December 01, 2002

Sunday December 1, 2002 • Howard Tayler

I've been bacheloring it for most of this Thanksgiving weekend. I sped up to Podunka err... Pokey-pokey no... umm... POCATELLO Idaho on Turkey-day for feasting with my family, but I had too much work to do to spend the whole weekend up there. Thanksgiving, therefore, was two three-hour drives bracketing about eight hours of quality family time. The rest of the weekend (starting Wednesday morning) was mostly just me at home (with the notable exception of some quality-time spent playing video games with my brother). It has been kind of lonely here without all the kids and the wife and the screaming, and the band-aids, and stuff. I did get a lot of cartooning done, though.

Now before you Schlock fans get to feeling all guilty for free-loading on a strip that gets written at the expense of time with my family, let me say that I'm a workaholic, and can't sit still for four hours, much less four DAYS without doing SOMETHING productive. Had I stayed in Idaho for the weekend I'd have gone insane. Besides, the wife and the kids are going to be home in time for Church on Sunday, and we'll spend the evening putting up The Tree.

Anyway, as of this writing I'm drawn 28 days ahead. Seven of those strips were drawn today, which is pretty good for me. Lately I've not been able to do more than four rows in any given day, regardless of the amount of time I have that I can use for cartooning. Today I went out and bought more pens, switching back to the Staedtler Mars Pigment Liners that I used to use. Turns out they write more smoothly than the Itoya pens I've been using, which means that it's easier on my hands. Who knew? And to think that I thought I was SAVING MONEY by spending 50 cents less on each pen.

It just goes to prove that old saying... "buy cheap, pay twice."

Let that be a lesson this Christmas season. Don't buy cheap stuff just because it's cheap. Buy reasonably-priced, high quality stuff (for me!).