Are you going to remember to call your father tomorrow?

I consider myself lucky in that I get to spend quality time with my dad (and the rest of the family) tomorrow morning. In fact, this entire weekend is turning out to be some good quality family time. Granted, it’s been seriously stressful trying to get the house cleaned up in preparation for my folks staying over, but it needed to be done anyway and if anything having my parents spend the night was a great motivator to finally get all that laundry taken care of. Now that most of it is finished (never mind that it should’ve been done a long time ago) I think we can relax just a bit - at least until I have to start painting the last two bedrooms on Monday.

But forget that I’ve actually got more work to do - what’s in store for Sunday? Well, taking my dad out to brunch for starters. After that I plan to relax a bit, and by ‘relax’ I mean ‘do Sunday’s comic’. Yeah, it’s been a long day for everyone so we’ll just go ahead and finish up the comic tomorrow afternoon it looks like.

Ok, Ok, what about dads, right? Well, I don’t know about your dad, but my old man likes Good and Plenty’s and mixed nuts - which is exactly what he’s getting from me. I figure that he doesn’t need another tie, and if he did I would just give him back the tie I borrowed from him last year. He also doesn’t need another plastic animal that poops jellybeans, though I know he gets a kick out of them much to my mother’s chagrin. He also doesn’t need the latest Tiger Woods game because I know his computer can’t keep up with them anymore, and I’m not about to spring for an Xbox 360 because, well, I don’t exactly have that kind of disposable income.

So what did you get your dad for his big day? Did you do anything special? I want to know!

Good news everyone!

To get straight to the point, I just got a call this afternoon from Liberty Union High School in Brentwood asking me to teach art for the 2009-2010 school year. I know - exciting, right? It’s about the same commute to there as where I was subbing in Hayward and, while it’s a little further out from the Bay Area, I’ll be going against traffic the whole way.

I’m just to thrilled to have that validation that makes the last three years of classes, student teaching, and substitute teaching all worth it. I get to have a job in classes that I enjoy teaching - art 1 and ceramics - and I can finally feel like I’m beginning to work toward building my life and career.

So what’s this mean for Salt & Battery? For one, I’m taking the night off to celebrate. I’ll be doing Wednesday’s comic on Wednesday in the morning, so as not to leave you all high and dry. If you’re wondering what’s happening to Super, don’t worry - we’ll have one or two more “filler” comics before getting back to the action.

The school year is officially out and while Summer school will soon be upon me, I’ve still got a little time between commitments to get some stuff done around here. On my list of things to do include a few updates to the blog’s page navigation, moving the blog calendar and controls to the right column, and using the left column for comic-related stuff. If I get a chance, I’d also like to condense the blog post metadata (comments, tags, etc. after a post) to be a little more sleek and sexy. We’ll see what ends up happening, but none of it should get in the way of Sunday’s comic coming out like normal.

Have a great weekend, and enjoy your Summer (whatever little of it you may have)

Major victories come few and far between. That’s why I like to pile together all my little personal victories and cash them all in for easy pick-me-ups along the way. Today I added another coin to my pocket: I hit a home run.

Literally.

It was a good pitch and a solid connect, and the ball went into deep left-center, right over the fielder’s head. Sure, I was playing against 8th graders, but have you seen how fast some of those kids run? Anyway, I think I gave them a run for their money seeing as I made it home unchallenged and even knocked in a teammate on second. The teachers ended up beating the 8th graders 14-8, which is pretty big since the teachers didn’t do so well last year. I’m just happy to have played, but that home run was just freakin’ awesome.

I’ve never really hit a home run before; at least, not that I significantly remember in a game that somewhat mattered. I do like softball (and baseball) and, though I haven’t played in quite a while, I had been looking forward to getting out there and playing with everyone. I figured I’d get a couple base hits seeing as I’m not particularly athletic anymore, but I never thought I’d be running home on my first at-bat. The feeling of accomplishment and pride as I made it home was euphoria - the hi-fives and praise from my teammates and co-workers made me ecstatic. I contributed, and I did it in spectacular fashion.

Am I bragging? Probably. But if you can’t be a little proud of your personal accomplishments every once in a while, then what have you really accomplished?

I really hate doing this double-delay thing what with breaking promises and somesuch, but I gotta do what I gotta do. There was a power outage today which prevented me from doing the strip and, like I said before, my brother is staying with us whom I haven’t seen in a while.

Since he’ll be staying for a bit and I’ve got a LOT of plans coming up in the next few days, I’m going ahead and canceling comic updates until next week. If nothing else interferes, look for Salt & Battery to continue again on Wednesday, June 3rd.

Thanks again for your patience and understanding,
–H