Hey Grovers! Hope you are all well & practicing social distancing & washing your hands…geez, I can’t remember ever washing my hands this much, I mean, I wash my hands (I’m not a fan of getting my hands dirty) but I’ve never washed them THIS much.

We’re doing well here at the Grove & I just wanted to say hi to my readers out there & hope you’re not going stir crazy in isolation. Stay well, stay strong, we’ll get through this!

Hey Grovers! Here we are at the end of January. It was over a year ago that my whole health issue (*whispers: cancer*) began, and between that and my dogs, and now my wife’s car, 2019 was a major suck, for me at least. I hope your 2019 was much better.

I’m feeling fine, except for my knees…lol, I’ve caught myself saying that SO many times now when someone says, “hey, how are you?” that I’m trying to catch myself before I get to the last part and say, “I’m feeling fine.” But, yes, the knees are an issue. I’m also now moved into my new/old studio, although I still have a lot of my daughter’s things in there…it’s hard to remove her stuff from the walls and I get majorly depressed when I do so…miss that girl! But she’s living her dream, so gotta’ accept that she’s now over 180 miles away and that I won’t be able to see her as often (mostly due to not being able to afford it, and some due to the fact it’s hard for my wife to get time off).

Speaking of things hidden inside parenthesis, which brings me to the point of this update, and congrats for making it this far…I’ve started a gofundme to help with what 2019 has dealt me. Here’s the link. Help if you can, spread the word far and wide. I’ve always hated doing these things (mostly because I suck at them), but this is the time of the year I dread, two big bills to pay to keep the house, but also now stacked upon it is the mountain of medical bills that need to be paid…ugh.

Thanks, Grovers – This is your fearless leader….OUT!

Hey Grovers! Happy New Year!

A little update on me, healthwise, I’m done with radiation therapy, and will now spend the next part doing PSA checks with my urologist & radiation oncologist. Speaking of my urologist, had a cystoscope last month and am still clear of bladder cancer!

But onto the headline…Now that the wife and I are empty nesters, I am slowly moving back into what was at first, my studio, then for 23 years, it was my daughter’s bedroom. Now, it’s my studio again. In fact, I have the workhorse computer set up with the art desk in the studio now. But that leaves quite a few boxes & old portfolios that were shoved under & around the art desk when it was out in the corner of the dining room, or as I called it, the microstudio. Inside one of the portfolios, I found 25 comics that were photocopied, but never uploaded to the site. Some of the comics would fit in between some of the comics already posted from 1999, but I didn’t know the dates of THOSE comics (other than the year as I put the copyright year on it), so I fudged the dates. But, surprise, some of the new comics actually had printed dates on them, so I knew when they were created for. So, I’ll just plop them in after the 1999 comics that were already published.

For the 2000 comics, the storyline appears to have a start in January as it discusses the year changing over to 2000. There are some other comics that then delve into the future, but then another storyline starts abruptly. I know I usually don’t jump into a storyline already in progress, so I know there’s some still missing strips that come before it. I bumped the dates for those towards the end of January 2000 & into February 2000. Not perfect, but, hey, I know I’ll find others that mess up this date guessing (see the 1999 found comics above).

I’ve already scanned the photocopied comics, added a copyright blurb at the bottom & reduced the size to fit on the site. Over the weekend, I’ll start posting them a few at a time so my twitter followers don’t get overwhelmed by a flood of tweets. This new cache of discovered comics now bring my total published to well over the 3000 mark (3123, to be exact), but I am not going to suddenly start renaming the current run because the numbering is from the, well, current run, started in November 2008.

So, look for the comics, which I’ll put the links to on the History page (which really needs to be updated). These found, I actually still find funny (and the last one of 2000 is a bit weird because I was trying something with a particular character – won’t spoil it here – but I don’t remember the exact reason for the change).