August 5, 2024

It’s been a long, amazing weekend of seeing friends and experiencing my age-old hangout: Otakon! While it’s changed quite a bit over the years, it’s still a fun experience. The crowds were amazing, and there was so much ambient positivity and support everywhere. For the first time in ages, I didn’t sell anything (and there’s a good chance I wont booth at a con ever again; I think that ship has sailed). Instead, I cosplayed with the group and wandered around.

First and foremost: I got to experience driving in downtown DC in the worst of ways.

Yes, that’s how long it took me to drive that far. I still can’t believe it.

We all arrived on Thursday, many of us not having seen each other in months. I finally got to meet the elusive Pickles within our friend group (check out their artwork – they’re stunningly talented!) We settled into our respected hotels, then wandered out to a place they frequented in previous years called Farmers and Distillers.

Friday and Saturday were the big cosplay days. Several of us, veterans of cosplaying in hot environments in late summer, decided we were all too old for such things and came up with a comfortable and fun way to cosplay: Vacation versions of our characters! We all dressed up as various characters from Final Fantasy XIV, all decked out and ready for their ‘vacations’ in the latest expansion released earlier this month: Dawntrail. I played the part of Thancred, and I may have gone slightly overboard with it, but I regret NOTHING. The fans and fellow cosplayers loved our group (especially Zaff’s cursed Hades shirt), and I received a lot of compliments on my Dadcred.

Both photoshoots, Friday and Saturday, were a ton of fun for me. And of course, all the random cosplayers we met along the way.

Another highlight of the weekend: I got to meet the voice actors for Alisaie, Alphinaud, and Thancred. I made sure Peter Bramhill signed my gunblade! He loved all our cosplays.

Sunday was a little different. We dodged into the convention for a short while to make one last run on the Dealer’s Room and Artist Alley, then me and several other members of team AFAB donned our nicest clothes and headed over to the Watergate Hotel for a fancy tea service. I got the Lavender White Tea, and it was a full pot, served in a fancy teapot! The entire experience was surreal and everything tasted SUPERB. We barely finished everything! Well worth every penny. The hotel was really fancy, and the bathroom was stunningly beautiful. Great for selfies!

Afterwards, we met up with the rest of our group at the Smithsonian Natural History museum, and spent some time wandering around. Mostly, I hung out with Pickles and admired geology. Apparently they’re a self-taught geologist, and quite knowledgeable about how various minerals and gemstones are formed! I learned a lot, and got treated to a fun moment of watching them go feral through a large container of polished stones. We also got caught by a busker outside selling hats. Not sure if we were scammed or not, but we all appreciate the hustle and the guy was really nice and polite. I now have a touristy souvenir!

However, at the end of Sunday, it was time for me to say my goodbyes. I drove in, and I enjoy long night-drives, so I decided to hit the road around 11pm, making back to my home in time to see the sun rise. It was an amazing experience, and it was great getting to see my friends. If nothing else, being around so many artists really made me want to get back into doing my artwork again. I have missed it.

July 8, 2024

It’s been a rough time for the family lately. Not long after my last update, my grandpa, Bob, went into the hospital. Of course we were concerned for him, but he’s been to the hospital several times in the past few years, so everyone assumed he’d bounce back. After two weeks though, we noticed that, while sometimes he seemed to get better, he would decline again.

On June 27, we finally laid Grandpa Bob to rest beside my grandmother, who had died back in the mid-90s. He was my last grandparent, and at 98, he’d lived a full life. One of the few WWII veterans still left, he was afforded full honors during the ceremony.

Now my dad and I are spending more time together. After all, there was now a rather large void left in his life. My parents had invited Grandpa to live with them years ago, and my dad and his dad had done a lot together. So now, every Saturday, we have dinner together and watch “Svengoolie” together.

After everything, we’re now getting back into a routine again. It’s been rough, but life carries on. I’ve been working on my “Daedra Named Desire” fan-fic again, and will hopefully have new chapters to post soon. That is, if I can drag myself away from House Flipper 2! Apparently this game really has a hold on me; I haven’t even touched the latest expansion from FFXIV! I’m also still working on getting all my old artwork reposted to my site. And I’m gearing up to go to Otakon at the end of the month. So lots of updates coming in the near future.

Until then, please enjoy these pictures from our Hawaiin Shirt tribute to Grandpa.

May 6, 2024

I know there’s been a silence of update posts, but I have been working behind the scenes. I ran into some problems uploading my older artwork; apparently 2019 was when I was swapping computers. As such, my sketches were scattered across various folders and back-ups. Eventually, I had to just go through my Patreon and save all the sketches that I’d uploaded there. Thankfully, after working on it for two weeks straight, I’ve managed to get all of 2019’s artwork uploaded. Here’s hoping this is the last time that I have to go hunting through my far-too-many back-up folders to find all my artwork. At the very least, I am consolidating everything as I find it into one area.

