Spoofy Randomness

Character: Meagan

Stretch’s girlfriend living her own awesome life in the States while Stretch is in Egypt. She’s basically a more awesome combination of Wonder Woman and Supergirl.

  • Travel Destinations

    Travel Destinations

    My hints for a warm destination didn’t work so well. Her birthday, her rules, so I happily went along with it, and it was a great trip! It was really nice to be together again, and London had lots of cool things that Meagan lined up.

    Somewhat ironically, it wasn’t horribly frigid there as they had unseasonably warm weather (I bundled up, but Meagan enjoyed the temps) and as I drew this comic back in Alex a cold front rolled in from the Med and temps dropped into the single digits Celsius–just below our London temps–and cold rain and wind.

  • Time Zones

    Time Zones

    Meagan introduced me to this song, and oh man do I feel it some days: https://youtu.be/ntSBKPkk4m4

    The weekend thing always throws me; there’s a double whammy there because the weekend in the Middle East is Friday-Saturday. Combine that with a 7 to 8 hour difference with Central Time Zone, and I’m leaving work on Thursdays while Meagan is heading to two more days. It makes finding time to video chat very difficult because we don’t share much of a weekend and weekdays are almost impossible since one of us is always at work or asleep. I think a 12 hour time difference would actually be easier to handle because of that.

    Okay, so an eleven-thirty start to a game isn’t that early (unless you’re a college student), but for those that have to work those games (like the Scouts who volunteer for ushering, and the professionals like Will who get to help), it can become quite early. It takes a lot of effort to prepare for enough people for Memorial Stadium to become the third-largest ‘city’ in Nebraska! Trying to shunt that many people, sometimes in varying states of sobriety, can be quite ridiculous, especially at that hour.

    And yes, Meagan does this every day. Silly. 🙂

    Technical note: I changed where I draw to have better posture, but it turns out I’ve gotten into bad habits and drawing on a table suddenly means I can’t seem to draw a straight line. Ugh. I’ll keep working on that.

  • I’d Like to Buy a Vowel

    I’d Like to Buy a Vowel

    Ref: Borg El Arab

    Just throwing this out there: vocalizing the written word in a written comic is HARD.

    Also throwing this out there: porgs are adorable. As soon as I saw the sign for Porg El Arab, I knew what I had to do.

    You may have noticed that I’ve been putting more panels in recent comics.  While it started by accident because I wanted to cram two strips into one to finish before Ramadan, I’ve been happier with the look this way. It may not be around for all comics, but for this one it works.

    The street signs in Panel 4 do exist (slightly further apart, as there’s a tram line between them). Yes, it’s the same street name.  That is also what the new Egyptian street signs look like, if you were curious. They have Arabic on them as well, but it turns out ClipStudio does NOT like Arabic (which is problematic for a strip like this one).

    The narrator of my comic has been getting a lot of work done. Just don’t tell him I noticed or I’ll have to give him a raise. (You should give him a raise on my Patreon.)  And don’t have him ask me how my Arabic lessons are going!

  • Egyptian Wedding II

    Egyptian Wedding II

    AAH! I HAVE TO DRAW EXTRAS! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

    …Ahem.  Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system…  One thing that was exciting about Meagan visiting was that we could go places together!  Alas, dancing did not get to happen, as in Egyptian culture the men all dance on one side of the room and the women on the other. (This also describes American middle school dances, but for different reasons…)  Sarah and Moustafa did get some dances together, but a lot of the time even they were separated.

    This comic ends the strips about Meagan’s visit. Back to my ‘normal’ life next week! Also, stay tuned for the comic’s summer plans; I should be announcing those by the end of the month!

  • Egyptian Wedding I

    Egyptian Wedding I

    Meagan and I did enjoy attending Sarah and Moustafa’s wedding, but Egyptians definitely like things on the LOUD side!

    I finally figured out how to free transform text in ClipStudio! Yay! This has been something that has been driving me crazy (but not crazy enough to Google it, apparently).

  • Proposal

    Proposal

    Ref: Journal

    SHE SAID YES!

    *ahem* Commentary, right.  So as I mentioned in the last comic, our trip for the most part did not go quite according to plan. Before we left, I had been nauseous; I chalked this up to a bit of anxiety about airports that has bothered me since my panic attack. I had some discomfort and bowel issues on the way, but by the time we had gotten to St Catherine I felt fine.  That first evening, we were talking to Mahmoud, the wonderful gentleman who had organized our trip for us.  I had gotten the impression that there weren’t many people who would be at the top of the mountain, but he told us there was usually 150-300.  I was planning on proposing up there, but I didn’t want to do it in front of that many people.  As we were sitting out on the patio of our lodge, we were just enjoying each other’s presence in the peace and quiet and the snails and I realized it would be the perfect place, so I decided I would propose the next evening.

    On our way up the mountain, we discovered that numbers were way down due to some rain earlier, and I started considering the original plan.  The security guard checking backpacks pulled out the ring, but thankfully Meagan was looking the other way.  Then, the plan got aborted, and I realized it was not anxiety but an actual stomach bug.

    After resting, I felt much better.  Meagan took a nap while I wrote in our journal, and this gave me the idea of how to spend our afternoon.  As we were reading the journal, I remembered that in her last entry she had evaluated the odds of me proposing at different times (at the time of writing, she had placed her trip to Egypt as the lowest odds), and I realized that would be my cue.  That part of the trip went beautifully, and we spent a few hours celebrating.

