hrm...

First and foremost I have to extend my sympathies to the family and friends of Mike Wieringo. He passed away this past weekend at the young age of 44. While I didn't know him personally, I've been a fan of his art and of his humbleness and professionalism. RIP, Mike.

Nothing since March, huh? That's disappointing. Tho, not exactly unexpected for a Chad Fidler blog I guess. What's been going on over the last 4 months, you ask? Well, even if you don't...I'm going to type it anyway.

M and I are both another year older. She's more beautiful with every year that passes. I just seem to be getting less hair and new mysterious pops and creaks in my bones. And speaking of beautiful, Hope has grown so much. She's now nothing but legs! Where'd my bald lil'baby go? Now she's 5 ("and a half", she makes sure to tell everyone) but looking 16. Eep!

My day job as Art Director allowed M and I to attend Comic Con International in San Diego, last month. One of our biggest clients at work is HasbroToyShop.com and at a dinner with them they said that I should come out and help them with the show and I agreed. ;) The show was amazingly huge. I've heard all about how big it is but nothing can really describe it's size. No wonder it's a 4 day show.

Some of the highlights:
- Dinner w/M at the Liars Club
- Getting to see Jim Heffron at the show. Thanks for taking the time to seek me out, dude! In that place, that's a lot harder than it sounds.
- Getting to finally meet Michael Mendheim, the genius behind the mysterious project that I've been coloring. We've been working together for years but had never met in person. Thanks for the beer, Michael!
- Meeting and getting drinks w/my collaborator on the Mendheim project, Simon Bisley! I must admit, after stories that I've heard of Simon, I was a little intimidated... but what an amazing guy. We left the convention hall and went for drinks at an Irish style pub and had the most amazing conversation about self-respect, living life to it's fullest, self-worth...it's hard to describe but I'll be taking what we talked about with me for the rest of my life. What a truly awesome guy. I hope we have the opportunity to meet again.
- Room service w/M Saturday night. We had both had our fill of "nightlife with comic geekdom" so we got ourselves a couple of bottles of wine and hid away in our room for the night.
- The wine guy at the bottle shop M and I stopped at. "You let her breathe...15...20 minutes..." >;)
- Attending the Rob Zombie Halloween panel and then later getting to meet Tyler Dane at the HTS booth. He's playing Michael Myers. Really great (and tall!!) guy.

I'm sure there was more that I'm leaving out... it was a lot of hard work (there are a lot more people out there that want to buy a Stan Lee Spider-man figure than you would think, true believers) but a lot of fun as well.

Beyond that, I've just been trying to enjoy Summer. Treating every weekend like it's a vacation, cooking at least one gourmet meal a week and spending as much time outside as time (and heat) will allow.

On the DLG front. Hope is still very excited about it. She's always making suggestions for stuff to go in it. And we've both started sketching in our sketchbooks. Her's is quite a bit more full than mine but at least I'm drawing again.

Hope everyone is having a great summer!

-c