Comment on 039 of Pandemonium Renaissance
BarG, 14 Nov 2009 10:46 am

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I'm not much of a baker myself. My dad was the baker in my family. Unfortunately, he has lost most of his vision now (macular degeneration) and cannot do things in the kitchen any more. He baked bread, cakes, cobblers and pies. He used to bake coffee cakes made with nuts and fruit filling, with icings spiced with lemon zest. (Whenever a recipe called for orange zest, he would always substitute lemons because I'm allergic to oranges.) He referred to them as "goodies" so naturally we called them "baddies." They were more bread than cake. The dough was kneaded, braided and allowed to rise a second time before he put it in the oven. He used to bake bread -- pan dulce was always my favorite. My mother's mother was born into the German culture in southeast Texas. She made the most wonderful German Kaffekuchen. She had an oilcloth table cloth on her kitchen table. I can remember being quite small and helping her wash it off and dry it. Then she would sprinkle flour over it and roll out the dough until it was paper thin and covered most of the table. Then she would sprinkle it with cinnamon, sugar, chopped nuts and the fermented raisins she'd strained out of her raisin wine when she bottled it. Then she'd roll it up and twist the roll into a spiral, slide it off onto a cookie sheet and bake it. Then she would make a glaze with powdered sugar. It smelled so wonderful baking. She was second generation American, but she spoke English with a German accent. I used to love to hear her talk. She made the best white bread -- loaves and rolls -- and both my grandmothers made such wonderful biscuits. Flaky and light. My dad made biscuits, too, every Saturday morning for our breakfast. He used a "store-bought" biscuit cutter to cut them out, but my grandmas always used a drinking glass - they'd smear a little shortening around the lip of the glass and then flour it. When the glass was pressed down on the dough to cut one out, there would always be a little foof! of flour from the air escaping as the dough got pushed up into the glass. One of my mother's brothers ran a cannery out of his farm, and every time we'd visit, we'd come back with jars and jars of all kinds of fruit preserves. Just the thing for a biscuit hot from the oven.

Comment on 0905 of Incubus Tales
BarG, 10 Nov 2009 11:00 am

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I love Dhiar's expression in the last panel. - hehe! The little demon that could! -- I know I can! I know I can!

The party ball is great, but considering the "theme" of IT, shouldn't there have been two?

Sneaking a break from work. Will have to come back later and check out the tunes.

Yay for you teaching yourself piano! "Makenaide" indeed!

Comment on 038 of Pandemonium Renaissance
BarG, 06 Nov 2009 08:51 pm

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I'm really lucky in that I cannot recall ever having nightmares. My dreams typically don't have much "emotional" content. I will occasionally have an "uncomfortable" dream, where I'm supposed to be someplace or do something, but I can't remember where or what, but I don't have those very often. Most times, my dreams are very visual - like a kaleidescope of realistic images of places and people with scene shifts for no apparent reason. However, sometimes my dreams are like movies, and have a plot and characters and everything. I've literally dreamed up some of the plots for my stories, as you know, Hushi.

I also sometimes have recurrent dream images. There was a period of time when I frequently dreamed I was walking across a neighborhood at night, not down the street but across them. I'd walk through people's yards, walk in their front doors, through their houses, out their back doors, through their back yards, in a straight line, through one house after another. Another image that has popped up in my dreams since childhood -- very surreal. Imagine if you took an ocean beach, with calm water and small waves coming in and breaking on it, cut out a big square piece of it, and plopped it into somebody's back yard. You've got waves rolling onto the beach, but the water and the beach are totally contained inside this 6-foot redwood fence. Bizarre.

I've had some "warning" dreams too, always about health problems I didn't know I had.

Comment on 0903 of Incubus Tales
BarG, 03 Nov 2009 02:05 pm

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Stupid Rhapsody data base doesn't have any Nakazawa Yuuko either. *does the frustration dance* -- Yeah, I know, I can probably find her on YouTube, but you can't make a play list of their videos that will play by itself.

About the hair color, I noticed that on some of the Princess Princess band members. One of them had dark blue hair.

I do have to say if I "summoned a demon" and got Dhiar, for about 30 seconds, my expression would be more like my lower jaw hanging open down around my knees and my tongue hanging out. This would be followed shortly after by an industrial strength demon glomp. . .

Comment on Dragon_17 of Them Dudes
BarG, 01 Nov 2009 07:19 pm

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Thanks always for updates. I know how crazy busy your life must be with school and all right now. I hope you get as much of a rush drawing TD as I get from each new page. Always such a treat!