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Gawds above, it's been wild lately.

First, Floyd came by. That was truly an experience. Granted, it was "only" a Class 1 Hurricane by the time it blew through here, but that's still more than enough to get the job done. We lost power around 10:30AM on Thursday, and phone service shortly thereafter. After that, Liz read voraciously, and I wandered around the house listening to joists and joints creaking, watched a tall pine tree sway back and forth and back and forth (several times thinking "Is it gonna fall this time?"), and tried to sleep. Needless to say, we didn't go in to work.

Friday morning we had scheduled to have the plumber come in to remove or improve the weenie scaldguard devices that were preventing us from taking hot showers (Tepid, yes. Hot, no.), but he never showed up. As we found out later, he lives in Virginia Beach, and only could have made it to us if he was Clark Kent. We still didn't have phone service or electricity, so he couldn't have called us to tell us. Bleah. So, we went in to work at about 10AM. I, at least, expected a half-full office or so. Nope. Just about everyone was there, hustling and bustling about. Perfectly normal day. I tried to make myself busy despite the fact that I couldn't check out of our source-control program the files that I need to work on, and I wasn't precisely sure what I was supposed to be doing with them. The office's ISP was down (again!), so it was tougher than usual. :-P

We left work at the usual time, came home, and puttered around for a bit. About 5:30 Liz picked up the phone and heard a dial tone. Yay! We called around to a couple people locally to let them know we were okay. Liz's folks called and we talked to them about about the traffic on the roads (Summary: Horrible.). I went out on the back steps to see how our dirt/yard had faired, when I saw a blob of mud about the size of a golf ball stuck to side the house, about, say, eight feet off the ground. I went out front and peered around at the side of the house that has no windows and faces an empty lot. There's about a dozen little mud blobs stuck to the side of the house, at all heights. Looking at the front of the house, there's a smear of mud along one window screen and the window behind it. I got quite annoyed. Liz later told me she thought I was overreacting. Personally, I'm worried that if the little pukes are willing to throw mud at the house, they'll pick up some rocks when the mud dries up. ::shrug:: We'll see. I don't want to be the grouchy neighbor, but if it saves me from having to buy replacement windows, I'm willing to do it.

We still didn't have power, so I took Liz out to Uno's for dinner, since it was on a main road, and all the main roads had power. We came back home, and the house was dark. Still no power. Crap. We had even gotten our hopes up since the road that leads toward our little subdivision had power for a stretch. Then we picked up the phone. Deadski. No phone again. I was, to put it mildly, piqued. Liz asked if I wanted to go to her parents' house for the night. I said I didn't care, but if we stuck around, I was just going to sleep so I didn't have to think about it. We went to her parents' house, got lovely hot showers in the morning (it seems like everyone and their cousin's moose got power back before we did), and we went home the next morning, we had power. Yay!

So we promptly left town. We have this friend who self-published a comic book for five issues before deciding he didn't need to go any farther into debt, and he pulled the plug on the series. He announced he was going to throw a wrap party at the Small Press Expo (SPX) in Bethesda, Maryland. Even though not a lot of our friends were going to be able to make the trip, we decided to go because Mark Oakley, the writer/artist for this series that I like was going to be there, and I thought it'd be neat. So, Saturday we promptly drove up to Bethesda, arriving about 3PM. I thought this would be great, since I could do a sort of initial walk through that afternoon, and then buy stuff on Sunday. Nope. The dealer's rooms closed at 7PM that night, and the next day was all seminars.

Well, that sucks.

So, we hurried down to the car, got the stuff we'd brought to have signed, checked in, hurried back downstairs, and got in line to have Neil Gaiman sign stuff.

Oh, did I forget to mention Neil Gaiman was there? ;-)

This is probably quite common, but he doesn't look anything like I thought he'd look. I'd even seen quite a few photographs and paintings of him, but in person he looked... kookier. Wild frizzy hair, odd sunglasses, and a manic determination to get through the incredibly long line of people who wanted his signature and stuff on something he'd written.

Liz and I were about fifth and sixth from the end, and waited for quite a while to get the signature. I got him to sign a little story he did for Charles Vess's Fall of Stardust. I asked him to draw a tree (bad, old Cerebus joke), and he asked if it was a Tory joke. Knowing zippo about symbolism in British politics, I said it wasn't. He laughed, and drew the tree, signed his name, paused, grinned up at me, and drew something odd at the bottom. Don't ask me what it means, he didn't tell me.

Revision: Liz remembered this. Later in the same Cerebus, Cerebus has a dream where he thinks "Have to figure out how to sketch potato salad... or Cerebus is finished! Finished! FINISHED!" It's fairly obvious who has the better memory in this house...

Anyway, I went and showed off my tree (and odd extra) to everyone else that had come to the show (which was Greg, Liz, and T), and went off to try to bother Mark Oakley.

I discovered I have this problem. I hate interrupting people. At least, I hate interrupting people who are buying things when I'm not. So, I got a few words in edgewise around Mark Oakley, but other than that I managed to introduce myself when we first got there, ask a few questions, and that was it. I didn't even get any of the stuff I brought signed, all because I didn't shove it on the table and into the queue. Bleah. Well, it's my first real comic con. I'll try to be pushier at the next one I go to.

And now, we're back at home, doing the laundry, planning dinner (it's my turn again!), and studiously avoiding thinking about going grocery shopping.

How was your weekend?