    Then she got whammied by an intestinal parasite all night. Thankfully it let up long enough for us to get back home (we were really nervous about that taxi ride) before round two.  But hey, we had a few hours of bliss on this adventure where everything went right, and I’m so excited for our future life together!

  • AA23: Bad@$$ Queen

    AA23: Bad@$$ Queen

    And here’s the reason I made myself king: so Meagan could be the bad@$$ queen. Not the first time she’s been portrayed as such. Because she basically is, although she cannot keep a straight face like that.

    Also, I got to talk about a plant’s urinary habits and sorta keep Spoofy Randomness’s reputation of no bad language intact. This challenge is WEIRD.

  • The Most Holy Place

    The Most Holy Place

    Ref: St Catherine’s Monastery | Mt Sinai

    Ah, this (mis)adventure! There’s a bit more of the story than I can feasibly do in the weekly comic, but I’ll save it for next week. As for this particular bit, we did not get to ascend to Mt Sinai as planned. I was out for the rest of the morning, but at least Meagan got to go see the monastery grounds.

    The font in panel(?) 3 is Vaporized by Blambot, and it worked great.  The shadow started as an accident, but I really like it.

  • Miracles

    Miracles

    So as noted in this comic, I decided to take Meagan to Mt Sinai for part of her visit.  The first thing we both noticed was the QUIET.  SO QUIET.  This was especially nice for her, because she was not used to the clamoring ruckus that is Alex and found it a little overbearing.

    To get to the mountain, we had to fly into Sharm El Sheikh, then a bedouin driver I had arranged for took us around the mountain range (there is no direct path) to the town of St Catherine.  The drive took about three hours, and only had one stop on the whole route. DESOLATE.  Luckily, aside from construction at one point the roads were good, and was actually four lane divided roadway for half of it. And note because I know someone will ask: the current conflicts are in North Sinai, we were in South Sinai, and there are several military checkpoints on the way and especially at the mountain. It was quite safe.

    I was fascinated by the landforms.  I teach about unconformities, but I had never seen it so obvious and frequent in the landscape.  It was clear that the mountains had been pushed up at an angle, and the different types of rock eroded at different rates, which was neat as well.  I’ll be using that as an example for a long time!

    But outside of geology? It’s a whole lotta NOTHING for miles. Very pretty nothing, but nothing nonetheless. I can’t imagine crossing this on foot.

  • LDSG: On Hold

    LDSG: On Hold

    From Meagan: 

    Moving abroad requires sacrifice… and not just from the person moving. That’s really hard early on in a relationship, when it should still be about flirting and dates and silliness and having adventures together.
    The last six or so weeks before Jake left, in an attempt to help AND squeeze in as much time with him as possible, our whole life became about preparation. Which meant that it was NOT about cleaning my house, mowing my lawn, eating well, exercising, or really maintaining my life at all.
    Add to that the fact that Jake was preoccupied with his own stress and, though he did what he could to comfort me in my emotional moments, I had a hard time feeling seen and acknowledged. At one point I felt like my contribution to this whole experience and process was summarized by simply packing his suitcases, which frankly made me really angry. My energy, my effort, and most of all my overall sacrifice for him to have this experience felt unnoticed and wasn’t met with the level of gratitude I felt like it deserved.
    It might have been only a week after he move when he had this big aha moment and told me how much he suddenly saw and understood. He needed time and space to breathe and think and process this ENORMOUS change to really let it sink in and click. And, truthfully, I think he needed to be WITHOUT me for a while for that to happen.
    The moment that clicked for him and he expressed his gratitude and just recognized me was one of the defining moments in our relationship. The acknowledgement of not just the little tasks I helped with, but the big-picture role I played was validating more than I can say.
    Our time apart continues to let us reflect on what we have together, what we want in the future, what we need from each other, and what our relationship really means to one another. And some really good conversations come from that.
    From Stretch:
    Don’t worry, this revelation did not take six months to happen! It pretty much happened the first day I was in Alex, coming off of the panic attack and having a chance to really sit and think.  But yes, it was very easy (and a little bit necessary, for both efficiency and sanity’s sake) to get so absorbed in getting ready to leave that the rest of my world got left in the lurch.  And Meagan did this all without complaint, coming straight from work every day to whatever we were doing.  She is a trooper, and she drives me to be the best I can be because of what she does.
    Meagan does raise a good point about distance in her commentary.  I think for every relationship, putting some distance every once in a while helps not take the other for granted.  That being said, I think we took this to a little extreme!  It is very important for anyone planning to live abroad to acknowledge the effect on those back home, and that was one of the goals of the Long-Distance Survival Guide this year, especially with last week’s and this one.
    One thing that this whole situation did for us is that it pushed us to have those deep conversations fairly early on.  We only started dating a little over seven months before I left.  As a result, we had to decide fairly early on whether we wanted to pursue our relationship with the intent of making it last when most people would still be in the ‘casual relationship’ stage, and I feel it really shows how well we click together that we were able to do so.
    Meagan’s bag in panel 3 might be full of trail mix…  This is the last of the Long-Distance Survival Guide comics until next year.  Time to take a break from drawing laptop and phone screens!