MY FATHER

...sometimes said that he went to work to get away from the wife and kids. He was joking, of course. But adages being adages... At work, I spend any free time I have surfing the web, reading, thinking or writing. When I leave work, that's where the fun should begin.

Except, I think I'm watching the Emmys tonight (a friend of a friend of Evelyn's is up for one—or someone she works for is, no one seems sure). We can't read about it on cnn.com tomorrow, we have to watch it live. This is the sort of plan you make when you can't find the right size bullets for your suicide gun, "Looks like I'll have to do myself in in a far more painful way, but I need some ideas..."

And then we seem to be going to a jazz club to see a swing band (A friend of a friend of Evelyn's is in the band—or a boyfriend of a friend of a friend is). Now, I like "swing" just as much as the next guy, assuming the next guy can't dance and just likes it when a Benny Goodman track randomly pops up on his iTunes in between Biggie and Carcass, but going to some shmo's 3-HOUR gig? The next guy sure isn't going. Some Shmo (this is now his Christian name as far as I'm concerned) also plays guitar in the swing band. Thanks, Stray Cats. LOOK AT WHAT YOU'VE WROUGHT!!!

I wasn't asked about this. And I think I said the swing band was a good idea when I was under the impression that I wasn't going. Somebody better buy me lots of booze and/or dope. It might be time to start using dope.

If I'm really lucky, the group going will be all couples and somebody will get the brilliant idea to segregate the men and women so we can engage our separate interests. And then I'll get to take part in some local sports discussion. Better yet: soccer. 'Cause ain't NOTHING more interesting than talking about a sport with 8 thousand teams that do nothing for two hours.

So, what would I RATHER be doing than the above?

Reading BLDGBLOG, of course. This is my new favorite blog. Fascinating stuff I know little about. It's a whole new world of Micronations and links to Pruned which has a step-by-step progression of the Palm archipelago being built off the coast of Dubai. There's the Proposed library made from airplanes and asks question like "What other buildings are rockets waiting to happen?"

I'd also rather be working. I'd love to get into Kaiju Jugoruma a little bit more. There's something about doing the full load of pencils/inks/puter in one shot that has reinvigorated my spirit. I'm excited to be working, and I've got finished product mounting as I go. Right now, this is more fun than pages and pages of pencils, then pages and pages of inks and then (the worst) pages and pages of puter work. I'm using all my brain muscles at once, and the flexibility it gives me is liberating. Normally, I'd be stuck with the initial badly proportioned pencils with the wrong caption border and improper tracking in the text for months until I got around to inking it or even months later when I touched it up in Photoshop. Now, I got to see it through many stages and update it as I found my groovethang on progressive panels.

This is fun. Working, thinking about work. Away from the wife and kids.