"Post No. 702"

Been Spring house-cleaning time around th' ol' Puck' ponderosa. Carpets getting a heavy cleaning, door scrubbed, weeds trimmed, etc., etc. Always a lot of work to do maintaining one's property.

Speaking of which, after removing half of the ceiling plaster from my mother's back bedroom damaged due to water leaking from rains, I discovered said damage to be much more extensive that anticipated. Rafters are rotting as well as roofing boards and there's much more work that will have to be done than in the initial estimate. A new estimate is now being figured and I foresee this repair work going well into the Summer.

The main problem was caused from her previous repairman (if one could call him that), which replaced the shingles on her roof on the rear of the house a couple of years back from hailstorm damage. Instead of removing any damaged wood he simply cut corners, took the old shingles off, put down new velvet undercoating and shingles and told my parents (my father, still alive at that time) that the job was finished and took their money. Had it been repaired correctly the first time, we wouldn't have the problem with this now. Lesson to be learned? WATCH your repairmen and be sure they're doing their job correctly. If not, fire them and find someone that will. (Such people really like to target the elderly.)

In comic book news, artist Gene Colan is doing badly and could really use some help from all the many fans he has that have enjoyed his work over the years. To see auctions to benefit him, please click Here.

Finally finished inventory on my comic book collection. All lists are burned onto a CD, plus back-up lists for updating. Been working on this since January; glad that's completed.

Mowed for the 10th time yesterday and today for the year. Gonna go through a LOT of gasoline this Summer for certain.

Pretty disapointed with the way they finished up the "Lost" t. v. series. So many better scenerios that could have been used, but instead, it was turned into a metaphysical mess. I confess to not watching a whole lot of episodes, but friends always kept me up-to-date with the show. (Shame.)

Got in a full set of the 1985-1987 Megaton (published by Megaton Comics) that I'd won on auction, along with the 1987 Megaton Holiday Special #1 and a Wizard Ace Edition 2. Megaton Comics, to me, was the forerunner of Image Comics, in a way, as issues contained work by both Erik Larsen and Rob Leifield. Almost every issue contains strips of larsen's "Vanguard" character, but most importantly, issues 3 thru 5 have appearances (the first 3) of "The Savage Dragon" (then called only, "The Dragon"), and issue #8 has an ad for Leifield's "Youngblood" (making it also their first app. anywhere pre-1992 -Image). There's also work by jackson Guise, Gary Thomas Washington (who did an alternate comic back in the 1980's that I always enjoyed, "A Boy and His Bot", and whom is a nice guy as I met him once at a Kentucky comic book convention for alternate comic publishers) and several other pretty decent strips of various characters. The Wizard Ace edition reprints Megaton #3 (first FULL app. of "The Dragon").