The Grim Reaper has made another appointment with our family. First, he took my daughter's dog Nemesis, then my son's dog King, then my beloved cat Bob and I haven't seen Alucard, my other cat, in months and I fear the worst. Scooby, my son's pet chihuahua / dachshund mix has a tumor in his jaw and his pain has reached the point where eating is intensely painful.

My daughter in law, Samantha, has made the arrangements for Scooby to go to his last visit to the vet.

Now it means we have my two "cats on loan" and my son's dog Aiser left. Kimari is a cat that belongs to my daughter, Cynthia, and when she settles into a place that can handle cats, he's going home, and Amaya who my friend Dee left with me since she's going back to Indonesia and there's a chance Amaya is going with Dee.

I know pets aren't forever, still, like my kids, they are only with me for a while and then their paths diverge from mine.

Here's to travelling my own path in life...

It's been a while since I wrote in my journal and a lot has been happening. Sailor Ranko: the comic has restarted, I've got someone redoing the existing pages and I go out a lot with the friends I've made in Seattle.

Up until today, I've been counting the days that my son Jeffrey would finish high school in Los Angeles, and come move up here to attend a college in Seattle. Well, things have changed.

He wants to change his career and go to film school in Los Angles.

I'm happy for him. I really am. Which now means that I'm living in a home that's a bit too big for me. I'll be starting a search for a smaller place, much closer to work, so I can spend more time doing the things I like to do instead of fighting traffic.

I picked this place because it was near some decent schools and I had hoped my son would stay with me longer than for the summer.

Now, my youngest is going to graduate in the spring and I've run out of kids to take care of. That's it; the last of them have become adults. I'm "free". No more needing extra bedrooms in anticipation of my kids attending school and coming home needing a mom. No more homework nights, and no more sessions of Halo 3.

Of course, they will visit, but it's not the same anymore.

I've got some decisions to make in regards to my long term situation. Do I stay in this house, paying more rent than I need to for rooms that stay empty? Do I move to a small apartment? What about my eldest son who lives with his wife downstairs? Should I make the call for us to part ways?

This morning, what I was going to do for the next 4 to 5 years were crystal clear. Now it's not so clear anymore.

Got up and checked out of my hotel, then drove over to an appointment I had here in Scottsdale. Things went great. Then it was off to the Phoenix Airport to pick up Anne Onymous of "The Wotch" and take her over to Robin's place.

Due do a scheduling hiccup, I couldn't meet up with Mike Stackpole on Sunday, so I drove to Prescott Valley, dropped off Anne, and drove back to Scottsdale, where I met Mike at the Blue Wasabi and had a wonderful dinner with him. It's been a very long time since I've seen him and we chatted about Bard's Tale, current and past novels either of us had written and overall catching up. It was great to see him again.

Hopped in the car and drove back to Prescott and met up with Anne, Robin and Thom and went to see the Harry Potter movie. I've already seen it, and the trio liked it alot.

Then we went to Robin's place and they went to play Xbox (Team Fortress 2) and I passed out in the spare bedroom.

WWWWWAAAAAAYYYY too much driving today. I'm so glad I'm not planning this much driving for the rest of my time off.

It has been a long, long time since I've had a vacation; a real vacation. I've been such a workaholic most of my life, I rarely took time out except for an occasional date, movie or nice dinner somewhere.

Day one:
Got up early to make my flight to Phoenix AZ. I arrived at 10:20AM, got my rental car, checked into my hotel and then went straight to In-N-Out burger. I don't know what secret ingredient is in the sauce, it made me drool just thinking about it. I nommed.

The heat reminded me of Dallas/Los Angeles. It felt good. Relaxed for a while and at a friend's suggestion, I went to Hana Japanese Eatery and I loved it. The service was great, the food was great (Spider Roll and their Sashimi Bento), although the prices were a bit higher than I'm used to, it's expected for a sushi place smack dab in the middle of Arizona.

Now, I'm back in my hotel room, and vegging out. Serious vegging... Yes, I'll veg.

I've been writing Sailor Ranko novels for 7 years now, and sometimes I wondered if anyone really got any enjoyment out of them. Since the comic started, I happily read posts on the webcomic's forums and saw that my works have many fans.

I was contacted by a fan of the comics and novels today and she really touched my heart with her story. She's a transgendered woman with a son who felt he had lost his father to transition. Upon finding Sailor Ranko through the comic and reading the novels, the two reconnected because of their shared love of anime. They both found my novel "Tunnel Vision" to be their favorite and eagerly await my next novel in the series.

I'm overjoyed in hearing that my work put a smile on someone's face and affected them in a positive way.

To my new fan, thanks for returning the favor.

I had a Washington Mutual credit card with a generous credit line that I had used for the last 5 years. As it's well known that Chase purchased Washington Mutual, my credit card became a Chase card with the same terms.

In reward for my loyal patronage, Chase decided I deserve a 29.99% interest rate and my charging privileges to be suspended.

Now, I've got to re-work my finances because I was using the card to pay bills and paying it off and I carried a modest balance. Now, that balance is pushed to the "long term debt" pile with a high priority to pay it off since the interest rate is so high, it ought to be illegal.

Chase Bank sucks. I'm not going to use them ever again if this is how they treat their customers.

It's been 30 years since I was sitting in my bedroom, with a wire wrapped ROM emulator, writing code on my little Apple ][ computer and making changes to existing Atari 2600 games, so I could learn 6507 assembly language and the art of video game programming. Sitting in my garage and in boxes around my house, are thousands of classic video game cartridges I've collected over the years. Some, I bought brand new in the stores, others, I've gotten from other collectors, and some I created, like the Apple ][ hosted ROM emulator that I used to write the Avalon Hill Atari 2600 games.

