Happy Mother’s Day to the best wife and Mom a family of misfits could hope for. We promise we’ll clean our rooms if you lay off that wicked backswing of yours.
Mother’s Day crept up on me this year. I almost ran out of time to draw my wife, Jodie, a Mother’s Day Card, something I’ve been trying to do every year since I started dabbling in comics and illustrations six years ago. Jodie has been really ( and I mean really ) into Paddleball this last year, so this particular theme seemed appropriate. And no – I don’t dare go up her against her on the court less I have my ass handed to me. I’ll stick to drawing her instead.
I’m kind of attached to the stuff on my desk. Apparently my stuff is, too….
Last year Jodie bought me a diffuser for my office. It did an amazing job of masking the funk of two dogs and, well, me, until it didn’t. Turns out, just like milk, essential oils can “turn” if left in a diffuser for too long. Jodie started buying me candles shortly after that revelation. Thing is? Candles don’t last that long. Now instead of a smell problem, I have a jar problem.
“Jodie! I’m accumulating jars from all of the burned out candles you have been bringing me.”, I announced from my office.
I looked back at my desk. My lamp stooped over the carcasses of empty jars cluttered around it, its light reftacting off of the colored glass.
“It looks …. kinda sad”, I thought to myself.
“Can you use them as planters?”, Jodie called back from downstairs, interrupting my thought.
“Good idea!”, I called back to her.
But first I have a better idea…”, I thought to myself.
Yes, rabbits can lay eggs, but only bedazzled pastel ones – and only once a year.
And, that obese man who wears a red velvet suit? The one who is ferried about in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer and squeezes down chimneys to give you free gifts? He’s real, too.
It’s no wonder our kids want to be so independent. After all the lies we tell them they just want to figure it out on their own.
This particular comic idea has been lurking in my head for years. It spawned from the Easter Egg Hunts that my cousins, Tony and Michelle, would invite my family and I to every year. The invitations ceased, like many things, during COVID. As luck would have it we received an invitation again for this year, inspiring me to finally put stylus to tablet and draw.
Yes, it’s been a while since my last post. Between the holidays, a busy work schedule, a particularly nasty bout with the flu ( and pneumonia ), and taking some artistic license with this particular comic, it took ….a while.
Normally, I draw using pencil and paper, or with a stylus on a tablet. This time I wanted to try something a little different – vector graphics. With vector graphics you use a mouse to drag, drop, and manipulate shapes and curves to create art. Honestly, it’s a little funky until you try it. The best analogy I can think of is “arts and crafts” in elementary school, where you are given sheets of colored construction paper to cut out and paste together a picture. It’s kind of’ like that – expect without the scissors and paste, at least physical ones. The weird thing is that vector graphics are all math. I converted the image above to a .PNG, but if you were to open the original .SVG file ( that’s short for “Scaleable Vector Graphics” ), you’d see a bunch of numbers. The numbers declare the points and line thicknesses of the shapes that make up the image.
Moving forward I plan on doing a lot more illustrations and comics using vector graphics. It takes longer, but I am getting faster with experience. My reasons are twofold : First, I like the clean crisp lines and colors and simplified designs that vector graphics lends itself to. Second, vector graphics are big in graphic design, illustration, and user interface design ( UXD ), all areas that I am interested in.
So, please be patient with me as I ramp up my skills to accommodate this new style. I have a bunch of ideas – they might just take a while to manifest here as I stumble along.
Lastly, if you are interested in learning how to draw using vector graphics, I use a free application called Inkscape. Adobe offers a competing product called Illustrator, but it is subscription-based and quite pricey for an amateur hobbyist such as myself. Fair warning – Inkscape is not intuitive. If you want to give it a shot I highly recommend taking a course. I have had a lot of luck with these courses on Udemy :
I’ve been to more football games since my daughter, Kaylee, joined Pop Warner Cheer than I have in my whole life. The competitions? They’re just the icing on the cake.
Dungeons and Dragons wasn’t always cool. Back in the 90’s, it was a game played by pimply, greasy, pubescent boys on shag brown carpet under dim incandescent lights with Led Zeppelin rocking in the background. I know because I was one of those boys. Back then I think my friends and I spent more time trying to make each others’ characters miserable, and by extension ourselves, by throwing sadistic, borderline hilarious plot devices at one another.
