"Post No. 551"

Got This in the mail today in my effort to collect a few Copper Age keys ("John Stewart becomes Green Lantern"). I figure it might be a good comic to hold on to for some day when I get so old I can't turn a comic book page any more and it would sell well.

This has been some day. I knew I'd be busy, but I didn't think I'd be at it ALL day. It began at 7AM when I got up and got myself awake enuff to get ready to start raking the leaves in this yard (a useless task since they'll only have to be raked again; in fact, in a few hours you couldn't even tell I touched it to begin with), and I was at that task for about an hour and a half when mom called, saying that someone had cancelled their apointment at her foot doctor and that she could get in if she could get over there in an hour, so I quit what I was doing and took her.

Getting back I returned to the yard and worked yet another 1-1/2 hrs. on that, finally getting them all raked into neat piles which I raked onto a tarp and in a couple of large loads got them dragged back to the brush pile at the far end of our yard.

Of course, this really didn't start today, but last night after I worked my usual 9 hrs. at my regular job, after which I came home and got up on the roof and emptied my gutters of leaves, then went down to mom's, emptied her gutters and trimmed her entire hedge which, altogether, took probably a good two hours total.

So, back at mom's today after a lunch break, I raked up all of the trimmings from that scrubbery and bagged that, then raked probably 75% of her front yard to get up thousands of little twigs which I was tired of mowing over all the time and bagged up all the twigs as well and hauled them to the edge of the road and called the "city people" for pickup on it.

Then I remembered the large limb that I had to move out of the way when I emptied her gutters and decided to cut that; a monumental task using a 2 h.p. electric chain saw. In fact, I finally had to get out a circular saw to cut some deeper grooves until I was able to get that down. Yet another good 2 hour job total.

Then I mentioned I was going home to pick up my grocery list and go to the grocery. Well, of course mom needed "something, so I had to pick that up as well, and then, just as I was about to leave, she asked me to go by and pick up some medicine at the local pharmacy, too.

Getting all of that I dropped off mom's medicine and groceries and finally came home and, pretty much, collapsed. I hadn't really slowed down for eleven hours.

Got to work a full day again tomorrow, then off Friday to take mom to have her stomach rescoped, which will more than likely be an all day affair, and I can't find anyone that's off that day to go with me to help keep me company. I certainly will not just sit in that waiting room 4 or 5 hours for her; instead, I'll go to the local mall to the bookstore to see what new comics are out. Maybe even buy a TPB or a new Overstreet (since I've got a 30% off coupon at Waldenbooks).

And speaking of trade paperback collections, I have read both the second ("Lust for Life") and 3rd. ("Year of the Bastard") Transmetropolitan ones now, which reprint issues #4 thru 18. The stories in these concern Spider Jerusalem getting a new assistant, having certain people trying to kill him, and his covering the current presidential election of his time.

As usual, I wasn't disapointed by Mr. Warren Ellis's writing. This two series had a pretty nice surprize "shock" sort of ending, and I think what Ellis is really writing about is more his personal ideaologies and views on politics more than anything else. In these stories he seems to convey his own disatisfaction with the BS that politicians always deliver, and parallel my own views that sometimes one must just trade the devil for the witch simply because "the devil's better".

But then...what do I know. I don't think I've ever read an interview that's been done with him on Transmetropolitan. Maybe he just wanted to write some interesting stories which differed from the usual yawn-inducing stuff we get from "the long-john" sort of comic books.