Recently in Personal Category

I'm back home, and I've got a mean case of the post-vacation blues. There are two different ways to gauge how much I've enjoyed a given trip: how unbitten my fingernails look right before leaving, and how crappy I feel when I get home. Those fingernails were lookin' great before I went back to work.

I had a pretty excellent time. Saw family I hadn't seen since last year, met up with a friend in Michigan for an evening of drunken fun in East Lansing, and then took off for Toronto to see my friend Sam, who is always a delight (and his family is so lovely putting up with me, such wonderful people). Due to the way the weekends and holidays fell this year, everything was unfortunately cut a little short, but I had a superlative adventure regardless. We went to a burlesque show on New Year's Eve instead of just getting roaring drunk, and it was the best thing ever. Ribald entertainment! My favorite kind!

Sam got a new LOMO camera for Christmas and consequently he took a ton of cool-looking photos while I was there (including the one above). Check 'em out. The fisheye kind of makes it look like my eyes are trying to wander off the sides of my head in a couple of these, but the effect is pretty rad. I probably should have brought along the Holga or the Polaroid, but I was a little strapped for space in my luggage as it was.

So I had a great time. You may be wondering what my New Year's resolutions were, but I don't really believe in making them, so you will need to be disappointed in that regard. But here's to a new year and a new decade, hopefully vastly improved over the last one.

I'm back in Michigan seeing my folks. Then it's off to Toronto for New Year's. Probably won't be posting here much if at all, so I'll see you all in the new year!

Hopefully with some stuff to actually show you.

Tonight I made this for dinner:

It had been a while since I cooked for real at my own house. I really need to do this more often because I'm much more competent at it than I remembered. The above meal, for example, was totally delicious. It's a vegetable and tofu stir-fry!

I would tell you how to make it but I don't really remember anything except the rough basics. This is one of those "play it by ear" kinds of meals that can't really be explained scientifically with measurements and times. I'll give y'all an idea, though.

The Supplies

• 2 cloves garlic


• 2 thin slices white onion


• a good handful of white mushrooms, I think I had four or five?


• a block of firm tofu


• a nice smallish stalk of broccoli


• an orange bell pepper


• a handful of baby carrots


• soy sauce, vegetable oil, and a bunch of pretty basic spices
  

The Process

1. Get out a nice big skillet and pour in enough vegetable oil to just coat the bottom. Do this even if it's nonstick. You will want to use a medium heat to get the oil going while you prep.


2. Crush and mince the garlic, and mince the onion. Slice the mushrooms into nice thin slices. Put this stuff in first after you get the oil sizzling. This is important. It puts flavors into the oil.


3. While that stuff is sizzling, chop up everything else into manageable pieces. Put the tofu in when the mushrooms are starting to brown. It is a wet food and you want it to go in a little before the hard vegetables. In a minute or so, you can put everything else in.


4. Add a splash of soy sauce, and dashes of the following spices: salt, black pepper, oregano, basil, and garlic powder. Take it easy on this stuff. You don't want to overpower the vegetables.


5. Now this is the judgment part. You stand there shifting and flipping stuff around with your spatula because you don't want anything to sit still too long and burn. It takes maybe around 5-8 minutes to cook everything up at this point. Keep an eye on it and start tasting when the broccoli's color gets brighter. The carrots and broccoli are the main vegetables to test, since they take the longest to soften up. When the tofu is brown enough and the veggies are soft enough for your taste, take it off the heat and put it in your mouth.

The vegetables you use are pretty adjustable (I had a zucchini I wound up not using just because it didn't seem to fit with everything else). Just make sure you have a few different plants with contrasting colors and flavors, else it will be boring to eat.

You should also make some rice to go with this. I shouldn't have to tell you how to cook rice, though, and I learned it by reading the Achewood Cookbook anyway.

Before you think I am a culinary genius, you should know that afterwards I made apple cinnamon muffins by following some instructions off the side of a box. But they were so good.

So I was looking at my mail today and seeing how many organizations just in my community really need help to feed and care for people and animals for the holidays. Like most of you, I don't have a ton of money this time of year due to the various costs associated with the holidays, so I can't help people nearly as much as I'd like on my own.

