I knew that wasn't the cool thing to do.

No, I’m Not Going to Comic-Con

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 01:48:47 GMT

Earlier this week I had a dream about Comic-Con out in San Diego.

Karon and I had shown up to check into our room at the hotel, except the hotel had run out of rooms ages ago. So instead, everyone was being assigned a space on the hotel lobby floor where a sleeping bag was set up for us. And we didn’t even bat an eye, because that level of too-many-people insanity just seemed normal in a show that draws over 100,000 people each day.

And that is why I’m not going to Comic-Con. Sorry.

(Smell some rancid sweat and pay $15 for a bottle of water for me, though!)

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Down to Earth

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:07:09 GMT

Charlie and I went and saw WALL-E on Sunday night and it was, well, as great as everyone said it was. This is a movie I’d actually want to see in the theatre again (although movies are so darn expensive these days, who knows); just beautiful in both animation and story. And if that wasn’t enough, the super-fantastic Scott Morse designed the closing credits, which were beautiful and had a new song by Peter Gabriel (”Down to Earth”) playing over them. And I freely admit that I have listened to said song over a dozen times in the past 24 hours.

Obsessive? Me? Oh no.

I also found out this weekend (or was reminded of after I’d forgotten) that the Ellipse Arts Center in Arlington is having a six-week exhibition starting in August showcasing art from Arlington residents. The day one has to drop off the art is Thursday, so it’d have to be something that I showed in Artomatic. What’s nice is that the Center handles sales (for a percentage of the asking price), and it would certainly be nice to sell another piece. I didn’t come even close to breaking even at Artomatic; I wasn’t expecting to come out ahead, but I was certainly hoping to do so. When the show was over, I went home with all but two of the 5×5″s (that a nice gentleman in Falls Church bought), and one piece that Charlie had said he wanted and which I gave to him.

On the bright side, though, it certainly made me think a lot more about what I would do differently next time (a lot); presentation and selection and print size choices certainly had a lot to do with it. Glad I learned (or at least I think I did), but it would’ve been nice to have some of the costs offset.

Ah well! I’ve been having fun taking the new camera to the farmer’s market (as people who look at my Flickr account have no doubt seen) and I figure I’ve got a few more sessions to go there as the summer progresses. I like to imagine having a huge kitchen with which I could use some of those photos to decorate. One of these days, right?

Oops, American Gladiators is on. And such is my life, these days…

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Public Transit

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:18:54 GMT

Twice in the past two weeks I’ve ended up taking the bus to and from work, because of car repairs/appointments. I’m not a big fan of the bus for the simple reason that on the way home, it doesn’t matter which line I take—it is always late. In the spring or the fall, this isn’t too bad; in the winter (which is when I had to take the bus back in 2005 while I was without a vehicle for about a month) it meant shivering as the freezing wind blows, and in the summer it potentially means sweltering in the lack of shade.

The other thing I’m not a big fan of is the amount of time spent to take the bus to work. To get to my office in McLean, I need to hop the 38B to either Rosslyn or Ballston, then transfer to either the 15K (Rosslyn) or 23A (Ballston) to get to work. (I could take the metro from Court House to those stations, but the cost jumps up a great deal. And if it’s a really nice day I can snip the 38B out and walk, but that’s not going to change the amount of time spent for the better.) When I drive to or from work, barring accidents on the road my transit time is in the 15-20 minute range. With the bus, it’s a solid hour if the bus is on time.

But I do like the chance it gives me to read while going to work; between the bus home last night and to work this morning, plus a little bit of time at the car dealership, I read all of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, which has sat on my shelves for eight years waiting for this moment. (It was worth the wait. I’m looking forward to read Parable of the Talents in what will certainly be a less than an eight year wait.) And, perhaps most crucially, once someone suggested that I take the 38B over to my second bus of the morning (instead of the metro), it meant that the cost of the bus ride is now less than the cost of gas used to drive to work.

Yeah, that was an eye-opener. If I assume I’m getting 30mpg, it costs $1.53 to get to work, versus the $1.25 spent when I use my SmarTrip card, thanks to free bus-to-bus transfers. So now I’m considering the idea of trying to designate one day a week to take the bus to work. It’s certainly less convenient (no errands as part of the work transit) and it means I really need to make sure I’m out the door by a certain time in the morning or it’s another 20-30 minutes before I can get to the office. But I really like the idea of getting that reading time added to my day, and while the monetary savings are hardly a lot, it would also be good in general for the environment, right? So we’ll see.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Dreaming of Bhutan

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 01:07:55 GMT

There are things that I should write up at some point, but the words are failing me at the moment.

(Nothing serious, worry not.)

In the meantime, though, two images from the Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s Bhutan exhibit from this year. It’s perhaps a bit cliché to think so, but right now I find myself wishing I was there because I imagine everything would be a lot simpler.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Travel Woes

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:42:13 GMT

The plan was simple—fly into Long Beach on Tuesday, spend Wednesday at meetings, then head right back out Thursday morning. I was calling it a “hit and run” meeting because there wasn’t any extra time built in at either end; just come in, take care of business, leave. And up until Thursday morning, it all (more or less) went to plan.

Fortunately, I head to the airport early if possible. Long Beach Airport is really tiny, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to show up a bit early. So even after taking forever to drop off the rental car and running a tuny bit late, I was still there well over an hour and a half before my flight was due to take off. I went to the USAirways self-check-in kiosk… where I was informed that I no longer had an assigned seat on my flights (heading home via Phoenix). Or, it seemed, a flight at all. Never mind that I’d already chosen my seats when I bought the tickets, somewhere along the way it was deemed that I was getting bumped. Nice.

