Holiday Cheer

I forgot to mention in my last post how I was able after all to spend Christmas with my family, and it couldn't have gone better. We didn't exchange gifts this year like we normally do by drawing names, but we had good food (Subway!) and sang songs and just enjoyed each others' company. So it was a great day for me.

We did get small gifts via the Dollar Game, which we have been doing for a couple of years now. It's really fun if you get into it and it takes the edge off not being able to get everyone gifts.

What you do is everyone buys one gift for one dollar. If your family has four people in it you bring four gifts, all for a dollar, no more. None of the gifts are addressed, but all are wrapped.

Then one person starts by grabbing a random gift out of a bag or whatever. They then open the gift.

The next person in line then has a choice to make. They can either draw a random gift from the bag or they can take the other person's gift. If they pick one from the bag they are stuck with it unless someone else wants it later.

This continues until everyone has a gift. The ideal person goes last so they could take a gift from anyone they choose.

When a person's gift is taken they have to wait until everyone has gone then they get the choice whether to take one from the bag or take someone elses.

One VERY important rule is you go into it knowing you may not get to keep your gift, so warn the kiddies.

The first year we did this was really great because everyone was taking everyone else's gifts. This year wasn't quite as fun because only a couple of people (out of 17) took someone else's

So there you have it, a new, fun, inexpensive game to play at the holidays. And you can actually get decent gifts for a dollar if you look hard enough. Someone this year got a laser pointer, and one year I got a Coca Cola bear (I LOVE coke memorobilia!).


My mom and my aunt think of all kinds of neat little games like this on various holidays. Halloween 2004 my aunt thought of this game I can't remember all of, but it had something to do with a gift being wrapped like twenty times with a portion of a story written on each level of wrapping. I'll have to ask her about that.


This New Year's Eve we are all getting together at my cousins to play board games, a family tradition of ours. Some favorites are Scattergories, Guesstures, Hollywood Planet, Rook, Jenga and various other cool games. We always thought of bringing in the New Year surrounded by loved ones as a very symbolic thing. And our extended family is one of the closest ones I know of. There aren't many families out there that regularly see and spend time with aunts, uncles, nephews, neices and cousins, so I guess I'm lucky in that respect. The downside is everyone knowing your business, which has made me into some sort of private recluse the majority of the time. But even though we have our many differences we always are there for each other, and that's what matters most.


I promised you guys Christmas songs and I didn't deliver. But fear not! I have ONE for you today. I'm not crazy about the result as my voice for some reason lately is really raspy and just doesn't come off as polished as it used to be (maybe because it's been about 3 months since I sang in the choir!), but it's decent, and after re-recording it over a dozen times, I'm sick of singing the song. :) So here you go:

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

Be kind with any comments! :( (J/K)


Looks like I'm not going to make the Dark Horse New Recruits program after all. One artist told me last week he couldn't make it, but would have them early in January. The other artist I haven't heard from, but I assume he got caught up in the holidays, which is totally cool. Like Cary said on his blog, it was a longshot anyway, and there are plenty of other avenues. So we'll just hit the virtual pavement and get the things in the mail to publishers. And now thanks to the artists' efforts I'll have more pages to show anyway, so that's a good thing.


I have tons of lettering to keep me busy this week as well as revisions and research on my Platinum project if I can tear myself away from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. What I want to know is how in the world you sneak stealthily across a wooden hanging bridge without engaging the enemy when they are constantly walking across the thing?! Not that it matters since I got tired of trying and just ran through them swinging (I didn't have a gun).


Sometime today or Friday my brother and I are going to watch Resident Evil: Apocalypse, which he got for Christmas. We didn't get to go see it in the theaters.

Yesterday I watched Four Brothers. It was actually a pretty good movie. I enjoy Mark Wahlberg as an actor, but I was pleasantly surprised how well Tyrese and Andre (from Outkast) did in it. I haven't liked Tyrese's acting in any of the three movies I've seen him in, and I had never seen Andre. So I'm glad they did well.

One of the previews on that DVD was for Hustle and Flow, which I now really want to see. I think Terrance Howard is a tremendous actor with a lot of range, and I look forward to seeing him portray the leading role.


I read X-Men Deadly Genesis 2 last night also, and I am so anxious to find out who the villain is. I have this X-Men 30 year anniversary special from Wizard from several years ago that I am tempted to dig out to try to figure it out. It's driving me crazy!

What gets me though is in the back of both issues one and two they had backup stories featuring new mutants (Petra in issue one, and Darwin in issue two) I had never heard of. I wouldn't have a problem with this under normal circumstances, but it bothers me that seeing as how House of M was Marvel's way of cleaning up and basically getting rid of the majority of mutants, why on earth are they now, only a month or two later, creating NEW ones??? It irks me they get rid of Iceman to give me Petra, a girl who can move rock, or Darwin, a guy whose body adapts to ANY trauma. Well, the Darwin character I can live with (though I hate the name because I don't believe in evolution of man), but Petra? She moves rock. Wow.


Anyway, all in all this has been a great close to an ok year. Look for my retrospect prior to New Years Eve. I'm not sure what I'm going to say, but hopefully it will be worthwhile. Until then...

B-Out