Sudden Death.

I needed to finish up a bunch of stuff over the weekend - most notably, the second chapter of Ivy. Tuesday (today) would be the night I was to speak at the Multnomah County Library, and I needed the chapters finished up and with cover images to print into minicomics. So of course, what happens? Friday morning I wake up and turn on the ol' EMachine. Nothing.

Dead.

Three and a half years of working perfectly - no crashes, no memory loss. And now when I need her the most she lets me down.

I was without a machine all weekend; fortunately Petr came to my rescue and fixed me up with a new Gateway (which has crashed twice in the two days I've had it), and he rescued my hard drive and transferred my files to the new machine. I have none of my old programs except the 15- 0r 30-day trial versions of Photoshop and Nero. I had to run out and buy a new scanner and wireless card because my old ones aren't compatible with Windows Vista (thumbs down on Vista, btw). I lost such seemingly trivial things as my downloaded (and paid for) games, Firefox bookmarks and auto-fill passwords. But somehow in the middle of all this I managed to bust out the last six pages of Ivy Chapter Two, both covers for the minis, and an illustration for the Willamette Week. How did I do it, you might ask? Well, I got this secret weapon now.

It's called a work schedule.

I have been living with some very bad habits these days, the greatest of which was the way I spent my time. I wasted huge chunks of daylight hours screwing around. But no longer! My schedule now takes me through a decent 6 hours of working time between 9 and 5, and I see now that when I stick to it, things get done. Amazing. My hope for finishing this monster is renewed. An added benefit is that I've been coming up with new ideas for side projects as well. I'm already mulling over a series of short stories about a retirement community who experiences an outbreak of gonorrhea. It's called Swinghaven and takes place in one of those guarded, gated buildings with a pool and a bingo room. The cast of characters is already forming in my mind. Keep posted!

Otters in love.

This new print will debut at Stumptown as part of my "instant cavity" cuteness series. Just kidding. (about the series, not the debut.) Hey, 8,012,245 YouTube viewers can't be wrong.

TCB.

Here's a sneak preview of the comic I did for the Mercury.

(click for larger.)

I'm gonna have to hustle if I want to get the first two chapters out in minicomics form for Stumptown, so I have no time to chat. Enjoy the pretty colors!

Moooooooooooan...

I'm in pain. Why? We installed the bamboo floor in the kitchen two days ago and I forgot that I am not a sprightly young lady anymore. I overexerted myself.

This is what we started with: a ripped-up linoleum floor from decades past (which we've been living with for the last 2 months), with tar paper put down over the half of the floor the fridge and stove wasn't sitting on.


Matt's job was to man the nail gun, since he could strike the button with enough force to really chunk the nails in properly. I gave it a try and the thing would jump out of place at the second of impact, leaving half-imbedded nails that were a bitch to remove.


So my job was as follows: Place a plank against the space left and mark the length it needed to be with a sharp thumbnail score. Run out to the garage and cut it to size with a miter saw on the floor. Run back to the kitchen, place the board and use a pull bar to wedge it against its brethren, then use a tapping block to set it up against the line of the rest of the flooring. Enter Matt with three or four taps, and repeat. Over. And. Over. For. Six. Hours.

My knees were torn up at the end, but look what we got out of it:


Lovely! With some baseboards the room will really come together.

But now I am paying the price of all that kneeling and squatting in the form of some extreme muscle soreness and stiffness. You may or may not know this, but next week brings the advent of my 30th birthday, and while that number cannot be considered "old" by any means I certainly see the slow decline of my physicality start to loom largely in the distance. Out with friends last night I asked, "Where did my 20's go?", but then I thought of the last six years I have spent in P-town, making friends and having capers, traveling all over the world, and I was like, "Oh yeah. Living a great life." My thirties will be about getting serious. Seriously wasted! HA!!! Oh, I kid. But honestly - if I finish this book, remodel this house, and score a publishing deal in the next couple of years, I'll be satisfied. I want to be able to grow enough vegetables to supply myself, Matt, and most/all of my friends with food next summer and fall. I want to construct a raccoon-proof henhouse and adopt three lovely chicken ladies for the backyard. I want to afford to travel and see my sister and her son before he's much larger, and return to Tokyo for a longer trip. I want to continue to avoid owning a vehicle. I want to do a long bike tour. I want the next decade to be AMAZING.