Fortunately, Miriam G. (whom I’m writing a letter to USAirways about) was my savior here; in under five minutes she’d found out that I had no luggage to check (all carry-on, thankfully) and had me rebooked on a direct flight using Alaska Air. The kicker, though, was that the flight left out of LAX instead of Long Beach. And it was scheduled to take off in one hour.

With boarding pass and taxi voucher in hand, I headed out to the taxi stand and explained that I needed to get to LAX, fast. The next thing I knew, we were trying to get out of the series of turns and red lights that is Long Beach, moving towards the 405 and LAX. Now, according to Google Maps, one should expect the trip between the two to take 27 minutes, barring hideous traffic. (Which let’s face it, often exists on the 405.) With one hour to get there, I thought to myself that getting there in under half an hour was key.

We got there in 18 minutes. The ride itself ($68 worth) was paid for with the voucher I received from the airline, but I gave him a $20 tip because let’s face it, he earned it. (”I just wanted to make sure you didn’t miss your flight,” he said when I marvelled at how fast we’d gotten there.) It turned out that it was a good thing I still had 40 minutes before takeoff, because it took just over half an hour to get through security—including, of course, getting “randomly” selected for additional searching. Gah!

But I finally made it onto the flight, and I do love Alaska Air. Aside from having to kick someone out of my seat (nice try, go back to your middle seat), it was a pretty uneventful flight, Charlie picked me up at my new landing time, and I figured all was good.

Well, until this morning when I got in my car, planning to head over to the dealership so they could replace the faulty CD player. Because within two blocks, I was pulling back off the road to deal with what was clearly a flat tire. *sigh* I’m just glad my dad taught me how to change one way back in the day, although I did have to get the owner’s manual out at one point to figure out how to release the spare tire from within the trunk. (There was one bolt I was missing.) And hey, at least I was already on my way to the dealership, right?

So, knock on wood, that should be the worst of it. But if anyone wants me to blow up a Metro line this weekend, just let me know which color and I’ll ride on it too. I’ve got the knack when it comes to travel as of late.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Turnaround Shift

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:54:02 GMT

When I used to work in management at Giant Food, I occasionally got the dreaded “turnaround shift”—closing the store and leaving around midnight, then being scheduled to open the store the next morning which meant arriving around 6am. It was never a pleasant experience, but at least most stores tried to keep it from happening. (The exception was my six week stint in Leesburg, where the assistant manager instantly took a hatred to me and did everything he could to give me turnaround shifts, knowing I lived an hour away from the store. It ended because I got a job offer elsewhere and quite happily turned in my notice. The assistant manager was eventually fired for sexually harassing another employee and being stupid enough to do so in front of the security cameras. A happy ending for everyone, really.)

I mention this because I feel like I’m on a slight turnaround shift right now; after going away on a Saturday-through-Monday vacation with Charlie, tomorrow morning I leave on a Tuesday-through-Thursday business trip. So far all I’ve accomplished upon returning home this afternoon was unpacking my bag and starting up the laundry. Shortly I’ll repack the bag with clothes for the next couple of days.

It was a nice mini-vacation, though. We’d gone back to the Guest House at Lost River, which was as relaxing as always. When we went last time it was a Friday-through-Sunday stay, which most people seem to favor. So we met some nice people and hung out with others, and that sort of thing. But this trip was in part because we needed some one-on-one time, and Saturday-through-Monday fit our schedules better. And I’m glad we did it; it meant that almost everyone else left Sunday morning. So while we went hiking in Lost River State Park, the Guest House just about entirely cleared out. That meant once we got back, it was wonderfully quiet. So we read some books and magazines, took naps, and just enjoyed being around each other with no one else in sight.

Don’t get me wrong, there were some nice people there on Saturday (one couple we met on Saturday night and then talked to some on Sunday morning at breakfast seemed particularly nice and had a great story about how they’d gotten together), and if we hadn’t been looking for some quiet time I think we’d have really enjoyed hanging out with each other. But instead it was great to just relax. I think we both needed it.

(Oh, and after taking 198 photos, I’ve already deleted 108 of them off the hard drive. And I think only eight of those which remain are actual keepers. Argh. Oh well, at least that’s a higher number than zero, right? Still learning, here.)

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Greg the Bartender

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:28:01 GMT

Last Friday I worked my last volunteer shift at Artomatic. My first two were a little lackluster; shift #1 was during set-up on a weekend when it was so gorgeous out that the volunteers outnumbered the artists actually setting up by over 2-to-1, and shift #2 was a very quiet 12-5pm shift manning an information booth (that only really picked up in the last hour or so). This time, though, Karon and I (who had unknown to each other ended up with the same final shift) were working a 5-10pm Friday night shift, and were assigned to run the bar on the 1st floor next to the Cabaret Stage.

Now, this was admittedly a very rudimentary bar. There were five types of beer, four types of wine, three types of soda, two types of Red Bull, and water. So I’m not talking about us mixing drinks and putting out the shot glasses with hard liquor. And early on it was a tiny bit slow, but that worked well because I got to take a few pictures of the first band to play on the stage that night. But with all of that in mind? We worked our butts off and had an absolute blast; when we left, I turned to Karon and said, “Wow, bartending is where it’s at.”

