Back home

It wasn't a long trip, either time-wise (three days, two nights) or in terms of distance (somewhere north of three hundred miles round trip), but it sure was fun… and relaxing. I definitely want to start doing more of this kind of thing.

Jeannine and I decided that it would be nice, for our twenty-seventh wedding anniversary, to return to the New Hampshire seacoast area. That's where we got married, in the little back yard of our rented house in Dover, NH in the summer of 1983. We didn't invite a lot of people, but our friends and family members did quite a good job of making that small space seem filled to the brim with life and joy. A few days ago, while sharing memories of our wedding day, Jeannine reminded me of the lopsided carrot cake she'd made as our wedding cake -- I honestly can't remember it being lopsided, but knowing her baking skills I have no doubt it was extremely tasty. I mostly remember being fairly giddy with excitement and happiness, and filled with an unshakable certainty that of all the good decisions I'd ever managed to make in my life up to that point, this was at the top of the list.

And it still is.

Our wedding was a civil ceremony, with a Justice of the Peace from the Dover City Hall officiating. Afterwards, we had Jeannine's carrot cake for dessert following a variety of other foods, some prepared by us, others -- like the roast turkey brought up by Jeannine's dear friend Marguerite -- supplied by helpful friends and family.

A few of our friends stayed for a while after the wedding, and joined Jeannine and me in a drive out to one of our favorite beaches on the New Hampshire coast, Wallis Sands. We walked on the sand and hugged and breathed in the fresh smells of the salt air as the afternoon light waned. It was a great way to cap a wonderful day.

Twenty-seven years later, it seemed appropriate to revisit that beach and remember that day back in 1983. It was cloudy this time, and a bit cool, but still beautiful. We walked about a mile down the beach, and I persuaded Jeannine to pose on some photogenic rocks poking up from the sand.



(I hoped to put together about five shots taken at this spot into a panorama, and it kind of worked, but I forgot about the "moving wave" problem, so it did not stitch together perfectly. But that's okay -- I really like the image of my lovely wife on those rocks, with the backdrop of sand and water and sky... and the memories.)

It was a relaxed couple of days (almost, I was to remark to Jeannine when we got back home, like the honeymoon we never officially had), spent mostly walking around Portsmouth, finding interesting places to eat, cozying up in our hotel when it rained, or doing a little browsing in Portsmouth's many cool shops.

(Speaking of our hotel, here's a view from our little balcony looking out over part of the working harbor of Portsmouth. That green bridge just to the right of the center of the image is one of two vertical drawbridges, this one the innermost, which connect Portsmouth to Kittery, ME. I remember that on our first trip together to the Portsmouth area, back in 1982 when I had come with Jeannine to help her look for a place to live while she was going to graduate school, we had to stop at the outermost of these two bridges, and wait while the large middle section of the bridge was raised to let a ship pass underneath, then wait while it was lowered to allow wheeled traffic to resume across the span... and Jeannine was a little spooked by that. I think I was too, a bit, having never before encountered or driven over a bridge which was not just one reassuringly solid, unmoving surface, but -- as in this case -- something that could split in two, leading the overactive imagination to dire visions of cars accidentally plunging into the salty depths. The large green arching bridge seen off slightly to the left in the distance is another New Hampshire/Maine connector, this one the major highway between the two states, Route 95.)



While waiting for Jeannine outside one of those Portsmouth shops, I spotted this odd twig sculpture being erected on the sidewalk… I have no idea what it is or is supposed to represent, but it's kind of nifty.



One place that Jeannine wanted to go for supper our first night -- and breakfast on our third day -- was a small restaurant near the central square in Portsmouth called Popovers (named, I believe, for the delicious popover pastries in which they specialize, which I can attest are quite yummy). Here's a shot of me enjoying my breakfast fruit salad at Popovers.



Although we discussed it, we never did get over to Dover to walk around and reminisce, but maybe we'll save that for our next trip to the seacoast. -- PL

Salad days

This will probably be the last post from me for a few days (unless I get inspired and Jeannine lets me use her laptop Mac), and I thought I'd sign off with this photo I took of a fruit salad I made for her about a week ago.



I'm not much of a cook or a baker, but one skill I have is making salads, both of the fruit and vegetable varieties. Lately I've been trying to keep a fresh example of each one in our fridge so we can enjoy them daily. I'm actually thinking of taking some salad-making tools with me on this trip, but that might be just a bit obsessive.

