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!

...since I haven't blogged in a while:

The 4th of July was good - we just headed over to Jenny's folks' place and relaxed and had lots of barbeque. Jenny also went to a beading exhibit at the fairgrounds with her mom, and picked up a bunch of cool stuff she can use in her jewelry making. We didn't stick around for the fireworks spectacular, since we got stuck in the traffic trying to get out of CdA last year and didn't want a repeat experience. Instead we got out early and still heard plenty of illegal fireworks going off around here.

It's cooled off a bit over the past few days, and even rained some. We were over in CdA on Sunday and got to see an awesome lightning storm, but all we got here was a tiny bit of thunder off in the distance.

There's still some cold/flu type bug going around, and we think Jenny brought it home from work and gave it to me. I'm sure it's nothing major, but it's still annoying. The heat saps enough energy from me as it is, and this certainly doesn't help.

Jenny's taking the day off from work this Wednesday, as it's our 2 year wedding anniversary. We don't have anything big planned, although we're thinking of walking around downtown and going to Riverfront Park. The new Harry Potter film also comes out that day, so we'll be seeing that if nothing else. :)

I've been attempting to write more than draw lately, as I want to get to work on these 2 different comic ideas I've got and figure it'd help to actually have a story to draw before I dive in.

For the past couple of weeks I have been doing daily sketches of The Avengers and posting them on my deviantArt page. I started with Ant-Man and am working my way through the alphabet, drawing one character per letter. Here's the first 9, and the rest can be seen here: http://piotrov.deviantart.com

Things have been going well enough, if not particularly exciting. But then, I guess that's nothing to complain about.

Jenny had her dentist appointment on Friday; she hadn't gone quite as long as I since her last check up, but it'd still been about 10 years. But she had nothing to worry about, as her teeth were in fine shape - no cavities or problems.

It's back to feeling like summer, with temperatures in the 80's and up to 90. Looks like more of the same this week, so I'm thinking we'll be breaking down soon and turning on the A/C. Which means higher electric bills. Yay.

Sunday was our monthly meeting of the Spokane Comicsmiths Guild, the group of local artists and writers that was formed after last year's 24 Hour Comicbook Day. We've begun planning for the next 24HCBD, which this year falls on October 3rd and will again be hosted by local shop Merlyns. We also discussed some other possible plans for this coming year which unfortunately are only in the discussion stage, so I won't go into details yet.

And, of course, we also sat around and drew. I began sketching out designs for another character in my Fight City superhero comic - a super-genius crime boss known as "Brains" McBannon. I think these are the closest so far to what I want:

Called the dentist this morning to set up an appointment for the cracked tooth, and we were lucky - they got me in this afternoon! But they weren't able to get all of the tooth out (something to do with the root being too long) so they referred me to an oral surgeon - who was also able to get me in today!

Sooo, after a couple hours of poking, prodding and drilling, I got the cracked wisdom tooth out. The oral surgeon confirmed that the other three should probably come out as well, but I figure I'll wait until my mouth is completely healed up before scheduling the next appointment.

For now, I've just got to take care of the sutured up hole in my mouth, but thankfully they prescribed me some painkillers to help out with that....

Anyway, I'm really glad that we've got decent insurance through Jenny's work. I don't even want to think how much that would've cost if we hadn't (as it was, we only paid $30, plus $9 for the prescription).

Oh, and we also got hit with another big snow storm today. There's been a whole bunch of accidents and injuries reported already, and apparently the snow's suppsed to be sticking around for a while. Yay.

Well, my interview on Monday went as well as possible, I guess. But I still didn't get the job... though they did call me to tell me, instead of sending out the normal library form letter, so I suppose that's a sign they still liked me. I had a lot of experience from very closely related jobs, but apparently it went to another guy who had 2 years of experience in exactly this one. Oh well....

Patty's been doing OK so far, the past couple of days, with no more seizures or anything. But I think they're still waiting to get the results back from the EEG on Wednesday, so we'll see if that says something new. (For more info, see this link)

It's been fairly warm here, although I see that it's actually warmer in Fairbanks right now than in Spokane. Crazy!

And I'll leave you with something from my sketchbook - I've got an idea for a kind of funny animal / superhero comic, and this is a Golden Age vigilante type of character named.... Awesome Possum!

After teasing us by warming up substantially yesterday, we got another ton of snow dumped on us this morning. Hooray.

Just figured I'd share with anyone who missed out on a White Christmas. :)

I went to make our appointment to sign our new lease today, and was reminded exactly why we keep saying we want to move. I'll refrain from going into details - just to say that they keep exceeding their previous record levels of stupidity....

So, instead of a year lease, we're going to try to go for a 9 month one - because we have to move, and we realize that we won't want to move at New Years (with a year lease) and there's no way we'll have the money to move in only 6 months. We figure the end of September will be as good a time to move as any. We're hoping we'll have the money in 9 months, but I guess we'll just have to find a way.

We've been saying we need/want to move out of the apartments for years now - we just need to do it.

Otherwise - the snow has halted temporarily, but there's several more inches on the way in the next day or so, and then again around New Years. Road crews are working 24/7 trying to clear everything, but I'm more worried about the snow building up and caving in our car ports. Yet another thing I'll need to harass the office about on Monday....

...and it's just getting kind of rediculous now.

It's been going non-stop for at least 36 hours - we've got about a foot or more accumulation, and it's a mess pretty much everywhere. We ventured out last night to pick up some much needed groceries, and while we didn't see any accidents, there were plenty of vehicles stuck along the way.

Jenny was just out walking around and even saw a semi truck get stuck trying to get around the nearby traffic pretzel.

She was supposed to work at the library today, but they closed them all. Her boss called her this morning and told her to stay home. :)