Part of it was that Karon and I had a pretty good system, coupled with a strong work ethic so that we did things quickly and smoothly; why have a medium-sized line for all eternity when you can work a little harder and end up with little breaks here and there, right? So we hustled to serve people, and rotate in new bottles of beer into the tubs (so that they could cool down), and occasionally restock from the secret beer closet. (In some ways it reminded me of being a cashier at Giant Food way back in the day; there were some who were content to poke through an 8-hour shift every day, but I always felt that I’d rather get people out the door quickly and efficiently.)

But there was more to it than that; there was something enjoyable about interacting with the customers, that shared experience of flashing a smile as you took their orders or popped the caps off of the bottles. They were there to have a good time, and just about everyone was chipper and polite. It helped that (especially once the two 9pm-2am people arrived in the last hour) I wasn’t afraid to go to one side and give the, “Who’s next?” call and wave, and you could tell that the people lining up for their booze were happy to be served quickly. (I will never understand why some bartenders seem content to just ignore half the customers. Great way to earn a tip.)

Alas, we weren’t working for tips, but the number of people who left money in the tip jar (which also went to Artomatic) was pretty darn high. I like to think it was because Karon and I dazzled them with our awesomeness. Or something.

One fun thing to note was that there was a real pecking order in beer selection. From most to least popular—and I won’t deny that I completely approve of this—was something like this:

Flying Dog White Belgian-Style
Flying Dog Pale Ale
Flying Dog Amber Lager
Yuengling
Miller Lite (of which we only sold one bottle the whole night)

Seriously, it warms my heart that Artomatic patrons don’t want Miller Lite.

So, just another fun, new experience. At the next Artomatic, I think I might try and get all bar shifts if possible. And down the line if I need a career change, well, something to think about.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Two Moments of Hmph (plus One Moment of Victory)

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:50:29 GMT

Yesterday, when I got home, I saw another car pulling into the space across from mine (and between me and my apartment). In the passenger seat was a big teenager; I don’t just mean tall, I don’t just mean heavy, I mean big. You know, with that ruddy expression and sullen look and a sense of mass about him. As the other car was pulling in, he was licking a Minute Maid Limeaid Pop—and we are talking huge, exaggerated licks of which you normally only see in a cartoon. I mention all of this because it explains why this guy instantly registered on my radar.

Anyway, they got out of their car, and I got out of mine and fiddled around for a moment with my work bag and such. As I walked by theirs, I noticed that the teenager had dropped the wrapper of his pop on the sidewalk, apparently unable to bring it another 45 seconds towards a trash can. Charming. I knew I had trash to empty, so I figured I’d just pick it up on my way back out in about 20 minutes.

When I headed back out, though, I’d been running late and decided to delay the trash emptying until today. So as I walked by the car with the wrapper on the sidewalk, I scooped up the wrapper—and tucked it under the windshield wiper of the car. Hopefully they got the message.

On a non-victorious moment, I hit the morning spinning class today because I already had plans for this evening with my family. And sadly, instead of Barb (who’s been filling in for about two months while they tried to find a new instructor for Wednesday mornings) it was a new woman, Barbara, who’d taken over the slot. And it seems that Barbara’s idea of a good time was playing Jimmy Buffett. As in, probably 35 of the 45 minutes of the class was Jimmy Buffett.

As I loathe Jimmy Buffett’s music with a passion, I have made a mental note that from now on if I know I can’t make the Wednesday night class, I’m re-arranging everything else to hit Monday morning instead. The instructor at that time slot and I have a much closer musical taste. Because, quite frankly, had we been on moving cycles I would’ve contemplated throwing myself in front of another one this morning, in an effort to stop the horrible music from lodging into my head.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

There and back again

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 20:46:00 GMT

My original plans for this past weekend were determined a long time ago; Charlie and I would head up to Sag Harbor, New York on Friday so that we could see two dear friends of his get married on Saturday.

Unfortunately, sometimes life throws curveballs at us; in this case, a family member of one of the participants of the wedding becoming ill enough that a postponement of the wedding was necessary. At first it seemed just like the wedding would happen low-key but in Manhattan, but eventually it was scratched entirely. Since we already had our plane tickets, though, we were asked if we could still come up and visit for the weekend.

As it turned out, our role over the weekend really turned into, “Get people out of the hospital visiting room for an hour or two each night” because things had taken a turn for the much worse in the middle of the week. It was an awkward situation to be in—the visitors who are in town at the worst possible time. Part of me knows that they were glad we were there to serve as even a momentary distraction, but at the same time it was hard to not feel horribly out of place.

But on the bright side, it’s not like Charlie and I can’t entertain ourselves. (No, I am not referring to his singing.) We did a little bit of shopping, mostly at Century 21 where I ended up with some new shirts, and at the Strand bookstore. That was fun, but also a tiny bit frustrating at one point because they had a bunch of Ursula K. Le Guin’s re-issued anthologies on the shelves for $4 that came out in 2004, and I could not remember for the life of me which ones I already owned. So Charlie got to watch me dither back and forth on different volumes before finally putting all of them back on the shelf. Ah well. I did go home with a Rick Bayless cookbook that was 70% off, and Patrick McDonnell’s Mutts art book (still in shrink wrap) for 50% off, so it was a nice score.

