The Art of Tim

Hey folks. I haven’t been posting here recently, and I want to assure you it isn’t laziness. I’m extremely busy right now, and I have some painful deadlines I have to meet. I should be able to tell you about it shortly, but this stuff just takes precedence over leisurely journal posting.

Also the first episode of the CAD Animation launches tonight at midnight, which is pretty huge.

Saw The Transporter 2 recently. <3 Jason Statham. But damn, could they have chosen an uglier girl for the villain’s sidekick there? She was gross. I enjoyed watching her die.

I’m still loving Battlestar Galactica. I finished season one, and picked up the first half of season 2 on DVD, which I haven’t had time to start yet. That’s killing me because of the way season one ended. Hopefully soon.

Me and a couple of friends have started playing Everquest 2. I had tried that game out in the beta, and also shortly after release (some of you may recall me talking about it here), but I could never get past the ugly, ugly character models. It was a total turnoff.

Well recently I got wind of the new SOGA character models that you could use, so I check them out and they are downright sexy. So I decided to give EQ2 another shot. Now with pretty graphics, I find myself able to actually get into the game, and I’m liking what I’m finding. It’s better than WoW in some ways, and not as good in others. I think I find it to be more complex, and less forgiving than WoW, which is what I’m in the mood for anyway. Maybe I’ll write in-depth once I’ve been with it for a while.

Anyway, back to work for me. I just wanted to post something for you.

  

A quickie. I was in a Star Warsy mood tonight.

  

I’m home from my week-long vacation, and it was a blast. I haven’t had a real vacation in years. I attempted to take one in late 2004, but I didn’t go anywhere. Which meant even though I was trying to be on vacation, I ended up doing work anyway.

This year Britanny and I went up to Loon Mountain in Lincoln, New Hampshire for a week. Loon is the largest of the White Mountain ski resorts, and has always been one of my favorites. I’ve been a skier since I was a little kid, but Britanny only just started skiing this year. We spent the weekend without work/school, internet or video games, and it was bliss. It was such a relaxing time, and although I’m sad it’s over, I feel energized and refreshed. It was definitely a nice escape from the real world.

We stayed at the Mountain Club Resort which is right at the base of the mountain, so after a long day of skiing all we had to do was ski right up to our room and take our skis off. It was really nice. And it’s such a beatiful area.

What follows is a handful of our vacation photos. Most of you probably don’t care about those, but that’s ok. This journal is often, in large part, a way for my close friends and family that I don’t get to see/talk to very often to keep in touch with me, and keep up-to-date with what’s going on in my life. So if you don’t want to be subjected to the vacation photos of a couple you’ve never met, you could hit the back button on your browser now and not be missing anything.

This is our room. It had a little kitchenette and a murphy bed that came down from the wall.

Trying on silly hats in one of the Loon ski shops.



Here is Britanny and I on one of our first runs down the mountain.






Since Britanny only just started skiing, she fell down a few times (a lot). On our first run down she slid off the trail and managed to find a patch of buried ice that bruised her hip a bit. But she took it in stride.



The view from one of the trails.



And from the top of one of the ski lifts.



Britanny and I on the ski lift.



Britanny fell down again.



And again, hehe.



Some pictures of us while skiing.















At one point Britanny thought it would be funny to swipe one of my ski poles, and I had to chase after her. By the second day she had really grasped the concept of skiing, and she was doing great. By the end of the trip she was skiing better and faster, and didn’t fall down at all.



This was me taking a lunch break at the lodge. They had awesome New England Clam Chowder in bread bowls.



On our last day, we decided to give snowboarding a shot. It was an exploration in pain. Here we are as we’re getting ready to practice down a little hill in front of the resort.






This is a picture of part of the resort/lodge.



Britanny and I trying to snowboard (pictures captured the few seconds we were actually upright).






Finally we decided that sliding down the same fifty foot hill and hiking back up again was more work than was necessary. We were too chicken to try getting off a ski lift while attached to snowboards, so we took the gondola to the very top to try our luck down an actual trail.









We spent most of our first trip down the mountain in this position.



It took us about 45 minutes to get down the mountain, but by the end of the trail we were doing much better. We started to get the hang of simple snowboarding, so we decided to go up for one more try.






Britanny managed to capture one of my many, many snowboarding wipeouts.

I’ve been a skier my entire life, though I haven’t gone in a long time. I was worried that I wouldn’t remember how, but as soon as I snapped on the skis it all came back to me. I didn’t fall once the entire weekend. And then I strapped on a snowboard and made up for it in a single day. My wrists and palms are literally black and blue, and I ache all over. Snowboarding is great fun once you start to get the hang of it, and I would definitely try it again.

The whole week was outstanding. Aside from just getting a vacation and relaxing and having fun for a week, I got to spend the whole thing with Britanny, the love of my life. We’ve been together a year now, and we celebrated our first anniversary while we were in New Hampshire. The whole trip was a lot of fun, and I wish we could have stayed longer.

  

Quickie sketch. Ran out of room at the bottom of the page. I fucking hate it when that happens. Also screwed up my signature on the first go.

I’m having one of those nights.

  

I just got these in a random email. I thought they were hilarious.

(Edit: Ok, apparently these have been flying around the internet lately. I hadn’t seen them until tonight. I don’t care of for the Mr. T/Vin Diesel ones. I think the Chuck Norris ones hold a special meaning for me because I have fond memories of watching bad Chuck Norris action movies with my Dad when I was younger. At any rate, some of them are still pretty funny.)

Top Ten Chuck Norris Facts

1. Chuck Norris’ tears cure cancer. But he is so badass, he has never cried. Ever.

2. Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.

3. Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs.

4. The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain.

5. If you can see Chuck Norris, he can see you. If you can’t see Chuck Norris, you may be only seconds away from death.

6. Chuck Norris has counted to infinity. Twice.

7. Chuck Norris does not hunt because the word hunting infers
the probability of failure. Chuck Norris goes killing.

8. Chuck Norris doesn’t wash his clothes, he disembowels them.

9. Chuck Norris is 1/8th Cherokee. This has nothing to do with ancestry, the man ate a fucking Indian.

10. In fine print on the last page of the Guinness Book of World Records it notes that all world records are held by Chuck Norris, and those listed in the book are simply the closest anyone else has ever gotten.

11. There is no chin behind Chuck Norris’ beard. There is only another fist.

Additional Chuck Norris Facts

* Chuck Norris once roundhouse kicked someone so hard that his foot broke the speed of light, went back in time, and killed Amelia Earhart while she was flying over the Pacific Ocean.

* Crop circles are Chuck Norris’ way of telling the world that sometimes corn needs to lie the fuck down.

* Chuck Norris is ten feet tall, weighs two-tons, breathes fire, and could eat a hammer and take a shotgun blast standing.

* The Great Wall of China was originally created to keep Chuck Norris out. It failed misserably.

* If you ask Chuck Norris what time it is, he always says, “Two seconds ’til.” After you ask, “Two seconds ’til what?” he roundhouse kicks you in the face.

* Chuck Norris drives an ice cream truck covered in human skulls.

* Chuck Norris sold his soul to the devil for his rugged good looks and unparalleled martial arts ability. Shortly after the transaction was finalized, Chuck roundhouse-kicked the devil in the face and took his soul back. The devil, who appreciates irony, couldn’t stay mad and admitted he should have seen it coming. They now play poker every second Wednesday of the month.

* There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures Chuck Norris allows to live.

* Chuck Norris once ate three 72 oz. steaks in one hour. He spent the first 45 minutes having sex with his waitress.

* Chuck Norris is the only man to ever defeat a brick wall in a game of tennis.

* Chuck Norris doesn’t churn butter. He roundhouse kicks the cows and the butter comes straight out.

* When Chuck Norris sends in his taxes, he sends blank forms and includes only a picture of himself, crouched and ready to attack. Chuck Norris has not had to pay taxes ever.

* The quickest way to a man’s heart is with Chuck Norris’ fist.

* A Handicap parking sign does not signify that this spot is for handicapped people. It is actually in fact a warning, that the spot belongs to Chuck Norris and that you will be handicapped if you park there.

* Chuck Norris will attain statehood in 2009. His state flower will be the Magnolia.

* Nagasaki never had a bomb dropped on it. Chuck Norris jumped out of a plane and punched the ground.

* Chuck Norris originally appeared in the “Street Fighter II” video game, but was removed by Beta Testers because every button caused him to do a roundhouse kick. When asked bout this “glitch,” Norris replied, “That’s no glitch.”

