Ref: A (Not So) Brief History of Road Signs in Lincoln | Victory News Post | The Great Nebraska Highway Revision Project
So I intended Baloney to be an exaggeration of events. And then I wrote this. There’s only one exaggeration, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if it actually was true.
Anyway, I’m going to be posting random road trivia all month on Facebook. Because I can.
Okay, I can’t be a cheap McManus knock-off if I don’t talk about hunting! I figured this would be an appropriate topic for November and the start of deer season.
I had a bit of fun making locations anonymous (ignoring the fact that I’m about to reveal their real-world origins here). Twelve Sleep County is a fictional Wyoming county featured in the Joe Pickett series by C.J. Box (highly recommend), but the stuffed jackalope does actually exist in the museum in Douglas, WY. Chicken Butte is in reference to Crow Butte near Crawford, NE. My thought process was “hmm, replace Crow with a different bird, like a chicken, heh, guess what, chicken butt”.
Ironically, of the stories published so far and the ones I have planned, I think these hunting stories actually stick the closest to what actually happened.
People really don’t like having shops photographed here. It’s a big no-no.
Really, that last panel applies to any place of living, not just abroad. Egyptians aren’t as precise with agreements as us overly-detailed Americans…
I tried to draw the view from my apartment in Panel 5. I have a pretty nice location!
This may be my favorite NoaC comic so far, partly because of all the self-indulgent references I included here. Then again, NoaC itself it pretty self-indulgent, so…
I’m not sure how exactly or when this family joke of ‘looking at a river in Africa’ started (although I suspect it’s been even longer than 15 years…yikes) but I definitely never expected to ACTUALLY look at the Nile River with my family. And then we took a Nile cruise aboard the Blue Shadow from Aswan to Luxor, and there you have it.
I was amused to draw my family younger. Some of the other small references in this comic include Jass (a Swiss card game we play, pronounced YAHSS), of which I bought a French Swiss deck last summer that doesn’t actually mark face cards but all jacks carry axes. You can also see the scorecards with the reverse S (not a Z) because the Swiss do things backwards (the order of turns is also reversed in Jass). I also have gotten very good at falling asleep on planes before takeoff. Linda is Mom’s sister, and another running joke in our family is how often Wendy gets called Linda.
My parents came to Egypt! That was quite an experience for them; my mom had never left the USA. But of course, things don’t always go quite according to plan…
They got delayed out of Omaha, which meant they barely made their flight to Toronto. If my sister hadn’t been meeting them there and had let the flight attendants know they were coming, they would have missed the flight. But their bags did not make it, and thus the whirlwind of fun for the next four days as first they lost them, then they found them but had to get them to us… We wound up getting them literally four hours before we went to the airport to head to Aswan. (And yes, as soon as they got the bags, Dad got rid of the skinny jeans.)
Bit of an in-joke with this comic is that my sister only appears in text. Leading up to their trip, I had a tendency to say my parents were coming, but accidentally leave her out. I was more focused on them coming, since they hadn’t been here before and my sister had.
Ref: Parents
So for the most part I try to keep the comic light-hearted, but I also do want it to represent what living abroad is like and this is one of the drawbacks. If I were home, I’d be helping Dad around the house, but instead I’m stuck here. The good news is that my grandmother is out of the hospital and Dad’s surgery is pretty routine (I think they do something like 20 a day); it’s just hard not to be there.
On a positive note, Nathan makes an appearance! I’ve known Nathan since elementary school and we chat often. Also, can you tell my mom likes purple?
Hey look, we’re almost to comics actually in Egypt! Those will FINALLY start next week.
In the days leading up to my departure, I naturally tried to cram in as much time with friends and family as I could. FYI, in Panel 1, we’re playing the Widow’s Walk expansion of Betrayal at House on the Hill. You get a random scenario each time you play. It’s pretty awesome, and often ridiculous. That same day, I also wound up trying to assemble all the monsters to accurately put on the Monster Mash. And yes, Joshua is who Jorocks was originally modeled after (although I took steps to separate the two, including giving Jorocks a beard…which then Joshua promptly grew).
Meagan also gets all the awesome points (as usual). I am a decent packer, but she spent a significant chunk of her life when she worked for ΑΦΩ traveling and is thus a WHIZ at packing, and she did it willingly! This help was greatly appreciated!
Now, a bit of REAL TALK. This comic was scripted before I left, and reality hit a lot harder than this comic shows. If you are a teacher looking to teach abroad (or really, anyone looking to move far away), I highly recommend talking to your doctor about getting some anti-anxiety medicine before you leave. I did not, and didn’t think anything of it as I was surprisingly calm leading into my departure. And then I was sitting in the airport in Istanbul and unexpectedly had a full-blown panic attack, to the point where I needed medical attention. (Thankfully, I had an 8 hour layover, so I had the two and a half hours to spare for that without missing my flight.) I was still coming off of that when I got to my apartment in Egypt, and it turns out that one of the only medicines you CAN’T buy over the counter is most anti-anxiety meds. Luckily, after a couple tries and some help, I was able to get some medicine, and after a few days the anxiety wore off and I haven’t had any problems since (and no more meds needed!). But yeah, talking to your doctor about some preventative medicine is a good idea.
On a lighter note, there’s a Firefly reference hidden in the comic somewhere.
Last Saturday’s sketchbook was the last I have queued up, but if you want to see more on a regular basis, don’t forget to subscribe to Patreon! If I can raise $20/month, you will get weekly sketchbooks!