It also meant that on Saturday I got to pop by MoCCA for a few hours. I honestly hadn’t planned on it until right before I left Friday morning, which meant there was no time to alert anyone or make any real plans. It was a great time, though, talking with people like Jose Villarrubia, Christine Norrie, Mike Dawson, Greg Means, Alex Robinson, Chris Staros, Brett Warnock, and many many more people of whom I am blanking on right now. I ended up with some new mini-comics (including all three issues of Ivy from Sarah Oleksyk, hurrah!) as well as a new sketch in the wine book from Liz Prince. (I need to start posting those again, soon.)

The weekend wasn’t entirely without hiccups, especially on Saturday night when we went to dinner with some others in tow and discovered that the restaurant had no air-conditioning and was, to put it generously, boiling. Ugh. We finally found a place around the corner, but I think everyone was a little grouchy and run down by that point.

Also, we were staying in a brand new hotel from the Thompson group, Gild Hall, which was lovely… even though on Saturday we got a call letting us know that there was “a leak from the room above us” and they were moving our stuff to another room. Eek! Although that actually worked out well for us, as it turned out. While the other room was nice enough, the new one had a living room and a little kitchenette nook. Honestly, if the nook had a stove and oven, I would have cheerfully lived in that hotel room. Seriously. It was that big.

We ended up leaving several hours earlier than planned; our friends were very busy with the familial duties and we felt in the way. We called on Saturday night trying to change our flight home (it’s the Delta Shuttle, it leaves every hour) and were given all sorts of hassle and threats of $100 surcharges. So instead we just went to the airport to check in and were promptly asked, “Would you like to leave three hours earlier?” Why yes, yes we would. See how easy that was? (Our flight home was barely half full.)

Part of me would’ve liked to spend more time in New York, and give a holler to everyone I know in the city to see who could get together. But with the ever-shifting plans and circumstances, that just wasn’t going to happen. Now I’m home to the gentle sound of the dishwasher running. And it’s nice to be back here.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Oh, hell

Fri, 30 May 2008 14:09:06 GMT

My home computer all this morning long was kicking blue-screen-of-death errors at me. Great. Fortunately almost all of my documents and such are backed up, so that's a start. I did install one new piece of software yesterday so if I can get Safe Mode up long enough, I'll see if removing it will do the trick. Or if not, see if I can get XP to roll back to a Safe Point.

If not, though... the sad thing is I was just telling Karon yesterday how glad I was to hear that the successor to Vista (codenamed "Windows 7" at the moment) is scheduled for 2009/2010, because hopefully my current computer would live that long and I could just bypass Vista entirely. Clearly my computer decided to show me how silly I was being. At least most manufacturers now are offering XP as an operating system again. But still. Not what I was looking forward to. Here's hoping the problem is easily fixable...

What It Is

Sat, 24 May 2008 20:40:30 GMT

After a really wonderful morning (a running session, a walk over to the farmer’s market, a stroll home while eating a vegetable empanada, the breeze blowing and the sky almost entirely clear), I’ve found myself with a distinct lack of energy. I suspect the number of early mornings this week (including having to be up in Emmitsburg, MD by 8:30am yesterday, ugh) has finally caught up with me. (Which also kind of stinks because I have a birthday shindig on the calendar tonight and I don’t know if I have the energy to go.)

So I’ve been sitting home and reading Lynda Barry’s brand new book What It Is for the fourth or fifth time this week and it’s amazing how much this is resonating with me. I loved her book One Hundred Demons (it suddenly opened my eyes to what an amazing writer she is) but What It Is goes above and beyond that, talking so much about creativity and imagination and how we often self-censor ourselves. There’s a page in which she’s talking about how she started changing her behavior around other people, that really struck me.

By the 6th grade I stopped doing ordinary things in front of people. It had been ordinary to sing, kids are singing all the time when they are little, but then something happens. It’s not that we stop singing. I still sang. I just made sure I was alone when I did it, and I made sure I never did it accidentally. That thing we call “bursting into song.” I believe this happens to most of us. We are still singing, but secretly and all alone.

And that’s when it suddenly hit me that it’s one of the things I love so much about Charlie. I don’t think he ever censors himself that way. When he and Julie and I drove down to the Outer Banks Marathon, within about 30 seconds of us all being in my car he’d suddenly burst into song, and I remember Julie saying something along the lines of, “Oooh, this is going to be a fun ride.” And I always groan a lot when he does it, but you know what? I really rather envy his being able to do so, and most of the time it makes me smile.

Anyway, I’ll have a review of What It Is run later this week on Read About Comics, but I’m going to give everyone a sneak preview right here: BUY THIS BOOK. I suspect it’s going to be my favorite book (drawn or otherwise) of the entire year. It’s about creativity, and ourselves, and the world around us, and everything in-between, and it’s fantastic.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Meanwhile, back on the ranch…

Thu, 22 May 2008 19:50:56 GMT

It’s been a while since I’ve updated about life in the Wild World of Greg. Well, aside from talking about photos or nasty sugar-substitutes.

My work computer bit the dust big time last week. Now I’m on a replacement Lenovo, which has some things which are better than my old HP (for starters, shutting the laptop doesn’t turn it off, and since I use a large monitor at work this is a good thing), other things which drive me crazy (it’s a bit slower and is most noticeable by the 3-second pause before it will open a new browser window).

Artomatic seems to be going well. I set up a guestbook after the first weekend and there are a couple of comments in it that made me smile. No sales, alas, but hope springs eternal. I do think I’m going to run out of business cards before the end, so I decided to give Zazzle’s cards a whirl and printed some out. They should be here at the start of next week, which is good.

