Well, gang- I’m back from our whirlwind tour of Arizona and Utah.

Nicki and I did a bit of “speed tourism” and fit a ton of sightseeing, con-going, visiting with friends, birthday celebration, and even a bit of a family reunion all into one week.

We flew to Phoenix for Cactuscon (Phoenix Comicon) where we met Stan “The Man” Lee and ate at Alice Cooper’s restaurant Cooper’stown, drove up to Prescott Valley to Dave and Micah’s for the night, hiked in Sedona, stopped in Jerome, visited Glenn Canyon Dam and Lake Powell, had ho’made pie at the Thunderbird Restaurant in Utah with my folks on Nicki’s birthday, oohed and awed at Kaibab National Forest, ran into two fellow Memphians at the Vermillion Cliffs, saw a dust devil in Cameron, and were blown away by the south rim of the Grand Canyon.

We even managed to get engaged between all that!

I popped the question as Beetlejuice after emceeing the art auction at Cactuscon on Saturday night- which also happened to be our 1yr 9mo anniversary!

We went down to the Hard Rock with Dave and Micah after the auction and had some celebratory drinks and dinner.

It was a great night!

Pics from Cactuscon’s Preview Night and our flight to PHX up next…

Lin

Hey gang-

Well, after a week or more of being sick thanks to a trip to the doctor, modern chemistry and Nurse Nicki I’m feeling human again. Over the weekend while recuperating on the couch I felt like doing some sketching.

Nicki’s sketchbook was handy and since she had just gone as Peter Criss from KISS for Halloween this year I thought it would be fun to draw him. Tried using some watercolor pencils, but aren’t crazy about the way they worked. Don’t know if it was them or operator error, but think I’ll try picking up a small regular watercolor set and practice with those a bit. It was still fun to draw and play.

We watched “UP” over the weekend and I was blown away with some of the work the Pixar animators were doing with their field kits on their location scouting trips to South America.

Would love to go out to Utah or Arizona and just sit and sketch and paint all weekend sometime. Maybe I can get a little in while I’m at Cactuscon this year.

Hope to get some more sketching done this week and weekend- and now that I’m feeling better maybe a bit more KISSing, too.

“KISSes, dahling!”

Lin