On a technical note, I highly recommend Kyocera ceramic knives and peelers for making salads of any sort. The blades are incredibly sharp, making slicing just about anyting a breeze, and I believe the nature of the ceramic blades does not impart any kind of taste to the food being sliced, as can sometimes happen with metal blades, especially with acidic fruits or vegetables.

I've also become enamored of the "Kyocera Adjustable Mandolin Slicer", which has a ceramic blade as well. I've always been a little leery of these things -- okay, I'll admit it, they frighten me! -- as the hand action required to use them could lead to sliced-off sections of fingers if one's attention wanders. But in the last few months I took the plunge, decided I would be extra careful, and it was most definitely worth it. This tool cuts down the slicing time for a vegetable salad by about two-thirds. In addition, it easily adjusts to four different settings for four different thicknesses of slices. And it's fun! (As long as you keep your eyes peeled, no pun intended.) -- PL

"Things Change…" Part Three: Falling away

I picked up a new MacBook Pro laptop yesterday, and have spent a few hours copying old files onto it, re-installing some key programs, and generally trying to get things back to the way they were -- or at least close to it. So far, it seems to be going pretty well. AOL is working, I can get on the Internet, and I don't think I have lost anything vital (of course, that estimation could change as things progress).

I have made one big decision, though, which I was not expecting… but which I can see now is connected to the continuing series of changes going on in my life.

I have not -- and won't -- copy my "TMNT Stuff" folder to the new computer.

"TMNT Stuff" was a folder I'd maintained across several laptops -- in fact, I think it started on my G4 desktop Mac. I put just about everything and anything TMNT-related into it -- art that I'd scanned, some of which I'd colored in Photoshop; all of the art files for the 2K3 TMNT animated series that Lloyd and his crew sent me for approval; plots and notes for the stories I created for the TMNT Volume 4 comics, as well as the Quark (and later InDesign) files for the comics themselves; various interesting emails and web clippings related to TMNT; some important contracts, various drafts of movie scripts and treatments and outlines; and so on. The last time I checked (about a minute ago) this folder was slightly over ten gigabytes.

(I am not deleting this folder full of files -- I will be keeping it on a back-up external hard drive in case i ever need to refer to it again.)

Lately, I have been feeling the sense that the Turtles are "falling away" from me -- I know that is imprecise and very subjective, but it is the closest I can get to articulating how it feels. After the sale of the TMNT property to Viacom in October of 2009, I felt some immediate relief, some significant lessening of my sense of responsibility to and for the Turtles. But I didn't experience the real -- you know, I'm not even sure how to describe it, but I had this kind of anticipation of a feeling of liberation or something. And it wasn't there.

But now it is.

In the last week or two I have actually found myself breathing more easily, and feeling like my shoulders and neck aren't as tight as they once were. I find myself thinking of the Turtles as something from my past, not something of my future… which is a little freaky, given how long they'd been part of my present, but even as a freaky feeling it isn't unpleasant. It feels… relaxing.

I'm not eradicating the Turtles from my life. That would be foolish -- they are a huge part of my personal and creative history. And someday, maybe I will play with them again. But right now, that day seems very, very far away.

Those of you who were/are fans of my TMNT Volume 4 comics may wonder what this means for the continuation/conclusion of that series. I have been doing some soul-searching about that, and at the risk of disappointing some of those fans, I have to say that I don't think the series will ever be finished as I had originally intended it to be. I just don't have any desire to leap back into it, and in fact, I am a little afraid of trying to do so, given my sense of of trepidation about getting sucked back into the world of the TMNT at a time when I finally feel like I am getting free from it.

So this is my current thinking: The art, scripting and lettering for issue #31 is done, and the inking on the art for #32 is just about finished. I may finish up the final details of these two issues, and publish them not in print form but on the Web.

Following that, I will take the plots that I have written out for what would have been the concluding six or seven issues of the comic book, beef them up a little bit, and post them online, either at the Mirage Licensing site or on this blog, so as to give readers of Volume 4 a clear look at how I intended to conclude that series.

