Bad

Apparently, I'm a very bad person. At least, that's what I gathered today from a bitch fight I found myself in on Facebook. Ken and I refinanced our mortgage and had our closing yesterday. The entire process didn't go nearly as smoothly as we were promised and we ended up with nothing but trouble every single step of the way. I tried to hold back my feelings during all of this, but even this morning, I was still raging at the treatment we received from the lender. So I posted a bitter comment about it on my Facebook page. Someone who I wasn't directing my anger at jumped in and started demanding I take down my status update, that this was slander, how dare I attack him/her, etc etc etc. Trying to explain my feelings in simple basic English only seemed to make matters worse. I find it very amusing that this one employee whom I didn't have an issue with was making my point crystal clear about the lack of customer service this lender has. It was pointed out by a few, both in the thread and by personal message, that this behavior couldn't have been more unprofessional. So, yes, I admit that directing my anger at one person towards an entire company was misplaced (one bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch girl!), it was nice to see someone whom my anger was not (initially) pointed at jump in and assume I meant him/her.  

There was a reason I've pulled back from internetting lately.  Perhaps this was a sign that I need to do that again.

Electra Woman and Dyna Girl

Scary

Belated NYCC Pictures

I promised pictures from the New York Comic Con, but I didn't get a chance to post them the night after my last post, as planned.  So without further ado...

 Hawkman.  This Hawkman, however, could stand to have a cheeseburger or two.

 Me & Oscar the Grouch

 Blair from Road Rules.  He's dreamy.

 I have to admit, I stole this picture from another website.  My friend Todd spotted him at one point and told me about it, but I never actually saw this Luke Cage at the con.  He looks fantastic.

 Some of the toys I bought at the show.  I was on the prowl for bargains and I found 'em.

 Another bargain.

 While technically not something from the convention, my friend George gave this to me while I was in NYC.  It was supposed to be my wedding present, but since the wedding was postponed, he wanted to give it to me now.  It's an original Fred Hembeck re-creation of the New Teen Titans #1 cover.  I'm in love with it.

 More bargains to be had.

 Not bargains, but toys I didn't even knew existed.  And I love them.  Doctor Who figures in the Mego scale!!

 My new Super Friends shirt.

 New drinking glasses.

 My new Red Lantern hoodie. 

 I got to meet up with my old friend Chris (see previous post).  I miss him.  

 Wonder Woman!

 The crowd as it was starting to wind down on Saturday.

 More winding down of the crowd, with an overview of the DC Booth.

 More winding down.

 And a little more winding down.

 This Legion set went on sale last Monday and sold out instantly.  I want!

 Aquaman & Mera.

 Nightwing and Supergirl.

 Spider-Man's worst nightmare.

 Jean Grey.

 Superman

 This guy's Plastic Man costume was PERFECTION!

 Robins

 Jack Knight

 Black Canary and Green Arrow

 Poison Ivy vs. Batgirl

 Batgirl & The Riddler

 The Sensational She-Hulk 

 The Black Orchid costume was probably my favorite costume from the con.  Hands down. 

 Mr. T

 More of me & Radtke

 I didn't notice until later, but this asswipe walked right into my picture of Dazzler.  She was fucking fantastic!

 The Watchmen

 The Huntress 

 George in the Batmobile

 Batgirl

 Plastic Man again.

 Power Girl

 A Yellow & a Red Lantern

 Bad news for Batman

 Killer Moth

The X-Men and a Yellow Lantern?

I didn't go to the con with the intention of taking all these pictures, but I'm sure glad I did.  I should have taken more while I was there.  There were so many great costumes.  People really embraced the spirit of the convention and it made the show such a great experience.  Next year, I'm planning on taking twice the pictures.

NYCC

I spent this weekend in New York attending the New York Comic Con.  Last year was the first year I attended this show and I was anxious to get back.  Although I was planning on going (since last October, actually), I had made no plans because, like just about everything else I've been talking about lately, Mom's illness popped up and everything got put on the back burner.  So I had no plans to go this year, wasn't really feeling like doing anything at all, but my friend George asked me if I was coming.  I talked to Ken about it and decided that I need to do this.  For me.  Things haven't exactly been getting better since Mom died and I really needed an escape from it all.  So Friday morning at the crack of dawn, I boarded the MegaBus for NYC and got my geek on in the best way possible.  I arrived in the city at 10:15 and headed right over the the con.  By 11 o'clock we were in, my luggage stowed and off to wander.  I brought down my sketchbook with me because I was hoping to score a bunch of commissions.  This didn't exactly go my way.  At 11 o'clock, for instance, many artists were already booked up through that day and most of Saturday.  At least the bigger name artists I was hoping to hit up.  

