Tomorrow’s my father’s birthday and each year he get’s a watercolor painting by me. More recently he’s got paintings having to do with Florida and frogs. I’ll show the final painting Monday or so. For the Daily Inks, I’ll show the fish I inked after painting the fellow a bit ago today.

This week’s Swampy’s Florida cartoon has to do with wolves. Here’s the wolf I inked earlier that will be in the panel.

Swing over to the Swampy’s Florida site or Facebook page on Sunday to see what Florida area is named after wolves.

Cartoon I drew as Thank You to the nice folks at Dennis Miller Radio

Had a thank you to send to the folks at the DMZ – the Dennis Miller Zone. The only trouble I had after \geting my credit card hacked into two months ago was getting my subscription to the Dennis Miller radio program cut due to it being the only one trying to charge the card while it was down. It took some back and forth, but the folks that run the service let me back in with my longevity of 2009. I sent them the above cartoon thanking them for going to the trouble, becuase, apparently, it was difficult to pull off.

The Swampy Machine decided to take a break from it’s operating procedures Monday as I made my way to a meeting in a Palm Bay, Florida , with Tim Reynolds of The Knowledge Exchange. That had me staying at my friend Jim Fern’s house during the time it took to fix the catalytic converter.

Was I surprised when I drove the car a mere few miles away and it kinked out again in a Publix parking lot. Tim Reynolds and his wife were too kind to drive out to the stilled vehicle during New Years Eve. But not before a number of Publix customers gathered around the car trying to figure the trouble. A group consensus was that the starter had gotten clogged with oil that had gotten loose under the hood.

The crowd dispersed and Tim had the real answer to my trouble and that’s what we did. I bought a new starter and Tom and his son inserted the replacement.

To do this meant doing it at Jin Fern’s house, where I was staying. Thus I drew the drawing above as Jim’s home became a mechanic’s den.

Aunt Dimity Digs In by Nancy Atherton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really do like Atherton’s writing style. It is so well done. To avoid repetition, please see my review of the previous Dimity book I read, Aunt Dimity’s Good Deed.

Had a discussion about authors and the appeal of the writing seen more prior to about 1930. Atherton is much like that in description and style. As I read her books I often forget the time period of the story is current.

This story is a weaving of many elements that is better accomplished than ion the first two I read. There’s no murder or explosions. Just a theft of a brochure. What that theft leads to is one revelation after another.

Another element I like, which gets added to in this volume, are the stuffed animals involved. You have to be reading the series, to understand what this means.

I’m anxious to get to the next book. Though wonder how the setting where this story takes place and where the main character lives can be used again after mining so much of her neighborhood’s past.

Bottom line: I recommend this book.

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Gonna get back to Daily Inks in a couple days and thought I’d add this of the Swampy’s Florida cartoon I inked today. I’ll post the Swampy’s Florida cartoon in a couple days.

This is a part of a larger Christmas card I’m doing for an organization. Happy person! A simpler line than i usually do, but what best fit the subject matter.

The Christmas Garden Affair by Ann Ripley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A standard mystery that probably goes a bit far describing the garden business. Certainly overblowing it’s importance. Though it needs to balance the book.

The writing is fine. Wish there were more descriptions of the setting of scenes. Also, though the characters were well defined, somehow I was getting confused as to who was who. It could be that my not being a fan of landscaping had me a bit detached.

I read this because there is an indication by the title and the cover that Christmas was somehow involved. Christmas is barely mentioned until page 218 and then the reference continues. All culminating in an epilogue involving the holiday. This book could have been set at anytime and Christmas was just a tool to sell the book.

A big pet peeve involves a detail that is just wrong – PBS leaves their programming to the individual stations across the country. Especially since the time this book came about. Some prime time programming is consistent with stations, but a garden show could fall at anytime anywhere during a time period. That throws off a conflict in the story that is noted early on.

Bottom line: i recommend this book as an average mystery.

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Caricatures galore for Everest University tonight!

This is part of one of the editorial cartoons I inked today. I’ll post one of the editorial cartoons I’m working on that is more of a commentary of Christmas life soon.

I love drawing dragons, dinosaurs and other types of reptiles. Dragons and monsters are especially fun. Don’t get much chance to draw them, except in caricatures. I could force the subject mater into the editorial cartoons, but that’s a lousy way to tell stories. So glad Nancy is a fan of dragons!  

This event went fine until the past week’s grueling schedule caught up with me and really slowed me down.

I had to head straight home after this to get back to other projects I’m working on. It was a long drive and got home around 4am.