Comic for Tuesday, March 1, 2005

Posted: 1:30 pm, Tuesday, March 1st, 2005

Ladies and gentlemen! It is so good to be baaaack!

Wow, hand it to my IT department. I ran some anti-spyware stuff on my work computer on Friday and it brought the internet crashing down around me. No surfing, no updating, no nothing. Let me tell you, a modern office job, with no internet access? It's very close to cruel. Oh, and no interweb also meant no gmail, which was kind of a bummer, too.

But, the guys got me back on line, which is nice. Especially since the strip was somewhat timely - the Gates ended their two-week run on Sunday, meaning (probably) that they came down yesterday. Any more delay and this joke wouldn't make any sense.

Anyway, from that right into the heavy: My mother called while I was in the shower yesterday morning with word that my grandmother passed on early Monday morning. Gram earned her rest - she was 89 and suffered a stroke that pretty much limited her to a recliner back in May of '96. My grandfather died last February, so she had been really wanting to go for about a year now. I'm going up for the wake and funeral tomorrow and Thursday. So, obviously, no updates then. I'll post something on Friday when I'm in the office, but I'm not going to promise a strip - we'll just call this a week of vacation. Not a terrible place to take one after the whole Tanya storyline that just wrapped up, actually.

So, just letting you guys know. My mother was taking it pretty well when we talked, and even cracked a joke or two (I have to get it from somewhere, people).

Big Ben LaMora turned 1 on Sunday, if I am not mistaken. Ben made his Five Bucks debut our second day on the job, back in September (scroll down, this is from the early days when the concept of an archive completely escaped me). I can only imagine he's grown since then, but JJ probably is still not letting him open his beer.

Again, sorry about not being up yesterday - it was driving me a bit batty - and not being around for most of the rest of the week. We'll see what we can see as far as a strip on Friday - I might just draw something by hand and scan it in. I've been thinking about doing a concept week like that sometime, anyway - 2.0 wants me to run a few strips the way that I sketch them out, which is a ridiculously minimal approach to cartooning, but could be worth a cheap laugh sometime. We'll see.

bullfrog