Happy Thanksgiving! I hope yours was great; I know mine was.

We didn’t do any big traveling for the holiday here at Treefort West this year. Quite frankly, we’re in a financial situation at the moment wherein a “big” trip involves the laundromat. Emme’s exploring some exciting job options that have the possibility to pay fine dividends in the future but, unfortunately, not right now. So things are pretty tight.

But you know what?  It’s been awesome.  We slept in every day, I didn’t go to work for four days, I could REALLY get used to this (reminder to self – write mega-bucks earning graphic novel that moves industry forward in order to retire young).

To bring it back to journal comics, I was putting together July’s mini comic and realized there were some empty spaces in the sequence…

August 12th “Soccer It To Me”

…that needed to be corrected.  So I got them done over this weekend and I’m including them here.

July 21st “Gaining Traction”

Our Thanksgiving was, as previously mentioned, awesome.  We went to dinner with our friends Sparrow and Josh from Emme’s Universal Unitarian church, their kids Valkyrie and Daroc, and other family members.  They have an amazing house, their “straw house”…

July 21st “Battle of the Best Newsies”

…that they’ve have built it into a hillside, raised it with a wooden frame, and built the walls with straw and adobe (raidient heat earthen flooring).  By themselves.  They’ve bought a chunk of land and are living a fairly off the grid life.  She’s just a generally all around awesome person, he’s a cop (and a licensed massage therapist and a home-builder and a… a fascinating person).

July 11th “Carelessly Laid Plans…”

They’re a specific brand of Vermonter (even though they live in New Hampshire, technically).  They have awesome kids.  They don’t own a TV.  (Which has been influencing me since Thursday.)  They’re complex and self-sufficient folk.  They have a HUGE solstice bonfire each year.  It was really nice to spend the holiday with them.

Emme and I made pies (which were the first to be finished, I’m proud to say!) and wrapped the night up with an excellent game of Munchkin.  We also confirmed that the best ratio of pies to guests is 1:1.

July 6th “Bio-Dolt”

Friday we got stuff done, but not a lot of stuff.  Saturday was all about drawing, in theory anyway.  I’ve also been working to finish up Alison Bechdel’s “Essential Dykes To Watch Out For” collection.

Lots of Vermont culture this holiday weekend.  Lots of different people and media and philosophy of the region.  Things to think about that I’ll need to express later.  Right now, I hope you enjoy these comics.  There’ll be a new regular journal on Monday night.

-Matt