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Ladies & Gentleman, we have a place to live. (please hold all applause until the end)
This is the only picture that I have right now, but when I go get my keys I will take more/better pictures. Plus, when you all come over for a slumber party, you'll get to see it. Yay!
And we can go on the WATERSLIDES in the lagoon.
This weekend Ryan and I did something really bad. Something soul crushing. Something that we haven't been able to talk about properly since. Something that we totally regret and yet there is no repentance. We went to an open house for a house that we can't afford.
In fairness, we didn't know for 100% sure that we couldn't afford it. I mean, sure, what makes us think that we can afford the rent on a 4 bedroom McMansion in Irvine? But we had to check, on the off-chance, right?
We were out looking at houses for lease with our poor agent (who has sent us about eleventy billion listings) and while leaving one property, we saw a hand-written sign for a house for rent. What's the harm? we thought. Feh.
The house was gorgeous. Absolutely flat-on-your-face beautiful. Something like 2,700 sq. ft. of interior living space plus a yard, plus the association pool and spa are just across the street. The living roomS (plural) had a pass-through fireplace that was... I can't even talk about it. And the island in the kitchen? The hardwood floors? The stone work on the patios? The 50 foot ceilings? The modern, square windows? The FOUR bedrooms?
The part that turned the knife in my chest was the master bedroom. The biggest room in the house. The room was approx. SIX HUNDRED square feet. The walk-in closet is literally bigger than my current living room. The Jacuzzi tub could host a party of 5. The glass shower enclosure? Maybe another 5. Our apartment now is big by local standards - at approx. 1,100 square feet. Can you imagine? Holy... *faint*
The worst of it wasn't that it was out of our price range, but that it was barely out of our price range. The rental was being managed by the original owner, who probably bought it 10 years ago for a song (another house on this street was listed at $1,149,000) so they weren't asking as much as they could have. But regardless, it was about $700 out of our range. Which is a fucking bummer, let me tell you. $700 is a ton of money, but doesn't seem unobtainable. Like maybe I could sell roses by the freeway or panhandle or work at Starbucks at night. I could do SOMETHING to come up with an extra $700 so that I could live in the Barbie Dreamhouse. *sigh*
But it is not to be.
The upswing to my anger is that we will know by tomorrow if we got the 2 bedroom condo that we looked at over the weekend. I know I should be doing backflips in the aisles, but I just can't bring myself to get my hopes dashed again.
As usual, I am late to the game. But whatever. I caught Kyle Dunnigan's stand up special on Comedy Central over the weekend and OH MY GOD I want him to be my new best friend. Fortunately for me, he has also posted several videos to YouTube, including the one below which is very timely considering that I am still trying to shake this damn cough.
For the uninitiated, Kyle also played "Craig" on Reno 911. Hella funny. Yeah, I said 'hella' what of it??
After weeks of pleading and begging and "but all the other kids are doing it" I finally caved and took Ryan to see 300.
I hadn't realized that it was called 300 because that's how many nipples you are guaranteed to see. Close up. With super zoom. And also, air conditioning apparently. Wee bit cold in Sparta, eh?
I'm not a fan of action movies, plus I am embittered by proxy that Kate's friend didn't get cast, so I was mostly enjoying the popcorn and snickering teenagers sitting behind us. Although at a certain point my popcorn tasted like chapstick and I had to wonder - was I tasting it wrong? Or do they use chapstick wax in the faux butter? Cinematically, the movie was really neat and Frank Miller writes a good tale, so blah blah blah - but the boobs? And the nipples? Yeah, a bit much.
As we left the theater...
Ryan: Oh my god? That part? With the swords?
Mia: Why so many nipples?
Ryan: And the fighting? And the bad guy?
Mia: No, but really - I know they're targeting teen boys but...
Ryan: And I love the way they do the sepia tones in the backgrounds and the --
Mia: [interrupts] --nipples? WHY SO MANY NIPPLES??
You: How many comic conventions are there anyway?
Me: Eleventy billion.
You: And you have to go to all of them??
Me: More or less.
This weekend was the Wizard World convention in Los Angeles. If you didn't go, you didn't miss anything. Seriously, I wanted to apologize to every person who DID go. It was that lame. There were decent artists and a fairly good showing from the industry, but the attendance was REALLY low and so everyone was bummed about it.