The con was insanely busy.  Last year I got to the con just after lunch and it was pretty busy, but not too bad.  This year, hours earlier, it was beyond mobbed.  They estimated that 100,000 people were going to attend.  It felt like it, but not in a bad way.

George and I did a lot of wandering around, shopping and browsing and taking pictures.  I tried to hook up with some friends I knew were attending.  I texted my friend Martha, but unfortunately she didn't see my text until later that night.  She wasn't attending Saturday and I wasn't attending Sunday, so we missed each other.  I did finally get together with a couple of people I was hoping to, though.  The first was my friend Hank.  I've known Hank since we were both teenagers, however we've never met in person before.  Long before the internet, fandom was based through the mail.  We were both members of an amateur press association.  We had our first chance to meet back in 1988 when we were both at the San Diego Comic Con, but the night he called up to my room, jet lag and con exhaustion had set in and I was passed out.  The friends who I was with told me they couldn't rouse me, I was that dead to the world.  The second time we missed each other was last year at the NYCC.  I was there such a short while, so it was difficult meeting up.  This year, George and I were walking around and we stopped at one point in front of the DC Comics booth.  And lo and behold, there he was, standing just a couple feet from us.   Finally!  We only got ten or fifteen minutes before he had to get back to work.  I was hoping to run into him again, but it didn't happen.

On Saturday, George had work to do, so I wandered about on my own and hooked up with my buddy Chris.  I haven't seen him in maybe 15 years.  He went to college here in Albany and was the roommate of a good friend of mine.  We lost touch over the years, but that's bound to happen.  It was fucking fantastic catching up with him.  Like George, he was at the con to not only enjoy himself, but he had to work, too.  

Right after we parted, I was wandering aimlessly when I ran into someone I work with.  It was really random.  In a crowd of 100,000, someone from work was the last person I thought I would run into.

The final person I ran into was my friend Todd.  I found out he was going to be there Saturday, so I told him to text me when he got there.  Naturally, he forgot my number.  He did try sending me a Facebook message around 1, but I didn't see that until later that night.  George and I were walking through Artist Alley when I see someone come up to me fast.  It was Todd.  Good thing he saw me because I was oblivious to him.

The only thing that sucked about the convention is I wasn't in the best health.  I woke up Friday with a sore throat and by Friday night, I had full blown laryngitis.  My voice still isn't back yet, but it's coming back slowly but surely.

I had a great time and it was definitely the break from reality I needed.  I have lot of pictures, but it's late and I'm too tired to wait for them all to upload tonight.  It'll be something to look forward to tomorrow!

Getting Back To A Normal Life

I'm trying my damnedest to get back into a regular life kind of routine. The last month or two have really knocked me off the tracks. August was a fun month, what with vacation and all, but I really haven't been back to normal since then. A couple of weeks after getting back is when Mom got sick and September was a great big giant blur.

I've been trying to ease myself back into a regular routine. I'm getting back to the gym, which is huge. My visits over the last six weeks or so have been pretty sparse. I'm trying to get back into a regular schedule, but that hasn't happened quite yet. I've been going, just not on set days. Yet.

I'm still going to try to get to Dad's house at least once a week for the foreseeable future. This past Saturday Ken and I spent over six hours sorting through papers. Mom did all the paperwork, all the bills, all the everything. She seemed to have had a system for filing, but it's one that escapes me. It was organized chaos. She knew where everything was in her piles and secret stashes of papers, but no one else did. Saturday we spent all day just sorting into piles things like taxes, bank statements, bills and all that stuff. Next time, the plan should be to go through the things we sorted, file by file, and determine what still needs to be kept and what needs to be purged.

My diet is something I'm easing myself back into. I've been eating like crap for the last month or so. Real crap. As much as I love diner food and burger joints and places like that, I really don't think I can take much more of them. I've been living on Pop Tarts, pb&j, french fries and burgers and my body isn't very happy with me. I've managed to keep my weight (kind of) in check, but my body is feeling pretty gross. I should be able to get things back in check in a relatively short period of time. I just need to get back on the better eating wagon.

I love a three day weekend from work, but I'm at the point of it where I hate hate hate it. It's almost 8 o'clock, and while I got a lot done this weekend, I'm in a panic thinking about the other things I wanted to do but didn't, and the things I still need to do before going to bed. If only I had one more day.

