I drove to Elk Grove, Galt then Sacramento to visit family. I ate a delicious German dinner, watched Spider-Man: No Way Home in the theater, again, and spent the night at my cousin's house and forgot to write a blog post.

After a month of long days & nights working on the mural I was happy to spend a quiet Christmas Eve sleeping in and watching movies in bed. Tomorrow I'm going out of town for the weekend to visit family before coming back to work on the mural.

Today I slept in, ate a lot of turkey, mashed potatoes & gravy, and watched a few movies in bed. Tomorrow, I'm planning a long day & night of working on the mural.

I went to my friend's Halloween party tonight. I think it's the first time in over 10 years since I've been to a costume party. I wore the cheapest costume and mask I found at Spirit Halloween store a few days ago. It's a black robe and plastic devil mask. I only wore the mask for a couple minutes when I arrived and only put it back on once to try and scare some kids.

It's been confirmed! I'll be vending, for the first time in over a year, at the Rose, White & Blue Parade, on 4th of July, here in San Jose. I'm still waiting on more details but the date and times are set. Earlier I pulled out the foam sign I made for my booth just to take a look at it. Over the next couple weeks I'm gonna need to work on a new booth setup to display my prints & buttons, and maybe magnets too, along with my t-shirts. I'm really looking forward to getting out there again and talking to people!

It's Memorial Day. Nothing artsy fartsy to report on. Tomorrow I'll resume my quest to conquer the world! In other words, I'll get back to working on the prints and other shit I've put off this holiday weekend.

I got my second vaccine shot this afternoon and got a nifty button! I didn’t experience any side effects either. I’m looking forward to hanging out with my fully vaxxed friends & family in a few weeks after the vaccine has taken full effect.

The tax prep is still dragging along nicely. I did a bit of work tonight. Mostly reworking the forms & spreadsheets I use to keep records. I do my best to log everything but I’m constantly trying to improve & streamline the whole bookkeeping & tax preparation process.

Happy Star Wars Day!

I went back to Casitas de Esperanza on Friday, not to work on the map mural but for their Easter event. It was open to all Amigos de Guadalupe residents They provided food for all guests and an Easter egg hunt & toy donations for the kids. Right before they released the kids to go hunt for Easter eggs the staff used my map to help line them up based on age. It made me so happy to see the map being used and to see all the kids running around having fun. I posed for a few pictures while was there too.

Aside from a bit of touch ups and a good cleaning, the contiguous United States are done. I still need to lay down Alaska, and color in Hawaii to be officially done-done. In a few days Casitas de Esperanza is having their first annual Easter egg hunt, for all the kids housed via Amigos de Guadalupe, and they’re accepting donations for pre-filled Easter eggs. I bought a bag of plastic eggs and chocolate candies and loaded them up. I also drew a different smiley face on a each egg.

After a minor update to my heart eyes logo, and uploading it to Instagram for Valentine’s Day, I got a few comments suggesting I put the design on a shirt. That was never the plan but I’m up for it. Unfortunately I’m going to be out of town for 3 weeks so it’ll be a month, maybe more, before I could really start production. I’ve started sketching ideas for the label inside the neck that tells you the size and, depending on cost, a small graphic for the back. There’s not much else I can do till I get back besides get pricing, lock down the artwork, keep the momentum going and take some pre orders. We’ll see if people are still interested a month after Valentine’s Day for this lovie-dovie design.

Today I got a covid test and it was much more pleasant than the last time I got in June. I made some minor tweaks to my heart-eyes logo and uploaded it to Instagram for Valentine’s Day. Several friends said I should make it into a shirt and I just might. I also finished the “Scents by Drea” label design for my friend. I’m still working on a logo design for another friend which I’m almost done with.

I went with my buddy Jon and his girlfriend Gabi to Grant Park this morning and hiked some new trails on New Years Day. We did a little over 4 miles which brings the total to 9.75 miles (out of the 51 miles of hiking trails according to the Grant Park website) but it doesn’t look like 19% (almost 1/5) of the trails are covered/highlighted on the map in the last pic.

Kept it low key for New Years, cause of covid and I'm old. I made a little animation for those who went out and gathered in groups. If they get covid, fuck em! After 9 months I'm tired of feeling bad, plus we should all know better by this point. If they get other people sick, well then then they're assholes too. Besides folks ringing in the new year with covid, I've plotted a short hike at Grant Park, to do later today with my buddies, and got back to work on the EMN Phoenix project I should have finished by now. Happy New Year... even though not a damn thing's changed!

