For no particular reason, here's the stuff I read and watched in August:

Books/Comics:
The Expectant Father by Armin A. Brott
Death of Captain America, Vol. 3: The Man Who Sold America
Astro City: The Dark Age, Book 1
Strange (JMS/Brandon Peterson series)
Empowered, Vol. 5
Incredible Hercules: Secret Invasion
John Carter Warlord of Mars (1970s Marvel series) #1-18
Top Ten Season 2 #1-4 + Top Ten Season 2 Special
Amazing Spider-Man #590-594

TV/Movies:
Crank
The Wicker Man
Margot at the Wedding
The Limey
District 9
The Assassination of Jesse James, etc.
Death Race
The Quick and the Dead (HBO original movie starring Sam Elliott)
Appaloosa
The Batman, Season 1

I haven't had a chance to check out the rest of their stuff yet, but consider this a glowing recommendation for Snakefarm's album "Songs From My Funeral". The album is entirely made up of trip-hop versions of folk songs.

And if that doesn't immediately sound awesome to you... first of all, ask yourself what's wrong with you, then go listen to their version of "John Henry".



They've got a Facebook page, for those of you with Facebook capabilities. There hasn't been any activity on it for about a year, but you can listen to all the songs from "Songs From My Funeral" there.

Like most cool music I've discovered lately, this comes to me courtesy of Brian Ibbott's superb Coverville podcast. Check that out too.

- I got a new Asus netbook. Can't believe the bang for the buck in this thing. It's my favorite new toy.

- I'm sure you've all seen this already, but just in case it slipped by somebody... The Ballad of GI Joe is totally worth your time.

- I've been reading a lot of old John Carter Warlord of Mars comics from the 70s. I've never read the novels, so maybe one of you can tell me... do all his adventures end with some sexual innuendo followed by John Carter and Dejah Thoris running off to do it? Because that's how the comic is going so far.

- Gah! There are only like two more weeks until the pools close!

- I'm going to Montana next week to go camping with my uncle and cousin. One last guy trip before the baby is born. I'm really looking forward to it.

- Saw and enjoyed The Limey and The Wicker Man recently, both on recommendation from Tom Deja and Derrick Ferguson via their Better in the Dark podcast. If you haven't checked BitD out yet... well, you should. Go on now.

So it's been a while since I've checked in around here... long enough that I've received at least one phone call to make sure everything was okay (thanks for worrying, D). Fortunately, everything is okay. It's better than okay actually, and most of you have already heard why.

But for those who haven't...

Trelina is pregnant, and - remarkably - after almost two years of hellish fertility treatments, we somehow managed to do the deed without any help whatsoever. This is our first baby, and something we've been trying for, off-and-on, for about ten years.

The due date is December 1. It's a girl, and her name is Jasmine Rhiannon Anderson.

We're very happy. Also overwhelmed, which is why I haven't been around here very much this summer.

Here's the latest picture of mama. About 24 weeks here.



Some men might secretly harbor doubts about whether the child in their wife's belly is really theirs, but not me. No sir. You know how I know? Take a look at this sonogram.



This was taken at 18 weeks. That shape in the middle of the picture is exactly what it looks like. A tiny baby hand...

... making Spider-Man fingers.

I cannot WAIT to meet this kid.

I had a really good workout yesterday – one of those “this is gonna hurt in two days, but I don’t care” workouts.

Trelina picked the dogs up from the vet, where we kenneled them over the weekend. We love our vet, and the cost of the kenneling itself is totally reasonable… but Tara was wwwaaaaayyy behind on her shots, so we ended up paying to get her up-to-date as well. Final bill: $300+. In other words, more than we spent on gas and hotel for our weekend in the Outer Banks. Ah well, at least the dog’s all inoculated now.

(We went to the Outer Banks for a friend’s wedding over the weekend. It was the second most gorgeous beach wedding I’ve ever been to. We took lots of pictures. I’ll post some of them later this week.)

Speaking of trips, I got a call from my cousin Mike last night. The two of us are flying to Montana in August to spend a week on the river with my uncle. We’ve been planning it for most of the year, but I was starting to think people weren’t going to be able to get time off work or afford the trip. The trip is a couple of weeks later than we’d planned now, but otherwise it looks like Thunderbirds are Go. I’m really looking forward to this.

