Gonna take this moment to wish my beautiful, helpful and incredibly talented wife, Gaby a Happy Birthday (which will happen shortly after this page is posted).  She helped me immensely with the gray tones on this page. Without her help, it would’ve been even FURTHER delayed, and quite frankly, 2 weeks is a long enough delay already. >_<

Whew… Backgrounds (even the simple neighborhood backgrounds) can be tough. : P  You’ll notice they get simpler and simpler as this page progresses.  That’s ‘cuz I spent nearly a week and a half on the first two panels when time allowed and when I wasn’t completely exhausted.

Not even exhausted from work, either.  I just haven’t been sleeping incredibly well lately for some reason.  Been focusing more on that lately, which at least partially explains my lack of updates for the past two weeks.  A lot of that trouble stems from some mysterious shoulder pain I’ve been dealing with for the past few months.  Not sure what’s causing it, but experienced friends have been suggesting it might be my rotator cuffs on both shoulders.  Been trying to exercise them more lately.  Icy Hot helps, too.  And Glucosamine.

I digress… : P

Outside of that, I REALLY wanted to get this page done.  Not even for the backgrounds so much as because I was really proud of the expression work I did on this page. XD  That last panel with Brian really works, in my opinion. 🙂

This will lead to their first meeting with Karen.  Sooo… that ought to be fun. 😉

Come back next week to find out! 😀