Yesterday was Jenny's father's birthday, and we spent most of the day over in Coeur d'Alene with her parents. We went to see the Surrogates with him - which was a pretty awesome sci-fi flick (based on an equally cool indy comic). Glad we got to see it in the theatre, though I think it could've been a bit longer.

Then after the movie the four of us went out for Thai food at the local Thai Bamboo (which was, of course, delicious), and then caught up on a bunch of recorded TV from the past week. A very fun and relaxing day!

The library is doing sort of an "employee exchange" program, where they're moving some people to different branches so they can see how things might be run differently and meet other co-workers. So now Jenny is working up at the North Spokane branch once a month. Her first day was this last Thursday, and she really enjoyed it, although it does mean a much longer commute (like 45 minutes instead of 15).

Otherwise things are going OK. Jenny had her year review at the library, which went well and got her a raise (yay!). The temperature is dropping, and even dipping to freezing occasionally, but the apartment seems to be holding the heat pretty well. Maybe those new energy-efficient windows they installed actually work.

I've been working on some commissions and tinkering with one of my comic ideas. Doing the 24 Hour Comic Challenge has definitely been an inspiration to get back to work on it - hopefully I'll have more concrete news on that relatively soon...

Jenny's been working on a bunch of cool crocheting projects, which we really need to take some pictures of and post up. It would probably help if we had a decent digital camera, since right now we have 3 old ones that all only work about half the time. 

Local Arts & Crafts People: The next Spokane Comicsmiths' Guild is on Sunday the 18th at Merlyns, from 3-6 pm. The next Crafty Club meeting is on Friday the 23rd at the Spokane Valley Library, and starts at 7 pm. Feel free to leave a comment if you're interested in more information.

In fact, it's the first time in weeks that we've had both the A/C and the fan turned off and it's still comfortable. We had an awesome thunder shower last night that dumped buckets of rain, and there's actually a nice breeze today. Very pleasant, indeed.

Saw on-line that Fairbanks finally got some much needed rain as well. Hopefully it'll keep up and help squelch all the smoke they've had to deal with from the fires up there. Of course, the timing of the rain is not too surprising for those of us who are from Fairbanks, as the fair starts today... ;)

Speaking of the fair, our friend Tigger (aka AlX Hurlbut) has a booth this year and will be selling prints of her photography. Any locals who are going, be sure to stop by and check out her photos & say Hi (and buy something!).

Also, this will be my friend Ellen's (of Ellen Million Graphics) last year selling at the fair. She's closing down the Gift Shop portion of her website, and expanding her business in other directions. So drop by her booth as well, to find out what's happening in the wide world of EMG and grab some of the cool Gift Shop merchandise that might be gone soon!

Anyone who might be in the area this Saturday (May 30) should be sure to check out the 3rd annual Spokane Comic-Con, being held at the Spokane Falls Community College from 10-5.

Jenny normally works on Saturdays, but was able to get the day off, so we plan on spending the whole day there just hanging out and being geeks (next year I hope to have a table there myself...). Several of my friends will be there, however, so be sure to swing by their tables and check out their work. You can find a lot of them on deviantArt:

Ben Hansen
Jesse Acosta
Lars Brown
Levi Skeen
Matt Nelson

More information about the convention can be found here: Spokane Comic-Con 

Also this weekend (Friday through Sunday) is Spokane Art-Fest, the annual arts and music fair, sponsored by Spokane's Museum of Arts & Culture. You can find out more about it here: Spokane Art-Fest

And finally, Jenny also has her Crafty Club meeting on Friday, which she organizes through the library (where she works). Needless to say, we plan on being pretty busy this weekend, but it should be a lot of fun!

They just revealed the results from the most recent Project: Rooftop contest (which was to re-design Batman as if former Robin Dick Grayson was to take over for Bruce Wayne), and while I didn't win, I was pleasantly surprised to see my entry had made it into the Runners-Up. This looked to be their most popular contest yet, with a huge amount of impressive entries, so I'm just happy that I was even mentioned. You can see the winners and results here: Project: Rooftop Batman 2.0 Results

I''m still participating in the AngelCrusher's Fighting League art jam/trade over on deviantArt.com, although I did get behind when I was doped up and recovering from my dentist visit. After I was back to semi-normal, I knocked out the 2 entries I was missing and am now mostly caught up. Just have to get the last 2 entries done in the next 5 days before the semi-final round starts. You can check out what I've done over at my deviantArt page: Peter's Gallery on deviantArt

Jenny had her first Crafty Club at the library last Friday, and it was a success, although she's thinking of changing the time so that more people could attend. She did make a necklace for her mother's birthday, which her mom loved. She's actually in the process of modifying it right now so it fits a little better, but here's a scan of it in it's original incarnation:

Jenny's schedule at the library has been a little wonky lately, and as she's working this Friday she took all of today off from the law firm and we had a pretty good day running around. Nothing too exciting, but still fun - had our haircuts this morning, got some fast food for lunch and then spent a few hours shopping. Not that we have any money to burn, but we did still have money left on various gift cards that we could use - got some things we wanted and some things we needed, and even something for Jenny's mom's birthday (which is on Saturday), and barely spent any real money.

Spent the rest of the evening catching up on some TV shows on-line and working on some arts & crafts type stuff. I haven't really drawn anything for the last week or so, as I was knocked out by painkillers most of the time, but I'm finally feeling mostly all right and am getting back into it. My mouth is still a bit sore, but I'm doing OK.

Jenny's been working on beading and making jewelry lately, and she  picked up some more yarn today. She's also set up a crafty club at the library for people to get together and work on projects - the first meeting is this Friday evening.

As an example of the type of stuff she's been doing, here's the bracelet that she made for her sister's birthday last month: