped again at one of the service centers on I-90, by 8:30 we were across the border into Canada, and by 9:30 we were having dinner in a Kelsey's in Hamilton watching the Leafs beat Tampa Bay. The car got us 500 miles home with no problems at all. <br /><br />Absolutely we are thinking about getting another car. We've gotten a lot of trips out of the Yaris, but getting stranded on the side of the interstate once is all the warning I need.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=968147" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:967764april 20222022-04-05T15:20:29Z2022-04-05T15:20:29Zpublic0Here in the new world there's a seeker born every minute! And THAT's the Firesign Theater reference I put into the newest Let's Anime which is all about Queen Millennia, the 1982 Toei anime film that combines Leiji Matsumoto's tragic space goddess mother figure with lots of New Age Harmonic Convergence crystal vibrations, a Kitaro soundtrack, and a script that hits some of the marks of the Queen Millennia TV show and manga, only occasionally getting into high gear. <br /><br /><a href="https://letsanime.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-queen-of-one-thousand-and-forty.html">https://letsanime.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-queen-of-one-thousand-and-forty.html</a><br /><br /><img src="https://64.media.tumblr.com/7a1922c46c3d40c41e0480c500a2e170/568ebe8185341e63-81/s1280x1920/1578e72ddc0779afe53718ba1a0c1fcbe6dab7e1.jpg" /><br /><br />In other news, the new kitten is integrated well into the family unit, I'm still working weird shifts on the HP Indigo, the weather is slowly warming up, the Oscars were a disaster (this is why people watch the Oscars, it's live TV starring people that are used to fifty takes in a closed set, screwups are everywhere). COVID cases are ticking back up, mostly among triple-vaxed people who set their masks on fire and want to cough on everybody in the Ikea, like we saw on Sunday. We're still masking in stores, thanks.<br /><br />I am looking for a space in Toronto where we can hold a Small Press Comic Market. That's the term I'm going with now. 20 tables, 40 chairs, six hours on a Saturday or a Sunday sometime in the fall, that's all I need. Waiting to hear back from my first choice, but there are some other spaces under consideration as well. Trying to keep it in the Parkdale area, but if I have to go further afield I will.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=967764" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:967529March 2022 update2022-03-05T00:35:15Z2022-03-05T00:35:15Zpublic0So what have I been up to for the past month? <br /><br />Dave-watchers may remember way back in December of 2017 I got sent down to Alpharetta GA to get trained on an HP Indigo press my job was buying. So I did that for two weeks. Then I flew back to Toronto and then Shain and I turned right around and drove down to Atlanta for Christmas, it was kind of a busy month there. And then after Xmas I came back to Toronto and didn't really work on the HP at all for various reasons. Well, four years later, my work says, hey, we need Dave to get back up to speed on the HP. So for the past month I've been over on the other side of the digital room getting my HP learning curve flattened out. I have cleared a lot of jams, changed a lot of blankets, and had some long service calls, but I feel pretty competent with the thing now. <br /><br />Let's combine this new HP stuff with how work's gotten busier. The short hours I spent most of 2020-21 on are now over, I'm back to regular working hours. So I've been fully employed for the first time since a long time, and that's taken some adjusting of alarm clocks and what-not. <br /><br />We spent Valentines at Storm Crow Manor, a nerd-gamer-fan theme restaurant with good food and novelty drinks. It was our first time visiting, and the next time friends come to town they are ALL getting dragged there 'cause it's kinda cool. <br /><br />We got a new kitten, his name is Muskie, as in Ed Muskie, to go along with our other cat's name, which is Mewbert Mumphrey. Muskie is about five months, fluffier than Mewbert, a little more outgoing. After some initial hissing and swats, Muskie is now following Mewbert around the place and they're more or less coexisting. Still some play-fighting from time to time. <br /><br />The latest Stupid Comics is all about how if you join the Army Reserve, they don't want to hear how you don't want to fight. <a href="https://misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics753.html">https://misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics753.html</a><br /><br />The latest Let's Anime is a column from 1999 by Walter Amos that was supposed to see print in a Star Blazers 20th Anniversary fanzine, but for various reasons didn't see the light of day until now. <a href="https://letsanime.blogspot.com/2022/02/star-blazers-and-start-of-fannish.html">https://letsanime.blogspot.com/2022/02/star-blazers-and-start-of-fannish.html</a><br /><br />Anime North is coming back in July, I'm going to be doing panels and generally revelling in the return of home-town anime cons, and there will be a streaming online thing in May as well. <a href="https://www.animenorth.com/event/">https://www.animenorth.com/event/</a><br /><br />I'm planning on doing another streaming Anime Hell sometime soon, it'll be a Dubs Time Forgot presentation of, well, Dubs Time Forgot. So stay tuned.<br /><br />We saw Dune! I liked it, the film took time to explain things in ways the 1984 film did not, and definitely foregrounds the Lawrence Of Arabia THESE ARE ARABS stuff and the MAYBE MESSIAHS DON'T WORK OUT, GUYS stuff. We saw Nightmare Alley and it's terrific, just put Toni Collette in every movie to whisper "don't do the spook show" over in the corner. We watched The Peacemaker and I was surprised at how much I liked it, not really a DC guy, but this show delivered in ways the Marvel TV shows have not, period, full stop. Funny, gratuitous, violent, lots of attitude, but with a big sloppy heart. I really want to go to a movie theater again. Maybe soon.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=967529" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:967421one of those pandemic posts2022-02-09T12:56:00Z2022-02-09T12:56:00Zpublic1A month ago I was doing my five day quarantine on account of the COVID, and cases here were 7-day averaging 13K. Today the 7-day average is 3K. Progress, definite progress. Restaurants opened back up on the 31st, things open up further Feb. 21 and by March 14 most restrictions are lifted.<br /><br />If our next wave is like the last wave, we'll have another spike in May that should flatten by July? I just want to have an Anime North again.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=967421" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:966850back on our kitsch bs2022-01-31T14:54:24Z2022-01-31T14:55:25Zpublic0Saturday it was cold as heck so we stayed in. I cut my hair. We watched a 1977 TV movie ("Possession") starring James Farentino as a former priest brought back from the dead to battle evil and star in this failed pilot. Harrison Ford is a sleazy, mumbly biology teacher at an all-girls school where mysterious fires are breaking out while PJ Soles looks on from the background. I went to Canadian Tire and bought a windshield wiper and to the pet store for more kitty litter. Baked some cookies. Got a pizza from the Detroit place here. It was that kind of Saturday. <br /><br />Sunday we went out up north on 400 to visit some antique malls we hadn't been to. The one on 11 north of Orillia hasn't changed much, the Pickers' place north of Barrie has closed, and the Barrie Antique Center has re-opened as "Sanford & Son" run by a woman who's name actually is Sanford. Nice to see the antique center re-opened, it's been largely overhauled though the corner full of books is still there. <br /><br />Not surprised the Pickers' place closed. It was poorly laid out, most of the merch was overpriced, the place was half full of auto body parts, if you did find something interesting, it wouldn't have a price on it. <br /><br />Looks like we're in for a warming trend for the next couple of days, which will give the giant piles of snow a chance to melt. Yes please.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=966850" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:966569boosted2022-01-25T15:11:31Z2022-01-25T15:11:31Zpublic0I got my booster Saturday evening! Sunday I felt pretty lousy but it passed by Monday. Feeling back to normal, I guess. It snowed a bunch on Monday the 17th and everybody took a snow day. Snowed some again last night, enough to make things a little slippery here and there. I find the crucial element in snow driving is to keep that momentum going - you can make it up that hill *if* you are allowed to sail into it at a reasonable speed. If you have to stop because, say, some Uber driver has to stop dead in front of you to let somebody off, well, that makes things tougher. Almost happened to me. <br /><br /><br />Before my booster we went out into the hinterlands to some antique