Drew Blank's Blog, page 2

I swear I am not procrastinating…

I guess it is notable to mention that two nights in a row we went in to check on KGB and he had woken up in his sleep and put on his sneakers. He doesn't remember doing it the next morning…but we have pictures.

The kid is weird.

Countdown to KAHN!!!!! …errr, I mean Con….

So I feel terrible saying this after just getting back from a cruise, but goddamn do I need this Con. I just have to get the hell away from my work. It's like a soul-sucking blackhole of progress. Thank god everything for the Con is paid for up front, cuz we ain't gots no cash. Hopefully the Con will be a success and we will actually come home with some money. If not, no biggie. As long as we have fun, which I am sure we will.

I have been busting so much butt on getting things ready for the convention that I have been kinda slacking in the writing department. I feel bad because I am feeling like I won't hit my February deadline…but oh well. I am also not going to rush it just for the sake of being done. It would be nice to have two books to sell at the next round of Cons, though.

Other than that, life has been pretty uneventful. Kayla turns 16 tomorrow ::shudder::. Even though I will be officially entering my late thirties this year I have a hard time feeling old. Having a sixteen year old, however, makes it a whole lot easier to swallow that I am close to geriatric. At least I have a close to perfect daughter. I really couldn't ask for more. We offered a few ideas for her to have a big Sweet Sixteen blowout, but she really just wanted a laid back "no big deal" kinda get together. She will have some girlfriends over tonight to watch some of the 15 new scary movies we bought her (I Heart GoHastings.com) and then tomorrow people will come over for homemade deep dish pizza (I will be in the kitchen all day) and for some of Twisty's delicious treats. Most importantly? I will not be working. Whoo hoo!!!

Oh, it just occurred to me that I had a dream that I was in China last night with my good Chicago friends Dean & Phil (and my dad showed up at some point??) Instead of site seeing, everyone just wanted to go to a Chinese Mall, and we ate at a Chinese buffet. How depressing…oh and then there was a shooting, but McLovin came along and killed the bad guys dead. What the hell is wrong with my brain? I mean really??

Oh well…guess I need to get my ass outta bed and get ready for another day of sweaty drudgery…

I am ready to retire…

This 8 days of vacation went by way too fast. I guess what they say about "Time flies blah blah blah" is true. I am not ready to go back to work. Not only do I have to work, but I have to work my ass off so we can have enough money to enjoy ourselves at Heroes Con next month.

The cruise was great, though. Definitely the best vacation ever. It had been twelve years and Twisty and I have never taken a vacation alone. We missed the Blank babies like crazy, but we got over it. It was just amazing to spend some true one-on-one time with my lovely bride. We spent lots of time by the pool people watching and giving everyone on the ship nicknames (Big Friend, Little Friend, Team Date Rape, Bows, Bows' D-Bag Boyfriend, Ralph Macchio, Mrs Roper, Sparkles, Yogathong are just a few examples). We spent a day at CocoCay, Royal Caribbean's private island. It was great laying on the beach and spending time in the clear blue water. We had never had the opportunity to see the blue water beaches. Absolutely beautiful. We also got to listen to the five guys that sat behind us on the beach that were very obviously there just to get laid. There was one good looking one among them…the rest were either chubby or fat and completely socially awkward. The highlights of that conversation were "Dude, you called that Canadian girl cheap. She was pissed" "I am not taking one for the team tonight. I had to deal with giraffe all night." "I didn't mean to call her cheap. I meant clingy!" It was 2 hours of this amusing inanity.

The next day we went to Nassau and spent a few hours wandering the streets shopping. Our all day resort excursion had gotten canceled and nothing else really appealed to us so we decided to just wing it. Once we started dripping with sweat we decided it was time to head back to the boat and do some swimming. We could have gone back to Nassau (it was Cinco de Mayo and all the young'ns were partying in town) but we really didn't want to push our way through all the tour guides and scooter rental guys again. I did get offered some premium weed though. If only that meant something to me.

