So I have decided that I want to wish an extra-special and very happy birthday to all of the December people who get shoe-horned into the rest of the holidays!

*ahem*
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birrrrrthdaaaay dear Sagittarius and Capricorns!
Happy Birthday to you!

Also, thanks for reading and supporting the site, and I do wish everybody a safe and wonderful holiday and all the best that the new year has to offer!

As I do every new year, I got to thinking about the year that passed, and this time about the decade that passed, and WOW. There has been a LOT packed into the last ten years but in the interests of keeping a reasonably sized blog entry, I will keep the retrospective to 2010.

I went back and looked at my resolutions post from last year. While I didn’t achieve everything exactly as I wanted to, I think I did a whole lot better than I would have if I hadn’t set the resolutions, so I’m calling it a win.

• Got down a little over half of my weight loss goal, and more importantly maintained it through some pretty tough diet-times so I made some good habits. Time to get back to posting the weekend weigh in. Accountability helps. I will continue to work on this in 2011.
• Finished the full 10k Terry Fox run in September and I don’t think anyone was more surprised about it than I was! I have to admit, there was no dignity by the end of it, the red face, wheezing, snot, blisters and sweating really kills the photo op, but I made it. Haven’t decided what to set goal-wise this year. Maybe I’ll try the 10k again and be one of those people who breezed by me saying stupid things like, “Only 10k? They really need to make this more challenging”. All joking aside, I do need to set something, that was very motivational.
• Got a lot more accomplished in the web-comics ring. Not what I thought I could do, but one of the things I found out was that there was a heck of a lot more to learn than I thought there was. Met some great people who have been an enormous help with the technical side of learning and although I am going to have to seek professionals for some of this stuff, I am still looking into some coursework for the new year. I’m thinking of leaning toward apps development, but I have no idea what I need to do to even start that. There’s just so much really cool and inspiring stuff out there.
• My amazing sweetie got me a Cintiq for Christmas, (best husband EVER). The last 3 strips have been completely digital. No paper trail at all. Pretty cool. I’ve only tried digital clean-up a few times and I didn’t like it. Took too long and killed the line quality, (great for animation, not great for comics). But I’m working on it. Some friends have recommended Manga Studio, so that’s one more bit of software to add to my learning curve. The Cintiq is an amazing tool and it’s going to make short work of my storyboard contracts this year. (yay!) And since it cuts the drawing time, I can spend a little bit on background elements.
• I HAVE to set up proper model sheets for myself this year. For whatever reason I never did that and regardless of style evolution, (every comic goes through that) half the time Fiona and Trish end up looking like their own stunt doubles.
• I also have to get and learn Quick Books or my accountant is going to fillet me with my own receipts.

That’s it. Those are the big ones for 2011. (I’m really stoked about going into a whole new decade.)

Thanks so much again to everyone who reads, comments and keeps coming back. I hope that whatever your resolutions are, (or aren’t, whatever, not judging) you have a safe, happy and healthy new year!

I’m still doing my best to catch up, and now that all of the T’s are crossed and the I’s are dotted I think it’s ok to announce the big news in my little world.  Just after I got my computer back up and running, I found out we would be moving to a new town.  So I am leaving for London Ontario next month.

Anyone who has ever dealt with the buying and selling of property will validate me in saying that it is a stressful, time consuming, disorganized process.  Every time you try to sit down and work you get the boot so someone can some snoop around your house.  Thankfully, we had two of the best realtors I’ve ever encountered on our team, Shelley Weichel and Blair Patton, who made the whole process as painless as possible, if it wasn’t for all of the house work, I’d actually say they were both a lot of fun, but honestly, vacuuming makes me really bitter.

So, the catch-up will continue through the end of June, after the move is settled a bit I’ll get back to posting the Weekend Weigh-ins and general blogging.  If the comic isn’t caught up by then I’ll just start posting forward. I’m having nightmares about sitting at my desk on New Year’s Eve like Charlie Brown, only instead of reading War and Peace I’ll be inking the Halloween comic.

You may or may not have noticed, I’ve attached a link to The Baroness’s forumspring on the left sidebar.  Thanks to everyone who has sent her questions, she has been tackling the really tough issues, like the importance of not dropping the soap.