malls we hadn't visited in a while, out to Tillsonburg Antique Warehouse and Courtland Treasures. Found an inflatable Huckleberry Hound for a bargain price. The vinyl is back out at prices ranging from ridiculous to 3-for-$1 but I never have enough time to really dig through the records. These places all close at 5, so by the time we get out there our browsing time is limited. Spent the rest of the weekend watching cheesy old TV movies and staying out of the cold, and recovering from the booster. <br /><br />Anime North has moved its date back to July and I'm all in favor of it - the COVID situation might have cooled down enough by then to allow us to do a 50% capacity show. I don't think the venues are going to let Anime North NOT hold a show this year - 2020 and 2021's shows were legally prohibited from happening, which gives everybody a force majure out, but unless things get awful again 2022 is a different story. I was expecting a lot of complaining on the various Facebook groups but people seem to be feeling positive about it. I like the July date anyway. Their previous May date was the US Memorial Day weekend which put AN up against four or five other good-sized anime conventions, which has cost AN guests, vendors, industry, and attendees in the past. Also, later in the year gives me more prep time.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=966569" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:966345ask not for whom the bell tolls2022-01-11T01:29:28Z2022-01-11T01:35:14Zpublic1Well, I got the COVID. Am feeling crummy but manageably crummy. Cough, aches, no fever, I can still taste and smell. We're quarantining at home for five days, this is day five, I feel like I'm coming out the other side of it. If I feel OK tomorrow I'm going back in to work. If not, it's one more vacation day I can burn.<br /><br />Not quite sure where I got it - we had PCR tests on the 27th and the 29th and they came out negative. I started getting sneezy on Saturday the 1st but my sinuses have been nuts for a while now and I didn't think anything of it. My wife got her booster on the 3rd. She started to feel a little lousy, I was still sneezing, we happened to have two rapid tests thanks to friends in Cincy, so we tested on Thursday AM. She tested negative while I tested positive. Thursday afternoon is when I started feeling legit sick. So far I've been about the same. We really haven't been anywhere except to the grocery store or to walk outdoors. I went to work twice, but I don't work closely with anybody, I work an off shift mostly by myself. So who knows where this came from.<br /><br />We have plenty of food, the cat has plenty of food, we have plenty to occupy ourselves with. We're just waiting it out.<br /><br />For me, COVID feels... there's a weird hot ache behind my eyes, and fatigue, and a dry cough. I don't have that "beat with a baseball bat" deep body aches I get with the flu, my digestion and appetite have been fine, even the fatigue isn't too extreme. I have probably gone into work feeling worse. Definitely I felt worse the last time I had a solid case of the flu.<br /><br />I've had two Moderna shots, the wife has had three Pfizers. I'm sure without those shots we'd be a lot sicker. My advice is to stay away from other people and get all the shots you possibly can get. And then stay further away from other people.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=966345" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:966009tripped out2022-01-01T20:24:36Z2022-01-01T20:24:36Zpublic0So yeah, we went to Atlanta for Christmas. We'd planned the trip a few months out, figuring COVID would be a dull roar in the background, instead of the cranked up to 11 scream it's been for about a month now. A week before the trip Canada's health minister pretty much begged everybody to cancel their non-essential travel, and I waited for some sort of official border closure. That never came, so we went.<br /><br />We left here Wednesday the 22nd and drove to Cincinnati. The border crossing was uneventful - the officer asked if we were vaxed, but didn't check the documents. We stayed with Greg and Melissa that night and the next day drove down I-75 Atlanta way, stopping off in Chattanooga to see Grant and Marie and Daniel. <br /><br />In Atlanta we didn't do a whole lot other than seeing family, wrapping presents, having Xmas at Dad's with everybody over a brunch/lunch meal. Boxing Day Sunday we saw a bunch of friends at Matt Buffington's house with his family (two kids now!) - CB, Elizabeth, Parker, Matt, Melanie, Jessica, Mike and their two daughters. <br /><br />Monday we went out to Athens to see Devlin T. at Bizarro Wuxtry and trade in a bunch of comics for store credit, and catch up on what's been going on in the Classic City. Also on Monday we got our pre-arrival PCR tests at Walgreens'. They'd been good at getting my results back during AWA so I figured a Monday noon test would be fine for a Wednesday border crossing.