Wow, it has been a LONG time since I last posted here. I’m pretty sure its because of school work and other various things that have kept me from doing the stuff I love. (Even my weight loss plan failed because of my lack of time, but we will talk about that further down.)
Let me start off by apologizing for the Christmas cards. I know that NONE of them got to you guys before Christmas. Let me explain to you what happened. Moving to the city has caused us alot of grief. Moving here cost more than we had expected and we ran through the donations you guys made very quickly. SO when it came time to print them, we didn’t have the money. Then when we did have enough money, Greg had a creative block and couldn’t design the card. After a few weeks of us discussing it and coming up with some good ideas, we finally narrowed it down to one REALLY GOOD idea that we had. So he went to work creating it and we sent it to a printer to have them made. Well, we ended up fighting and struggling with the printer for awhile longer until we got the cards to our standards. It was about this time that Christmas was coming upon us and everyone’s lives start to get busier than usual. I went through paypal and pulled out all of the donations over $25 and started to organize them. It was about this time that I discovered that Paypal didn’t include addresses on everyone’s payment, so we didn’t know where to send them. So I sent out more emails than probably any of you have done in you entire life and asked for those missing addresses. Once I had all of those in, the hardest part of all came upon us. We had to address and sign EACH of these cards! With our time diminishing due to the approaching holidays and school about to end, we just didn’t have time to finish them before the holidays hit. Then we finally had some time to do a few batches of cards, but we didn’t have the money to mail them out. (You are probably wondering why we went to Disneyland if we didn’t have enough money. Well there are several reasons: 1) Greg was about to start school, and in his entire educational period, he is only getting 2 weeks off from classes. This makes taking a vacation very difficult. 2) Both sides of our family were very helpful and gave us money for Christmas and my birthday so we could go on the trip. 3) We made this the least expensive trip that anyone could possibly take to Disneyland.) Anyways, now that we started getting stipend checks from Greg’s student loans, we have enough cash to send them out. We have sent out a few batches and I think we only have about 1-2 batches left before they are all out. So if you haven’t gotten your card yet, there are 3 things that could be the cause of it. 1) Your name is still in the last batch. 2) Your address was not sent through paypal and I didn’t get an email back from you. 3) It somehow got lost between me trying to get your address from paypal and then onto a card. (Its very difficult to take care of 400 Christmas cards!) If it makes any of you feel better, we didn’t even send out cards to our family and friends this year. So either please be patient or forgive us for the mess we made out of such a wonderful thing that you all did for us. We are really sorry and we are trying to get the last of them out ASAP.
Ok, next thing on my agenda to talk about. We have something really special to offer all readers of Real Life Comics. Every year, our forum holds a Real Life Forums Gathering where we all get together and go to an amusement park or something. Well this year, they have something HUGE planned. They are planning on having a week long party here:
Click the picture to see the entire rental description. Now, usually this is only available to Real Life Forum members, but because of the cost of this beautiful beach house, they have decided to open it up to everyone! Greg and I go every year and we will be there this year as well. So if you want to spend a few days or a week with Greg, me and a bunch of other Real Life fans, this is the place to go! We are even planning on pimping this place out with our computers and gaming systems. This is the closest we are probably ever going to get to a “Real Life Comics Convention”. Now, the notice is kind of short. We were hoping that more of the forum members were going to be able to attend, so now you guys only have a short amount of time to decide if you want to attend this. The dates are for April 1-9th. If you are interested in finding out more about this, the gathering planner has put up a thread in our forum with ALL of the details. Check it out here: REAL LIFE FORUMS GATHERING. The price of attending is a fantastic deal, so much so that you probably couldn’t go on any vacation fot the price of this vacation. Also, don’t mind the fact that the thread says the first deposit is due on the 1st. We have already gotten enough money together to reserve the house. Now we just need you guys to sign up so that we can pay the rest of the deposit! I should also mention that it won’t do you any good to send me questions regarding the event. I’m not the planner, so I don’t know all of the details. The best thing to do it to PM or email MartinBlank from the forum. (He is the one who posted.) I should also add that only a limited number of people can be reasonably accomodated in this thing, and it’s now on a first-come first-serve basis. All details are in the linked thread, so be sure to read through that in detail before proceeding.
Item number three on the agenda is a smaller meeting that Greg and I are planning. We would like to meet some of our Bay Area readers (or people who live close-by). So we would like to hold some kinf of meet-up for sometime in March. When Greg and I hold these meet-ups we usually walk away with 1 or 2 new friends. If you are interested in attending an event like this, please email rlsanfranciscomeet@gmail.com. That way I can get an idea of what kind of space we might need in order to accomodate all of us. Once a few days have passed and the emails have slowed down, I will get to planning something.
Many of you have been emailing me about my diet stuff. Well, I fell off the wagon. I just didn’t have the time nor the money to dedicate to my health. Now I have gained more weight and I even cried the other night about it. I always promised myself that I would never weight 200lbs, and I now weight 185lbS! I’m only 5’3! So this is scaring the crap out of me. So I am determined to try and get down to a reasonable weight by the time Greg graduates from school in 60 weeks. I am going to be making smaller goals in the mean time, but I am going to need your help! I was so depressed and upset about the entire thing a few nights ago. Of course I couldn’t sleep, so I went searching for info. I came across a forum that was all about supporting each other while they obtain their weight goals. While browsing, I discovered a thread that was people’s “Before, During, and After” pictures. This was fantastic for me because I was able to see that actual people were really able to get to their weight goals. Not just something you see on television, but actual people! Then the idea hit me. Why don’t we start a sectionof our forum that is dedicated to healthy living. Not just weight loss, but also weight gain (for those of us who need add a few pounds). It would be much better because its a discussion among friends rather strangers. Well, many of our forum members don’t believe that this will be a sucessful endeavor. So I started the:
Click the image to go. Its just a thread in the forum, but I have been told that if it is popular enough then I will be allowed to open my own sub-forum where we can have more space to discuss whatever we want! So what do I need from you guys? Well, when I told all of you about my goals, I got hundreds of emails from people in the same boat or people who were nutrionist or exercise instructors, etc. Now I need you guys to come help me out with this thread. Whether you are a dietary expert, a person who is dieting, or just someone who likes to cheer people on, come to this thread! Come to support Greg and myself, or come for support! We are just waiting for you!
Wow, this is a REALLY long post. Perhaps I need to post more often with smaller topics! hehe.
To kick start my weight loss campaign, I’ll post my tickerfactory weight loss ticker.
