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!

So, unless you're very old (sorry, Mom!) or don't traverse the goofier sections of the internet, you'll know that the last panel of today's comic is a reference to the "X all of the Y" meme. I really only used it because it's something that was said in the house. Such is the nature of memes.

ALSO part of the nature of a meme is that it tends to get away and separated from its origins. Lots of memes can't even be tracked down to who originally created them, and they just take on a life of their own. I never really knew where this particular meme came from, until today when I referenced it, and someone mentioned to me in e-mail that, yes, the original creator does indeed exist.

One thing that sucks more than anything is reference without attribution. Accordingly, you can visit Hyperbole and a Half bY Allie to see more by her. Before today, I didn't know this site existed, but it looks pretty funny, and I would hope you go check it out. A meme's a meme, but at the very least, the originator of said meme should reap some benefits from it going viral.

Hey folks...

I've been kinda knocked on my ass with some kind of disease or another for the last 2 days (thus the no-comic day) and I'd meant to post this yesterday, but I was just kinda out of it. As promised in the comic, the Enterprise D Ambient sound. It's only an hour long, but if you drop it in a looping sound player, it does the trick. :)

And now I can go die in peace.