Comics and More by Jon Chad: December 2011

Ahhhh, another transition page! How atmospheric! It's like the sun cresting over the horizon on Christmas morning. Wait! Xmas is IN TWO DAYS!! I got back into Burlington, VT (where my parents live) on the night of the 22nd; just in time for the Annual Chadurjian Christmas Triathlon on the 23rd! Event number 1 is the annual bloodletting, where we all go down to the Red Cross and donate blood. The machines that draws blood records how long your donation takes, thus giving us quantifiable numbers as to how we did. For the second year in a row I won this event with a (not too great) time of 5:48. It was a good enough time though! Mom Chad came in close second at 5:53. Too close for comfort.

The second event is the annual cookie decorating. This year was tough. My brother was really clever with the angel-shaped cookies. Here's tray 1:

Here we can see a diagram of a breast done by my sister on the left, a Boston Celtics player below that, and a shark head by my brother on the right-ish side of the tray. Here's tray 2:

My brother was bringing out the big guns with this one. On the top left you can see Mysterio from Spider-man. A little bit down and to the left of Mysterio is the Shocker, also from Spider-man. I mean, it's PRETTY good, but when you play with the big dogs, YOU'RE GONNA SEE THE TEETH. At the bottom-center of this tray you can kinda see my boot-cookie depicting the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. Here's were most of my cookies ended up:

AHHHH, yesssssssss. At the top left we see a piece that I call, "Violent Crime; the disintegration of the American Morality Fortress". Moving down and right from there is Krang. Down and to the right of Krang is a dragon head. In the bottom left hand corner is duck man (??). Above the dragon head and Krang is perhaps my most ambitious piece of the year:

Using cookie scraps and some engineering know-how, I've constructed a cookie replica of Barad-dûr, Sauron's tower from the Lord of the Rings. See how imposing the back-lighting makes it! Look at that M&M eye peering at you through the thinly veiled courage that shrouds your soul!

The last event of the Triathlon is informally the Bailey's drink-off, which I didn't win.

This really has been an amazing day! I got to go to the screen-printing shop where I USED to work (and where my brother NOW works) and visit with them. I even got to catch shirts that my brother was printing as they came off the conveyor belt. How flipping cute is that?!? They have a new 10-station, 8-color automatic press! I knew it was going to be there, but wasn't informed that it came FROM THE FUTURE. that thing was outfitted with so many sensors, motors, magnets and computers, that I was amazed that my brother had gotten the hang of it in a short amount of time. Christmas is going to have to pull all its stops if it wants to compete with how good the 23rd has been! Happy Holidays!