<br /><br />Tuesday we got back on the road. We detoured to Dirty Jane's Antiques in Red Bank TN, where we saw a repurposed school bus that housed One Piece fans (what's the story with that?) and then we took 27 north to I-40, I-40 east to 75, and 75 north back to Cincinnati. Wednesday we got up and still no test results. We got lunch and still no test results. Andy knew of a lab near his job that guaranteed same-day PCR test results for $100 - but they closed at 3pm. At 2 we decided to bite the bullet and get those tests.<br /><br />A couple of C-notes later we were swabbed. Rather than sit around Cincy waiting for emails we figured we could make some time on the road, so back north we went. <br /><br />Shain's negative results from the second lab arrived at 7pm. We stopped at a Starbucks in Lincoln Park and I checked my email - I had both sets of (negative) test results waiting for me. With those in hand we crossed back into Canada about 9:30. This border crossing was much less trouble than the search we got back in August. We got home about 1:30am.<br /><br />All in all a fine trip - we got to see a lot of people, exchange presents, and not get sick. We didn't get to do the kind of deep-dive antique mall digging that we enjoy, however. The sheer stress of worrying about getting those return PCR test results back in time, combined with the stress of worrying about getting COVID in the first place, well, that made this trip more anxious than usual - and I'm always anxious about long cross-border car trips anyway. So yeah, some stress. <br /><br />Glad we saw family and friends, glad we stayed well, glad to be home. Here's to a better 2022!<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=966009" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:965695november 17 2021 covid numbers2021-11-18T01:34:40Z2021-11-18T01:34:40Zpublic0The last time I did one of these number roundups was almost a year ago. This is what it looked like last December: <br /><br />worldwide cases: 65,395,834 <br />worldwide deaths: 1,509,544 <br />US cases: 14,149,770 <br />US deaths: 276,406 <br />Canada cases: 399,770 <br />Canada deaths: 12,423 <br />Ontario cases: 125,233 <br />Ontario deaths: 3,727 <br /><br />what does it look like now? <br />worldwide cases: 254,910,151 <br />worldwide deaths: 5,122,686<br />US cases: 47,414,651<br />US deaths: 767,324<br />Canada cases: 1,765,163<br />Canada deaths: 29,485<br />Ontario cases: 617,057<br />Ontario deaths: 10,003<br /><br />To be honest I don't even know what these numbers mean any more. More cases, fewer deaths? More vax, fewer hospitalizations? Ontario's daily numbers spiked in the spring, went down in the summer, spiked again around Labor Day, and have been going down ever since. Our numbers have been in the hundreds of new cases per day, 512 new cases today. It's been bouncing around 250-400-600 for the past week or so. <br /><br />We'll be driving down to Atlanta for a short Christmas visit and we'll likely have to have the PCR test again before we cross back. I'm hoping things will keep trending downwards.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=965695" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-05:2847300:965503post AWA thoughts2021-11-17T04:11:12Z2021-11-17T04:11:12Zpublic0So it's two weeks since I got back from AWA and I guess I didn't get the COVID. I got two separate PCR tests the Sunday of the con - just so I'd have results in time before my flight on Tuesday- and they were both negative, of course.<br /><br />The con went OK! Thursday was super crowdy. Friday still kinda crowdy. Saturday and Sunday didn't feel as crowded as those days felt in 2019. My feeling is, my guess was right and the show lost about ten percent attendance. The people that did show up were masked, vaxed, tested, and ready to party. I mean Thursday night drunken Disney Atlantis Princess drunk.