You know it's a bad day when I was the only one stopping to say 'Hey' to Lou Ferrigno, and I don't know jack about The Hulk and also didn't spend $30 on his autograph. Imagine how well Bud Bundy fared...
But yet again for Ryan & me it was Mission Accomplished. He met with some press people to Make The Nice and pave the way for some pre-press around Hiding in Time. We also met some fellow artisans looking to do some collaboration pieces, which is always a good thing. Plus, he finally got to meet Mario Gully in person, which was totally awesome. Just before Spawn was re-directed, Mario was looking for an inker on his book Ant, but Ryan was too busy and so the project went to someone else, then Ryan got laid off (blah blah) and so anyway he was excited to meet Mario and throw his hat in the ring for any future projects. The two of them hit it off like gangbusters and even talked to one of the Marvel editors at the convention about a project together. So once again, convention networking has paid off.
I didn't get as many pictures as other events, because there just weren't as many people to photograph! Except the aforementioned, Bud Bundy. Pictures will be posted shortly.
any by that, I mean buy a copy when it comes out. :-) Please.
Not that long ago, an editor critiqued some of Ryan's art as 'serviceable' which has kind of been a running joke since then. Fortunately, Ryan is the man of steel and impenetrable to benign reviews, and so when his work on Spawn got run off the rails without warning (official PR), he just shrugged and kept plugging away. Since he was effectively "out of work" I suggested that he relax, take a break. To which he suggested that I shut my trap and hand him that pencil. Feh.
Well, what do I know? He sent in some samples, and they were beyond serviceable, in fact they were downright utilitarian. While we were in NY at the convention, he got a call to offer him the job. Hell yes! So now he is a busy bee again (which is apparently how he likes it, stupid robot) and the first preview will be printed in a couple of weeks and the first issue drops in late April (I think). As soon as I get the legal thumbs-up, I will post some of the preliminary images and start marketing the hell out of this thing tell you all about it. Because, you know, this has always been primarily a Comic Nerd Blog*.
*this is a joke. I do not have the attention span or enthusiasm to be a FanBoy.
Holy shit, I should be fired. I used to think I was a good little marketeer, but apparently things are passing me right by... you wanna know why?
I got a friend request on MySpace today from a local NAIL SALON. Holy shit. How brilliant is that? It has the price list, pictures of awesome paint jobs, etc. And if you're a "friend" you get a discount.
I think I need to go back to school and re-learn everything that I thought I knew about marketing. How To Market in the MySpace Age.
Yesterday was a gorgeous, sunny day and I was out of the office at a conference which was a nice change of pace and then I got to work from home after the conference was done, which meant taking Ruckus for a walk and making friends with Monkey too. It was so uplifting and positive that I got a lot of work done and was feeling great. La la la...
So it was a complete shock when at 3am I woke up and (cough, cough) my throat was swollen nearly shut and raw and my lungs were spewing up... something icky. *sigh* I've been taking care of Ryan since we got back from NY because he's sick, and so I blame this on him. Stupid jerk.
Obviously, I don't enjoy being sick. That goes without saying. BUT some sicknesses are preferrable. Give me a stomach ache that I can work through. Give me a head cold, where at least I can take sinus stuff and shove kleenex up my nose. But this raw throat thing is the WORST. It makes it hard to breathe, even through your nose. And not much helps. Ice water and warm tea... ibuprofen and cough drops. That is my entire arsenal, and they all mean well but SUCK. *sigh*
Hanging out with the Cool Neighbors, there will inevitably be a round of "pick one" which is a sort of game, wherein someone asks you to pick one thing. For example, if you could only eat one fruit for the rest of your life - no other fruit even exists - which would you pick?
These games are fun, but actually very hard. I mean, only ONE fruit? How do you choose? Why can't 'fruit salad' be a fruit? Damn the indecision.
So go ahead, YOU try - here were last night's questions:
1) which one fruit would you choose?
2) which one meat would you choose?
3) which one vegetable?
4) which four meals would you choose? You have to eat these same 4 every day for the rest of your life -- they come as a complete meal, so a bowl of cereal would have milk, but that doesn't mean you'd get a glass of milk to drink with your PB&J.
For comparison, this is what I said:
1) pears
2) seafood
3) tomato (I know it's actually a fruit, but...)
4) chicken tikka masala, bean burrito, bagel w/cream cheese, and soup