Finished watching season 4.0 of Battlestar Galactica last night. ( Let's discuss, with a couple of mid-season spoilers... )

I need a haircut.

Planet Hulk HC
It took me a little while to get into this for some reason - I don't know why, since it's basically the Hulk as Alien Conan, which is EASILY the coolest phrase I will write today - but once I got rolling, I enjoyed it a lot. The villain of the piece was a little underwhelming, but he was also sort of beside the point. The world of Planet Hulk is the star here, and it is surprisingly rich. I may have dug this a little more than the follow-up, World War Hulk.



Thor Visionaries: Walter Simonson, Vol. 1
This is the 4th or 5th time I've read these stories, but somehow I never manage to get tired of them. It's difficult to put into words what makes Walt Simonson's Thor so damn awesome, but if you need convincing, here's a sampler.



Metal Men
Man, this had gorgeous art, but I feel like writer/artist Duncan Rouleau lost control of the time travel angle near the end. The book's still got a lot going for it, though. There are fun science facts, the aforementioned gorgeous art, getting to watch the Metal Men get blown up en masse at least three times, and a cast of villains with names like the Balloonatic and the Death Metal Men. Definitely worth your time... just consider yourself warned that you may have to read it twice to figure out what the hell is going on.

I checked out the 6-page preview of Batman & Robin #1 that's been floating around the Internet (and you should too, unless you want to just go out and buy the first issue that is - it's in comic shops now). It looks good. I'll buy pretty much anything this creative team puts out, of course, but as a dedicated tradewaiter, it's going to be a few months before I get to read this in its entirety.

Frank Quitely's always gorgeous art is stunning, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd seen some of the choices he's making here in other Batman comics before. The fine lines, the sound effects as part of the art, the economy of close and medium shots.

And... I may be completely off-base here, but I think Frank Quitely is consciously doing a Marshall Rogers riff in this book. That is to say, this



and this



remind me of this


(This image is from the Comic Art Fans page of Tim Soter, which you can find here.)

I haven't seen anyone else point this out, so maybe it's just me. What do you think?

Was stumbling bleary-eyed toward the shower this morning when I noticed that I could hear the washing machine running in the basement. Since Trelina and I had gone to bed about 7 hours before, and the washing machine only runs for about 25 minutes per load, this did not compute. And so I changed the direction of my stumble and went downstairs to check it out.

Seems the washing machine got stuck just before it reached the spin cycle, meaning it had been churning away at this particular load of laundry for about 12 hours by the time I turned it off. It was a color load, so the water was a dark, soapy blue. I ran the spin cycle for a couple of minutes, just to drain most of the water out, but I didn't have the heart to start dragging clothes out. I really hope there was nothing I really liked in there, since I'm pretty sure the entire load was destroyed.

That washer/dryer set was in the house when we moved in, which makes it at least 10 years old, and maybe as much as 20. The dryer has been glitchy for a couple of years. So... yeah, I guess it's time for some new appliances.

1) Preheat the oven to 300.
2) Tear 4 corn tortillas into 1/2-inch strips and bake them until they're crisp - about 15 minutes.
3) Peel a head of garlic, chop it in half, and set it aside.
4) Chop 2 medium onions and 2 carrots. Slice 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts into 1-inch strips.
5) Heat 2 tbsp. olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until it begins to soften - about 2 minutes.
6) Add the chicken, carrots, and garlic, 2 bay leaves, and 1 tsp. ground cumin to the saucepan. Cook until the carrots begin to soften and the meat begins to brown - about 3 minutes.
7) Add 4 cups of chicken broth and 1 16-oz. can diced tomatoes to the saucepan and raise the heat to medium-high until the soup boils.
8) Reduce heat and simmer for about 10 minutes until flavors are all cooked through.
9) Discard the garlic and bay leaves.
10) Pour into bowls and scatter the top with the baked tortilla crisps. Makes about 4 servings.