Charlie and I saw the Israeli movie Jellyfish last night and both loved it. It’s co-directed by the husband-and-wife team of Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen, and written by Geffen. If I didn’t know better, though, I’d have thought it was written by Keret. I first discovered him through his graphic novel Jetlag (drawn by the Actus comic collective in Israel), and love his short stories—and while the film adaptation of his story “Kneller’s Happy Campers” (which he had nothing to do with) is reportedly awful, I think Asaf Hanuka’s graphic novel adapation of it into Pizzeria Kamikaze is great. Anyway, it’s a good, solid movie that doesn’t overstay its welcome; I was impressed with not only the script that alternates between dreamy tableaus and harsh reality, but with the visual stylings of Keret/Geffen. I’ll keep an eye out for their next film project.

The Capitol Hill Classic 10K last weekend was a blast, both for running it (I’d missed it last year thanks to an injury) as well as seeing old friends. It made me really appreciate both the work I’d put into exercise and running since mid-April, as well as all the people I’ve met through the sport over the years. Good times, good times. Even if I am starting to look like Paula Radcliffe and her hideously bad form when it comes to running, it seems.

Remember how I said I had three things I would think about buying if I sold things at Artomatic? Somehow I’ve ended up with two of them. Thanks to a gift card for my birthday back in March, I picked up Mario Kart Wii, which is so much fun it’s mind-boggling. I even got Charlie to play it and he, too, is all over it. Super, super fun, I cannot recommend this highly enough. (Also on the Wii front is Wii Fit, which I set up this morning and used for half an hour. I got it primarily for the balance and yoga exercises, and I love how well it analyzes my form. I think Fred will be delighted with the end results of me using this on a regular basis.)

Also, I was looking at the laser printer that I’ve been eyeing and the price had suddenly dropped $60 due to an instant rebate. Well, clearly it was a sign that I should buy it now. So it arrived today and I will set it up this weekend. I’m also quite pleased that it’s wireless, so I can set it up across the room and have it out of the way. I haven’t had a home printer in over a decade. What a strange feeling!

Last but not least, it is a super-small world. A week ago, on my way home from work I got trapped on the GW Parkway for 2 1/2 hours due to an accident in the southbound lanes that made the police completely shut down the entire parkway. Eventually everyone shut off their cars and walked around a bit, talked, and so forth. (I took the opportunity to read almost all of Tithe by Holly Black, which is also this month’s book club selection.) The entire time, though, I kept looking at the guy in the car behind me because he looked so very familiar. It wasn’t until afterwards that it finally clicked, though. It was my good friend Jon’s cousin David, whom I haven’t seen in a decade. Bizarrely, he looks completely unchanged. (No doubt there is a portrait aging away in his attic.) Meanwhile, I look pretty radically different than I did in the late ’90s (much less weight and much less hair) so it didn’t surprise me that I didn’t look at all the same. But still, how funny is that?

This weekend, I am looking forward to not having to go away for Memorial Day weekend in, well, quite a while. Perhaps I can finally photograph some of Rolling Thunder? That’d be nice.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Greg vs HFCS

Fri, 16 May 2008 20:29:40 GMT

So, unless you’ve been hiding under a rock the past couple of years (or are merely very adept at avoiding the media), you know about the evil sweetener used in so many US food products that’s called “high fructose corn syrup” and which converts to fat much faster than sugar, doesn’t stimulate insulin production (which means you don’t feel “full” as fast), and also kills small kittens simply by being within a 5-foot radius.

Now, ever since I spent most of 2004 on Weight Watchers, I regularly look at the packaging of what I eat; calories, fat, ingredient listings, and so forth. So while I knew that I don’t eat many things that have HFCS as an ingredient, when Butch and Chris mentioned they were cutting it entirely out of their diet I found myself a little curious as to what I still ate that had it these days. (It does help that I’m not a big soda person.) So, I went through the fridge and pantry, because there’s a certain appeal in the idea of striking the last bits of HFCS out of my life. (After all, if it’s easy to go from “some” to “none” then why not?)

The end result? Only a few things, happily.

Box of individual Kellogg’s cereal servings
Pepperidge Farm 100% whole wheat bread
Kudos granola bars
100-calorie snack packs
Gatorade

The nice thing is that all five of those are pretty easily replaced. The other cereals in my house (Kashi Strawberry Fields, and various varieties of Puffins) don’t have HFCS and I really eat them more often these days, anyway. Bread is easily switched back over to Nature’s Own 100% Whole Wheat, which I used to buy anyway but had only hopped brands because I could get the Pepperidge Farm bread at CostCo. The Kudos and 100-calorie snack packs are a little frustrating to go because they were also regular CostCo purchases, but similar alternatives from Trader Joe’s are a-ok. And with Gatorade, I switched over to buying the powder (which doesn’t have HFCS) and am going to just keep a pitcher in the fridge. Less plastic being used that way, really.

It does help that I shop a lot at Trader Joe’s, don’t really drink soda (happily my one occasional vice of Jones Soda Cream Soda uses sugar cane), and also enjoy doing some shopping at H-Mart/Han Ah Reum where the products just don’t seem to use it.

Do I think I’m going to magically drop weight from eliminating HFCS? Probably not. (Besides, I still have to eat what’s left of those snacks. That may take a month or so. But as they run out they aren’t getting replaced.) But it is nice to know that it’s pretty easy to cut that substance out of my home. It does make me wonder how easy it is for others to do it, too. And I do plan on writing letters to the makers of the products I will miss (Kudos in particular (*sniff*)) to let them know that I’m not buying their stuff anymore and why. Hey, it can’t hurt, right?

