March, 2002

Confession time. I have been so incredibly lazy this quarter it's not funny. I've managed to get zero reviews written and I have no excuses. I seem to be in one of those rare cycles where I haven't been paying attention to my comics. I still pick them up each week and read a few but my to read pile is getting huge. I'm even backlogged on my Comics Buyer's Guide reading.

Well, there could be one excuse for my foray into comics slackerdom. I am officially pregnant. Okay, I'm not really sure why that could be the cause but it's the only thing that's changed around the Hodge household within the last several months. Perhaps raging hormones interfere with my desire to read and review comics....

Anyway, I'm due around August 23 and I am so looking forward to being hugely pregnant during an Oklahoma summer. So far things are going fine. I didn't have any morning sickness to speak of with Duncan and this pregnancy is proceeding much the same which is good because I hate to throw up. You can visit www.flooby.com/baby-x and view the first ultrasound of the kid. It's not a great picture and as The Keith pointed out resembles a frog more than anything.

I also turned 36 in February. I'd like to say I had a great birthday but I was flat on my back with a temp of 101 and massively congested sinuses all day. I felt so bad Mike stayed home to take care of Duncan and drive him to school. I might have felt better if I could have taken some NyQuil. As it was I took a lot of Tylenol and that was it. I'll be glad when I can take a few more drugs because trying to sleep sitting up is not my idea of a fun time.

My monitor also gave up the ghost on my birthday. Mike and Duncan had been using my computer and Duncan ran in to tell me there was smoke coming from my computer. At first I thought he meant my actual computer was smoking which didn't make me very happy since I hadn't done a solid back-up in quite some time and I knew I needed to start working on the APA soon. But it turned out my el cheap-o monitor had merely given up the ghost. So I guess for my birthday I got a new monitor which wasn't such a bad birthday present and it's certainly an improvement over the old monitor.
The pregnancy gives me a good excuse not to coach softball this year. Last year was such a headache for me that I figured this year would be worse. The girls are getting old enough that they only want to think about boys and I didn't expect their hearts would be into softball this year since they certainly weren't into it last year. Hopefully this will mean my June submission, traditionally the one without any reviews, will not be reviewless. I hereby resolve to get off my duff and read my comics!

The search for a new house continues and has become more imperative with a new Hodge on the way. There's not much out there to look at right now being Winter but I know that soon more houses will come on the market and Mike will be dragging me all over OKC.

The convention I mentioned last quarter that Mike was involved in is moving slowly. He's probably going to drop out of the steering committee because of frustration with how things are going. Since he doesn't want to run a convention (been there, done that) he doesn't feel right about being involved and getting frustrated and gripey. We'll see if they pull things off. Since it's planned for August I may be otherwise occupied and unable to attend anyway.

Mike has instead been putting his efforts toward writing. A friend from the SF club we belong to (www.starokc.org) has gotten a small group together to critique each others writing. I've been encouraging Mike to put more of his time into this than the convention because I know it's something he really wants to do and because the frustration factor is so much lower.

Speaking of frustration factor, I am now officially the new STAR OKC Treasurer/Secretary. The Treasurer part means I get to report on how much money the club has (not much) and the Secretary part means I get to keep the membership list up-to-date and take minutes at the meetings. Mike's Palm Pilot has made the latter job very easy and has provided the club with incredibly thorough minutes. The frustrating part comes about in that I have found myself becoming disenchanted with STAR lately thanks to politics rearing its ugly head once again. Truthfully it makes me want to resign my office so I can back off from STAR and keep my life free of unnecessary frustration. So far I'm sticking it out.

Duncan is having a great time in Kindergarten this year. His teacher, Mrs. Dilbeck, has been on maternity leave since before Christmas but the full-time sub, Mrs. Sparks, is loved by the kids just as much so there's been no major upheaval there.

We're going to try Spring soccer this year with the same coach he had in the Fall. Once again we're playing at the Ione YWCA so the game schedule is light and the only pressure on the kids is to learn and have fun.

Let's see...time to talk about good movies we've seen I guess. We saw Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and I enjoyed it immensely. Duncan even had a good time although he did fidget less during the fight scenes. I haven't read the LotR trilogy so I went into the movie only knowing bits and pieces of the story (mostly because of Bakshi's Lord of the Rings movie). That didn't seem to matter though because I was engrossed from the start. It's always nice to see high fantasy done well on the big screen. Mike and his mom have read the trilogy and they were just as impressed. I'm looking forward to the next installment.

Mike and I saw Brotherhood of the Wolf, a French film full of beautiful imagery and exciting fight scenes. It's worth seeing if it shows in your area.

And we braved Queen of the Damned even though the few reviews Mike had read panned it. It's been ages since I read The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned but the movie seemed to be a faithful translation of Anne Rice's lore-a tad pretentious and self-indulgent but that's what I expected going in so I wasn't disappointed. Overall I was entertained and thought Stuart Townsend was a good choice for Lestat.

Well, I've rambled enough this quarter. On to my pathetically insubstantial 'zine....

Tamara J. Hodge
March, 2002