Thoughts:
- Recipe courtesy of Eating Well When You're Expecting.
- I've never made tortilla soup before. This was really tasty. My Mexican wife agrees.
- The garlic is a pain to fish out of the soup after cooking, so I just left it all in there. If I do this again, I'm going to use the diced stuff and leave it in there. I hate wasting garlic.
- I was surprised how tasty and, well, tortilla chip-like the corn tortillas were after only a few minutes of baking. Sprinkle some salt on them and you wouldn't know the difference. As God is my witness, no more corn chips will go to waste in this house!

Trelina and I went to the pool for a couple of hours today to celebrate the first nice weather in about a week. We're both as pale as the driven snow, but hopefully not for much longer. Unfortunately, the water was freezing. I got in once, just for principal's sake, but spent the rest of the time reading by the poolside and soaking up rays.

The rest of the day has been devoted to working on the final "team" project for my Business Systems class. Tomorrow shall also be largely devoted to this endeavor. Half my team dropped the class in the last week and a half of class, and of the three that are left, one is a stroke victim and can only manage about half an hour on the computer at a time. So it's basically been me and one other guy doing a project that should be done by five-six people. Hence the quotation marks.

We started on Battlestar Galactica Season 4 last night, beginning with the 2-hour Razor movie. It's good stuff, as expected, but after a few months of Doctor Who, this show seems utterly devoid of hope or humor. Which I guess is sort of the point. Might be a little difficult to get through with all this summertime staring me in the face, though. That's all I'm saying.

It's been over a month since I've posted to these parts. Part of that is because school has been kicking me around the playground for the last five weeks. Part of it is because work has been demanding a lot of my attention (and I've been lucky to land a bit of overtime because of it).

It's also partly because my wife is pregnant.

As some of you already know, Trelina and I have been trying to spawn for years, and we've got the bills from the fertility treatments to prove it. 2008, in particular, was a pretty tough year in regards to the fertility stuff. The treatments are physically painful and emotionally exhausting. And expensive - did I mention expensive? So last November, after yet another round of IVF that didn't take, we decided we needed to take a break for a while.

Then, some time in early March, we got pregnant all by ourselves. (Which, I hope you'll agree, is the best way to do it.)

We found out in late March, while we were on vacation in Phoenix; but we've been down this road before, and we knew we didn't want to tell anyone until we were safely through the first trimester. If you don't get why we chose to do that - well, imagine realizing that you've miscarried the baby you're carrying. Then imagine reliving it dozens of times when you have to tell everyone who you previously told you were pregnant that you're not pregnant anymore.

Anyway, we're at 13 weeks and some change now, so we're well into the "telling anyone who will listen" phase. Nothing is sure in pregnancy, but we're past the most dangerous period - and twice as far along as we've ever made it before. So we're feeling pretty good about things right now.

And just like a proud papa, I brought pictures:

( Ultrasound and 3D Ultrasound )

More pictures are on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/russlee74/sets/72157618894913687/.

The due date is 12/01/2009. Mark your calendars.

Work has been pretty intense lately. Not unpleasantly so - I seem to have found that elusive balance of staying busy enough to make the time fly without being overwhelmed - but it has prevented me from maintaining my various online presences. I expect to be even scarcer as summer gets closer and the outdoors start beckoning for reals.

This year's veggies are growing apace. So far I've got jalapenos, tomatoes, and strawberries growing in buckets out on the deck. I started some garden beans from seed last week in a couple of small containers I had inside - and holy crap do they grow fast. I'll have to move them into a deck bucket this weekend, I think.

Nearing the end of a comic script I've been struggling with for the last four months. This thing has been my Everest - I've spent so much time agonizing over it that I no longer have any perspective whatsoever. Hopefully it's better than I think it is right now.

Started my latest class today - Business Systems. Lots of reading so far, but after that Statistics class last month, I'm just glad there isn't any arithmetic involved.

Currently reading Cthulhu Tales, Vol. 2: Whispers of Madness from Boom Studios, courtesy of the Baltimore County Public Library. I'm hardly a connoisseur of Lovecraftian fiction, but I usually enjoy the stuff I encounter, and this is no exception. Creepy little trade of 11-12 short comic stories drawing inspiration from Cthulhu and the other elder gods.

