It was my birthday yesterday, and I find that the older I get the more I want to only mention that it was my birthday the day after my birthday. It’s fun to watch the guilty expression fleet across the face of the person with faulty memory.

Nah! Just kidding! The only one around the office to even know that it was my birthday was the HR department, and they actually sent me a card. It was surprisingly lax in any form of monetary bonus, but the thought was appreciated, nonetheless.

I got to see some of my favorite people over the weekend, even if it was only for a short period of time. My sister had a stop off at the Calgary airport, and I made sure I was outside of the gate waiting for her to pass through. She truly misses Victoria (even more so than myself, which is very hard, but her story, which should be told by her and not me, has resulted in such a cavity in her soul that could only be filled by the loving friends she has gathered around her), and her weekend pass, er, visit there has probably made her miss it more. Be that as it may, it was really nice to see her for the two hours she was in Calgary.

My mom flew in less than an hour after Wendy arrived, so the three of us got to have a short visit. While Wendy and I were waiting for our dear mother to de-plane, a group from Frankfurt came through security with about a million skis. I guessed that they were part of a ski team, not because they were tall, in good shape and had a million skis, but the back of their jackets said “SKI TEAM.” It was a wild guess, but I have a good feeling about it.

My sister remarked to me as a response to something I said to her but can’t quite recall right now, but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with me saying she “had” to do something. She remarked that she didn’t “have” to do anything, and the emphasis was on the “have” as she is in complete and utter control of herself and doesn’t “have” to do what she’s told because that’s what life is all about: choice!

It only took a moment for me to come up with what I can only assume was a very annoying response to her, but now that I’ve had longer to think about it, I came up with the top 3 things she “has” to do:

1. She can’t punch any old person in the face on any old street in any old town, etc. She can’t turn her car into the oncoming lane against the flow of traffic just because she feels like it. She can’t change her diet to include a side order of razor blades and a tall glass of hydrochloric acid to wash it down with. Why? Because she “has” to RESTRAIN herself.
   
2. Does my sister want to be rich? Probably! Does she want to rob a bank, risking imprisonment with no visitation from her two handsome sons just to fast track her way to wealth? I doubt it! Why? Because she “has” to COMPLY with the law.
   
3. And last, but not least, and since it is such an obvious one, and I feel like copping out: I believe none of our ancestors were fairies or pigeons, so since flying without mechanical means is out of the question, Wendy “has” to OBEY all gravitational forces.…

That last one could probably be stretched out to include all of Newton’s laws, but my sister would probably just ask if he was the guy who did all that wonderful stuff with figs, and I’d be left wondering if she was being serious or not.

Regardless, it was nice to see her. She departed, and I brought mom back to my place for a few minutes before she took us all out for my birthday dinner. We went to the Cheesecake Café, where some of us had mediocre, cold meals, some BEvERages and a healthy (hah!) portion of cheesecake. I used to love the Cheesecake Café, but now I’m very selective about what I order there for dessert. For some very, very stupid reason that I can only assume is for esthetics, they have decided to put icing on most of their cheesecakes. If there were ever a cake, besides rum cake (mmmmm!) and others, I’m sure, that didn’t need icing because it was sweet enough, it’s cheesecake. However, under the icing is one heck of a good sized, great tasting piece of cheesecake, and no crumb went unconsumed. Michelle and Rylee had a piece of Cheesequake Cheesecake (everything but the kitchen sink), Mom and Brendan shared a piece of After Eight Cheesecake, and my favorite 10 (soon to be 11) year old, Kristen, picked a piece of Oreo Cheesecake for her and I to share. You’d think beer and cheesecake wouldn’t go together, but you’d be surprisingly wrong. Too much beer and cheesecake? Yeah, that’d probably be bad.

Mom left the next morning for Creston, but not before leaving me a birthday card. When I got home from work, I opened up to find Monopoly money in it. Further inspection proved that it was actually American currency, and she had left a not in the card to get those books I wanted. So I did! My two most favorite authors decided to come out with books at the same time, to my delight, and the money mom left and the $10 discount coupon I got when Michelle and I saw The Departed (gooooooood movie!) last week was enough to get both in hardcover.

I’ve mentioned the first one before, maybe on more than one occasion. It’s Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett, the definitive author combining humor and fantasy:


This is the third book about a certain character named Tiffany who is training to be a witch (better than Harry Potter, in my opinion, but I still like J K Rowling’s books, as well), and Kristen and I care for this character very much. When I told her that I had purchased it she was already making plans to use separate bookmarks to indicate where she and I had left off. I’m sure her bookmark will reach the end of the book in a few short days.

The second one came as a surprise because I hadn’t read his website in quite awhile, so when Neil Gaiman’s collection of short stories called Fragile Things came to my attention at the airport bookstore while waiting for Wendy, I was pleasantly surprised.


I bought both books while Rylee was at her karate lesson last night, and when I brought both books up the the counter, the guy operating the register was very excited to see that I was reading Gaiman. He told me what an awesome book it was, and he appeared to be a full grown adult. He had read it and enjoyed it immensely. When I queried him as to how the short stories were, he paused, took off the tissue like book cover and pointed out the cover art. “Look! A snowflake, a butterfly, a heart with a map on it! That’s totally Gaiman!” With the smallest of pauses, and resisting the urge to tell him that Gaiman probably didn’t do the art himself, I agreed and took my purchases out of the store.

Another animation challenge has been issued, but this time I’m not going to wait till the last minute to finish it up. I’ll post a link when I have something, but right now I’m only going to work on it little by little. I have many strips to draw, ink and color, and those take priority over any extra fun I want to have (besides family fun, that is). Be that as it may, I did do another Character Design last night. Here is the criteria:

You will have to design a character, a musician.
Rock star, rapper, pop singer... your choice. Add a little description or explanation with the picture, though.

And, as a result, I quickly did this little design:


Not as detailed as I'd like, and the shading is off a lot, but I wanted to submit something. The gentleman above goes by the moniker "Cry Baby Mason." His mission, as bestowed to him by a Saturday night haze party hallucination, is to bridge the tremendous gap between children's music and death metal. You can go to the thread and see what others have come up with...there's a vast array of different talent there!

Actually, come to think of it, maybe cheesecake and beer wasn’t such a good idea