I've got blisters on the inside of my nose

Having a cold sucks.

Still, got to start catching up with the blogging sometime. So, some bullet points:

-the Vicious Ambitious launch party at Tubby Dog was a lot of fun. Tubby Dog makes insane hot dogs (including a peanut butter and jam hot dog and a wasabi-covered hot dog), but the really frightening thing they produce is their onion rings, which feature a thread of onion wrapped in a pillow-sized chunk of fried dough. I'm convinced I'm still breaking out because of those things.

-setting up a small but essentially functional comic shop at a remote location is a pain in the butt.

-Went to bed early the Friday before the Calgary Comic Expo. Note to self: going to bed early isn't an effective strategy if you're going to wake up at 5 in the morning. I wouldn't make that mistake again. The next night I didn't go to bed till 2 in the morning. And I still woke up at 5. This is one of the major reasons I don't like traveling.

-The Calgary show was good. For the first time I can recall, people brought stuff they'd bought earlier to a convention specifically to have me and Fiona sign it. That was very cool.

-The third or fourth last thing Darick Robertson did in Calgary the Saturday night/early Sunday morning of the show was draw me drawing him (a scan will be forthcoming). The fourth or third last thing Darick Robertson did in Calgary late Saturday night/early Sunday morning of the show was chug down two pints of guinness at frightening speed. He claimed this ability was not unrelated to his getting the job drawing Garth Ennis' THE BOYS. The second last thing Darick Robertson did that night was draw someone else who was also drawing him. The last thing he did that night was catch a plane out of town. Somewhat later that morning, I was told he'd left town early, skipping the Sunday part of the show. I didn't really believe it, at the time. However, as no word of his alcohol-poisoned corpse surfacing in Calgary has been forthcoming, I guess he really did just leave town.

-About three hours into the show on Sunday my hand gave out. I was doing sketches of myself (the only thing I can draw semi-consistently) in the Charity Art Book I didn't have any other art in, and suddenly I'm coming out looking less like a neanderthal and more like late-era Charlie Brown. My hand was trembling uncontrollably. I was pretty punchy after getting maybe eight hours of sleep over the previous three nights, so I found this hysterical, rather than terrifying.

-Fiona Staples is the Future of Comics. She's also pretty cool to hang around with for eight hours a day on the weekend.

-There was this guy named Tom who was the coordinator for the volunteers looking after the CCEE guests. My enjoyment of the show had a huge amount to do with him and his colleagues. Judging by the way they treated me, I might as well have been Mark Waid or Greg Rucka or one of the other creators who people who aren't personal friends had heard of who attended the show.

More later. All this typing has devastated my currently pathetically fragile constitution. Hopefully Tiina will return home soon with some of the Good Cold Medicine.

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