The thing about Pneumonia is that it’s not one of those “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” situations. It kicks you in the chest and it takes a while to get back up. So when I say “back to the gym”, that actually means walking the treadmill for an hour.

Everyone says I really have to take it slow and ease back into activity, but when you find yourself winded after a ten minute walk when you know you are (were) capable of running 5k in an hour, it’s that’s harder and more frustrating than it sounds.

So for now, I will keep walking. I figure if I can do an hour every day this week without the cough coming back, then (fingers crossed) I might be able to start back to some of my classes next week. Which would be good for everybody because frankly, it’s getting really hard to come up with comic ideas without my primary source of frustration inspiration.

Last week Fit Bottomed Girls posted an article about the calories in Girl Scout Cookies* (What!? These aren’t loaded with vitamins and anti-oxidents?). Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to check out the nutritional info on anything you’re eating but to me, buying Girl Guide cookies has been more about supporting those ridiculously cute little girls. I hold no illusions about the content and usually ended up taking the boxes into the office to leave on the break room table… admittedly, this has been less effective since I started working from home.

In doing some follow up reading about the Guide/Scout cookie sales, I found out that you can send a box of cookies to the troops serving overseas. What a great idea! Showing some support for the little troops and the big troops, all while keeping temptation out of my freezer.

*Girl Scouts – USA, Girl Guides – Canada

Graphic novels online are at a bit of a disadvantage because it can be hard to get into the meat of a story when you can only read two pages a week, but this one has three chapters in the archives so there’s a nice bit of reading to get hooked on.

This last week’s worth of comics came about when I found a magazine with an article about yoga vacations. Water yoga, snow yoga, dog yoga and horseback yoga were actually real classes you could take…although the pictures were a bit different.

There were many more, some much more serious, some I couldn’t even get my imagination around (“laughing yoga”?). Either way, it was a great opportunity to seize the silliness.

While our American friends are shaking off the tryptophan haze, we are officially launched into the ever-festive holiday shopping season! (Or “Squishmas” as it’s known around here.)

This is the first Christmas for the Promises Shop and we’d like to mark it with a little something special, so from now through Christmas we’re offering a FREE 8″x17″ Print of fan favourite comic Breezy Tree Pose in your choice of colour with every purchase of Starting Tomorrow! Offer valid for both standard and artist editions.

The yoga prints are also available for sale individually ($10/ea).

Speaking of prints, don’t forget that you can order a signed, glossy black and white print of any of your favourite comics, ($10/ea) by hitting the buy print button below the navigation buttons (the ones shaped like little sneakers). Please be sure to select buy print on the comic you want or specify the date and title so the correct one gets printed. If there is any confusion, please feel free to email me (under contact in the main menu or the little email icon in the left sidebar).

If you are interested in original artwork or a specially commissioned piece please contact me for pricing.

The sooner you get your order in, the better for both of us. I will do my very best to get your purchase delivered in time for Christmas but I can not guarantee international orders shipped after December the 11th. December 18th for Canada and the USA.

Thanks so much for your patience during this brief interruption. I’m very happy to say that the comic is on track and will be updated this wednesday, as promised and then back to regular Monday, Wednesday and Friday posting.

My first book, Starting Tomorrow arrived yesterday and is available for sale in the brand new Promises Shop! (Next to Links in the top menu bar.)

I’m very pleased with it. Starting Tomorrow is a good sized collection of comics with a selection of my favourite Q&A from The Baroness Knows Best, and Jim Zubkavich wrote the foreword. (It’s very touching, I’ve known him a long time.)

The “official” launch will still be at the Word On The Street Festival in September. I didn’t expect to receive the books so soon, but the folks at Transcontinental are really on the ball so I will have them at Fan Expo! (Hope to see you there.)

Please note that the store is new, so if you order your copy online and there’s any kind of hiccup, email me directly and I will sort it out. Don’t forget to include any special personalization for artist editions (names to address, favourite characters to sketch etc.).

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish today’s comic (yesterday was very distracting).

This will be my very first podcast. I’m pretty stoked about it and very flattered to have been invited. I’ve been catching up on the CCTC archives and it’s a really solid show. They’ve had some pretty impressive guests in the past, (tough acts to follow) and the hosts are fun guys so I hope you’ll tune in.

We start recording at 7:30 PM EDT tomorrow (June 23) and it’s my understanding that we’re airing this live so there’ll be no fixing it in post…I’ll have to start practicing my allocution.

“Moses supposes his toeses are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously.”

That’s a substantial milestone and I’m pretty excited about it. When I started this, I never really thought about getting to two hundred comics.

Actually, I remember when I got my copy of How To Make Webcomics, (excellent book by the way), I had only posted a handful of strips but I was having a great time and wanted to know more about how to keep it rolling. That book is co-authored by some of my favourite cartoonists so I was pretty stoked about it. I don’t remember how it was worded exactly and I don’t have my copy handy to reference, but in one of the first chapters there’s a paragraph that talks about choosing your topic/theme. They strongly encourage you to choose a topic that’s close to you rather than one you think will fill a niche market. Great advice, but the example they used was a comic about a gym. If you write about that you’ll run out of material and get bored. I’m paraphrasing, but I remember having a pretty good laugh and thinking, “Great! I’ve chosen the one topic my mentors are warning me away from.”

Seemed like something I would do.

But, here we are! I still have a lot of fun working on these and even though I don’t always get a chance to reply, I appreciate all of your comments and emails. I’m looking forward to number two hundred on Friday and hey, maybe even three hundred one day!

My friend Ted teases me about being a crusader, but I’m a great believer in a cure in our lifetime. So if any of my super-awesome readers want to chip in, my personal breast cancer charity of choice is the Princess Margaret Hospital foundation. They are one of the top five research centers in the world, aggressively focused on finding a cure.

It was really fun working in colour. I went with design markers on board rather than digitally painting this one. Mostly because I haven’t used them since college and I remembered really enjoying working with ink, (turns out, I still do). It was a toss up between ink and water colour which is another favourite medium, it’s just so calming and gentle. I can pick away at a water colour piece for hours. In this case I think the ink was the right choice, water colour loses a lot of contrast in scanning.