I finished editing the Hail Santa video tonight. I ran into some issues and learned a few things while working on it. First off, the DSLR camera (overhead) stopped recording and I had to start it up again. There was a notice on the display saying it stopped recording. Luckily I caught it after a few seconds. After Googling it, I learned that I need a faster SD card. My current card is too slow and can't keep up with the camera as it records video. The other option was to record at a lower resolution but I ordered a new card instead. After importing the DSLR and iPhone footage (side angle) into iMovie I learned the two videos didn't sync up. It took me a while to figure out that one video was slightly faster than the other. That shouldn't happen. My guess is that the slow SD card is the culprit. After doing my best to sync the two videos and cutting the hell out of it, I sped up the video from 18 minutes down to 40 seconds. I want to keep my videos short since most people on social media have little or no attention spans. But after speeding it up I realized the quick cuts don't look good at such high speed. I might export a version that's a little longer so the edits aren't as jarring. Either way, next time I edit, I need to mindful of the original video length and how much I need to speed it up.

My family has always celebrated Xmas by staying up till midnight on Christmas Eve so on Christmas Day there’s not a whole lot going on. Usually I’m out of town at a relatives house, just lounging around and hanging out with my cousins. This year, because of COVID, there was no get-together. Today I just hung out at home and didn’t do much besides watch tv and movies again. I didn’t want to end the day without doing something fartsy so I did a quick drawing called “Hail Santa,” cause it’s Christmas.

For as long as I’ve been around, and before I was born, my dad’s side of the family always got together to celebrate on Christmas Eve. It’s always been a big deal for the grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces & nephews. It’s a long running tradition that had to be canceled this year because of Covid. Yes, it’s a bummer but today wasn’t a bad day. I hiked a couple more trails at the Sierra Vista Preserve this afternoon and got a little bit closer to completing the whole space. I just need to do the Upper Calaveras Fault Trail, east of the Cutoff Trail, and the Lower Calaveras Fault Trail, which is a doozy. Just the Lower Calaveras Fault alone is almost 10 miles round trip and a 5-6 hour trek. I’m thinking of doing one hike to finish the Upper portion and coming back another day, nice & early, to knock out the Lower part. Depending on the weather the next few days, and how much it rains, I might be able to 100% complete the preserve before the new year.

I didn’t really do shit today besides lay in bed and watch tv & movies. My body is sore AF after a 3 mile hike on Monday at the Sierra Vista Reserve and over 6 and a half miles at Alum Rock Park on Tuesday. Wednesday was a rest day. On Thursday, which is Christmas Eve, I’m going back to Sierra Vista to clock some more miles and hike trails I’ve never been on before.

Incase you missed the sign on the front page or my Instagram posts earlier this evening... I put my t-shirts on sale for $25 each (including shipping & handling) by using coupon code IGOT5ONIT at checkout. The offer is limited to t-shirts currently in stock and runs until December 25, 2020. This sale is in response to Black Friday, (which was today) Small Business Saturday, and all live vending opportunities being shut down due to covid. It’s a small effort to make a few sales before the end of the year and get rid of some inventory that’s been sitting in boxes all year.

I also made my FRANKIE MCFLY kiss-cut stickers 2 for $5. No coupon necessary.

AKA: Netflix and Eat.

This afternoon I went over to Orange Moon Salon to hang my four drawings. They'll be on display there for a while. Go make an appointment to get your hair did and check out my art. Tonight I finished my last two drawings for Inktober 2020. The 30th is my face, all beat up, broken & undead. The 31st, which is Halloween night, I drew a trick or treating kid with tentacles wearing a ghost costume holding up 6 candy buckets. This was my fourth year doing Inktober.

It's been 4th of July for about a month in East San Jose. That's how long people have been lighting illegal fireworks. It wasn't even the ones that light up, just loud AF and setting off car alarms. Tonight they lit up everything. It was crazier than years before. I stayed home in the backyard listening to the police scanner and ready with the hose in case there was a fire. I'm getting old.

Today I finished inking Brains/Guts (just need to white-out the mistakes,) made a Happy 420 doodle for all the stoners maaaaaan, and digitally inked an old drawing I made called "Pac Man Must Die" 

So I made up this evil Easter bunny character I call the Beaster Dummy. I first drew it in 2014 (bottom left) not very evil looking. I must have skipped a few years because the next one was 2019 and it looked a little gnarlier than before. This year I wanted to emphasize the "beast" so I made it scarier. I feel it could have used a few more hours to really make me happy but it was already past midnight and Beaster is over.

... so I drew a thing, using those things, and digitized the thing, for tomorrows (todays) thing.