Take That Hill!

When was the last time this happened to you?

Receptionist (over phone): "Madison Dental Associates. Can I help you?"

Rawdon: "Yes, I'd like to make an appointment for a checkup."

Receptionist: "Okay, let me check our schedule... oh, someone just cancelled. Can you come in on Monday?"

Rawdon: "Uh, sure."

It's been a few years since I've been to the dentist, a pattern I hope to break. I'm braced for some bad news, though.

I also made appointments to the eye doctor, and for my cats' annual checkup. Hopefully by the end of the year I'll be all healthy! Well, other than being overweight.

We've been having this meeting for most of the year, three days a week for half an hour. It hasn't really been especially useful, as it often turns out to be either pep talks from our boss, or sessions that start with the words, "Okay, any questions?" Not really organized. I'm starting to perceive that my boss' management style involves tossing certain things out and letting us resolve them among ourselves. Which I guess is reasonable inasmuch as he can't do everything, but I think it would be better to have this stuff delegated to a single person.

So I figured that if no one was going to do it, then I was going to carpe that diem. ('Diem', I notice, is 'die' with an 'm' at the end.) I figure I have a little leeway to be a bit autocratic, since no one else seems interested in doing the job, so I'm aiming towards meeting that will be reasonably useful to me. Hopefully it will be fun, but it will get old real fast if I start getting lots of nitpicky kibbitzing.

1. Thieves and Kings is moving out of its lighthearted fairy tale mode and back to the adventures of Rubel, the young thief. This is a good, complex title which treats its young characters realistically.
2. Quicken Forbidden is a peculiar comic about a teenaged girl who find some magic boots, a magic tome, gateways into other dimensions, dream-world robots, and some strange organizations in the midst of it all. After three issues, it's still not clear where it's going, but it has a certain charm that keeps me interested.
3. Batman: The Long Halloween has wrapped up after 13 issues. It's certainly the least of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's four Batman Hallowe'en stories, but their general approach to Batman storytelling by focusing on the civilian characters and the atmosphere of Gotham City early in Batman's career makes it more interesting than the typical Batman title. (Not that this is hard.)
4. I'm getting frustrated with Doctor Tomorrow, the story of a 1940s man who mysteriously receives vast knowledge from the end of the 20th century and uses it to become a hero. The 12-issue series is following him through his career, but it just doesn't seem to be exploring its themes very fully. The Doc chooses not to read too much of the future's history, and loses much of his resources due to being targeted by Joe McCarthy in the 50s, which sort of sucks all the fun out of it. Ah, well.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)