Keeping Busy

What's a guy to do when he doesn't have a job and doesn't really need to get another one right away?

Fuckin' VEGETATE, that's what.

Although "fuck AND vegetate" has a nice ring to it.

I updated my resume, of course, and very quickly had a job lead. The interview was on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. The first person I spoke to was the freaking vice president of the company. Five minutes into it, he said, "I don't think this job is for you."

I readily agreed; they wanted more of a manager and less of a production artist. Then the person who arranged the interview talked with me some more, and gave me a few leads for agencies. I'll explore that in a few days.

That Monday, I had the first appointment with my new regular therapist. It went okay, I guess. I'm having a hard time keeping things straight in my head. Once I type it all out here, it sort of dissipates. I really should just give the doctor the link to this place. It'll probably be easier. He's decided to avoid medicating me for a while.

I spent a good portion of that first week off sorting through my crap and disposing of a lot if junk. There's still a little left to go, but it's manageable.

My parents came down for Thanksgiving/my 29th birthday.

(Sucksgiving & Thanksgiving on the same day? That sucks!)

They arrived a little after 12 PM that Thursday, bearing pie, cookies, cash, and a family heirloom that I didn't know we had:


This watch belonged to my Great-Grandfather Brady. Grandpa inherited it at some point, possibly before GG went nuts. Grandpa eventually gave it to my dad at a point where he was very proud of him. Dad said, "I've been meaning to give this to you for a while now..."

They survived the trip to Brooklyn for Thanksgiving dinner at my former landlady's house. On the way there, I gave them a brief tour of my former neighborhood.

Friday they got the tour of Astoria; specifically the park and the house Grandpa Brady grew up in. With Dad's busted knee, and Mom's anemia, it wasn't easy for them to get around. After the hour-long walk, they crashed on my bed. I ran over to the local Staples and used my birthday money to pick up some ink and paper to print out some of the pictures I'd taken.

I didn't have anything to do, and if I had, they were too beat to do anything. So we just lazed around a bit until dinner time.

It was a bitterly cold evening. On the way back to my house from the restaurant, there was a small group of boys in their early teens a half-block behind us. They were yelling such obscenities like "he sucked my giant dick!" or whatever. I told my parents to keep walking, and turned around. I walked past the boys, and turned again to follow them.

One of them looked back, and said something to his crewmate. He also looked back. They proceeded to shut the fuck up, and crossed the street. My parents watched the whole thing. I quickly caught up to them, and Dad asked, "what did you say to them?"

"Nothing. I didn't have to."

They got in the car and drove to the hotel. They went home early Saturday morning.

I spent the rest of the night preparing stuffing & pies for Lynne's annual "Saturday After Thanksgiving" party, at which a good time was had by all. Lynne got me the book Comics as Philosophy, which will probably end up on my Cartoonists' Syllabus.

I woke Sunday afternoon and started to work on a project Francis needed some help on. As of this writing, there's five things I have left to work on, but I'm waiting for a bit of art direction that was missing from the instructions.

My second therapy session was on Wednesday. I'm not quite as comfortable with him yet, but it's only a matter of time.

With almost everything else wrapped up, I spent Friday night trying to organize/bag/board the Fuckton of comics I've accumulated over the past two years, and continued to weed out the comics I don't want anymore. I've started to make the transition from long to short comic boxes, to make things easier the next time I move. It seems I need 15 more short boxes to get the job done.

So far, I have seven long boxes full of comics I don't want. I originally intended to give them away, but I'll try selling them on eBay first. I just need to sort out all of those first, before I start taking pics and all that nonsense.

My mood lately is a strange combination of unrestrained apathy, irritability, yearning for solitude, and lonliness. How to describe that...

"I don't care, don't be stupid, leave me alone, please stay."

It's all right; it doesn't make any sense to me, either.

Oh, and I've put on more than a few pounds. Yikes. I need to get my expanding ass to the gym.