But what if everyone who reads this blog gave as much as they could to help people and animals in their communities? That might not be a lot per person, but I bet we could help a lot of people!

Here's where you come in. I want you to donate to a charity somehow. Buy food for the food bank, buy a toy for Toys for Tots, donate a monetary amount, small or large, to a local organization that feeds people or provides coats or shelter or clothes or toys (every community has a homeless shelter or a food bank). A local humane society, rescue or animal control shelter is okay, too. I don't want the critters to go hungry either.

Take a photo, scan or screenshot of your donation (blank out your bank information or sensitive personal info, if applicable) and e-mail that to me at krisjacque at gmail dot com.

With your verification, include an art request, and I will draw it for you. This is a bonus incentive, on top of that warm fuzzy feeling that comes from knowing you helped someone. Depending on how much you donate, you could get a sketch, a colored digital or traditional media drawing, or even a painting*. Donate however much you can afford!

* Due to postal costs, I probably can't afford to send you a hard copy of the art. Big spenders can have a high-resolution digital version of their image though.

I think there will be a continued relative lack of activity here for most or all of November, as I am actually doing NaNoWriMo (that's National Novel Writing Month, natch) this year and taking somewhat seriously the premise of finishing a stupid novel that I will never, ever, ever let anyone read.

Seriously, it will be hidden forever. You will never see it. I am 100% dead dog serious about that, and despite some of my friends' eternal charms and ability to shmooze me into sharing stuff I'm not confident about, I will not budge on this one. But it's an interesting exercise in forcing myself to make up a story on the fly, which is something I am notoriously bad at. I am also notoriously bad at: making up disposable characters, writing without constant self-editing, and writing when I am certain of the fact that I am writing something intensely stupid.

Do you wonder how stupid it is? It's a "serious" horror story about werewolves. All the characters are intensely dislikable. So the answer is "pretty stupid."

Somehow it's very satisfying so far, though! However, it's also exhausting my other creative impulses. So I don't think there'll be much drawing done this month. Sorry, audience who reads this blog solely for cute pictures of dogs and/or creepy naked satyrs. You will have to go without. After I'm done with this I'm sure I won't feel like writing anything for months, though, so you can get lots of nice pictures then without a lot of dumb words by me (your friend (Kris)).

So I went to Ann Arbor to party with my hombres for the Gargoyle Centennial. I didn't have my Polaroid on me all the time, unfortunately, but here's what I got.

Accidental photo. This was actually the closet in the room where I was sleeping, which was the bar room. Those are drink recipes written on the door.

Max and Zack admire the VHS box for Shredder Orpheus, a very direct adaptation of the Greek myth of Orpheus, except the characters live in a bizarre post-apocalyptic future where everyone skateboards.

Four of the Penn State Phroth staff were staying at the Garg House with us, since we invited them to our centennial (their magazine is 100 years old, too). They were pretty cool kids.

Friday morning, there was a brunch at Cottage Inn. I don't think I ate $15 worth of food, but I did get to see Keith, whom I had not seen in a dog's age, and Max, who remains my BFF.

HI KEITH. I think Max took this photo.

The Garg office is so fancy now. They got this cool stained glass display from John Dobbertin.

This one took place on Saturday. We all felt so lazy and totally ordered some Chinese food.

We were going to have a sitting quietly party but it turned into a totally raucous party. Seriously we had barely slept in days.

Zack smokes cigarettes and doesn't like the Internet.

The party was ruined for me a little bit by the combination of jet lag and some kind of mysterious illness (a cold), which all lowered my energy and constitution. And my flight in was delayed two hours, which never helps the mood. Got in at 2:30 AM on Friday morning and then stayed up even later because I was cranky as hell and wanted some booze. Zack, Billy, Max and I wound up going to bed at 6:00. The alum activities were mostly in the morning and early afternoons on Friday and Saturday, though. OOPS.

It was a pretty good time but I was seriously wrecked by Saturday. I'm still recovering.

I'm going out of the town for the weekend to visit scenic Ann Arbor, MI, for the Gargoyle 100th Anniversary celebration. It's gonna be awesome.

