Howdy folks - I know I've been kind of spotty with the comics lately, (I think I average about three a week) and for the most part people seem to get it - I've got an 8-month old shaking my life up a little, so it can tend to complicate things from time to time. Today though, I was actually going to have a damned comic up. I had it written in my head, I was getting all ready to do it, and as I put Liz to bed so I could come work on it... an all-too-familiar cry rang out over the baby monitor. Liz has to be up earlier than I do (6:30 most days), so I tend to let her sleep while I attend to Harper.

An hour and a half later, it's now 2:15 AM and Harper just went down to sleep. My plans for comicking went right out the window, and I have to be up early myself. This is the kind of thing I can't plan for, folks. When you pop over to the site and a new comic isn't up, odds are better than average that I've had a night similar to this one, and there's very little I can do to control it. And honestly, not getting 5 solid comics a week out frustrates me to no end.. you have NO idea how much it frustrates me. As Harper gets more and more able to fall asleep and stay asleep on her own (she's getting there little by little) things will ease up a bit, but my first duty is always gonna be to my daughter. That's just the way life is. I never plan on stopping the comic, so put those kinds of fears to rest... and I patently refuse to just switch to a M-W-F schedule. I've done Real Life the day before it goes live for twelve and a half years now, so I don't have any plans of changing it. The schedule went through some bumpy times back when I was in culinary school, and I got through it. This is much the same thing. Just bear with me.

In a brief bit of other news, some of you may remember this comic from the dark ages of 2009. It is with that in mind that one of the products released today on ThinkGeek (and one that amazingly ISN'T an April Fool's gag) is an inflatable captain's chair. It's for kids only, sadly - only rated up to 120 pounds. But still... pretty bad-ass. Harper's gonna need that for her bedroom before too long, methinks. :)

I don't know what's going on, but for some reason the software I use to post the comic is down. I've got an e-mail in to Phillip about it, but otherwise there's not much I can do. I'm workin' on it. :)

Greetings, Lifers! I am not dead as you suspected (seriously... I even got a facebook message today asking if I'm okay. If I keep up this trend of skipping updates, I'll be long dead before anyone even thinks to call authorities. Good thing I don't live alone, I suppose...)

WOW. Tangent. Okay, so it's been a pretty eventful week here at Real Life Headquarters! (Also known as my office.) Harper's keeping us busy as always, but that's not ACTUALLY the reason for the lack of updates - the real reason is that last week, Liz got an honest-to-god job offer! (OMG SPOILER ALERT.) A good one, too - which considering her previous offer followed the phrase "What's the LEAST you'd be willing to take?", is a pretty big deal. So we kinda took Wednesday off to celebrate, and then my usual thursday-night-dinner at my Dad's ran long, so it kinda nixed friday's comic. And after a busy weekend, I had to get to bed early to get UP early so I could help my boss move all our crap from one office to another, so I nixed ANOTHER comic. These things do tend to happen... I wish they'd be a little less frequent, but now that I'm constrained to doing the comic after 9 PM, it's slightly more frequent than I'd hoped for. I'll figure out a routine eventually, I'm sure.

But the MAIN reason I'm making this post isn't to reassure you of my alive status, it's to call attention to two auctions I should have called your attention to much earlier. See, Pat Rothfuss is doing his annual Worldbuilders charity drive, and I've donated two items to the cause: The first is an appearance in the comic, for one or more days as the story calls for it. (The previous winner showed up in the recent Stargate strips) It's for a really good cause if nothing else, and while I can really only guarantee one comic for sure, there's always the possibility that I'll extend it for particularly high bids. :)

The SECOND item is a little more near and dear to my heart: This year, I undertook knitting a Doctor Who Scarf. It took well over a month of knitting for as much free time as I could muster (probably well over 70 hours) and a CRAP ton of yarn, but I finished that sucker, resulting in 13 feet of garter-stitched goodness. It even made it into the comic once or twice. And with all that said, I felt it was one of the only other things I had of any real value that I could give up to the cause... so I did. The 4th Doctor's Scarf is also up for auction, and I hope it does well. Not only because it's for charity, but mostly because it took me a crap-ton of time to make it, so I feel like it has a lot of value. :)

The thing is, I lost track of time during all this, and as of the time of this writing, there's only a tad over 18 hours left on these bad boys! So if either of them sounds enjoyable to you, or if you just like giving to charity, head on over and give them a bid! And don't forget to check out the other cool stuff Pat has available to people who donate over at his blog. Thanks, everyone!