(And no, I’m also not going to go crazy about this. I know that sometimes you’re out and there’s nothing you can do to avoid it. I’m not worried about that.)

Just don’t tell the corn farmers about this. Between talk about switching ethanol from corn to things like sugar cane or switchgrass, and now this, they might get a little pissy at me. I promise that I’ll buy a lot of corn this summer, though. Mmmm, black beans and corn and avocado and tomato… Now I’m getting hungry.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

One Last Photography Mention (and then I’ll shut up, honest)

Mon, 12 May 2008 23:35:33 GMT

I’m happy to say the new camera’s test drive was a rousing success. Hurrah!

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Photogregphy

Fri, 09 May 2008 18:11:02 GMT

Two quick items of note!

First off, I now have an official “these are some of my better photos” website put together. I think it’s a pretty nifty site, and I’ll be adding to it as I finally get my new camera up and running and it takes pictures worthy of going there. Consider it a “best of the best” selection, and it’s at http://photos.gregmce.com. Very exciting! (Well, for me.) It’s the closest I have to a portfolio online.

And second, for those in the DC area, Artomatic opens today! It’s running through June 15th, has free admission, and is one block from the New York Avenue metro station. (There’s also some street parking, and I think also some pay garaged parking available.) It’s closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, but the rest of the week has some pretty reasonable viewing hours. (Wed/Thurs: 5-10pm; Fri/Sat: noon-2am; Sun: noon-10pm.)

So if you’re interested, try and head on up to the 9th floor and check my stuff out! And then check everything else out while you’re there; there’s a lot of really interested and neat art being exhibited this year, and I’ve only seen a small fraction. This year was a big learning experience for me and hopefully the next time the show comes around my stuff will be even better. But I had fun getting things ready.

End of self-promoting plugs! (Next time I’ll talk about something riveting like high fructose corn syrup. Mmmmmmm.)

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

I feel the earth move under my feet

Tue, 06 May 2008 19:31:10 GMT

I’m sure there must be a “You can tell you’re an East Coaster when…” list out there that includes the item, “You get excited over a 1.8 magnitude earthquake.”

It certainly wasn’t as strong as the one a few years ago (that was around, what, a 3 or a 4?) which was piddly in its own right, so this one was even less so. With the previous one I at least got up out of my chair and stuck my head into the hallway to see if others felt it. With this one, the best I could muster was an instant message to Karon saying, “I swear I just felt our building shake.”

I’ve been feeling a little bleah for most of today, so it’s good to get excited about something. I skipped my run this morning (one of my legs was feeling stiff and tight this morning and even after several stretches today it’s still a bit that way) and I haven’t decided if I’ll attempt one this afternoon after work or not. (I am unfortunately leaning towards no.) I certainly didn’t sleep well last night, which didn’t help matters, too.

But on the bright side, my labels for Artomatic are printed and sitting on my desk, so I just need to pop by this evening and then I am completely done. People keep asking if I’m excited and the answer has been, “Not yet.” Maybe it’s because it was all so new and a learning process for me this year; I’ve already made a lot of decisions for potential future exhibiting on ways I would do it different. Hopefully once it’s all taken care of I will be a little more jazzed about it.

On the other hand, I have decided that if I sell some of the photos (which would be awfully cool) that I get to reward myself. So items I’m looking at include:

Mario Kart Wii just looks amazingly fun, plus there’s the online play aspect. I would sure like to experiment with a “prime” lens. And I haven’t had a printer for over a decade, since the infamous moment where Kate sent me a cursed manuscript and my printing it out literally destroyed the printer. (It started printing jibberish about 2/3rds of the way through—and no, it was not the manuscript’s actual text—and never recovered.) So for those, I am excited.

(Not that I’m actually expecting to sell any photos, of course. But the thought is pretty fun to think about.)

Overall, though, things are good. I have some friends moving into the neighborhood next month, some beautiful orchids blooming in my office, we had salsa lessons in the office yesterday for Cinco de Mayo (which was fun), and an older gentleman at the gym yesterday asked if that was indeed me at the opera last week—and that he and his wife also left before the end because they couldn’t stand it. Hee hee hee.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Hopelessly busy, but making good time

Fri, 02 May 2008 20:00:25 GMT

Phew! April is finally over, and I think with it, the busy time is starting to wind back down. The past two weeks have felt like anything and everything was just crammed into it all at once, between returning to a full running/exercise schedule, book club, opera, an anniversary, Artomatic, reviews, and a billion other things that are temporarily escaping my mind.

That’s not to say it was bad things, of course. (Well, the opera was dreadful and we left after the first act.) Just everything happening at once. But it felt good after work yesterday to accomplish a lot of things off my list; stop by Michael’s and get some replacement frames, cook dinner with enough for leftovers, go running with Pacers in Arlington, eat dinner, feed Karon’s cats, head over to Artomatic and check on painting situation then clean everything up, and get home with enough time for Top Chef, Lost, and 30 Rock.

But anyway, after next weekend things are looking much calmer. Saturday has two birthday parties, Sunday is going to be hanging all of the photos at Artomatic. Then next week shouldn’t be too crazy, just finishing up my Artomatic set-up on Tuesday (labels for the photos, figuring out how to put a business card holder in my space, that sort of thing), dinner plans on Monday, spinning on Wednesday, running with the group on Thursday, possibly a 10k on Saturday and then a volunteer shift at Artomatic, and working at the store on Sunday.