Doorbell rang around 11 AM today. I approached the door assuming I was either going to have to chase off kids wanting to mow my lawn or tell the local representative of the Jehovah's Witness that I was a Wiccan again. It was one of my neighbors, though, holding the loose and rifled remains of my wallet. He'd found it in his front yard.

I don't carry a wallet, generally speaking. I carry a money clip with my ID, my debit card, and whatever cash I have at the time. My wallet, with all the club cards and other nonsense I need only occasionally, usually resides in the console of my car.

Which means that somebody broke into my car last night.

Only "broke into" might be the wrong turn of phrase, since there's no sign of forcing. Either I forgot to lock it (unlikely, I'm pretty good about that), or I did lock it but my key fob (which I've long suspected was starting to die) didn't quite get the signal to the car.

They got away with my iPod and the tiny radio transmitter I used to play it on my car stereo... and my wallet, of course, but at least they were nice enough to leave that in my neighbor's yard. And he was nice enough not to run it over with his lawn mower.

It's annoying - I'm going to miss that iPod - but I'm just thankful they didn't bust out a window or vandalize the car in any way. There may have been an old, canceled credit card in the wallet, so I'll have to keep an eye on my credit report and make sure nobody tries to reopen it, but at least there wasn't anything active in there.

The moral to the story? Lock your cars up, kiddies. And if you've got a key fob that does it for you, keep pressing that button till the car honks at you.

Trelina and I watched There Will be Blood a couple nights back, courtesy of Netflix (good movie, enormously depressing), and it occurred to me that Daniel Day Lewis is probably the best actor of this generation. I can't think of any others that even come close.

While pondering this matter, though, I was struck by that slightly tangential, yet age-old question: Who's better? Robert Deniro or Al Pacino?

Most of my friends lean toward Deniro. I'm a Pacino man myself. Both of them have played only slight variations on the same characters for the last 20 years or so, but, IMO, Pacino gets the edge in terms of acting chops based on Scarface alone. Plus, he's just more fun to watch.

As for Deniro... I'm sort of at a loss to see what the big deal is, honestly. Like Pacino, he's got a distinctive persona, and nobody can deny that the guy's got screen presence, but has he ever played a character that wasn't, to one degree or another, Jake La Motta from Raging Bull?

Okay, I'll give you Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein remake, but he was hardly on screen at all in that one. Is there anything else?

That's a serious question, not me being snarky, because if he has, I'd love to see that movie.

Barry Kitson was doing a signing at Comics, Cards & Collectibles in Reisterstown this past Wednesday. Mike Fogg and I headed up there to see him and get a couple of books signed. We didn't expect that he'd be doing any sketching.

Boy, were we wrong.

He was working on a gorgeous Supergirl piece for somebody when we got there - full body sketch with watercolors. It was already 7 PM, though, and he had a list to work through, so I figured we'd just get some books signed, say hello (Mike runs Barry's mailing list, so they know each other), and get out of there.

But after he'd finished the Supergirl and signed a bunch of comics, he asked if anybody wanted a quickie head sketch before he got started on the next big one.

Hell yeah, I did.

Look below the cut to see what Barry Kitson considers "a quickie head sketch".

( Read more... )

Thanks to Mike for letting me know about the signing, and Barry Kitson for just being awesome.

So Trelina and I flew to Phoenix back on the 19th and spent about a week in town. My aunt was celebrating her 30th wedding anniversary, so we were there mostly for that, but we also took the opportunity to catch up with old friends.

Some choice pics from the trip below the cut:

( Read more... )

- Getting ready to get on a plane this morning and fly to Phoenix for my aunt's 30th wedding anniversary. Haven't been there in a dog's age (or had a real vacation in a year and a half), so it'll be nice to see everybody again.

- Saw Celtic Woman at the Hippodrome last night. Great show.

- Had dinner at Lucy's Irish Pub on Eutaw St. in Baltimore. Had the fried green tomatoes - they were delish. Thanks for the tip, Liam.

- A little nervous about the dogs. This will be the first time we're going away and just leaving them in the house. The lovely and talented Heather Fogg is coming over to let them out and spend time with them twice a day, but I'm still worried about the havoc they're going to cause while we're gone.

- Sorry if this sounds a little like Rorshach's journal. Got only about 4 hours sleep last night, so still a little punchy.

