Condition Clear

On project launch nights, there isn’t always a steady stream of work to do. It comes in bursts and gallops, and then it subsides, and in those gaps, there is music (that, usually, at least one person in the room loathes), and there is ping pong (winners all we are not), and there is takeout and smoke breaks and yawns. Tonight the crew is here in a mostly dark room, and it’s mostly quiet, except for the music, but the music is quiet, too. We’re all working in said bursts and gallops, waiting for the launch call to happen. It isn’t scheduled to begin until 12:30 a.m. I just yawned for the sixtieth time.

Sometimes we’re able to slip away for little bits of time here and there, to go home and feed our dogs, or to grab a quick bite, or, as I did tonight, to dash home and pick up the wife and enjoy a micro-date. In the ninety minutes or so that I was away from the office, we ventured to the Cracked Crab, her favorite little Pismo Beach seafood restaurant. This is the kind of place where they spread butcher paper on the tables, then dump tin buckets of crab legs out onto the paper in front of you, and you just eat and eat and eat. Or maybe it’s oysters. Clams? I can’t remember, but it doesn’t really matter that much. They give you a smaller bucket, one with crayons in it, and if you’re anything like Felicia and me, you spend your time waiting for food drawing increasingly awesome cupcakes and cupcake monsters and life-size replicas of your Boston terrier.

This moment, stolen away from the hustle of the rest of the week — and it’s only Monday — is going to be a hard one for Tuesday or Wednesday or any other day to top. I had to keep checking my email to make sure no catastrophes had occurred back at the distant office, but it was okay. I got to be with her. We’ll have our first wedding anniversary in two months, and I expect after the tenth or fiftieth I’ll still be as excited to steal away with her.

She’s home right now, knitting and pounding anime episodes and as much as I wish I were there with her, sketching and listening to her complain about English-language dubs of Japanese animations, I find that nights like this just make me even more grateful for those kinds of moments. I’ll probably be here for hours yet, and will come home exhausted at three or four in the morning, but she’ll be there waiting, and that just kicks all kinds of ass.

I once had this whole other life that could have completely put me off of being married, but the thing is, it didn’t. And here I am, happy. So thank you, whole other life that I can’t even remember very well. You really, really sucked, but you paved the way for one that so completely doesn’t.

Months, it’s been! But I have an excuse, and it’s the usual one: jeez, have I been busy.

The last half of 2009 and the first half of 2010was a whirlwind of wedding plans and preparation and lots and lots of work. But the wedding has taken place now, on a perfect May day with all of our friends, and we’ve since traveled to and returned from Costa Rica. And now there’s an awful lot else going on:

• I’m helping a friend with a book project, and in exchange, he is:
• Building an iPad app for my own book, the long-in-progress Eleanor project
• I’m pretty busy fine-tuning the art of being married and a kickass husband

But I’m back. And check this out:

Married!

Meanwhile, there’s other illustration news I’ll be sharing shortly, so hang in there, all two desperate readers. I’ll see what I can do about eliminating these post hiatuses. (Post hiatii?)

And so it’s Valentine’s day! This year, my geek queen and I had planned on a day trip to Santa Barbara, followed by cooking dinner together. Instead, we’re hanging out at home in our pajamas while Felicia gorges on her latest fascination, Blood+. We’re just four episodes away from the end of an epic, fifty-episode marathon. Somehow this just kicks the ass of any Valentine’s day we could’ve planned. (Though we’ll be cooking tonight’s postponed meal tomorrow night.)

Happy Valentine’s day, darling. Sometimes you even out-geek me.