Lentil Lady Down and Out

First off, no regrets. I'm glad I went into the office today to help out with the US Hunger Project, filling bags of food for hungry New Yorkers, especially when I was informed that only about 25% of those who'd signed up actually showed. I was assigned in an assembly line to fill the bags with lentils. Still, after 45 minutes with a hairnet and gloves and a mask (so that nobody else catches this lurgy) and repetitive scoop-and-fill motion, I had to excuse myself. I was going to head home right away but it was easier to sit still at my workstation, get some work done, then leave at lunchtime to spend the rest of the day working from home. I timed things well, there was a smoke condition in the East River tunnel and things were just beginning to escalate at Penn Station, so I made it to the subway platform before the major craziness (thank goodness subways weren't affected at any rate). My head has been gradually clearing just enough for me to think straight and get my work done, but I still feel sluggish. Let's see what tomorrow brings!

Impacted

Well, I did schlep into Manhattan this morning and did a few Community Impact Day activities with my work colleagues, which is usually fun except I kept needing to sneeze and couldn't breathe very well, so I gave up around 3:15 and came home after pretty much working a full day anyway. Definitely staying put tomorrow, hoping to finally lick this illness. Ugh.

Not Traveling Anywhere

I got some sleep last night so I was up and running, working from home again since our office doesn't reopen until next week. Sad in a way, as today was our Community Impact Day and I'd had in-office plans, but relieving as my toe is still bothering me from all the weekend's walking. And I'll be doing more walking tomorrow locally, so my feet will only get to rest today, Thursday, and Friday. I spent almost an hour and a half on the phone with our travel agency doing five different travel arrangements for one of my partners, and four hours doing online charity information sessions as my volunteer activities. I had toyed with the idea of going to the Mets game, but I'd have no way of getting back home from Queens (two subways and a bus late at night did not appeal to me; neither did night driving) and, you know, foot. But I left with a mostly-empty inbox, which I'll check and clear a few times tomorrow as I have a couple meetings to attend despite my vacation day. All in all, a pretty satisfying workday!

Bloodletting, Fish, and Snow

Today we decided to honor Dr. Martin Luther King's legacy of service by giving back to the community, of our own blood in fact. I donated a pint but Robin, whose blood type is much sought after, agreed to a double-red donation. Took a half hour just for the ALYX machine to be available, then at least another 20 minutes to separate his plasma from his platelets and recycle one of those back to him, I can't keep track of which. We celebrated by going to our favorite sushi place before my most recent coupons expired, and just about made it home before the snow turned to sleet then back to snow. The temps are starting to plummet now, and I don't even want to think about what's in store, but I feel like we accomplished things today, and now it's time to cocoon for awhile.

Silly Site o' the Day

Wow. What a day. I'm rather at a loss for words. Well, first off, I hopped a 6:45 AM express bus down to the Wall Street area, getting there right around 8:30 AM. Yep, it takes just about two hours from Bronkers to Wall Street! The book distribution/reading went very well. I was assigned to two classrooms of special-needs kids, who didn't care much for the free book but did seem to take to the activity booklets we gave them. Very rewarding, although I was unable to answer their questions about Inside Out 2, having not seen it. Do you think this would help?

Via Laughing Squid. Then we got on the subway back to Lex and 51st, which meant navigating stairs both ways, and between that and sitting awkwardly in the school's chairs something was bound to happen. Which it did mid-afternoon, as I got up from my office chair and started walking toward the kitchen to refill my water tumbler. The most painful felt-like-a-groin pull I've ever had (alas, that's one of the places the IT band issue expresses itself). I could hardly walk! It eased a bit if I walked very gingerly, and didn't seem to bother me that much walking (slowly) to the bus stop at 5:30. But then, of course, the real fun began. I wound up sitting there for three hours as the Deegan flooded, then Broadway flooded, and pretty much my entire world was awash for a good long while. The bus driver did a terrific job but she looked fairly frazzled by the end of it! And when Robin finally met me at the terminus about an hour ago, as soon as I got off the bus the pain started again. So I've canceled my vague plans to take the car in tomorrow for its annual inspection, as I need the time to rest and heal, and my area of Bronkers needs time for all this rain to recede. And now, time for an extremely late dinner!

