Ok, first, Dad’s doing fine.  He was able to go home this Sunday (yesterday).  He’s moving around on his own pretty well, has a wicked S-shaped scar down the back of his head, four titanium screws holding the chunk they cut out of his skull in place, and seems to be his usual self.  The tumor was bigger than they thought, and had started growing into his brain, so they had to spend an extra 2-3 hours carefully digging out the pieces.  The day after, we chatted about the Sherlock Holmes stories that he’d read me when I was little.

So, yeah, that was a roller coaster of a week.   Whew.

I have not spent that much time in a hospital, while not having been admitted myself, for years.

In a bid to cheer me up, the Geek Husband What Rules introduced me to Drawfee.

It worked.

I have not laughed that hard in ages.

Seriously, we laughed until tears ran down our faces and we had to hold ourselves because we laughed until we hurt.

I love this YouTube channel.  So much.  Three or four artists try to draw characters from prompts provided by their followers or their friend/co-worker Tristan (aka The Lore Librarian).  My friend Andi thought they had finished, but I’m not sure.  Regardless, there are a LOT of archives.

Most of the episodes I’ve watched have just been Jacob Turner, Nathan Yaffe and Juliet LePetit.  I have seen one with Karina Farek on it, and she is also delightful.  Some of the episodes I have seen have entailed drawing D&D characters for an Urban Fantasy Game, several episodes involving drawing Marvel heroes and villains that they have never heard of, drawing Lovecraftian Horrors, drawing each other’s greatest childhood fears, and I still have years of material to watch.

All of the artists are really talented and draw wicked fast.  Honestly, watching them work has taught me a lot about drawing on tablets or other electronic equipment.  You never see the people, you just watch the drawings come to life.

Each artist attempts to draw the character they’re assigned, and when they’re done, they put a photo of the actual character up on the screen up next to what the artist has drawn.  Sometimes they have some striking similarities.  Sometimes they’re wildly disparate.  They’re pretty much always hilarious, either listening to the rationales for design choices, or the voicing by the artists of what they think the character they’re drawing would sound like, or by the other artists and Tristan.

The D&D Urban Fantasy episode was the first one we watched together, and I laughed so hard I could not breathe. We watched for about four hours that first night.

So, yeah, I highly recommend Drawfee if you need to laugh.  It was kind of a life saver this week.  Thanks, guys.

And thank you to those who reached out to me this past week.  Even if I didn’t respond, I appreciated it.  I spent most of my time at work or at the hospital, and calling and texting with family back east to keep them informed.

Let’s hope the second half of the month goes better.

Thanks, guys.  Love you all.

If you like what you read here, or want to help fund my a nice relaxing day at the hot tub place to get over all this crap, please consider donating using the link at the top right of the page:  Keep Us Geeking, or checking out my Patreon.  Thank you!

Also, if you’d like to see what sort of fiction I write when left to my own devices, please feel free to check out my fiction Patreon, Nothing Nice Comes Out of My Head.