And then… quiet time. It’s been surprising to me how much time Artomatic has taken up, especially as it gets closer, but it’s a good learning experience for me. If there’s another show in 2009 and I partiicpate, I will certainly be better prepared. And the next couple of weekends are much more open and free than mine have been as of late, too. So that will be nice. I want to just spend some time finally learning how to use my new camera (which is gathering dust on my desk because of everything else), that sort of thing. And as the days get longer, it somehow just feels like there’s more time to do things. That mental block that hits when the sun goes down can really slice into one’s day. Having my tv shows all come to a close again helps, too. (Although as of tonight I am now three weeks behind on BSG, plus two weeks behind on The Office and Ugly Betty.) I don’t watch that much these days but there’s only so many hours in the day.

Still, I feel like I’ve been accomplishing a lot. So it’s not a bad sort of busy. Just one with a lot of things getting checked off. I’m ok with that, for a while. I just need to keep the list from growing as fast as I remove things, that’s all.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Wine-Book Wednesdays: David Hahn

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:19:06 GMT

My first exposure to David Hahn's comics was Private Beach, a bizarre sort of merger between X-Files and Love and Rockets. Strange things mixed with relationship drama and a sharp wit is my best description of the book. When I met him at San Diego in 2002, he was one of those people that was so amazingly friendly and likable that you were almost relieved that he was such a good artist, because you wanted him to succeed at everything.

Since then, he's drawn two Bite Club mini-series for Vertigo (think Miami mafia meets vampires), and is also drawing the all-ages Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane comic. The fact that he can switch from adults-only violence to fun and cute kids comics? Well, it's nice to see that the industry knows how good he is.

His drawing below is also a take on one of his Private Beach covers. I must admit that whenever I see it, I always wonder what would happen if this sketch would suddenly collide with J.G. Jones's wine sketch...

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Wine-Book Wednesdays: Kelley Seda

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:01:25 GMT

Ah, Kelley Seda, how I miss you doing things in comics. Seda’s debut work was a strange little mini-series called Rare Creature that… it’s kind of hard to describe, to be honest. But it’s about a girl named Amelia who is pregnant, and in love with the boy with huge hands next door. It’s an odd, almost fragile-feeling story that was like nothing else on the market.

She did some work designing books for other comic publishers for a while, but she seems to have left comics entirely for other art forms. It’s a shame, although I don’t think the comics industry ever really caught on to her brilliance. Very, very much our loss.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Photo-Excitement

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:11:25 GMT

All sorts of exciting things are going on as of late in the world of Greg Photography!

The first and foremost thing is that my brand-new camera arrived today. It’s a Canon Digital Rebel XTi (known in other countries as the EOS 400D), and it’s my very first SLR camera. I am, needless to say, super-thrilled! I am also vowing to stop by the library today or tomorrow to get a book on SLRs because I’ve never actually used one. It’s a whole new world of lenses and f-stops and all sorts of other exciting terms that a decade ago made my eyes glaze over.

Almost all of my photos for Artomatic are now printed as well; I’m going to re-print one or two of them that need a slight tweak but generally speaking I’m really happy with them. When I picked them up, I opened up the package to make sure they were all there and the woman working the counter actually gasped out loud. Which was a nice ego boost, needless to say. She and another employee asked what camera I was using and were flabbergasted that it was a point-and-shoot. Frames are ordered and en route, as are my business cards. So now I just need to figure out exactly how I’m going to decorate my space. I worked a volunteer shift at Artomatic on Saturday night (it was gorgeous out, so the place was dead as a doornail—good thing I brought a book!) and it gave me some ideas to mull over. Artomatic doesn’t open until May 9th so I still have a little breathing room to get ready.

I’ve also put together a special sub-website spotlighting some of my favorite photography, and put about half of the photos into it. That’s the URL that I put on my business cards, and as soon as it’s done I’ll post a link here. But I’m happy with it, too; as great as Flickr is, I like the idea of having a very specific subset of photos to send people to instead of a photostream that also has, for instance, lots of pictures of my friends shoving french-fries into their nostrils. (Well, not quite that. But you get the idea.)

Between the new camera and seeing everyone else’s stuff at Artomatic, I’m thinking/hoping this will get me firmly back on the photography road again. It was nice having some time off after the 365pictures project, but at the same time I’m eager to start adding new photos to the collection.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Side-Effects May Include…

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:00:21 GMT

One of the best things I’ve discovered about taking a Benadryl before bed every night, now, is a side-effect I didn’t expect. Namely, I’m having dreams that I remember on a much more regular basis.

Most nights, once I fall asleep it’s (by my reckoning) an instant transition from falling asleep to waking back up. Dreams more often than not are only in-between the two if I’m extremely tired or have had alcohol first. So maybe it’s the medication, maybe it’s just having a deeper and more restful sleep, but more often than not these days I’m finding myself with dreams that were strong enough that I can actually remember them.

It’s funny because I’m not entirely sure when I stopped having regularly occuring dreams. Maybe in college? It’s that sort of thing that you don’t notice until they’ve been gone for quite some time. Someone asks you what you dreamt about and you realize that you have no idea. It’s fun, though, to have them back. I can more often than not pinpoint where some of the images are coming from as of late, too.

