Wow, it has been a little while since I posted. I hadn't realized so much time had gone by. I've been so busy with midterms, and then a solid stream of homework hard on their heels...well, I can surface at last, I'm glad to say. The worst is over, I think, though I still have one last hurdle before the end of the semester: portfolios for all of my studio classes (Graphic Design, 3D, Observational Drawing), and my thesis paper for Brothers Grimm, of course. But now that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel - December 9th - it lends a light, airy quality to every assignment I have left.

I voted today, and I can't tell you how glad I am about it. After all this build-up, it felt really good. Now, if the Kerry/Edwards canvassers will STOP BUZZING THE APARTMENT, f'r cryin' out loud already... Courteous enough people, but horribly persistent. They're on every other street corner around here today, though I was pleased to see a couple of folks out with Bush/Cheney signs. There was more of a party atmosphere than the bitter antagonism I've been witnessing in the month previous...I think everyone's just ready to blow off all that pent-up steam. Anyway, I'm just glad that the wait is over, we've done our thing, and now we can settle in for the long winter legal battle for the Presidency.

I actually haven't been paying much attention to the news lately. I'd finally achieved a complete and total burnout by last weekend, and I've mainly been listening to movie soundtracks and spending long nights at the school while working on homework projects. The weather's been a bit dreary: overcast skies or fog every day, rain every day, for the last week, week and a half, maybe...today there was a little bit of sunlight and blue skies shining through the breaking clouds, and I realized how much I had been missing daylight. Very pleasant day, overall.

If you haven't looked at my wife's blog recently, go take a look - she posted some pics of our apartment that she took over the fall. Come and check out our cozy digs!

What else was I going to say? I thought I had something constructive to talk about, but mostly I'm just thinking about... Whoa. I just had deja vu. In fact, I just realized that I was having deja vu about a time when I was having deja vu. What is that called, treja vu? Weird.

Um. Anyway. I've been writing, I've been reading...when not doing homework, I've been doing historical research, spurred on by Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe III book and some observations I've made about fantasy literature, specifically Robert E. Howard, Fritz Lieber, and Mike Mignola. That last one has been my "Hellboy" kick - I've been reading them steadily since I saw the movie and discovered that they had a number of them at the library. He's got quite the talent for pulp adventure material, laced with esoterica and smart-alecky dialogue. Not like "Buffy" smart-alecky; a little more world-weary and less ironic and self-referential. And brief. Despite the common misconception, monologues and comics don't do so well together. Anyway, my conclusion is that, for writing interesting adventurey-type stuff, nothing really beats history. The world at the height of the Byzantine Empire in 537 AD was an interesting place.

My wife has gotten somewhat hooked on "Buffy", by the way. I'm not sure why I feel a sort of triumph in that, but I do. I encourage her descent into geekdom at every opportunity, I guess.

Oh! Right...thinking about classes. I had my advisory meeting yesterday, and put together the classes I plan to register for on the 11th this month. After a somewhat dreary semester of Foundation classes that had little connection to what I want to do, I've filled my schedule with comics classes. Ideally, anyway - I'll find out for sure later, but my advisor assured me that Comic Art One would be mine at last. Sadly, Vince Stall isn't teaching it this semester, but I should be able to catch him in Comic Art Two in the fall. I'll also be getting Digital Illustration One, a three-part class called Writers' Workshop, and the History of Comic Books, so I'm rather excited.

There are some classes that they offer in this school that make me scratch my head. "Are you sure that's going to result in something useful?" I find myself asking. But then I have to remind myself that I'm majoring in Comic Art, and that shuts me up pretty quickly. Still, I really had to restrain myself this time around. There's a class I was looking at called Interactive Multi-Linear Narrative, which is all about - get this - writing and designing computer RPG plots.

A class about writing roleplaying game adventures. Seriously. I had to remind myself that I had classes I should take that I might actually get something practical out of.

So now we coast into November. The leaves have mostly fallen around here, gold with flecks of green or russet carpeting the sidewalks, while fog obscures the skyscraper peaks downtown and the drizzle blows every few minutes. I found myself wishing for, I don't know, the tenth time that we had a fireplace in the apartment. Not for warmth, but because lighting a couple of logs and settling into the couch with a book would make the atmosphere as perfect as it's going to get out here. Don't get me wrong, it's been beautiful here, but last night, while I was hanging around the Service Bureau waiting for some color printouts of my Graphic Design homework, the guy working there started listening to the "Twin Peaks" soundtrack.

And I couldn't help but long for the mountains.