A distasteful milestone

January 31, 2017 - 108 Days til' Keycon

This year I hit an important milestone in my adult life. A hateful, ugly, 300 pound milestone. For the first time in my life my weight ballooned to the 300 pound mark. 


It's not an achievement that I ever wanted to make. Not the sort of achievement any middle aged man wants to make. But there it is. A three followed by two zeros starring at me from my bathroom scale. 


Three hundred. It's a base and low number. 


So, in these times, I must fall back on the sin of pride and try to figure out how to lose that weight that has made all my pants too tight and means I have trouble fitting into some of my favourite and loud Hawaiian shirts. 


So I've started a new regime. I want to get back to my old weight of about 260 or so. It's a decent weight for my build and certainly a lot healthier than the bulk I'm currently carrying. 


First to go was the sugary drinks. I was at a point where I was drinking, on average, about one two-litre of Pepsi a day. Excessive no matter how you look at it. I was drinking roughly one cup of sugar a day. More depending on what else I consumed during that day.


At work I walk approximately 11 - 15 Kilometers daily. So that is something at least with regards to exercise. The only days that I don’t do that is on my weekends.


I've also taken inspiration from a young woman,identified as Estella Gong,at the time a computer engineering sophomore at University of Central Florida, who, back in 2014, filmed herself doing pushups for a hundred days. She said that she was self consious of her body and hated being called ‘scrawny’ so she participated in a challenge called ‘give it 100’ which challenged people to get better at a skill for a hundred days and post videos of their progress.

She went from barely being able to do a pushup to doing clapping pushups and making it look easy. Watch the video below.

I’m not following any sort of fad diet set series of exercises. I’m going to continue to eat as I normally would. The only real change is that lack of a two-litre a day and my breakfast bag of ripple cut potato chips. Beyond that I’m just continuing with walking and doing pushups whenever I have the energy.

I’ve been at it for about two weeks so far. My weight is currently 294 pounds down from 298. I was at 292 for a couple of days but we had a games night and I may have drank another two-litre. 

Oops.

I’m going to be continuing throughout the next couple of months working on loosing enough weight so that when the snow starts to clear in a few months I’ll be a bit more comfortable starting to jog again. 

Until then it’ll be no Pepsi on a daily basis, pushups and walking at work. 

I’m aiming for about 30 pounds by the time Keycon comes around. 

We’ll see. 

Happy Thanksgiving.

October 10th, 2016 - 221 Days to Keycon

Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian friends!

Today Canada celebrates it's Thanksgiving. The day will be full of friends, food, family, food, sports, food, crying, food, arguments, food and finally more food.

There will be pie. Usually of the pumpkin variety. With ice cream and lots of whipped topping.

So, of course, I have to work.

However, to my geek friends and fellow con-goer's.

Happy Thanksgiving!

RIP Tom Ireland

On October 3rd, 2016, Winnipegs fandom woke to find themselves fewer by one. At 4:18am Tom Ireland, husband of Anna Murray, passed quietly surrounded by friends and loved ones.

Above is an illustration I did to honor Tom on the Meet the Geeks blog page. It's a small tribute to a man who has been a staple of Keycon for decades. The quote under the comic came from his Facebook page and seemed apropos.  

I'm forced to admit that I didn't know Tom that well. Although our lives crossed paths for nearly twenty years I never really got to know him. I knew him enough to engage him in conversation and to congratulate him when he and Anna got married in 2015. 

I saw him occasionally at my work and he, often accompanied by Anna, would come and chat for a time. We were both engaged in the security industry. 

I really wish I had gotten to know him better. 

I regret not getting down to see him in the hospital. I wanted to believe that there was still time. We had the good intention of going down to see him but life happened. Maybe next week. 

But there is no next week.

And I am truly sorry. I wish I knew more about him. Enough to write a short biography. Enough to tell you about him. About the people he made smile. About those that loved him and that he loved.

I don't even know how old he was when he passed.

Goodbye Tom. This is a poor, poor obituary for so fine a soul.

May those that were left behind find peace and remember only the good times.

Winnipegs Fandom won't be the same without you.

All my love...

~Corey

September 07, 2016 - 254 Days to Keycon.

I'll admit it. I suck at keeping up on things.

Seriously, I've got like four or five unfinished blog posts waiting in the queue.

At least I've managed to keep up on, somewhat, the Meet the Geek's blog page. I'm averaging about two blog posts a week there.

Meet the Geeks is moving along reasonably well. I've found a bunch of old comics that I never finished so I've been taking time in the evenings, when I can, to touch them up, finish inking them, and now even starting to colour them.

Part of what had been keeping me away from working on the comic was that I could'n't find a lot of my tools to prep the comics for the web. My copy of photoshop is still packed away somewhere so I was able to find a work around program that frankly is a lot more intuitive than photoshop and better suited to my comics work. That program is a free add on for Microsoft Paint and is called paint.net. It's a simple and clean paint program that does everything that Photoshop needed to for comic creators and isn't $20 a month or $800 dollars or whatever. Plus it's open source and a user created an add on called isolate line art that does just that so you're not required to jump through the hoops that Photoshop needed to get your line art. One click and you're done.

Also found my old Wacom tablet in my boxes. Fortunately the drivers work with Windows 10 so I didn't need to go out and buy a new tablet.

The most recent MTG comic was coloured in paint.net and, while I'm not happy with some of the colours, it at least gave me a chance to work on my technique. It came back to me as I worked through it.

So there you go folks. Cartoonist Corey is back. I'll be updating as much as I can over the coming months. In the meantime check out the Meet the Geeks blog right here on Blogger. 

~Brother K'Bob

Presenting Rob and Lorna Collett

July 16, 2016 - 306 days to Keycon

Photo Credit - Lee Werth

Today Jenn and I went to the go-to con social location the St. James Legion to celebrate the union of fellow Klingon Robert Collett and Lorna Fink.

It was a low key affair. The wedding started at 12:30 with the bride, looking stunning in a white and red dress, walking down the aisle. I admit that the joyous tears of the bride as she walked towards her intended may have set off a few tears of my own. Vows were exchanged and the happy couple walked arm in arm up the aisle a half hour later.  

We had about six hours to kill in between so Jenn and your humble reporter returned home to eat and take a nap.

We returned to the dance at about 7:00pm where the festivities were just beginning. The dance was being MC'ed by Philip Grodecki. The newly minted couple took to the dance floor to usher in the evening. Unfortunately Lorna's father was unable to make the wedding so, where the father and bride would have danced, Lorna took to the floor with Walter, their adorable and incredibly well behaved infant son. Heart strings were tugged. 

Just before hitting the photobooth I was surprised to hear the first bars of The Time Warp, a convention dance staple, start up. Traditionally the song is played at midnight so it coming on at 7:50 threw a few people off. Of course, in true Pavlovian form, the challenge was met and the floor was quickly filled. 

After that we got our photo taken and joined in a con-goer group photo.

We mingled for a time before slipping out.  

Of course Jenn and I wish Robert and Lorna all the best. 

~Brother K'Bob 

I have no idea what to do

July 7, 2016 - 317 days to Keycon

One of the off putting things about being married with children is that on those rare days that you are on your own you find yourself completely unable to figure out what you want to do.

I'm sitting here on my couch, a fan by the door blowing cool air on me, in my underwear and realizing that the world today is indeed my oyster but I have no clue what to do with myself.

Jenn and the kids are camping.  The toddler is with his auntie and I'm sitting here able to go wherever I want and do whatever I want and I'm realizing that I have no idea what to do!

I could go browse a bookstore.  I could go explore a used CD store and look for some music.

Instead I'm here on my computer.

This stinks.

I'm going to go find something to do.

Happy Canada Day

July 1, 2016 - 321 days to Keycon

Happy Canada day to my Geeks!

I consider myself, especially now, to be lucky to have been born Canadian.

There are few countries where we could expect the standard of life that we have here.

I want to say thank you to all out there, and I know there are many of you, who have served to keep this country as it is.

~Brother K'Bob