When It Rains, It Pours

This is perhaps the busiest looking comic I've ever drawn. And there's not a ton of movement either, it's mostly facial expressions. So I apologize. It was necessary.



This sort of actually happened. Right after I accepted a job with my current employer, I got a call from Kelly Sciences. Of course, I didn't reject them outright. I waited to hear how much they would pay me (not very well), before declining their offer. I guess it's true that as soon as you're employed, everyone else wants a piece of you.

So that's it. This was my official announcement. I'm staying on the west coast. I have a job, and I'm here to stay. I miss my east coast friends already but hopefully, we'll have plenty of opportunities to visit one another. Now I have to settle in and really make some friends in the area. I don't know how the next 3-5 years are gonna go. I can only hope for the best. Tally ho!

DO NOT WANT

This is how my I felt during my Job Search in October. I was so over finding a job. I'm not even going to talk about it anymore. I had just renewed my NJ car insurance (exorbitant!), and I miss some of my east-coast peepz (I'm a tiny white girl... I'm not sure I can use the phrase "peepz" but... eh. what the hell). Really, I was ready to resign myself to hoboism and crawl into my crappy cardboard box on Vine. Making friends? Also apparently overrated.

But hey, look at me, I can be an optimist too!: Plus side - I have some version of all the clothes drawn above, including that super sassy suit in the first frame, although it's got pants, not a skirt. I'm such a fashion plate, I amaze even myself.

EDIT: And as always, events did not occur as shown. This is just a reflection of how I feel.

My New Muse

Since returning to California I've been reunited with some friends I met back in August and also made some truly awesome new friends.



Skedaddle the chinchilla belongs to one of my old-new friends, but I didn't meet Skee 'til October of last year. He's adorable and clearly my new muse. He just hops all over the place, explorin' and being unbearably cute. I often cannot contain my *squees of glee. Until October, I'd never seen a chinchilla in person before, so this was an unexpected and welcome surprise. So soft and fuzzy.

I'm now making plans to have a chinchilla someday when I retire.

So generic question to OKC land out there, what's your favorite kind of pet and why? Do you think you'd want a different kind of pet when you're older or do you think your preferences will stay the same?

Bye Bye Berkeley

This was drawn the day before I left California. Man, I was excited to be going back to New Jersey.


After the high quality of the last 3 strips, this one ends up looking like crap, hm? That's what I get for composing a strip at 11 at night.

This strip is not to say that I don't like California. It's a nice enough state. But something tells me you guys are nuts for living in a place where half the signs of the apocalypse can occur in a single day. Maybe I'll be back if I get a job here! But I had just gotten word that I'd been rejected from the job I really wanted at UC Berkeley. Suck.

My Boxwarming Party

This didn't come off as funny as it seemed in my head. But maybe that's because this comic took me a whole 2 weeks to get together. I'm a loser. This was the last day before I left California to go back to Jersey. It was starting to grow on me. Just a little.

Cue Futuristic Music!

If I really don't want to live in a box in California, I'd better be making a small fortune and not eating (so as not to waste resources).

It's apparently really hard to find a nice place for less than 700k.

Oh, The Geek

I used to get requests in my mailbox to do memes and it'd been a week since I did a comic. To be honest, I don't much care for memes. But then the LOLCat thing came to town and I was hooked. So I decided I might as well do everything all at once. So I memed all last night. My friend Meherbaba requested a comic, so I scraped one together. And in record time too, if you don't count all the stuff at the bottom (I don't want to give away the ending now)...



Yes indeed, this is one big GIF file. And yes indeed, I had to position and tweak every Chewie down there. Frustrating as heck. I really wanted Spock. Or in absence of Spock, Yoda. But apparently, Yoda's not as big a thing in sprite designer world as Chewie. Anyway, he resembles a hamster at least slightly... so it sorta works. Sorta.

ALSO: Obviously, this pegs me to the entire world that I'm a geek. I'm cool with that. And now you know my favorite Star Trek movie (and it really shouldn't surpise those who have read my profile, because, yes, it has whales). However, this is a plea to everyone to not badger me with IMed or emailed requests to know my favorite captain or favorite episode, or favorite doctor or whatever. You're not gonna get a response. Maybe I'll even block you. That kind of stuff is just not that important You're welcome to message me, send me a note, leave a comment, whatever you like, as long as you're not asking me more of the same. And of course, I love it when you enjoy what I've created. But there's a limit to the fanboyish squeeing I'll stand for in a conversation. It gets annoying after awhile.

Fun/weird fact I probably should not admit to: I have a TNG style doctor's uniform in my closet. And also a Starfleet Coroner's Badge (But I swear it's not mine, the badge, I mean).

To see the full versions of the Macros and Chewie icons I made, you can click on the following links:
Whalz
Pwnd
Chewie

Post-Graduation

But then again, it felt that way after every set of finals. True Story

Delicious Pressed Wood. It's the Sauce that really adds the flavor

And this is what results when an artistic person ponders Sweden.

Awhoba?

