…that the fan on my laptop, which has been laboring and grinding for a week, finally gave out so I can’t run said laptop without said laptop overheating. I’ve already ordered the replacement, so as soon as it comes and I replace the fauly fan by TAKING EVERY FRICKIN’ THING OUT OF THE CASE (thank you, Compaq Presario, for having the fan be the absolute first thing you install in a new unit), we’ll be back to webcomicky goodness.

…because I spent my cartooning time running a system restore to correct a corrupted Windows user profile instead. Isn’t it great living in the future?

I’ll be at Life, the Universe, & Everything in Provo, UT this Thursday thru Saturday, splitting my time between the dealers room and a bunch of panels.  Nothing webcomic-related in either half of the split*, but I’d be tickled pink if anyone there mentioned that they loved CheapCaffeine. Or even that they’d heard of it. *The next con I’ll be at is Westercon in SLC in July, and I DO plan on having the first CheapCaffeine print collection available then.

If my math is correct, then next Wednesday, October 16th, will see the publication of the 200th CheapCaffeine strip! In honor of this ever-so-momentous occasion, I declare next Wednesday to be “Everybody Tell Everybody About CheapCaffeine.net Day!”  That’s right, do your friends and family the favor of sharing with them the particular surreal humor of CheapCaffeine in its handy daily doses! Tweet it, Facebook it, Pinterest and LinkedIn and Googleplus it, use other proper nouns that have somehow become verbs! They’ll appreciate it forever — and if they don’t, well, do you really want to be associated with them? Think about that, really. So don’t be some pseudo-hipster, keeping knowledge of this comic all to yourself so you can tell everyone, “I really like this webcomic that you’ve probably never heard of…” Be the Johnny Appleseed of CheapCaffeine.net! Be the Annunciation Angels! Be the Typhoid Mary!

For the past several weeks I’ve been creating this comic without a buffer, putting together each day’s strip in the extra time I have before work in the morning. But the neighbor’s house across the street went up in flames at 12:30pm this morning, and that kind of occurrence tends to throw such casual patterns awry.  Thanks to minimal sleep, I don’t have the necessary minyan of brain cells to write a joke, and anyway I would feel more than a bit ghoulish trying to bring the funny while the fire engines are still folding up their hoses outside. There will very likely be more on this on my blog later, once the energy drinks kick in.