I'm also trying to get back into the swing of writing here again. I've let things slip. I wasn't feeling very communicative at all during September. I didn't feel like broadcasting the fact that Mom was sick. I had a bunch of one on one conversations about it, but kept it off the general airwaves.

Another thing I've been easing myself back into is a social life. Saturday Ken and I had plans to go help my Dad and sister sort paperwork, but before that we met up with Kevin & Brian from Danbury. We usually meet at a place half way between us, and Dad's house is in between the restaurant and my house. It was very convenient for us to do both things! I've got a few more things planned for the month of October and that's making me very happy.

And finally, I spent most of yesterday cleaning my dirty ass house. All housework went by the wayside while Mom was sick. There was no time to do anything. Ken really surprised me by keeping up with both the laundry (something he NEVER does) and the dishes (something he SOMETIMES does). Everything else just didn't happen. I spent the whole day working on the main living space. I got it all done except for the bathroom and mopping the kitchen floor. And what took me hours to accomplish yesterday Ken managed to trash in the span of about fifteen minutes. I was really annoyed. He tried picking up his mess, but the family room is still in need of another once over. Swell. I was hoping to deep clean the second floor today, but I got sidetracked with other chores. Tonight IS clean sheet night, however. It's my favorite day of the week!

ENOUGH!

I've been to two funerals in less than one week. Both an hour or so away. Both women who passed before their time. I've had enough.

The New 52

September was anything but a normal month for me on all counts.  September was the month that DC Comics introduced their 52 brand new titles.  The day that I got my copy of the first of these books, Justice League #1, was also the day my mother went into the hospital.  The day that the last batch of these first issues was released was the day my mother passed away.  There wasn't much time in between the release of the first and last issues for me to read them.  However, today I finished reading the stack of all 52 issues.  I decided that even though I was very unhappy with the decision to cancel everything and start fresh, I thought the least I should do was to sample the new titles and then make decisions on what to read based on the first issues.  It didn't hurt that there was such a major push that most retailers were offering great deals for trying the entire line.

I tried to sort the books as I finished them, putting them somewhat in the order that I liked them, from best to worst. The books might not be in exactly the right order, but it's close enough.

Some books surprised me for both the better and the worst.  For example, I was very surprised at how much I didn't like any of the Superman family of books.  I was really, really disappointed in every single one of them.  Action was probably my favorite of the Superman books, but in spite of it being a Superman book.  I won't be following any of those in the future.  

Another surprise was that I actually enjoyed I, Vampire.  From the looks of the book, from the description of the book, I was pretty sure it would be near the bottom of my pile.  I'm actually intrigued and plan on following up on this, though I'm going to wait for the trade rather than read it monthly.  

I found it interesting that one writer wrote one of my favorite and one of my least favorite books.  Kyle Higgins, someone I'm not familiar with at all, wrote both Nightwing and Deathstroke.  Nightwing was actually pretty damn good, I thought, while Deathstroke was painful and in need of instant cancellation.

My ten favorite books of the month were as follows:

Batgirl, my favorite book of the month.

Batwoman

Batman

Aquaman

Green Lantern

Wonder Woman

Legion Of Super-Heroes

Nightwing

DC Universe Presents

Justice League Dark

Without further ado, here are my ten least favorite books.  These were bad.  Bad bad.

Voodoo

 Captain Atom

 Blackhawks

 Teen Titans

 Red Hood and the Outlaws

 OMAC

 Grifter

 Green Arrow

Deathstroke

And finally, the absolute biggest piece of shit for the month

Hawk & Dove

I think that I'm going to end up reading about twenty or so titles out of the line up.  Some I'm planning on reading monthly and some I'm planning on reading in trade.  I plan on reading Wonder Woman, Nightwing, DC Universe Presents, Swamp Thing, Batwing, I, Vampire, Demon Knights, All-Star Western and Justice League International in trade format, at least the first volume of each.  These books intrigued me enough to want to read more, but not necessarily every single month.  As for monthly titles, I'm going to pick up Batgirl, Batwoman, Batman, Aquaman, Green Lantern, Legion, Justice League Dark, Savage Hawkman, Green Lantern: New Guardians, Detective, Frankenstein, Red Lanterns, Green Lantern Corps, Stormwatch, Justice League and Legion Lost.  That's 16 monthly titles and 9 trades.  How long I stick with any of these is anyone's guess, but those were the titles that didn't repulse me.  The other 27 titles in the line, though....