Well, it’s October now– things have been a bit delayed with our first contest, as you already know presuming you read our last newsletter. In case you missed it, the publisher of our story Hungry Ghosts celebrated its 10-year anniversary with a giveaway contest, giving away art and copies of Hungry Ghosts the graphic novel– and some copies of the ebook of the HG prose novel, too, as well as a digital story from Barb’s comic Gun Street Girl.
Barb and I finally got work on our house done this summer and this September– now we have all-new floors in every room (I had to move everything touching the floor in EVERY ROOM! The bed! The couch! The tables! The computer desks! The bookshelves! The comic book boxes! Everything!), and also a new upstairs bathroom vanity and mirror, and a new kitchen sink, and new countertops, and a “subway tile” backsplash that goes around the whole kitchen area. I got Barb a new stove, too– it’s black, so it pretty much matches the new refrigerator we got when the old one died earlier this year.
Also… Barb has always wanted an electric bike. She rode one years ago and loved it, but when I tried it– my center of gravity was too high. But we recently found a good deal on an electric scooter, and Barb likes that a lot. But we got it a little before my birthday last month, so she insists it’s for me, too. I can indeed ride it comfortably, since it means I’m sitting with a lower center of gravity than the electric bike we test-rode years ago.
Lately, let’s see… Barb and I read The Complete Peanuts from our local library (I even returned the last volume with the electric scooter, since the library’s only a block away). Highly recommend. It made us realize what Peanuts was really about: kids taking care of kids, since their world is so separate from that of parents and adults, and since adults dont’ really understand much anyway. (The exceptions are Charlie Brown’s dad and Peppermint Patty’s dad, but often it sounds like while each of those dads understand their kids, they don’t really understand adult life any better than kids understand life. …And don’t even get me started on the adults in the Van Pelt family…)
Oh, and I’ve started cutting Barb’s hair– since she’s so allergic to perfume and stuff, she’s given up on going to hair salons anymore these last few years. I was just using the electric clippers I own to give her a very close Annie Lennox haircut whenever she couldn’t stand how long it was anymore (which happens to her fairly often), but this last time or two she grew it so long that I bought a professional pair of hair-cutting scissors and watched this very simple but good video online of a guy cutting his wife’s hair. The results look like Jean Seberg. So, thanks, wife’s-hair-cutting-guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBZ4ZMVtXIA
Barb and I have also re-watched the 1978 horror film Patrick recently… don’t watch it if you’re easily shocked! We like it, though, because it’s really about the gal who’s the nurse in the film, more than being about the monster who’s bothering her. She gets a good character arc of going from being uncertain about how she’s going to make it in life separated from her husband, to not being scared of hardly anything and standing up for herself.
We also enjoyed watching Death Cruise for the first time! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQj8k1xzZkU Polly Bergen! Tom Bosley! Kate Jackson, after she learned how to act (at least partially on the set of our favorite TV show, Dark Shadows)! Celeste Holm! And Michael Constantine, doing a good job as the detective! Enjoyable!
Finally (for now), we’re re-watching our favorite South Korean supernatural TV show, The Master’s Sun, with ghosts and relationship shenanigans. Episode 3’s coming up… that’s a good one!
Also, Barb and I might watch Howard Hawks’ The Thing From Another World today/tonight, because one of my new birthday gifts (that I’m wearing right now) is a The Thing From Another World t-shirt!
That’s not me. I don’t have any tattoos.
Anyway, that’s it for now! There’s going to be another contest soon– I’ll give you more details through our newsletter (and maybe our website, if we have time)!