Emerald City Comicon and Price and Prism

First of all, our cat Price is in hospital and stable, so that was a load off my mind.  He's eating and drinking, hopefully he'll start healing soon.

(Left) Me wearing my Ka-Blam shirt and showing the print-on-demand reprints of Bosom Enemies.  I ended up settling all the very nice proof copies on Prism Comics, to go to Chicago with them.  A few of those are a bit odd -- as in: One Of A Kind.

Prism will be my show reps from now on -- and if I'm at a show I'll be in their booth.  They're looking for women comics authors because their customers are demanding books from women.  And, as Zan Christensen of Prism says, "The booth looks a little strange with just men."

 

Met my oldest younger brother and Irish Twin, Don Colbert, for the first time in 30 years at the convention, and an old friend, Chris Clark.  (Me, Chris, Bud).

Cartoonist's Northwest's Scot Allan as the scary horror host clown, and my Stinz painting, available for sale.

Scot always had this insane English laugh, and when he's in this outfit, he's downright creepy.

The show was great -- I would have needed to be cloned to stop and talk as much as I wanted to with everybody, especially all the new and old friends and colleagues.

Price Not So Cut Up

Price before surgery, with Fearless, with her scary devil eyes ("Don't touch my Price!"

At this point, still worried if he needed surgery. Ya think?

It was a bowel blockage.  As Dr. Burt said, "Like a rubber band around his bowel."

Poor guy was in surgery or recovery all day.  Then was wrapped up in a blanket for the long drive back home. 

Waiting for Price to come down from the sedative after surgery.

Then the water main broke.  Oh, and Dan slipped on the ice on the porch this mornings; we're lucky he's only bruised.

I hope I can make it to Emerald City this weekend.

Good news: Price has recovered to the point he staggered back to the bedroom and got up into his comfort zone on the bed.

Everything But The Job

Sigh.

We've got a postal situation up here -- our post office has gone postal.

It's sticking mail in the wrong post office boxes.  Since that's all we can get up here -- and I don't know why, unless the postmaster is just lazy -- that means envelopes with bills, checks and even medication are disappearing.

Stupidity?  Vindictiveness?  Theft of checks and drugs? That's always a possibility.

One of the people who used to work at our post office during the last time this happened, said, "The postmaster is doing everything but her job."

Which I can believe.  Half the time it seems she's running some charity or on the phone with her relatives.  We need volunteers up here, and kids have to be dealt with, but first of all she's the postmaster, and she needs to focus  on that job during working hours.  We can all screw up on the job, but repeated mis-delivery of important mail in a small town where many people can't get it any other way is inexcusable, and damaging.  People tell me the way they cure the problem is to move their post office box to Sekiu -- but what about those with no cars?  We do have them up here, among them the sick and elderly who live downtown.  When they need their mail, do they walk two miles along a twisting highway with intermittent shoulders, between cliffs and salt water, or do they wait until they can beg a ride?  Do they take the early bus -- for three dollars they might not have -- and wait over an hour for it to come back?  Or lend out their box key to somebody else?  Is the postmaster aware of any of this? I doubt very much she's trying to get somebody killed on purpose.  I'd never accuse anyone of that, but short-sightedness and sloppiness in a very important job like this can be lethal.

Anyway, for anybody up here, don't let our postmaster force you to move your mail.  Call the United States Postal Service and start a case file: 

Call 1-800-ASK-USPS®  (1-800-275-8777)
M-F - 8:00am-8:30pm ET  Sat - 8:00am-6:00pm ET  Sunday - Closed.  Holidays - Closed except for: Martin Luther King Jr., President's, Columbus, and Veteran's Days, 9:00am - 6:00pm ET.

ValentineMan Brings the Love

The Grandmother's Hive -- The June Review.

The Grandmothers' Hive got this really nice review.  I'm really going to have to post some of the art.

The Price is Right

Just got back from a 241-mile round trip with Price to the vet specialist in Kitsap County.  What a good kitty!  Only an occasional "Are we there yet?"

Lung x-rays clean, all bloodwork clean, no infections.

He has a 3-centimeter-long thickening of the walls of his small intestines.  The radiologist will have a report back in a couple of days.

Light some incense for it NOT being cancer.

Can we get the Price right?

Our cat Price, whom we've since about '98, is suddenly losing a lot of weight and not wanting to eat.  Been through blood and senior tests, nothing wrong but a low thyroid reading -- and he's getting thin, not overweight.  We've put him on thyroid medication, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything.  So we'll be setting up to go to a specialist.  He had a cancerous growth removed from his face a couple years back, and that will be part of the consideration.

Don't laugh - I've known people to spend $4500.00 on a dog for cancer treatment.  Ask what happened after Hurricane Katrina when people were told pets couldn't be rescued.  Family is family.  A good way to get hurt is to go for somebody's animals.

Price is from Bremerton, by the way. First time I saw him was butt-first in a homeless woman's arms.  She told me, "You have to take this cat!"  Her kid was looking up at me, hoping I would.  I finally did take the cat and put him on the bed, and when they'd left, I went back into the bedroom to find him crossed-pawed and looking around, like, "Yeah, I could live here."


Turned out he'd been dumped at the local St. Vinnie's and had been living in the parking lot for a couple weeks.  The woman couldn't stand it any more.  As usual, it's the poor who try to pick up the slack.


Price was named after our other tuxedo cat Vincent, who disappeared in 2001.  He's too young to be going into what looks like old age failure -- but that two weeks on the street might have set him up for a shorter life.


Here's hoping we can do something, but when they stop eating I've never seen it turn around.