This is what results when you force an artistic person to watch scientific videos about paramecia

I hope the Old Ones eat you AND your bad art

Back in senior year, the spring semester classes had started and I was alternating between disappointed and enthralled at some of the ideas that count as "education" these days. I loved my class that I (unfortunately) had to commute to another campus to get to (also unfortunate was that was at 8am which meant I was waking up on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6am).

But all my other classes seemed to have just a little too much reading and discussion... as though my professors made lesson plans and realized they only had enough material to last maybe 2 weeks. "How shall we fluff up these dismal lesson plans? A-ha! Reading! Lots of reading! And class discussions! I'm a genius!" Of course, a genius would recognize that a class of 60 students doesn't really yield ideal discussion.

My Art class was 3 hours from 1-4pm and unfortunately it was 2.5 hours of the prof lecturing on our reading (there's only 7 of us) and the final half hour was used for giving examples of things we were supposed to experience through the readings. Very dull. Particularly for a room with no windows (it was in the basement). And poorly planned (considering we had a project due in the middle of the second week and the prof hadn't introduced us to any of the technology we were supposed to use, and had mentioned we were to work on it solely outside of class).

Still, the prof is otherwise a nice guy, just socially awkward and not used to the competitive nature of the folks at my school. But really, today's comic will give you a little taste of how I usually felt in that art class.



The Cthulhu Lolita dress is designed by deviantART's Carnet-atelier. I DID however make a wearable version which I've worn to work on Halloween and to a few conventions.

For those of you who've never even heard of Cthulhu, click here for a link to the Wikipedia article.

I just realized how wordy this post is. I apologize. But it's great if you manage to get through it. Good luck.

The First Thing that Came to Mind

The thing I loved most about being at college is that for reasons unknown, professors allow you to handle expensive equipment and don't automatically expect you to break it. Reason number two for my love of a life of academia is probably that you're allowed to study some pretty arcane things. I once knew a fellow who is said to have graduated from Hampshire with a major in Oregano of all things. Why oregano? I have no idea. I can't imagine that it was a particularly interesting course of study, but, power to you if you can make it work. 'Course, you're probably not going to be good for much once you graduate, but who among liberal arts students is? I know that I, for one, will be completely useless.

But the topic at hand today is the Scanning Electron Microscope which I took a 5-day class to learn and ever-after shall be able to use said Super-Expensive-Machine (or SEM for short). Aside from the fact that I generally felt that I had no idea what I was doing, I was having a blast. For those not in the know, the SEM is basically a megamicroscope which can see at higher magnifications because it uses electrons, not light to observe specimens.

Friggin' Awesome.

Anyway, I vowed to master this fine piece of mechanical wonderousness and use it for my own EEEEeeevil purposes.



And by evil, I mean looking at tiny, tiny, fish corpses.

Obsession

So, once upon a time, a bazillion years ago (read: 15 years), I had dreams. Big dreams. I was going to go to Harvard and become a Doctor. A pediatrician. I was going to be rich, and well-off. I'd be a globe-trotter and join Doctors-without-borders. I would make the world a better place.

But sometime around 9th grade, I derailed from my track of supreme goodness and wealth and suddenly became entirely lost. The thing was, I completely sucked at Bio Enriched and I will never, ever forgive Mrs. Koza for that lost year of High School Biology. And it seemed unlikely that I could become a doctor when my highschool GPA was lower than a limbo stick half an hour into the game.
It probably also didn't help that I found cellular biology to be terribly boring. And also that I detest small children. It would be hard to be a pediatrician when you hate small children. Why do I hate small children? I'll tell you why. They're sticky.

But we're getting off topic here.

I had thought that due to my close proximity to failure in high school biology, there was no living way I could be a biological scientist of any caliber. I lost all direction.

Well, honestly, when I got to college, things didn't change too much. I failed intro bio as well (ok, I didn't fail. I got a C, but that's pretty close, right?). Even so, I forged ahead and realized my true love had ambition had been staring me in the face for many years, in the form of my beloved fish pond. I adore algae. Just ask anyone who knows me in person. Rarely does a day go by when the topic of fish does NOT enter a conversation.

At college, our geek dances were supplemented by my "Eelgrass" and "Eutrophication" dance.

This summer, I interned at NOAA, studying microscopic fish larvae. Which was ok. Not terribly interesting. Personally, I'd prefer to be studying something I can see with my own two eyes. But the things I DID see!

Those of you who are familiar with fish identification (which is probably not really all that many of you), will know Michael Fahay as "The MAN of Fish Identification". I got to meet the man. Not only that, I got the opportunity to watch him ID fish. While blindfolded. The man counted myomeres! The man counted teeth!

Excuse me while I go swoon in a corner.

Anyhow, he was Friggin' AMAZING.

I believe the point of all this was to admit that I like fish. I mean, I really like fish. I visit aquariums. I visit pet stores just to look at the fish. I visit Koi Pond stores.

I have a Koi Pond myself. With 13 little fishies in it. 3 of whom are black, 1 which is all orange. I could go on, but I think you get the general idea. I really want another, but it's best to put a cap on these expensive habits. Do you have any idea how pricey a Japanese-bred Koi is?

So of course, it is fairly distressing when your fish attempts suicide. We saved him though. And he lives in peace and harmony with the other fish.



His name is Lemon Zest