So as far as the next month goes, I'm looking at some interesting developments in my comicking career. On the 25th Erika Moen and I are giving a talk at the North Portland Library about our autobio comics as part of their Zinesters Talking series. Then, of course, on the 29th and 30th I'll be at the Lloyd Center Doubletree for the Stumptown Comics Fest, which of course I hope you local PDXers will attend. That Sunday (the 30th) at 2 pm is my panel, tentatively titled Sarah Oleksyk's Excellent Adventures, where I will be giving a rundown of my ways and means. The Willamette Week has asked me to give a short interview and provide a piece of art for a feature they plan to run, but my prior experience with them as a periodical has not been positive, so that's still up in the air. (The column they ran about our City Hall art show was extremely backhanded, and they ran my art without crediting me.) But I'm doing a color strip for the Mercury as part of their promotional Stumptown issue, and I hope it gets some crowds in there, because last year was a ghost town and I think it made some out-of-towners think twice about making the trip this year. (Don't give up, little ones! Come back!)

I think you'll like the Mercury strip, by the way. I pulled out all the stops. Two words: kitten factory.

The Treadmill.

Work has been coming along fairly steadily on the house; I wish I could say the same for my comics. I've decided, in the interest of having something on my table at Stumptown, to print up each chapter of Ivy as its own individual minicomic. That way I can get the work out in the world and perhaps light a fire under my ass to get more completed. I seriously cannot believe how long this book will take me to finish. I'm beyond sick of it.

Matt has been setting up the garage as a print shop, and we'll put it to the test soon - we've run out of most of our prints, and I have a few new ones I'd like to have ready to sell. I also have plans to make more cat toys and other little gifty items - anything to take up that looming tabletop. I'd also like to have something to bring to SPX, so people know me as a cartoonist and not just as some party-girl hanger-on (a comics groupie?).

I have to say, though, I'm so happy the upstairs bathroom is done (except for some paint touchups). Just to jog your memory, here are some "before" pictures:

Unbefuckinglievable. People lived here like this? Look at the unfinished board "panelling"!

Love that luxury vanity setup. I felt like a true princess.

And now, the shocking conclusion:

Whoa! It looks... clean! And inviting! Cobalt blue tiled floor, spackled walls (they're a very light lilac but it's hard to tell except in direct sun), new toilet, and a cabinet from Craigslist.

We "re-contextualized" a 60's-era stereo cabinet for the sink. Matt drilled out all the holes to fit the plumbing inside (there's a shelf in there now) and installed the vessel sink. The ginormous mirror makes the room look more open.

The only thing we kept was the tub. Those are new faucet handles and hand-placed tiles. Can I say this is the best shower/bathtub I've had since moving to Portland? The clawfoot at the last apartment was so heavy and cold, the tub water would be lukewarm by the time it was filled. Here we have the HOTTEST water, and that tub is like 18" deep.

So things are running along nicely at ol' Dekum Shack. All that's left as far as the upstairs is placing the bamboo floor in the kitchen. I wish I could say the same for the outside, however.

My biggest fear, especially after living next to the cuntalicious Amanda Benz (yeah, I called you out bitch, eat it!) for the last few years, was that I would have some issue with the new neighbors at this place - and since we bought this house, we'd be stuck with the problems long-term. Well. Unfortunately one of the sad facts of life is that you will consistently get shit flung at you over and over again, and you just have to deal. I should have seen this coming.

My next-door neighbor has lots of two things: dead pick-up trucks and dogs. The street outside my house, his house and the neighbors' house is lined with five rusted-out trucks. This is nicely complemented by the two beater motorcycles in his trash-strewn driveway, which take about 35 minutes of revving (especially after 10 pm) to start. And apparently this guy, Shane, likes to collect things, because his FIVE giant, male boxer/pit dogs who live in the backyard just wasn't enough - he went to the Humane Society about two weeks ago and added a little black and white terrier, whose squeaking, piccolo-like bark adds to the almost nonstop chorus of canine voices that float into my house day and night. Every time I was in the backyard the mass of dogs would rush up to the chain-link fence between our properties and snarl, growl and leap. I might take this moment to mention that while I like many dogs, I have a deep-rooted fear of them (I was mauled in the face by one when I was a toddler and sometimes a snarling dog causes an unexpectedly emotional reaction even today). We hung tarps over the fence to try and block their view of our backyard, but they can still hear us, and usually they don't even need a reason to start up.

I called the city to find out who the landlady was, since our other neighbors told us that place was a rental, but to my horror I learned that Shane was indeed the owner, and therefore probably not going anywhere soon. So this must be dealt with more delicately. I have all the numbers and forms in place to call about noise complaints and house inspections, but I guess some discussion is in order first. I just hate to be put through this again. Every time I hear those snarls and barks I want to cry. I can't even hang out in my own backyard. Fuck people!!!