I had forgotten all about my own experiences until my daughter, Ashley, bought a Dungeons and Dragons Starter Set for her and her friends to play. At first I was astounded that she wanted to play. I mean, Dungeons and Dragons is ( was ) for nerds, right? I was comfortable with it when I was her age, but Ashley? However, after gauging her enthusiasm my attitude quickly morphed into encouragement and finally, well, rejection…
My daughter, Kaylee, was selected to join her school’s safety patrol. On her first day on duty as a crossing guard I decided to pay her a visit. It went something like this….
“Guess what girls? As of August 1st I can get you all of the free bubble wrap and boxes that you want!”, I joked. “I just accepted a new job at UPS!”
“Which store will you be working at? The one next to CVS?”, Kaylee asked.
“Uh….no….”, I laughed, “No, it’s a management role. I’ll be managing other engineers.”
“Oh…..”, they said in unison. Almost disappointed.
More than a few of my friends have also suffered through a similar lack of enthusiasm from their own kids. Working for Apple does not mean you work at the Genius Bar, nor does working at Qualcomm mean you hustle popcorn and beer at football games, although admittedly, the latter is a bit stale given the closure of the prior home of the Chargers football team.
As a manager I’ll be herding engineers rather than the 1’s and 0’s that have been the hallmark of my prior positions. It’ll be a change of pace for me, but one I have been working towards for a while. Over the last couple of years I have been reading books on management strategies, interviewing past co-workers, and enrolling in classes. This year culminated with a Certified Associate Project Manager (CAPM) certification, a Certified SCRUM Master certification, and, of course, this new job.
“To be honest, there are faster, smarter, quicker engineers than me…”, I admitted to my soon-to-be boss during my interview.
He raised an eyebrow at me.
“…I mean, I’m no slouch!”, I corrected quickly. “But, over the years I’ve had the opportunity to work with some amazing people, and, given my own experiences, I feel like I am in a great position where I can guide and motivate them to become what they were meant to be.”
“‘I’m a ‘People Person’, too”, I laughed, “You know, like Tom Smykowski from Office Space? You know, Office Space? The movie?”
A questionable stare. I guess not. Probably a bad analogy anyway, though, given that Tom was anything but a people person.
For me it’s all true, though. Between a one-two punch of a cancer diagnosis and COVID lockdown, I need to be working with people again, not staring at a computer screen. There will still be problems, of course, just of a different, more “people-y” nature, and I am so looking forward to it.
So, before I go, some job search statistics for those who are interested:
I submitted at least 80 job applications over a 3-month period. The first of which was on 4/17/2022, the last of which was on 7/15/2022.
I interviewed with 12 different companies. This equates to 15% of the companies that I had applied to. The majority of the interviews were split into three different parts – an HR screen, an hour-long interview with the hiring manager, and, finally, a half-day panel interview with the team. I am still waiting on responses from some of the interviews that I participated in.
I received 3 offers, which is roughly 4% of the companies that I had applies to and 25% of the companies that I had interviewed with.
The most responsive of the larger companies that I applied to were BD, Sony, and Amazon. The bad news is that BD, after several rounds of interviews and over a month-and-a-half of waiting, cancelled the requisition altogether. Meanwhile, two months and three interviews later I am still “waiting” to hear from Sony. As for Amazon, I almost felt I had to beat them off with a stick. I was contacted by so many of their recruiters over the course of my search that I lost count. I can’t help but think I was just a quota as follow-up calls were few and far in-between. An engineer with a heartbeat, yup, that’s me.
The least responsive large companies were Intuit and HP, both of which I submitted multiple applications, but never received a single follow-up. Intuit was by far the most frustrating as I attended not one, but two career events – uh, I mean, mixers.
On the upside, the smoke kept the mosquitos away. No one complained of a single bite!
William Heise Campground. Seven families. Thirty people. And one bathroom, at least for the first night.
Apparently, at some point in my distant past I was a camper, because I surprised myself and my much more outdoorsy neighbor, Missy, the organizer of the expedition, by the sheer amount of camping equipment I had stuffed into the deepest, darkest corners of garage. It was almost as if I never wanted myself to find it again. Planning ahead I had bought a brand new tent in celebration of Amazon’s Prime Day, only to find two more hidden in my garage during my excavation.
“This new tent will work out better“, I insisted, “It’s bigger and we’ll all be able to sleep together!”
Mistake.