<br /><br />A lot of my friends who usually come didn't make it this time. The Saturday night that we'd normally have some sort of room party in memory of the room party we used to have which was called Dessloktoberfest, well, it was me and Neil and Ryan and Lloyd and Matt Buffington sitting around Neil's room drinking the rest of the six-pack of Shiner I brought and just shooting the breeze; no big deal but after not seeing these guys for 2 years it felt great. <br /><br />The congoers were great about masking up. The part about "you must show your vax card or your negative test results" didn't quite filter down to the walk-ins, however, so there were a lot of walk-ins getting annoyed that they had to fish out their vax cards. I mean, the Braves weren't asking for vax receipts. Seems like the States, or Georgia anyways, has basically decided to Stop Giving A Shit and let the virus roam free as the wind blows. <br /><br />The World Series meant parking was absolutely not happening for under thirty dollars on Saturday. I saw "Parking $100" at the Steak & Shake on Sunday. Most of the Braves fans were bemused & amused by the anime cosplayers, if people were expecting trouble it didn't happen. Hard to be angry when the Braves are in the series, I guess.<br /><br />Most of the nerd fan drama nonsense seemed to dial itself back. Disgraced former anime voice actor Vic Mignogna had a signing scheduled the Saturday of the show at a hotel across I-285 from the convention, and there was some talk about what if certain banned Vic-involved people show up at the con? I don't wanna say the head of public safety was looking forward to throwing certain people out on their ass, but when Lloyd and I did our "history of AWA" panel that certain people had shown up to in 2019, public safety was there with eyes on. But certain people didn't show up. Better for everybody involved, I think.<br /><br />The con had crazy line problems on Thursday - more Thursday attendees than ever before. Two lines for the SHFS materialized out of nowhere and what can you do? They got merged into one line, and people who got the short end of the stick weren't happy. One woman told me AWA was the worst run convention she'd ever been to. That's a tall order for 5pm on a Thursday! Anyway, I saw her later, she got into the SHFS and walked out with armloads of stuff, so I guess things went OK for her at some point.<br /><br />Anime Hell went without a hitch. Opening ceremonies were an hour late starting, so I figured by the time Neil's Totally Lame got going it would be at least 9 - but they scheduled an hour of slack time into the schedule and Neil started more or less on time, as did Hell, as did Midnight Madness. Didn't have a full room for the full two hours, but that's on par with attendance levels throughout the convention, I think.<br /><br />Sunday I got a ride for myself and Neil over to Dad's house, and we carved a pumpkin and handed out candy to kids, the first pumpkin I've carved in a long time. Walked around the block and caught up with a neighbor girl who's now a neighbor lady living in her childhood home taking care of her elderly mom and her kids and her mom's business and her own job, and still had time to dress up Mrs. Voorhees (her son was Jason). <br /><br />My convention panels were over by noon Saturday, I left the dealers' room for the last time with $40 still in my pocket, spent my downtime catching up with friends from 10, 20, 30 years back, hearing about kids, health issues, middle school drama, and how everybody's coping with the tidal wave of covid wrecking everything. <br /><br />I got to hear from a LOT of fans happy to be back at the con, happy AWA was back. Got to hear from a few staffers who thanked me for helping the show through the rough patch it was going through when it changed hands a few years back. After the con I came home and there was an email from someone who had been attending my classic anime panels for years and how those panels had opened her eyes to a lot of great shows she might otherwise never have seen, and that was a nice email to get in the aftermath of a convention. <br /><br />Flying seems to have added a few layers of passport-checking, boarding-pass checking, can I see that sticker on your passport, please? checkpoints. An hour before we needed to leave for the airport I decided my old luggage was trash, so I hustled over to the Canadian Tire and splurged on a new set of (cheapish) hard-shell luggage. Treat yourself, I guess. Glad I did. <br /><br />Discotek WAS at AWA but they did not have Braiger. They had the Cleopatra with my pull quote on the back, though. I wound up paying shipping for Braiger along with Future Boy Conan. What a world we anime nerds live in now.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=davemerrill&ditemid=965503" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments