City Pages at MSP Comic Con 2015

Nerdy Fun with Comic Artists at MSP Comic Con 2015 from Voice Media Group on Vimeo.

Forgot to show you this great video that City Pages made at MSP Comic Con back in May. It's a great look at what makes that show so special, and at about 00:53 there are a couple of shots of my wife Diane painting some faces.

Among the excellent interviews is one by our friend Chandra Reyer  and her amazing, awesome daughter Gillian. If we ever start having guests on Dragonfly Ripple, Chandra and Gillian have to be the first ones. That's some A+ nerd parenting going on right there.

FallCon report

FallCon was a huge success on Saturday. It was an especially cold day (the weather folk were evening threatening snow), but that didn't keep people away. Crowds were great all day and especially huge around lunch time. And they were spending money, too. Every creator I talked to had great sales days.

Kill All Monsters did really well and my son David sold out of a couple of issues of his Hulkasaurus mini-comic. He also made huge dents in his stock of the other two. I'm really proud of that boy. He set his own prices and hawked his own stuff all day. His work is great, too. I know I'm totally biased, but his drawings are super imaginative and often laugh out loud funny. He's becoming a real pro at this.

My wife Diane had kids lined up all day long for face-painting and for the second year in a row FallCon was her most successful show of the year. After doing FallCon solo for so many years, it's been great sharing a table with David for the last two or three and with Diane a little more recently than that. As she says, "The family that cons together, bonds together." Gonna need that on a T-shirt.

We were worn out after the show, so I didn't get a post ready for yesterday, but I'll make that up tomorrow with two horror movies. And I'll have one up tonight, too. It is Mummy Monday after all.

[Thanks to Grant Gould for taking the photo above.]

Braggin on muh wife

This is kind of old, but one thing (Halloween) or another (Christmas) got in the way of my saying anything about it earlier. I've mentioned before that my wife is an artist, but it's really cool to see her get some attention for her work, like in this piece the Saint Paul Pioneer Press ran on her. She's been very involved in our neighborhood since we moved here about 12 years ago, so letting that spill into her art is a natural progression.

She was also recently recognized by the Saint Paul's East Side Area Business Association as the Top Emerging Small Business. So proud of her.

[Updated: Totally forgot to link to her Facebook page, which is where she posts most of her art.]

The Person I Find Most Attractive In This World

Conveniently, I'm married to her.






This is the last item from Calvin's List. It's been fun, but I'm going to have to find something new to do on Sundays now. Or not. It might be nice to have a day off.

A Drawing by Diane May

This week's item from Calvin's List simply asks for "A Drawing." It doesn't specify who the drawing should be by, but I expect it wants one from whomever's completing the list. You don't need to see my scribbles, but I didn't want to post a drawing by just anyone. I do plenty of that every week already and the idea behind going through the List is to share more personal information than I usually do.

So here's a drawing by my wife, Diane: a scene from the summer camp she went to as a kid. She does one of these every year and donates it to the camp's annual fundraiser auction.

More off-topicness: My wife on the radio

This is from back in July, but I think it's pretty snazzy. We live right across the Interstate from downtown Saint Paul, so when NPR ran a story on urban demographics and the "end of White Flight" in US cities, my wife Diane called in to share her observations. She's the very last caller, right after the 29:00 mark.

Vacation photos: Wednesday

P6110045, originally uploaded by MichaelMay.

Diane had the day off on Wednesday and wanted to spend it hanging out in Baraboo. We found a park with a small zoo attached and had a good time wandering around the town square where we ate lunch, bought some candy, and I found an old copy of Porto Bello Gold at a cool, little bookstore.

We also tried visiting the Circus World Museum that's located on the grounds where the Ringling Bros. used to winter their show. Why anyone would want to winter in Wisconsin when they've already got a headquarters in Sarasota, Florida is something I hoped to learn, but unfortunately the museum was closed. Remember Lake Delton's emptying out on Monday? The waters had reached Baraboo and were threatening the outdoor parts of the circus museum. You can click on Hugo Zacchini above to see what it looked like.

(Incidentally, some Googling tells me that Baraboo was the home of the Ringlings and starting in 1884 was the first winter headquarters for the show. John Ringling moved the HQ to Sarasota in 1927 with at least one other HQ location - Bridgeport, Connecticut - in between.)

Vacation photos: Monday

P6090129, originally uploaded by MichaelMay.

Okay, truly, I'll have some honest-to-goodness content later today. Just want to make sure I stay on top of posting these.

On Monday, Diane had the morning off so we went to the International Crane Foundation near Baraboo. We actually did most of our sight-seeing in Baraboo this trip. I sort of hate the Dells themselves (except for a couple of attractions I'll talk about later in the week) and small town Baraboo is a wonderful get-away from the kitschy, tourist-trap madness of the Dells.

So anyway, click on David and the crane for more pics from the Crane Foundation.

I should also mention - as long as I'm talking about last Monday - that the weather adventures started on Saturday as we drove to the area. We got caught in a thunderstorm, but I've driven through those before and it didn't worry me. When we stopped at a truckstop for a bathroom break though, we were told that there was a tornado warning in the area, so we hung out for a while drinking coffee and eating pie.

Eventually the weather cleared enough that we got back on the road even though the warning was still in effect. We raced the weather to the Dells and got caught in the thunderstorm again. No twisters though.

I tell you all that to say that on Monday the Dells' big, man-made, recreational Lake Delton overflowed its banks, washed away a small dam and a nearby road, and cut a new channel to the Wisconsin River, completely emptying out the former lake. I'll show you pictures from that and tell you how it affected our trip later in the week.