On the first night I realized that our massive 6-person tent was a tighter squeeze than I expected. Worse, I shared an air mattress with Kaylee. Being heavier, I created a depression that she couldn’t help but roll into and subsequently, on top of me. I escaped to the van and spent a sleepless night reclined in the driver’s seat, sleeping for maybe an hour or two in 15-minute spurts. I wasn’t the only one, either. Jodie ended up reading through the night. As for my other daughter, Ashley? She rolled off the air mattress she shared with Jodie and slept, face-planted on the bare vinyl floor of the tent. To each her own.
The toilet and showers gave out early the next day. Suspiciously, the outage coincided with our fearless leader, Missy, contracting a very nasty stomach bug. Being the trooper she was, she insisted on toughing it out, to the extent of trying to follow along on a 3-mile hike in 90+ degree weather. Mercifully, she retreated back to camp only to be voted “off the island” and chaffuered home with a crate of Gatorade and saltine crackers.
A trip to Miner’s Diner in Julian and heaping scoops of ice cream cheered everyone up. Heck, I would have paid good money just to sit in the air conditioned splendor. As luck would have it the diner had an entire basement full of candy which each of the kids took turns exploring.
Some campers truly roughed it, if only by keeping their car’s A/C above 78 degrees.
“Hey, Kay! “Check these out!”, I called to my youngest, Kaylee.
“What are those?”, she asked.
“Sugar candy cigarettes!”, I announced.
“I haven’t seen these in years. Pretty inappropriate for this day and age.”, I reminisced.
She nodded in agreement.
Later that night, back at the campsite, we dined on packaged ramen, canned beans, and store-bought tortillas in an effort to hedge against any more food poisoning stemming from the BBQ’d burgers we had eaten the night before. After getting the campfire started my friend, Mike, strummed guitar while the kids all lined up on a squat fence bordering the campsite.
“Uh, what are they doing?”, Jodie asked.
“Smoking cigarettes.”, I said.
I averted her eyes.
“Don’t worry, they’re sugar. I couldn’t resist.”, I smiled. “It’s nostalgic”.
The second night was quieter. Unsurprisingly, many campers decided to hoof it rather than risk stumbling through the brush in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. My bedroom, the van, was commandeered at least once to make the journey to the remaining operable bathroom a half mile down the road. Sleep was elusive, even more so when Kaylee popped her head in.
“I can’t sleep in the tent”, she moaned, “Can I sleep in here with you?”
“You can try”, I laughed. “I haven’t had any luck.”
She was out cold within minutes in the passenger seat next to me, snoring.
I would say I was up early the next morning, but as I never really went down it’s kind of a misnomer. We managed a pretty good spread of pancakes and scrambled eggs before everyone decided to cut their losses, beat the heat, and head home early.
“Next time? Cabins.”, Jodie suggested.
“Right?”, I agreed absent-mindedly. My exhausted mind theorizing where in the garage I could re-entomb my collection of tents and camping gear so that they would never, ever, be discovered again.
In my defense, she did encourage me to swing harder.
My family and I were recently introduced to Paddleball by Jayme, my sister-in-law. Jayme and my wife, Jodie, were avid racquetball players before the onslaught of our children. A few months ago Jayme started playing a similar sport, called Paddleball, with a group at the local High School on Saturdays. She invited me to join her, and, naturally, I said “maybe”. My history with racquet sports isn’t a pretty one. I was the kid in high school that spent more time fishing tennis balls out of the bushes than hitting them. I was also the dude who screamed like a girl every time I played indoor racquetball with Jayme or Jodie. Simply put : They’re good. I’m not good. But, it’s more than a machoistic thing…
“I’m really not a fan of claustrophobia, 80mph balls, and swinging racquets in close quarters”, I told Jayme.
“It’s not a racquet, it’s a paddle”, Jayme encouraged me.
“And, it’s outdoors”, she continued.
“And, the ball is softer and doesn’t travel as fast.”, she finished.
“Maybe.”, I replied.
I eventually did join her, not to play, but because my youngest daughter, Kaylee, who had been going with Jayme, wanted me to meet “Grogu”, the “cutest puppy in the whole world” that frequented the courts. And, Kaylee was right, of course. Grogu absolutely was the cutest puppy in the whole world. But, I ended up playing a couple rounds of Paddleball, too, and, as expected, hit several balls over the wall in the process. But, everyone encouraged me to keep playing and had tips on how to improve my game. I remember coming home, sore and tired, but excited to tell Jodie all about it.
Fast forward a couple of months and Jodie and I now have our own paddles, made by Gearbox, a set of balls, portable chairs, and lots of new friends. We play Saturdays with the San Diego Elite Paddleball Group.
Drawn and Coded 