Orange You Glad I Didn't Say Banana?  (September 11)

Flying on September 11th... probably not the wisest idea.  But aside from a slight uptick in security and an annoying handful of announcements of the threat being at orange, it was fine.  We flew from Los Angeles to Portland, caught up with Greg and Jen, then we all flew to Anchorage.

But really... we still have color coding?  Is it just me, or is it vaguely terrifying that our government's way of keeping us safe is the same system they use at the Shoe Pavillion to mark tiers of discounts?

Are You Kidding?  That's the Best You Can Come Up With?  (September 12)

I wish we'd made this up.  But, no... we saw a lot of these in the Anchorage stores.

Epic Fail Symbolism (September 13)

So we're waiting for the bus that would take us to the cruise ship, and we wandered around Anchorage.  Wound up at a Starbucks, as all three of my companions are complete coffee addicts.

And we see all these people who have McCain Palin signs.  There's been a rally, see, because the eminently qualified Governor Palin has returned home.

And this pair of women (white, of course - we discovered Anchorage was more diverse than we thought, but the rally crowd certainly wasn't), walk by, holding signs from the rally.

Now, next to this Starbucks is a collection of statues - human torsos (no arms) with animal heads.  Animals that I guess represent Alaska - a Moose, a Bear, that sort of thing.

So the two women stop at the statues, and one poses for a picture (which the other takes) holding her sign up in front of the Moose statue.  And she holds it - I shit you not - in front of the Moose's crotch.

As if to say to the world... 'hey, my candidate is better than moosecock.'

We all found this really amusing, and as the two women left, we talked about how great it would be if we had asked the ladies if we too could get a photo.

We could have posted that photo to the web (on this blog perhaps), with the above title (Epic Fail Symbolism).

It would have been awesome.

But we didn't even get our cameras out, so no photos - not even of the moose statue by itself.

So to us I say... Epic Fail Photography.

Edit (September 23rd): Greg took a picture of the Mooseman statue!  So at least you can see what the statue looked like and imagine a woman holding a McCain Palin sign in front of its crotch.  So... no Epic Fail on Photography for Greg.  But we still get an Epic Fail Seizing The Moment.

Ice Is Nice!  How Does It Feel To Be Frozen?  (September 15th)

Our cruise ship took us into Glacier Bay.  We saw actual glaciers.  And we even saw glaciers calving (which is when the ice breaks off and spectacularly lands in the water).

There is nothing like it anywhere else.

And really, that's all I have to say.

Have Garter, Will Travel (September 16th)

We went to shore today.  But not on the organized excursions.  Those cost a fortune and we'd have to (shudder) deal with the other passengers.

The four of us walked around Skagway.

It's a tiny town, a gold rush place that was a Western town long after the continental west was already getting civilized.

They've done up the town to look like it did back then, restoring it (and in some cases putting facades up on buildings to reproduce the old look).  You'd expect that to look like Tombstone in Arizona (tacky tacky) or like Frontierland in Disneyland (tacky fun).

But it works.  I liked this town.

It helped that it was massively pro-Obama.  We counted about a dozen Obama signs, and no McCain signs or ridiculous Palin t-shirts anywhere to be found.

The highlight was the Red Onion Saloon and Brothel.

We got a t-shirt each, a souvenir garter, and a souvenir intimacy kit free with purchase.  The kit had 2 condoms and 2 dental dams - a steal, I tell ya!

Spawning (September 18th)

In Ketchikan (yeah, the city from the whole Bridge To Nowhere fiasco), we saw a Salmon Ladder.

But the salmon (and there were THOUSANDS of them, maybe even hundreds of thousands) weren't using the ladder.

They instead tried to jump up the rapids.

It was both pathetic and spectacular at the same time.

The futility of it all, with the occasional fleeting moment of triumph.

And there I was, one of a handful of humans, using digital cameras with ludicrously slow auto-focus and "shutter speeds," trying to snap a photo of a fish flying through the air for a fraction of a second.

Got tons of pictures of rapidly flowing water, I did.  And most of those were massively blurry.

Then came this...

It may look blurry and lame to you, but I was ecstatic... because off to the right, you can see that fish, flying up and over the rapids.

I had done it.

Tons of futile pictures, for a fleeting moment of triumph.

Whaddaya know?  Maybe our president is right.  Maybe "the human and the fish can co-exist peacefully."  Because I now know how much I have in common with a salmon.

The Dall House (September 19th)

On the last day of our cruise, as the sun started to set, we stood on the little patio/deck for Greg and Jen's suite and looked out at the sea.

There was something following us.  Several somethings actually.

About a dozen or so small aquatic mammals, too small for dolphins.  They looked like babies or youths.

They had black and white markings, so we wondered if they were baby orcas.

Turns out they were porpoises.   Dall's Porpoises, actually.

They would get out in front of the ship, then zip from front to back, popping in and out of the water.  We'd look back, and we'd be leaving them behind, and then they'd disappear for a minute, pop up in front of the ship and start again.

Unbelievable.

Tired (September 20th)

We went on vacation, so I should be well rested, right?

Uh, no.

As I mentioned in my last post, we're gamers.  That meant we gamed.  Quite a bit (though not as much as my players would like, I assure you).

That meant staying up until 2am most nights.

The thing I didn't mention in my post about gaming is that if you run a game, you're basically writing a plot, then plotting contingencies for all the ways that you can imagine in which your players will react to each situation.  And because you'll never anticipate them all, you wind up improvising as you go, then after running for the night, spend the next day replotting, or creating new characters.

On our cruise, I ran for maybe 30-35 hours.  That's game-time, not counting all my plotting and replotting time.

So, basically this last week I wrote, directed and played all the parts save the 3 leads in 30-35 hours of entertainment.  To put that in perspective, this week I produced either 15-17 feature films, or just over a season and a half of a television drama.  Your pick.

I'm friggin tired.

Vacation is vacation for Greg and Jen and Christie.

But for me... it's work.

Gloriously fun and rewarding work, with pretty much none of the negatives of writing professionally, but work nonetheless.

As I said... tired.

Born in Arizona, Moved to Babylonia (September 20th)

Got more pages in the mail today (well, probably got them a ways back, but we just got back into town).

Pages from our Batman Confidential arc featuring the comic debut of King Tut.

The story is now officially on the schedule.  It will appear in Batman Confidential Issues 26, 27 and 28, starting in (I think - the release date I'm not sure about, but the issue numbers are from Mike Carlin himself) February.

Very exciting, and I can't wait to start talking up this story.

The Cathedral Shuts Its Doors (September 21st)

The Yankees played their last game at Yankee Stadium today.

I watched on ESPN, which showed only a fraction of the ceremonies there.

I've been to dozens of games there.  I loved that place.  It gave me so many great memories.

Thanks for all of those, old friend.

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And that's that.

Consider this blog officially up to date.