Silly Site o' the Day

Well, the day ended kind of flat, with both NY baseball teams losing, England losing in the Euros as well, and no actual baseball or, really, anything tomorrow. Even the Tour de France has a rest day. Of course, I don't as I have to work, but at least I don't have to venture out until Tuesday. We did go out this morning, first to give blood then the local gourmet market to pick up some groceries I couldn't find in our weekly supermarket trip yesterday, and as both places (plus the car) were air conditioned it wasn't too bad. But we'll be suffering through at least two more days before this heat wave breaks. Certainly not the proper weather for tutting:

Via Laughing Squid.

Silly Site o' the Day

White Rabbits! I got into the office nice and early, and got all the work done that I could before heading upstairs to take part in a number of Community Impact Day activities, volunteering to help stuff bookbags for low-income kids and put together cleanliness kits for homeless New Yorkers and learn about the importance of giving blood, particularly to help those with sickle-cell disease, and write letters supporting the Trevor Project and watch a roundtable video interview with Special Olympics participants... I logged something like 5-1/2 hours of volunteer activity, which always feels great. This evening I took the subway up to Yankee Stadium, where I met up with fellow volunteers to see the Yankees fall short once more. Really great seats, although the sound was so deafening I had to wear earplugs through most of it, and a colleague drove me home after the seventh inning stretch so I didn't have to worry about any more public transit. Although I wouldn't have minded if they'd had cool street art like this fellow in Amsterdam:

Via Laughing Squid.

Silly Site o' the Day

Happy birthday to my Mom, and happy Red Nose Day in England! Here's this year's offering:



I'll have a Simon's Cat tomorrow.

Silly Site o' the Day

Started the day off by walking around 10 blocks in the chilly Manhattan air, then waiting outside like an idiot for 20 minutes instead of going inside to a magnet school for underprivileged kids where around 40 other work colleagues were, ready to distribute and read books to those kids. In my case, the kids got so enthusiastic they read to me! Really cool to see how much they love books. One of those things that leads me to believe our future may just be in good hands after all. At least as long as they don't meet up with university administrators with randomly generated job titles (via BoingBoing).

Silly Site o' the Day

Speaking of Key & Peele and charities, as I was yesterday, here's some primo cat blogging:



The Mary Sue has the videos which gave rise to this silliness.

Silly Site o' the Day

It's Red Nose Day USA, and so far the telethon has had some silly moments and lots of non-silly painful ones. Overall I think I'm going to go back and watch the rest.

Silly Site o' the Day

Why Red Nose Day was today instead of, say, April Fool's Day I have no idea (maybe they liked the "Friday the 13th" date better?), but so it was, and Comic Relief in the UK raised more than £78m - its highest ever total! So good on them!

Silly Site o' the Day

So there have been lots of clever videos lately of people taking the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, and here's one that I particularly admired from our friend Budgie:



Via the man himself.

Stan's the Man

As many comic book aficionados know, Dark Horse has a benefit book coming out in July to benefit Stan and Sharon Sakai. Here are more details. There's also an auction going on featuring original art from the book, and Robin has a piece up that's currently up for bidding. Here's the link.

On Mermaid Retention

Back when we lived in Brooklyn, Steve and I made it a point to never miss the annual Mermaid Parade, which we considered a kind of warmup to the Greenwich Village Hallowe'en Parade. Lots of fun and silliness (how could it be otherwise when it was coordinated by the Coney Island Hysterical Society, of which I was a member?), and a great way to celebrate the wonderful history of the place, even if you aren't particularly into performance art (which I'm not, as a rule).

So I was saddened to read this morning on Neil Gaiman's Tumbler blog how the Parade might not happen this year, for the first time in three decades. The main culprit, aside from the Parade having grown too successful making logistics trickier (am I actually a hipster that I attended way back before it got that crowded?), appears to be the lasting damage from Hurricane Sandy, which pretty much destroyed the Parade's main money generator, their museum and performance space. If you like this sort of thing and are so inclined, you might want to throw a few shekels into their Kickstarter. Their goal is $100,000 by the beginning of June, and so far they've only raised around $30,000, but they do have the Gsiman/Palmer Bump so maybe that'll make a difference.

For Peter's Benefit

In case anyone's interested, Robin has a few pieces up for auction to help our friend Peter David pay his medical bills after his recent stroke. This is one of the pieces:



Pretty damned impressive, isn't it? You can bid for it here. Robin has also done two original pieces, up for bid here and here. I'm rather partial to his Man-Thing, but that should come as no surprise. Bidding ends in two days!