Thirty dancers (and, at one point, four old fat guys) perform various choreographed percussion routines, pounding out their beats on everything from basketballs to metal trash cans.

Thoughts:
- Try to watch this without dancing a little in your chair – I dare you.
- Broadcast on HBO back in the late 90s, this is basically a film version of the Stomp show that’s been playing in London and NYC for a while. The main difference is that they get to do some of the routines in places other than a stage.
- Those places include an NYC alley, the terrifyingly filthy kitchen of a diner, and (in the incredible opening bit) suspended from a billboard framework on top of a roof in Soho.
- For those uninitiated in the ways of Stomp, there is no story here, and only one word of dialogue (in the diner bit). It has a lot of personality, but no plot. It’s essentially an hour-long dance recital.
- You shouldn’t let that stop you from seeing it, though. It’s brilliant.
- Some of the less likely things they use to create beats in Stomp Out Loud – a deck of cards, apples, and keyrings.
- My favorite bits were the aforementioned billboard routine and a part where the dancers are pounding on drums with stuffed socks while sprinklers are going off over their heads (pictured above).

Had a fantastic weekend, despite the fact that Mother Nature seemed determined to spoil it.

Friday night, I stayed home and did schoolwork. Trelina and I are flying to Phoenix next weekend for my aunt's 30th wedding anniversary, so I'm trying to work a little bit ahead in my Statistics class (which isn't making it any more fun, by the way). Needless to say, the awesome hadn't quite kicked in at this point, BUT I broke away from the books long enough to play Lego Batman for about an hour, so that was alright.

Saturday, after Trelina's bellydance class, we met up with our favorite people, the Foggs, and went to the Shamrock Fest down in DC. Mike Fogg is the only person I know who has a strategy for riding the metro, so we got introduced to some of his theory on the subject. At the concert, it was raining with temperatures somewhere in the 30s, so we only stayed for a couple of hours. All the bands we saw were great, though - the only one I was familiar with was Carbon Leaf. I would have liked to stay for Flogging Molly, but it was getting seriously cold by 7 PM, so we headed home.

Sunday was another Fogg day. They came over to our place this time, so we could carpool up to the Maple Syrup Making Demonstration at Cunningham Falls State Park. Just as we were pulling out of our complex, though, our old friend/ex-roommate Val showed up. He was just dropping by for a quick visit, but we talked him into following us to the park - though it bears noting that this took a little misdirection on Trelina's part re: exactly where and how far away the park was.

At the park, we had pancakes and saw how maple syrup was made and hiked to a waterfall and walked along a beach. Once again, it was cold and miserable, but we managed to squeeze a good time out of it anyway. On the way back home, we stopped in Frederick to check out a HUGE hobby shop (it had a big indoor RC racetrack in the back), and then went back to the Foggs' house for pizza and Rock Band 2.

I went to bed at 1 AM on a Sunday night/Monday morning. This is a sure sign that I'm having a good weekend.

( Photographic Evidence )
How was yours?

Friday night, my brother-in-law flew in from Iraq. It took him a long time to get through customs – I think there were three or four military charter flights coming in at almost the same time – but we eventually got out of there and got him home. The idea was for him to catch a few hours sleep in our guest bed before getting on another plane Saturday morning, but he was wired and only managed a couple of hours. Trelina and I stayed up with him until around 3 AM, but we couldn’t hang any longer than that.

Saturday, we got up and took him to the airport early, then came home and tried to make up for all the sleep we hadn’t gotten the night before. When I finally got up, I ran in to work for an hour to get a little overtime in, then spent the rest of the day doing schoolwork (note to self: never take a statistics class ever again).

Sunday we met up with Mike and Heather Fogg early and went to see an early showing of Watchmen in IMAX. (I loved it. I might go see it again. It was not perfect by any means, but it got a lot more right than it got wrong.) Afterwards we went out for lunch – can’t remember the name of the place, but they had some awesome jambalaya – and then went back to the Foggs’ house for some Rock Band 2. Mike sent me home with some more trade paperbacks (very kind of him, considering I haven’t finished – or even cracked – the last stack he gave me yet).

How was yours?