For instance, last night my mother was talking a lot about Dexter and Michael C. Hall and The Tudors, and I’d mentioned Artomatic to her. The end result? I dreamt that I was Michael C. Hall, but was also somehow an amalgamation of myself and his characters from Dexter and Six Feet Under. I was in a large mansion (and Peter Krause was there at one point) and the rooms kept shifting back and forth between the past and present-day, but a large room full of picture frames was in both of them. I ended up meeting a very attractive noble and was flirting with him (I’d gotten as far as an arm around him and there was no objection at his end) when I woke up.

Very strange, and funny, and a wonderful jumble of things I’d just been talking and thinking about earlier. It’s really nice to have them back. Another thing once the springtime pollen dips a little bit to monitor closely when I try and see if shifting to Allegra and/or valerian root at night will make a difference. Now that dreaming is back, I’m not quite ready to give it up again.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Good Morning

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:25:53 GMT

Ever had one of those mornings where everything seemed to just click?

This one unfolded perfectly. Got up and went to the gym early, snagging the last rowing machine. The woman next to me, Kathy, was chatty but in a good way. She said she didn’t recognize me and I’d mentioned that I was coming earlier these days, and a little more often while I took a week or so off of running. So we chatted about marathons (she agreed that Marine Corps is too crowded these days) and how she used to run them until her doctor made her stop, but how her husband runs ultra-marathons. She also laughed that I was “rowing too fast” her her to keep up and that she was competitive.

Now, I was thinking she was in her mid-to-late 50s. Turns out I was off by about, oh, 15 years. I want to be as in-shape and generally cool as Kathy in my 70s. And rowing next to her did wonders for my performance; a 30-minute set for me normally racks up the calorie counter in the 360-375 range, and around 6500 meters. Today’s set ended with it being at 404 calories and somewhere around 6750m. Clearly I will need to schedule my exercise around her schedule.

After a set on the elliptical and a nice chat over there with Roger (who had come in to hit the Friday morning spinning class, much to my surprise; turns out he had the morning off) it was back home, where after a shower (using a free sample from LUSH of their Buffy soap, which is great stuff) I took the brown rice out of the steamer, cooked some sausage and added it in, then seasoned the whole thing with coriander, chipotle pepper powder, cayenne pepper, and a few other spices and turned it into part of a bento lunch.

From there, it was off to work and the GW Parkway was just beautiful. I rolled the windows down, put the B-52s song “Hot Corner” on auto-repeat (and for those wondering how long the commute is, it was almost done with its fifth play when I got to work) and sang along while the warm breeze blew into the car and flowering trees gently dropped their petals. It’s just the right temperature out; no jacket needed, just a short-sleeve shirt and jeans and off we go.

There’s no big event in all of this. No “and then I found a million dollars” moment, no sudden turning point. Just a really good morning where you feel awake, and alert, and aware of everything around you, and alive. It was just about perfect, really. I wish all mornings were like this, but I’ll take them when they appear.

I hope everyone else is having their own version of a good morning.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Wine-Book Wednesdays: Scott Morse

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 21:02:30 GMT

I’m not even sure I can really begin to sum up the amazing talent that is Scott Morse, here. When he first appeared on the comic book scene with his book Soulwind (back when he was still C.S. Morse), it was a beautiful, contemplative work about swords and aliens and small boys and zen. Since then he’s done things in every genre imaginable and then some. He also creates animation for Pixar these days, with former stints at Disney and Cartoon Network.

If that’s not enough, he’s also one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. Thoughtful, kind, always ready to lend an ear. I have really fond memories of the post-Ignatz Awards party from SPX 2004 of having drunkenly rambled to him about some relationship problems and him just nodding sagely and offering advice and being supportive. The number of people (of all genders) who have a crush on him is understandable.

One of his more recent projects at the time was a comic called Magic Pickle, about… well… a pickle created through experiments that has all sorts of super powers and fights other evil vegetables with the help of the little girl who lives in the house atop his secret lair. (The original comic just was republished by Scholastic, plus two more prose books with spot-illustrations from Morse hit stores as well.)

So to say that a sketch about wine was perfect for Scott was, well, an understatement. This one still makes me laugh, in a good way.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Wine-Book Wednesdays: Dean Haspiel

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:02:27 GMT

Dean Haspiel is someone that I’ve known in comics for at least a decade, certainly much longer than that. A mainstay of the Small Press Expo for many years, I remember reading his Billy Dogma comics and loving their over-the-top masculinity and hidden vulnerability all mixed into one. These days he’s illustrating books like Harvey Pekar’s The Quitter and posting his comics on the ACT-I-VATE online collective.

More entertainingly, he’s always been a good friend and a fun guy to be around; I miss chatting with him at SPX, and the inevitable jokes from everyone about how he only owned one shirt (seriously, there are five or six years worth of convention photos where he’s in the same shirt every time) and how sooner or later it would always come of. “Dean puts the X in SPX!” was a hysterical rallying cry at one of the picnics.

This drawing was actually begun by Dean at the first MoCCA up in NYC, but he asked if he could finish it off later in the summer at San Diego. The first day at Comic-Con that year, I sought him out and sure enough, he finished it then—putting himself front-and-center and with his characters Jane Legit and Billy Dogma in the background. It was worth the wait.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]

Adult Behavior

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:56:04 GMT

Being an adult means there is no one to stop me from eating a handful of chocolate sprinkles in the afternoon if I so choose.

And I do. So there.

[Originally published at gregmce.com. You can comment here or there.]