I’ve desperately needed to do a reorganizing of my various computer folders for way too long. After all, I’ve been carrying over data and back-ups since almost 2003! Over 20 years worth of disorganization! Perhaps once I get everything uploaded to here I’ll focus on getting my computer folders back under control.

In the mean time, I’ve uploaded all artwork from 2019 through 2017. I’ll see you all in the coming weeks with even more archived artwork, until its all uploaded! At which point, I think the website will be fully functional and updated, and I can focus on building new things rather than preserving the old. Until then!

March 19, 2024

It has taken quite awhile, but I’ve finally finished uploading all the pages of M.A.Q. #041. I moved each chapter to their own page since having them all on one page was overloading my computer’s ability to load them. I’ve also started the process of writing a synopsis to give the story some sort of closure after all these years stuck in limbo.

At this point, I’ll more than likely switch back to uploading my old Facebook posts and putting up all the years of artwork that used to be hosted here. But for now, I’ve been sitting here for 6 hours straight, and I could definitely use a break.

March 18, 2024

It’s been an interesting day today. Tomorrow is voting day, and one of my old fosters came over for an overnight stay! Koda (formerly Buddy) is staying with me while his new mom works at the Polls tomorrow. Piper hasn’t had another dog spend the night before, and already its been an adventure. Apparently Piper rolled in mud (or at least I’m lying to myself and saying its mud) and she had to have a bath. I spent most of the day resting and relaxing only to spend the entire evening chasing two very happy dogs around the house!

As such, not much of an update today. But for now, enjoy dog pictures!

March 11, 2024

Crimmeny, been a minute. February, as per usual, was my nightmare month. For being the shortest month, it gets jam packed with events in my professional life. Now that things have calmed down, I was able to set aside some time to work on the website again.

Chapters 11 – 15 of Maq#041 have now been uploaded. Going back through them, I could tell when I was working through a number of mental issues. I can laugh now, but back then I was so upset about memories from my high school days resurfacing. Working on that comic really helped me out. I also noticed my artwork really improved during those chapters.

A few other minor fixes were done here and there, though most of the work I did today was organizing the filing system WordPress uses, so there’s not as much noticeable. However, it helped me out a bunch, and now updates will be smoother and easier going forward.

Until next time!

March 2, 2024

Having a good day today. Managed to get the day off from work in order to celebrate my grandfather Bob’s 98th birthday! True to form, we went to downtown Columbus to Schmidt’s. He goes there every week to meet with friends, so he’s incredibly well known there.

We spent most of the time chatting with the family members I rarely see, and finally got to meet my cousin’s latest daughter (the sixth great-grandchild to Grandpa Bob, all of them girls). My roommate came with, though he spent the entire time on his Steamdeck. Guess I can’t really blame him; he barely knows the family beyond my parents and grandpa. The food was good, the mini cream puffs even better. All in all, time well spent.

Happy Birthday, Grandpa Bob!

February 19, 2024

Today was a bit slower with the updates, though that was more due to going through photos of my now deceased pets. I’ve uploaded a bunch of ‘shorts’ to Youtube, as well as added more blog posts from Facebook. The last being Daisy’s final days with us. Hopefully next week I’ll make more progress, but for now, I’m going to go take care of my mental health. I think I’ve earned it.

February 5, 2024

Its been an interesting a productive day today. I managed to get chapters 1 through 10 of MAQ #041 uploaded to the comics page. Going through the old pages definitely opened up a lot of emotions. When I started that comic, I was HEAVILY influenced by the shojo anime and manga of the time period. Looking back through it, I’m almost embarrassed by how goofy the comic could be at times. Chapter 10 is entirely 100% fan service that has not aged well. Even so, I learned so much while making the comic. Even if it is never finished, it was important to me for over 10 years as I kept working on it.

Next week I’ll get the rest of the chapters. At some point, I’m going to sit down and write out where I wanted the rest of the story to go in order to give it a little closure.

January 29, 2024

Pretty significant update today: I’ve gotten quite a bit of the artwork re-uploaded! At least up 2020. Slowly, the gallery there is coming together how I want it. Now that I know how I want it organized it’ll go faster. Considering that I’ve set aside 5 hours a week purely to work on the website, it’ll all get uploaded soon! I really want to have Maq#041 to be uploaded, so I may work on that next week. I know there are a lot of old readers who’ve asked about it.

And that’s it for January! I think we’ve made some good progress here. Lets hope that I can keep it up during February!