Sketchbook Tour in Seattle This Weekend!

At the form/space atelier!

Now that Secret Agent Man is feeling better (thanks for all your prayers and well wishes) we are headed over for the weekend.  I'm excited to see my Sketchbook again, along with the others on exhibit. I'm hoping they will let me take some pictures, which, if they do - I can post here next week.

And speaking of Sketchbooks... I have been working a little at a time, when I can steal a minute or two, trying to get my first page done of the 2012 book, Fill Me With Stories. I think I'm finally happy with it. Although, I've been known to obsessively tweak stuff from time to time!

Thanks again to Brian Miller for his poem:

My First Giveaway!

Cue the bells and whistles and applause! Fireworks? Woo hoo!

Okay, so maybe it's not really all that exciting. Bear with me - I haven't had a giveaway and I'm thinking it might be fun!

I was talking to a co-worker today about a recent UFO call we got. (We do get them from time to time but they tend to be pretty tame.) Mostly we just give out the number for the UFO Hotline, because it's really not all that interesting. I suspect they are mostly jets from the local airport that are seen at a weird angle or something.
However, we both had interesting UFO stories of our own to share. I will share mine, because, well, it's really cool and it's my blog! (I think we've been over this before...) Plus I just read that they have declared May to be National UFO month in Canada. (Any Canadians know if this is true? Or is it just some UFO nut hopeful?)

But wait! you cry. Where's the giveaway part?! Well, it's this: I'm going to share with you all my UFO story. Then I would like for anyone interested to share their UFO story in the comments section. In a couple of days, (oh, how about Wednesday night?) I will select the one that I think is the best for whatever reason I see fit (again: My. Blog.) and then whoever the winner is will get to choose one of my Space Girl prints!
That's right, any one of my lovely Space Girls in all her 8x10 glory. I'll even sign it for you if you like.
So if you want to participate, tell your story (Reader's Digest version, please) in the comments section. I will then pick a winner and ask for you to email me with an address where to mail your Girl.

And here's my story:

It was late summer 1989. I was living in Colville, WA and working at a mom and pop grocery store until fairly late at night. Usually I walked home from work (unless it was raining because, you know, I melt in the rain). Anyway, my roommate came down one night to walk home with me. As we were walking up the hill we were commenting about how nice it was, a few clouds in the sky, the moon shining behind one cloud to the east looked really cool, yadda yadda. All of a sudden he stops dead in his tracks and looks over to the west. I say, hey what's up? He just stands there so I turn around and look. And there, to the west is THE MOON! I know, right?!
So we look back to the east at the really bright light behind the cloud. We stand there watching it for about 30 seconds and all of a sudden it just drops from the sky. Super fast. It goes down behind the tree line and we can't see it anymore but just then all these...beams -for lack of a better word, shoot up. They start moving back and forth like search lights.

My friend and I, at that point, start running for the house. He gets on the phone and calls a friend of his to come get us in his truck ('cause we were in college and p-o-o-r then, so of course we had no car). Friend #2 shows up and we start driving in approximately the direction of the lights. By this time we figure whatever it was went down across the Canadian border (I'm sensing a possible theme here...). We got to a clearing where we had a pretty good sight line and stopped. It was late, we never would have made the border crossing before closing at that point.
At this time the lights were getting dimmer and dimmer until there was just a glow on the horizon. Then about the time we decide to go we hear "whup whup whup whup whup" and look to the east in time to see a couple of these and one of these hauling ass for the border.

We never did find out what the dealie-o was, and we tried! We called the local Air Force Base, we called radio stations and weather services and nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch. I'm sure it was probably some military test plane or something.
Or was it...?

Your turn.