THE MOUNTAIN AND THE VIPER

The fourth season of GAME OF THRONES ended last Sunday, with an awesome battle between The Hound and Brienne of Tarth. The week before that, there was an hourlong battle at Castle Black and The Wall.

THRONES has become the favorite show of many, many people and for damn good reason. It's really really good. It takes a bit of a commitment and you actually have to pay attention to it since there are so many characters and so many different story lines. It's a weekly soap opera with much more violence, magic and dragons. It's amazing and if you're not watching it, you should be.

Everyone spent most of yesterday (Sunday, 6/22) in withdrawals and counting down the days until season five premieres sometime next March. Luckily for us, the World Cup is on and the U.S. Men's National Team decided to re-enact the iconic battle from Episode 8 of this season, "The Mountain and the Viper."

Unfortunately, for everyone in this country, the United States decided to assume the role of Prince Oberyn Martell. It was heartbreaking.

The U.S. was up 2 - 1 going in to stoppage time, when 5 minutes (5 minutes!) was tacked on. The U.S. held on for most of it, but Ronaldo, arguably the greatest player in the world made an assist at the last minute–literally the last minute–to give Portugal a tie.

The United States was 30 seconds away from advancing to the round of 16. Now I know how Tyrion felt.

HEY THERE, STRANGER

I know. I know. You don't even have to say it. I already know.

Look, the thing is that I've been busy. I've been working on things that I just haven't been able to share with you yet. Lots of behind the scenes things.

Also, laziness. That's also a thing. Laziness in regards to this blog, anyway. I've been getting outside, enjoying the summer, taking pictures with animals, trail running, going to bbq's and gardening with a two-year-old, playing PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN with a six-year-old, eating dinner on patios, going on nighttime walks to coffee shops. I've been doing all the things that you're supposed to do when the weather gets nice. you should be doing that stuff as well.

There has been a lot of stuff going on in the background though, I promise. Work has been... weird. There's been a lot of drastic changes to the company that I work for and I'm just kind of rolling with it. But enough about that. Let's talk about fun stuff!

• We've been going strong on the soccer podcast for 33 straight weeks now. It's been a lot of fun and if you like soccer and jokes you should check it out. There is a lot of soccer talk though. I won't lie, sometimes even I tune out for 10-15 minutes each time. And I'm in the room! http://www.wearethereserves.com
• I got accepted to Craft Lake City again this summer. I'm sharing a booth with my friend Lauren, who makes cat crafts. It's going to be a lot of fun, but now I have to buckle down and start actually getting my shit together. There will be another issue of FILLER, maybe some buttons and maybe some more shirts. I don't know yet. Depends how much I can get done in the next two months.
• SLUG Magazine and Craft Lake City are presenting some workshops this summer and they asked me to teach one. I'll be teaching a bunch of junior high kids how to make zines, which I'm pretty excited about. The biggest problem is going to be explaining what a zine actually is and that it has nothing to do with a computer. That might be tricky.
• I started reviewing comics again for SLUG. They gave me the first seven volumes of The Sixth Gun from Oni Press, so I worked my way through that and sent in a fairly long review earlier this week. It should be up soon. I've got two more comics I've got to read and a documentary about the early years of the California hardcore/punk scene to review next.
• Casey and I have actually been working on that children's book we concocted two years ago. We've been meeting regularly and pretty much have the whole thing hammered out. Then it moves into the scripting stage, then we need to find an artist. We're hoping to have it done and ready to go sometime next year. We're not exactly sure how that will happen, but it will. Casey's already trying to figure out how it'll be turned into a ride at Disneyland, how much control we'll have over the film rights and what kind of sequel potential it has. I'm trying to figure out how we're going to get it actually finished in the first place.
• I'm 52 pages into the rewrite of the Until My Heart Stops book. It's pretty much like starting over because I'm going back to posts that I wrote in 2004-2005 and seeing how bad they are. I've basically been re-reading each post, trying to get back in the mindset of that specific day and starting fresh. It's been easier and harder than I thought it would be all at once. I'm leaning towards renaming it "Tin Foil Basements and the Junkyard Next to the Women's Prison" but I'm not 100%. There are a few other ideas that I'm kicking around, too. I really like that one, though. We'll see. I want a second draft finished by the end of the summer so I can start playing with the layout.
• Tulip went back to print and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Now I'm just trying to figure out how to get it in stores. I knew it would be hard, but there are a lot of hoops that I have to jump through and a lot of bookstores (even the local ones) won't take anything unless they can get it through a vendor. I managed to get it into a local record store, but that's about it so far. Baby steps, you know?

See? I've been getting stuff done, it just hasn't been in the form of blog posts for you to read. I want to change that, but there's also a bunch of other stuff I want to accomplish, too. 

But I love you for still checking in with me. I really will try to update more often. I've got about 20 loose story ideas in my drafts folder. It's just a matter of getting to them.