AD NAUSEAM

We're back from our trip to the 2011 Heroes Convention in Charlotte. Just walked in the door, in fact, and it's really great to see Charlie. He's so happy we're back. I'll probably post a more detailed summary later in the week but I have some email to catch up on, lots of unpacking and I really need to collapse for a while before work starts back up tomorrow.

First, and most importantly, I'd like to officially congratulate Nicky Soh, our second recipient of the Mike Wieringo Scholarship Fund at S.C.A.D. He was one of three finalists given to us to submit to our panel of judges (thanks, folks!) and it was a very close vote. All the finalists should be very proud of their accomplishments. I wish we could give all three of them the scholarship.

Nicky Soh is very deserving of this award. Unfortunately, with the convention moved up a few weeks this year, Nicky wasn't able to make it to the announcement Saturday night on such short notice. Hopefully, he can attend next year. Good luck, Nicky. You deserve it.

As for our last (or, rather, first) recipient, Rae Rochelle, she has now graduated and I can't wait to see where she goes from here. I hope S.C.A.D. will keep us up on how she's doing. She was the speaker at the S.C.A.D. scholarship dinner (which we were sadly unable to attend) earlier this year and we received a copy of her speech from Karla Geibner, our contact in Savannah. It really choked us up. She's a great person and I'm so glad she was the first person to win the scholarship. I think Mike would be very proud.

Before I sign off, I want to thank everyone who stopped by and donated money or items for sale to the fund or bought something from us. We got some incredibly generous donations from passers-by, friends and pros alike. I can't thank you all enough. Your continuing generosity keeps us going. I'd thank you all by name ( I remember each and every one of you.) but I don't want to embarrass anyone. Just please know how thankful we are.

I also want to thank all the people who stopped by or emailed us or posted here and on Facebook with their condolences about Toonces. Everyone was very understanding and went out of their way to make sure I didn't feel like I was being perceived as the "crazy cat guy." We weren't sure we were ready for Heroes after we lost our little guy and especially were worried about leaving Charlie alone for 3 days but once we got to the show, everyone really cheered us up and we had a great time. It was fun seeing all our "regulars" and all of Mike's friends. ( I guess, after all this time, I really should start calling them "our" friends since they've embraced us.)

Thanks also to our friends Don and Kelly McCants who kindly stopped by over the weekend and checked in on Charlie and hung out with him for THREE HOURS so he wouldn't feel so lonely.

A huge thank you to Shelton Drum and his Heroes crew who hooked us up with a great spot next to our friends Todd, Craig and Nick, along with our new friends Gino and Scott. Also, he deserves a medal for putting up with my annoying emails and phone calls while he was swamped with convention business. Thank you, Shelton!

Finally, thank you to Casey Jones who generously spent hours this weekend doing sketches for us to sell for the fund when he could have been making money for himself. He's such a great and talented guy. And he loved Mike. He's doing a great job keeping Mike's memory alive and telling great stories about Mike's professional days that even I didn't know. I'm so grateful for that. If you're interested, (and why wouldn't you be) click the Artamus blog link on the right. Thank you so much for everything, Casey.

Okay, more later.