I'll have to double-check to make sure I'm within my rights to do this, but I think it will be okay. And in all honesty, at this point I think it's probably the only way this series will get anything close to its intended conclusion. I apologize in advance to anyone who will be disappointed by this approach, but I sincerely see it as the only reasonable way to go forward, all things considered. -- PL

A blogging break

Just want to put up this quick notice to say that I probably won't be doing much blogging in the next few days or week, for two reasons, one kind of a bummer and the other pretty wonderful.

The bummer? Well, it's partly my fault, I think, brought on by some messing around with my Macbook Pro laptop yesterday in an attempt to get it to work more like I wanted it to.... the result being that when trying to restart it today, it crashed. Badly. I can't get it to restart, or even allow me to start it up from a system software installation disk. I've tried just about all the tricks I know for bringing a computer back to life, and so far, it's no go. Looks like I'll be making a trip to the Mac store in Northampton this week to pick up a replacement.

All is not gloom and doom, however. Using what is called "target mode"' I was able to connect the nonfunctional laptop to another Mac and see it as an external drive, allowing me to back up most of my key files, which was a BIG relief. So now it will mostly be a pain in the butt getting everything set up on the new laptop the way I need it to be.

---------------------------------------------------

The wonderful part is that this week, Jeannine and I will be celebrating our twenty-seventh wedding anniversary. That makes me very, very happy. We have a little trip planned which should be a lot of fun, and I am really looking forward to it. I know I'll be saying this, or stuff very much like this, to her a lot this week, but I want to take a moment to say it here and now, on this blog...

Jen, thank you so much for these wonderful years. I hope there are many more. I love you! -- Pete

"Things Change…" Part Two: Changing things...

Following up on my previous long personal post…

Things have changed, and continue to change.

I seem to have experienced a sort of "personal seismic shift" as regards my relationship to the "stuff" that I talked about last time. I was walking with my good friend Len last week and discussing this very issue, when I suddenly said to him something like this: "With the exception of most of the artwork I own, both by me and by others, a few objects and artifacts which hold sentimental value, my tools and a few motorcycles, and the stuff I need on a day-to-day basis (clothes, computer, etc.), I feel like I could just take the rest, heap it in a big pile, and ship it to the nearest Goodwill or recycling center."

It's pretty strange to feel this way, after so many years of feeling the exact opposite. But it is also quite liberating. I spent some time over the last few days walking around my old studio, looking at all the stuff in the storage space underneath it. A significant portion of that lump of stuff is a set of shelves of boxes of multiple copies of old Turtle comics… and as I looked at them, I started to think, "Why am I keeping all of these?" I couldn't think of a very good answer.

So beginning soon, I think I will be selling most of this collection. I will probably keep most if not all of the limited numbers of first printings of the early issues (don't have many of those anyway), and maybe five copes of each of the rest of them. But the rest will go. I plan to discuss with Katie how to sell these through the Mirage Licensing web site. Some of them will likely be offered for prices higher than the cover price, as they are legitimate collectibles now.

I am also considering offering for sale most of my collection of TMNT toys from the first big licensing/merchandising era, but I haven't reached a conclusion on that idea yet. -- PL

Bold Bunny

No, that's not the title of a new anthropomorphic superhero character, but rather the description I gave this fine fellow, who has appeared at the edge of our driveway -- no more than thirty feet from our front door -- twice in the past two days.



And he (or is it she? I can't tell) has let me walk right up until I am just about six or seven feet away. If I stop moving, the bunny will sit there and we'll just look at each other. But then, if I make a move to, say, crouch down to get a better perspective for a photo, he'll be off into the bushes in a trice. (What is a trice, anyway? I should Google that.)



I don't know if this is the same bunny as mentioned in my previous "Rainbows and Bunnies" post, but I guess it could be. I hope he (or she) keeps showing up. -- PL

P.S. I forgot to mention that the second time "Bold Bunny" appeared, it was not only me standing that close, but Jeannine as well, and our big dog Parker... and the bunny was STILL chillaxin'!

P.P.S. Hmmm... maybe instead of "Bold Bunny", I should call him... "Usagi"!

After the rain

We had a short rainstorm late in the day today, and when I was walking the dogs I noticed that the rays of the sun, as it was beginning to set, were producing some lovely effects in the moisture-heavy air.

I took this shot in our back yard. I like its semi-tropical feel. -- PL