Comics Into Africa

With the world seeming to be ever more unfriendly these days, any inroads we can make to inspire creativity, particularly in kids, is in my opinion A Good Thing. One of the masters of all Good Things, Alex Simmons, has embarked on a new project. Here he is talking about it on this site. A sample: "Recently we’ve been offered the opportunity to be part of a really fantastic experience. We’ve been asked to bring the Color of Comics exhibition and our KCC ROAD SHOW to the Senegalese American Bilingual School in Senegal Africa. When? December 3rd, 2010." They need to raise a little over $19,000 to accomplish this. I know times are tough - if Robin were working I could afford to pledge more than just my ability to publicize this via my blog - but if you have any disposable income to spare, Alex would greatly appreciate it. He's a terrific organizer, and this sounds like an amazing project.

Silly Site o' the Day

Although I suppose today's Children in Need day has officially ended in the UK, I'll bet you can still give. Here's Peter Kay's animated contribution:



Robin walked me through this one, as I didn't recognize about half of the characters. Update: Vinnie's annotated it.

Whom Are You Sponsoring?

Looks like most of the participants in Blogathon 2009 are women. That was probably the case when I did it back in 2003 (wow, I can't believe that, six whole years ago!). This year I'm sponsoring the two bloggers on my blogroll, Natalie Davis and Cara Kulwicki. Good luck, everyone!

A Man of Vision

With the San Diego Comic Con coming up later this week, my first thought was to beg our con-going friends to drop Robin's name to various publishers and editors, as he's been available to work for some months now. But we've cut back on any luxuries and are pretty much getting by okay for now on my salary and savings.

So I want to talk about something really important that SDCC attendees can do. Y'all can spread the word about helping my friend and colleague John Ostrander.

I've known John for around two decades, starting back when his late wife Kim Yale was one of the founding rabble-rousers in Friends of Lulu. Kim was, plain and simple, my hero, and I also derived a lot of pleasure out of the comics work that she and John did. Her dedication to industry equality for women, as creators and readers and vendors and production people and so on, is the main reason I still support FoL. And John was right there with her every step of her private and public fights.

After Kim's passing, John donated a goodly amount of money to the organization's newly-established Kim Yale Fund, earmarked for those interested in putting in "sweat equity" to the cause but who couldn't afford the (at the time) $25 annual membership fee. John didn't have to do this; it was just the kind of person he is.

And now John needs our help, and few deserve it more. To quote from Colleen Doran:

John "recently underwent eye surgery to help with his glaucoma. I spent several days with him at the Superman Celebration in Illinois a couple weeks ago, and he was just a complete pleasure to be around the whole time, and never once complained about his eyes, though they did seem to be obviously causing him some discomfort. He spent the entire weekend being amazingly generous to both the fans and the other creators, giving advice to both aspiring and working writers, and free comics to little kids. As I’m sure we all know, there’s no feeling quite like meeting someone you have idolized and finding out that they’re a wonderful person on top of everything else.

"John’s very expensive health insurance isn’t completely covering his surgeries, his recuperation time in Boston, or his follow-ups. Thus, his friends at the Chicago Comic-Con and Wizard Entertainment are endeavoring to raise some money to help, bless ‘em, through both cash donations and an auction to be held Saturday, August 8th. All the information right is right here at Comix4sight.

"This is all those guys, I have nothing to do with it, I’m just passing along notice of their good works. They put it more simply and powerfully than I could – if he loses this battle, he loses his sight.

"All of us have enjoyed John’s brilliant work, most of us have been inspired by what he’s created or improved, and more than a few of us, like myself, have shamelessly been swimming in his wake for some time now. Please take a moment and donate what you can in cash, and also consider adding an item to the auction that these wonderful people are putting on.

"This is one of the really, really good guys in the industry, one of the best writers we’ve ever had. Please help these people lend him a hand in his complete recuperation. John has asked that any monies raised over his medical expenses be given to the Hero Initiative, so whatever you donate is going to a worthy comics cause no matter what."

Having John as a colleague during my ComicMix stint was one of the best things about that gig. Although we had the same "job" (weekly columnist) I don't think I'll ever think of us on any sort of equal footing, but I'm very honored to be his friend. Of course, Robin will be donating some pages to the auction (guess which ones). Wish we could afford to go to Chicago to help out more. But the beauty of a blog is that now y'all can help too! That website again is Comix4sight. Thanks in advance!