Hello 2020

Pearls Before Swine - January 1, 2020

But seriously folks...

2019 Christmas Tree

So I'm starting off the year with the hope that 2020 will bring wonderful new things. 2019 was a beyond busy year at work, which ended with me being laid off after 8 1/2 years, less than 2 weeks before Christmas. I was definitely very bitter to begin with, for many reasons, but I have slowly let it go, with the belief that I deserve to be somewhere that I am valued, and at the end, I wasn't.

I had a quiet Christmas with the cats, and today was the same - but today we had some beautiful sunshine for the first half of the day, and I appreciated it, and hope that is a good sign for the rest of 2020. I will be able to take a little "me" time for a short while, and I am looking forward to spring and hoping that wherever I land next work-wise I will be able to enjoy more of the summer than I did last year, and really for the last 8 years to be honest.

Boo

Munchkin

Boo & Tommy New Year's Day 2020

Looking Forward to Spring!

Savage Chickens

Pickles

Pearls Before Swine 

Well, February was a really rough month to say the least. Here in Whatcom County we had overnight (and quite a few day time) temperatures below freezing for the whole entire month. As I right this there is still snow on the ground around my house and in piles around the county, accumulated from several snow storms from over three weeks ago. I joke that it was like having a Michigan winter all in one month. We also had several very strong wind storms, and the cause of most of this cold is air coming down from the arctic via the Fraser River Valley in British Columbia.

My neighbors lost a 50 foot+ evergreen, and my landlords had half of their 20 foot+ lilac bush split in half. I was so excited in January starting to see things show signs of life for spring, and now I'm wondering if any of the spring bloomers are going to survive this brutal cold.  The other fun was catching a cold at the start of the month that caused me to miss a few days work and total sapped my energy for at least two weeks. Like a lot of folks, I am really, really looking forward to spring and it warming up. I just started my first seeds this afternoon, my hope for the future, Cherry Rose Nasturtiums ☺ 

Cherry Rose Nasturtiums from Floret Flower Farm

Today's Pearls Before Swine

Pearls Before Swine - March 18 2018

Today's Pearls Before Swine

February 4 2018

Wisdom in a comic strip.

Cartoonist Bill Watterson

On Wednesday I saw an article on IMDB about cartoonist Bill Watterson who drew Calvin & Hobbes coming out of retirement, albeit briefly, to draw a few strips of Pearls Before Swine as part of a fundraiser for Parkinson's Disease.

I'm not a regular reader of Pearls Before Swine, drawn by Stephan Pastis, but when I read about him connecting with Watterson for three strips from this past week I had to check it out. The impetus for all of it surrounds a fellow cartoonist named Richard Thompson who co-founded a charity called Team Cul de Sac that raises money to fight Parkinson's, from which he suffers.

In the article, it explains that part of the joke and how this came about is that Pastis is not none for his artistic abilities, and Watterson of course, drew amazing cartoons, he is a painter at heart. Here are all of the strips from Monday to Saturday, enjoy!

June 2nd

June 3rd

June 4th

June 5th

June 6th

June 7th