The Lost Week

by bot on December 4, 2010 at 3:03 pm

You may have noticed there haven’t been any new strips posted this week. First, I’m sorry. And second, here’s why: I’ve spent the past five days executing a move to a new apartment and it has taken up all my time. Seriously. I normally pride myself on being able to estimate – with extreme accuracy – things like how long a task will take, it’s kind of one of my mutant powers, but I was way off this time. It ended up taking about three times as long as I estimated, and as such, I had to put the strip on hold and take most of the week off from work, just so I could get out of my old apartment before my former landlord started hauling the remainder of my stuff away to the nearest landfill. Needless to say, in the six times I’ve moved since leaving my parents’ home to go to college, this particular move has been the hardest.

As much as I hate to miss posting a strip, this move has not only taken away most of my time, it has taken away the tools I use for making new comic strips, too. The image for this post is a picture of my current living room. All of those boxes are filled with needy, mewling items from my Nerd Horde that I’ve picked up over the years like a geek Katamari ball. Unfortunately, all that loot comes with a price: Space. And my new apartment has none of that. The previous apartment I shared with the Cornfather had two bedrooms, four closets, and several cabinets in which to store my loot. My new place has one bedroom, one closet, and the only cabinets to be found are small ones tucked away in the kitchen. And even though I’ve filled two garbage bins with random stuff (nothing good, no worries), three car-loads of donations to the local secondhand shop, and a trunk-load of videogaming items to a used game shop, my new dwelling can still barely contain my collection of DVDs and Blu-rays, much less my comic collection, toys or gaming stuffs.

This is all a preface to saying that my computer and Cintiq have been stored in a box (I’m writing this post using my work computer from my day job) somewhere (see arrow above), and will have to wait to be released from their holdings until this weekend when space will be cleared, and my sister (Xinda) and I get a new desk on which I can start making JEFbot strips again. We’ve already scoped out the desk I’ll be buying, (if not for an unfortunate mislabeling I’d already have it) and it’s much bigger than the previous one I gave away and will be even better for writing, drawing and creating merch on. So hopefully there will be more of all three of those things happening very soon.

With the new desk (which will be much better for my eyes and drawing arm) and the new BOTcave (which, although smaller, doesn’t have a leaky roof or mold growing in the ceiling like my last place did, which seems a fair trade) I suspect that JEFbot will be even better in 2011 than in 2010. And – barring any delays due to acting auditions, bookings or comic conventions – I hopefully won’t be using “moving” again as an excuse for late strips for the next five to ten years.

Sorry again for the “Lost Week” and thanks for all the support while I was going through this. I seriously cannot wait to get back to the drawing board and finally tell you: “The new strip’s up!”

Like that,
Jeff

Oh, also: the tweets and emails being sent my way re: Art imitating Life imitating Art in this strip from the JEFbot Archive are both funny and tragic. But let’s hope it doesn’t come down to this: JEFBOT.216