I know what it looks like

But really I've been busy this holiday season. Aside from throwing together my holiday calendar, I've done 4 Christmas cards for other people which I'm pretty happy with. It started with a card for Techlab where I used to work:

and that turned out so well, the lab manager asked me to do a card for her family:

and that was so good the owner asked me to do a family card for him:

And last but not least, I did a card for a neighbor who has set up a cancer foundation:

I'm slowly getting more used to working in color and that may have some affect on my future cartoons. I just hope it can add some "funny" to the whole thing.

I'm planning on trying to keep the one cartoon a week thing going for the next year, so stay tuned to see if I fail miserably.

It's Live!

For good or ill, the holiday music podcast is up and ready to be downloaded at:  www.filesanywhere.com

Log in using the user name: kszappa and the password is zappa1111 

I'm new to the casting thing and since I have a face for radio and a voice for silent movies don't expect too much. Just try to enjoy and be aware that it was made with love.

Oh yeah, quick downloading instructions. Right click on the HolidayTunes2013 folder and click on the download folder option. It should ask you where you want to save it on your computer. If so, save it to your music folder. If not, it may just put it in your downloads folder. Then you just extract the compressed file and it's ready to play. This is all assuming you're using a Windows operating system. If you're running Mac I haven't got a clue. I'm guessing you just wave your hand over it and it magically appears on your ipod.

Enjoy!

Never Too Cold To Rock and Roll

The weather has turned towards the inevitable winter here so two weeks ago I didn't even bother going out on Saturday to look for garage sales. The weather was cold and snowy and even I didn't want to face that, even if it meant there was a bargain to be had.

This past weekend wasn't too much better weather-wise with cold rain on Saturday and a predicted snowstorm for Sunday. The snow wasn't supposed to start until the afternoon and since the last few Saturdays have not been good, I decided to beat the snow and check out the local flea market Sunday morning.

When I pulled in to the parking lot I could tell that it was not well attended by either vendors or shoppers, but I figured it wouldn't take me long to buzz through it and maybe I could pick up a couple more boxes of apples for the deer at work. I cruised through with my eyes looking out for cds as always and was pleased to come across a table with a few dozen laid out. I asked how much and was told a buck each or 6 for $5. After coming across 3 Beatles disks that I didn't yet have, I knew that picking up a total of 6 wouldn't be a problem.

 The rest of the market was pretty lame, but I did find one vendor who I'd bought stuff from before, and once again he had a big box of cds for me to dig through looking for more treasure. the guy selling this stuff is a bit odd. Id heard him in the past telling another vendor how hard it was for him to get off heroin and how some of the drugs just made him sleepy. Unfortunately, when he's not on his meds he can get a bit testy. In the past I'd witnessed him cursing out people who tried to low-ball him on some of his prices to the point that it was a little scary. I made sure to ask how much for the cds, a buck each, and didn't try to haggle. I walked away with $16 worth and left the cold outdoors happy as a clam at a casino.

Here's what I ended up with. Not a bad haul for December.