So, I am in
Los Angeles. My aunt Aida has been visiting for the last dozen days and
it's starting to get to me. She's kind of high maintenance, not in the
sense that she needs to be constantly entertained, but she constantly
has to stay involved. She just doesn't stop talking. And she insists on
cooking lots of food. I mean, iot's like having both my parents staying
over. My sister Stephanie and I have been switching off so that Kooma
is easier to deal with. But she was starting to lose it badly and I'm
probably better at just taking it.
In any case, Kooma wanted to come to Los Angeles to visit a friend
(Michael Roberts), who is here for a few days (he's from New Mexico) to
see an eye specialist about some operation he probably needs to have
done. They haven't seen each other in a long time (he used to teach in
Hong Kong where Kooma still teaches) and wanted to catch up. Being the
good host I volunteered to drive her down here.
Now, I personally have no problem driving her down her and then driving
us both back on Thursday. I like driving and I like putting miles on my
car. And once here I was hoping she'd just leave me alone and do stuff
with her friend. She keeps wanting to pull me into things and I just
want a couple of days to myself.
I also need to do a bunch of work. I really need to get the Click2Dial
project coded and have to start testing it. We're way behind and
changing the tech stack is no excuse. So last week I was actually
working a lot to get everything coded and I've gotten a lot done.
Still a lot to go so I'm going to do it here and dial in to the Oracle
network (man, another hotel with no broadband connection). It's hard
for me to get anything done when there are other people around.
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I have managed
the last two days to work on my BattleTech campaign web site. Got about
a dozen news pages to finish, then the group status pages, then the
DunDraCon matches and The Succession Wars game. I'm way behind on
converting my site to the new format. Meanwhile the list of stuff that
I want to buy but can't because I haven't converted the collections
pages are still growing. After BattleTech I'll work on Hellboy and then
Star Trek.
Did manage to hit a comic book store in Elk Grove. Not much selection
and only going a couple of months back at best. Lots of empty space.
Reminds me a lot of the comic book store next to my house. Gosh, Comic
Relief is just so much better. Chris Claremont is back writing a couple
of the X-Men titles and I noticed that Rachel Summers (noy apparently
Rachel Grey) is back and taken up the Marvel Girl alias. When the heck
did she get back? Frak, I'm probably going to have to stop buying
super-hero comic books, especially the ones with multiple titles. Too
much to keep track of. X-Men is a really bad example because not only
do they have like a dozen titles, some of the titles are in their own
separate continuity!
On the other hand, Dark Horses' Conan series looks pretty good so far.
The art is very much like actual art, like someone painted the
drawings. Cary Nord does the art and it is quite good for the style.
The painting style does have some drawbacks like lack of fine detail
and a certain vagueness of the background at times. But it does look
good.
Kurt Busiek's writing is also good on the Conan book. At times there's
a bit too much expostulating and telling and not enough showing and
doing. But it's done in a Howard-ian style so I guess it's not too
jarring.
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