* The opening scene of the movie “Saving Private Ryan” is loosely based on games of dodgeball Chuck Norris played in second grade.

* Chuck Norris once shot down a German fighter plane with his finger, by yelling, “Bang!”

* Chuck Norris once bet NASA he could survive re-entry without a spacesuit. On July 19th, 1999, a naked Chuck Norris re-entered the earth’s atmosphere, streaking over 14 states and reaching a temperature of 3000 degrees. An embarrassed NASA publically claimed it was a meteor, and still owes him a beer.

* Chuck Norris has two speeds: Walk and Kill.

* Someone once tried to tell Chuck Norris that roundhouse kicks aren’t the best way to kick someone. This has been recorded by historians as the worst mistake anyone has ever made.

* Contrary to popular belief, America is not a democracy, it is a Chucktatorship.

* Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is based on a true story: Chuck Norris once swallowed a turtle whole, and when he crapped it out, the turtle was six feet tall and had learned karate.

* Chuck Norris is not hung like a horse… horses are hung like Chuck Norris

* Chuck Norris is the only human being to display the Heisenberg uncertainty principle — you can never know both exactly where and how quickly he will roundhouse-kick you in the face.

* Chuck Norris can drink an entire gallon of milk in forty-seven seconds.

* Rather than being birthed like a normal child, Chuck Norris instead decided to punch his way out of his mother’s womb.

* If you say Chuck Norris’ name in Mongolia, the people there will roundhouse kick you in his honor. Their kick will be followed by the REAL roundhouse delivered by none other than Norris himself.

* Time waits for no man. Unless that man is Chuck Norris.

* Chuck Norris discovered a new theory of relativity involving multiple universes in which Chuck Norris is even more badass than in this one. When it was discovered by Albert Einstein and made public, Chuck Norris roundhouse-kicked him in the face. We know Albert Einstein today as Stephen Hawking.

* The Chuck Norris military unit was not used in the game Civilization 4, because a single Chuck Norris could defeat the entire combined nations of the world in one turn.

* In an average living room there are 1,242 objects Chuck Norris could use to kill you, including the room itself.

* Chuck Norris can touch MC Hammer.

* Chuck Norris doesn’t read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.

* Chuck Norris once ate a whole cake before his friends could tell them there was a stripper in it.

* Chuck Norris is 1/8th Cherokee. This has nothing to do with ancestry, the man ate a fucking Indian.

* Chuck Norris always has sex on the first date. Always.

* Cars were invented to have a faster way of fleeing from Chuck Norris. Not to be outdone, Chuck Norris invented the car accident.

* As a teen Chuck Norris impregnated every nun in a convent tucked away in the hills of Tuscany. Nine months later the nuns gave birth to the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the only undefeated and untied team in professional football history.

* Chuck Norris once challenged Lance Armstrong in a “Who has more testicles?” contest. Chuck Norris won by 5.

  

I’ve got a lot of work to do, but I allowed myself a quick sketch. I’ve been trying to work on something that bugs me about my artwork, and that’s that I don’t draw large enough. For the comic strip, it’s not a big deal, because the artwork is very simple. Actually I’m usually able to fit 4-5 strips onto a single piece of bristol board using both sides. But when it comes to other artwork, drawing too small can inhibit the amount of detail you can work into a sketch.

Ok, now back to the grind.

  

Well, it’s officially 2006. I figured I’d make a quick post to mark the new year.

Matt and I went and played paintball yesterday down in Stamford. It was pretty busy, so we really had no problem jumping into games. They only had a setup for speedball, so games were pretty quick. I had a few really good matches, a few really lousy ones, and a ton inbetween. Came away with more than my fair share of bruises. I took a couple of nasty shots to the fingers which is making work a little more difficult than I’d like, but I’ll survive.

I need to pick up a longer barrel for my gun, because the one I have on there now is too short, loud and innacurate for my liking.

Received and made calls to friends to wish a happy new year. Even got a call from my friend Christian in Sweden (www.little-gamers.com), who was about 5 hours ahead of me into 2006.

Spent my New Year’s Eve with Britanny, of course. More than ever she is the best and most important part of my life.

We’re going on vacation next week, skiing in New Hampshire. I’ll be gone for a week which means this week is extra busy doing twice as many comic strips. Which I guess means I should get back to work.

Happy 2006 everyone