El Gringoqueño

What is going on here? I’m tapped out. I’ve had all kinds of interesting adventures and conversations, but I just can’t seem to put them down here. I guess, I should just take a deep breath and realize that sometimes the rivulets of artistic juices run in other directions.

I’ve recently started drawing and cartooning again. Laura has a project for a children’s educational curriculum, and I offered to help out with the illustrations.

That’s Don Pedro, the gardener. I got myself a cheapo Genius tablet (here’s a review) that works just great under Linux. Wacoms are in the hundreds of dollars, but this Genius was only $40 and works great. I’m using Inkscape for sketching and inking. When I’m done, I have a scalable vector graphic (SVG) which I can use, recolor, modify, and export.

Look for more artwork, cartoons, and projects in the coming months.

Once I learn the medium a little better, I’ll post some tutorials about working in Inkscape (or any vector graphic program for that matter).

Javier Ignacio O’Malley Gorbea gladly began the journey to toilet self sufficiency this past week. Javier, third born of four, has awakened each morning for the past few mornings wishing to go "pee pee" and "caca" in the toilet.

"Daddy, Mommy go pee pee in da toilet?"

"Yes, Javier, Mommy goes pee pee in the toilet."

Javier smiled, tickled by this little piece of secret trivia. "Mommy goes caca in da toilet," he declared, extrapolating upon known data, quite a valid hypothesis, if you ask me.

"Yes, Javier, Mommy goes caca in the toilet too." We both chuckled at our scatological observation.  "Daddy goes caca and pee pee in the toilet too. Olaia, Jaimito… everybody, all the big people go in the toilet. Asier is a little boy, so he doesn’t go in the toilet."

Javier smiled, happy to be included among the big self sufficient pee pee and caca goers. "I go pee pee caca in da toilet!"