I was recently contacted by another collector with whom I've done business with over a decade ago and he asked if he could take my collection off my hands.

For years, I've lamented about my collection. I felt I wasn't doing it justice since I didn't have the time to make displays and share it with other affectionados. It's not doing much just sitting on shelves in my garage. I guess it was fate, but combined with his generous offer and my hopes that he will be able to properly catalog, archive and even display some of my best pieces; I've decided to sell him my collection.

Today, I'm grabbing every little thing related to the collection that isn't nailed down (And if it is, I'm using my hammer to remove the nails), and boxing it up for a cross country jounrey across the USA.

I have a bit of meloncholy as I am packing this up. Many of these things, as I hold them, trigger the memories of the time that I acquired them or in some cases, made them. *sigh* I can't live in the past. I hope I'm remembered for my part in it.

On the bright side, I'll have room again in my garage for my car. :)

As my readers already know, Sailor Ranko, the comic, is on a hiatus for the summer. I've switched artists and now the new pages look far, far better. It will return on September 7th, 2009.

My Reflection is also on schedule and will debut on October 5th, 2009.

I'm working on my Sailor Ranko novels in the meantime, and hope to get back to regular updates. I've got a personal coding project that's taking up my time, which is why the hiatus is in place and why the novels have been so slow in updating. I hope to wrap up this project in another month.

On the home front, my cats are being cats. I've resorted to keeping a lint roller next to my desk so I can keep my blouse free of fur since those furballs are shedding their winter coats all over the place. If anyone knows a decent maid service in the Seattle area, let me know. I need one, badly.

I wonder if I can run a lint roller on my cats? Would that help?

It's been a while since I updated my journal. I needed some time to grieve for the loss of my beloved cat, Bob. Since then, my daughter Cynthia sent me her cat Kimari because she was moving into a no-pets apartment and a good friend of mine, Devi, sent me her cat Amaya because she was moving back to Indonesia.

Now, I've got my other cat, Alucard. This make three felines running around, making my life less "boring". Still, even now, Alucard and I sit on my bed and stare at the empty corner of the bed where Bob used to sleep. It's been over two months since she died, and we can still feel her presence.

XNA Math has been announced and shipped in the March 2009 DirectX SDK and the March 2009 Xbox 360 XDK. Look in xnamath.h for my code (I pretty much wrote the whole thing.)

Writing news: I've gone insane and have gone into production of a second webcomic. It's called My Reflection, written by me and drawn by Asuka of Abstract Gender and Ruby Thursday. I give a big thank you to Jimmy Brimstone for all his conversations with me that allowed me to flesh out Kyle and the story that will be told twice a week, starting in July (Or earlier).

Sailor Ranko is on the verge of hitting 300 paged. Woo hoo! I'll need to start advertising it again to help promote it and My Reflection when it debuts.

In case you're wondering, My Reflection is found at http://www.myreflectioncomic.com and Sailor Ranko is at http://www.sailorranko.com

Tomorrow morning, it's back to work for me.

At 2 o'clock, Saturday February 14th, 2009, my long time companion, friend and anchor in an ever changing world, suffered another breathing attack and I knew, her time was up. My little cat, Bob, looked at me with her big green eyes, begging for me to do something to make the pain go away.

At 3:45, I was at her vet as they administered the medication that would end her suffering. She died in my arms, as I petted her and comforted her before she left this Earth.

It's only been an hour, and I can still hear her purring at the foot of my bed. Alucard, my 2 year old tabby, already knows that the house is even more emptier. The two of us lay on the couch, both showing our grief in our own ways.

She came into my life in 1998, when Dayna, a friend of mine, was moving and couldn't take all of her cats with her. As soon as I saw Bob, I knew that kitty was coming home with me. She was already up there in the years, having been found under a porch in Albany NY at Dayna's mother's house, freezing to death from a New England winter. Dayna and her mother few Bob several cans of tuna before she would even slow down eating. Later, Dayna would move to Atlanta with Bob and stay there for a while. Then, she moved to Covina California, where Bob's journey switched over to me.

My kids and I bonded with Bob instantly and she was the center of attention. Bob and I, we had a special bond. When I felt sad or blue, there was Bob, rubbing my leg or purring in my lap, letting me know that there was someone who wanted to listen to my deepest feelings. We shared many times where I would tell her how I was feeling, and she'd always have a kitty smile for me and I could feel that things would be alright.

In 2004, Bob was nearly killed when she was run over by a car, and the vet did hip surgery on her to put her leg back into her hip. It was touch and go, and the family was there, visiting her at the vet until she came home.

2005, I got divorced, and Bob was there for me. Always being a good friend and looking out for me by just being there.

2006, I moved to Dallas Texas, and Bob got to ride in an airplane for the first time, and she was a hit among the passengers and everyone wanted say "Hi" to the cat in the cat carrier.

2008, I moved to Seattle, Washington and again, Bob was with me, both on the plane, and when I was living by myself in corporate housing. Each night, I would get home from work, and there she was, waiting for me at the door, and she'd escort me to her empty food dish with an expression of "I Can Has Cheezburger?"

Then, she started showing her age. She was not as energenic as she used to be, and it was my turn to comfort her. I fed her her favorite foods (Tuna and Meow Mix Select), I'd pet her each night, and I'd pick her up when she wanted to lie in bed with me since she couldn't jump up anymore.

Today, is supposed to be the day about love. I love my little Bob, and I never left her side as her time ran out. I already miss her so much.

Bob, whereever you are, thank you, for just being there for me all these years. I only hope that I was as good a friend to you, as you were to me.

Bob The Cat, Born before 1995 - 2/14/2009