We planned on having a lazy night after that, but Lloyd (the greatest waiter ever) recommended we go to the Love & Marriage game show (the ship's version of the Newlywed Game) and try out to be one of the couples. After a little pushing, Twisty agreed to go and we headed to the auditorium. It was pretty packed, so we really didn't have any plans of being picked as one of the three couples so we sat back to enjoy the show. Then Rico, the cruise director and host of the show, came out and announced they wanted a set of newlyweds, a couple that had been together for over 50 years and then one wild couple. We raised our hands to try out for the part of "wild couple" along with 5 other couples. We were then asked to try out and let the audience decide by having the husband recite some ridiculous nonsense phrase to his wife. The first three were just sort of stupid, kinda groping (some of them I did NOT want to see grope) and then it came to us. We decided Twisty should sit up on the back of the seat and I would give her a saucy lapdance. The crowd went nuts, and even though the final two couples knew they needed to one-up us, they did not and we were picked. It was a really good time. We definitely stole the show and most of the cruise ship found out Twisty wears a 38DDD (Sadly I got the question wrong…I missed a D). They also discovered I sniff my earwax and that before I met Twisty I was a whore. It was a lot of fun, but we lost to the married 50 years couple (although the host gave them a point because apparently he thought farting and falling asleep on the toilet was the same thing…I won't get into that). We didn't fight it too bad because the prize was a cheap bottle of Korbel. We did get a big bag of Royal Caribbean swag and a DVD copy of the show, so that was cool. They also played the video non-stop on the cruise TV channels, so we were constantly being recognized the rest of the trip. Mostly people calling Twisty Triple D.

After the show we were on a bit of a high so we went to the pool for the midnight buffet (we did not eat anything because we were beyond full, thanks to Lloyd, the waiter that liked to bring us multiple appetizers, entrees and desserts…the same waiter that remembered Twisty's name and referred to me as "Stone Cold"). There was a big midnight party as we left the port and we had a blast joining in the conga, drinking out of pineapples and just letting loose. That was about the end of the excitement. We spent the last day at sea eating, relaxing, eating, napping, eating and missing the kids. It was definitely time to get home.

II am sure I am missing plenty (and omitting some of the in-cabin fun), but we had the time of our lives. The next cruise will probably be a family trip, since we spent a lot of the time saying "Keaton would love this" and being sad whenever we saw a cute little boy. But being kidless for a few days was definitely necessary for our sanity. Besides, when we got home I had two days left of vacation to just chill with the kids.

All in all, a short but amazing vacation…now I need to go get dressed for freakin' work…..ugh.

Oh, and I got very little writing done this vacation. I was hoping to reach page 100 by April's end, but am still at page 95…grrrrrr….. But I have been busy getting things ready for Heroes Con in June. It should be freakin' awesome!!!!! A nice 4 day vaca with the family, chilling at the Embassy Suites during the down time. Can't wait….and after that I have no time off to look forward to until December….double ugh.

Croose?

In one week I will be getting my pasty bald ass on a cruise ship headed for the Bahamas. The first vacation Twisty and I have ever taken alone.  It is very exciting!  I can not wait.  There are two factors that are making us dread the vacation, though. First, we will miss the kids.  Kayla we are used to not seeing for a day or two with all she is involved with between school and friends…but 5 days is a long time.  KGB we are more worried about.  Twisty is very much into the role of stay at home mom, so she has a difficult time leaving him for a few hours, let alone a few days.  I myself will also be a wreck, but I think we will have enough distractions to keep us busy.  Amazingly and wonderfully our friends Ambie & Steven have agreed to watch KGB during the day for most of our trip.  KG and their daughter Amelia are great friends and very very cute together.  They will even be having a sleepover, so I think he will be having so much fun he won't have time to think about us.  The second thing we are dreading is 4 days of no internet. I have no idea how we are going to be able to handle that. Yes, we will have beautiful beaches, swimming pools, unlimited food and drinks at our disposal, gambling and major amounts of people watching…but how the hell am I going to survive four days without reading Aintitcoolnews.com, or Toplessrobot, or playing Mafia Wars, or liking so-and-so's status update about how they did that certain thing they have been working so hard at getting done??  Oh damn you interwebz and your crack like existence!!!  I am sure we will survive.  It will be interesting to see how many texts we have waiting for us when we get back.  I may just keep it on vibrate and store the phone in my lap as it gets caught up…..teehee

After the cruise it will be time to get ready for Heroes Con.  That should be an absolute blast.  I am trying to figure out the budget to see just how much awesome stuff we can have to give out, sell etc.  Too much excitement for this little geek.  Time to go shower and get ready for work…ugh….Day 6 of 8 days in a row.  but soon I will have 8 glorious days of no work. Oh how fabulous!!

The Super Ego

I got my new banners in the mail yesterday and they look amazing! Both will sit on either side of me at the convention emblazoned with the image that Ander Backlund designed for my web page.  Each brain exposed Drew head is looking down at where I will be sitting with my name above them.  Under the head on the left banner it says "writer" and under the head on the right banner it says "righter".  Cocky, arrogant and self inflated.  I would say that describes me to a tee. Can't wait for the convention.