So that means no new Dalton and no new art or other posts here until at least Sunday night. Probably later, because I imagine I will just crash on Sunday when I get back. But when I get back, there will be Polaroids. There will probably be sketches. There will be at least something for the infamous GargAlum Saturday Night Special. It may be Dalton-related.

Meanwhile, while you wait with baited breath for me to return, why don't you read my friend Beckey's comic String Theory? Unlike me, she actually updates regularly! And is some reasonable distance into her story!

Now I have to go take care of my dog and get ready to go to an airport. Goodbye for now!

I've been so busy with other things lately that I haven't been updating my delightful and utterly exciting blog. I've finally kicked off on the Dalton comic, but I suspect there are still bugs to work out with regards to the site. Some of them will only magically appear when I post more than one comic. Exciting!

It will probably eventually get its own domain, but I'm waiting to see if I'm committed enough to it. Drawing a comic is hard, and drawing a comic regularly is even harder. Because I'm a horrible freak, I draw better on paper than digitally, so the comic is drawn and inked entirely by hand, with brushes and dip pens. Basically I guess this is an experiment in using the most archaic methods possible. Next thing you know, I'll be delivering the comic to your house via express telegram. (Due to the restrictions of the delivery medium, rather than receiving a comic, you will receive a truncated script with stirring descriptions of the images you would have seen had you been viewing the comic.)

I think the comic is looking all right, though. And perhaps it's a reasonable enough explanation for my absence. I'm not sure how frequently I'll update--I might try for bi-weekly, but I'm not making any commitments until I'm really sure what I'm doing. So there.

Oh, I forgot to tell you. Guess who got her AKC Canine Good Citizen certification on the 17th of this very month?

Now that you've seen the Polaroids chronicling the satyric revelry in Justin's apartment, I can give you the summary. I had a fantastic time. A disproportionate amount of it was spent indoors, but that was all right; we spent a lot of time outdoors, too, just wandering around the city, going to bars, and marveling at it all. Jennifer, Justin and Cathy (pictured below) were very kind to tolerate my new-to-the-city ways.

The lot of us went to visit MoCCA on Monday (7/13), only to discover, to our disappointment, that it's closed on Mondays. To make up for it, we did end up seeing this fantastic little gallery showing of bizarre Dali prints, most of which I had never seen before. One depicted a giraffe on fire falling out a window. I am not joking.

Monday we also went down to Chinatown, where we ate delicious pork dumplings and I bought cheap crap on Canal Street. This was actually my favorite part of the city, by far. Where else can you get a $5 pair of sunglasses, argue down the price of a belt buckle, and buy a DVD of a crappy movie out of a suitcase? That's right, nowhere.

Hyatt wanted to meet up with us that evening and go to Forbidden Planet, but (admittedly on my insistence) we wound up going into a Halloween store first. This place was great, by the way. It had all kinds of stuff hidden in nooks and crannies, which is the worst way to lay out a grocery store but the best way to lay out a Halloween store. There were a few things I wanted to buy there, but willpower won out. I left with an excellent Betty Boop Talkartoon poster and that was that.

I had heard a lot of good things about Forbidden Planet, but frankly, though it was a nice store, Ann Arbor's Vault of Midnight is better, and the staff is nicer, too. I bought some things there anyway.

On Tuesday I wanted to do dumb tourist stuff, like go down to Battery Park and stare out at the Statue of Liberty over the water and see Central Park and Times Square and all that jazz. We ate breakfast at Ess-a-bagel, which came quite highly recommended by my boyfriend, and it lived up to all my expectations. Then Max (above) and I headed down to Battery Park.

It was getting late in the afternoon when Justin and Jennifer came to fetch us so we could go to Central Park (after puttering around with Max and me a little in Battery Park, of course). The parks in NYC are all gorgeous, by the way. After some playground antics, we were going to wait for Hyatt at the statue of Balto, but then I guess we were going to meet him at Times Square instead. Oops.

The main thing I took away from seeing Times Square at night was that I am not sure I ever want to go to Times Square again. Everything is covered in flashing lights. It's overwhelming. New Yorkers don't like it there, and I don't blame them.

We ate some tasty Italian food. Then, the next morning, we left.

Since I know you're positively dying to live vicariously through my friends and me by looking at our vacation photographs, you should check out the rest of them on Flickr.