Not For Robots apparel and...Vlad the Installer!

I met a lot of very kind folks at the Kidlitosphere Conference this past weekend, and some of them were kind enough to say very nice things about the cover I did for Laini's book and about my art in general (thanks everyone! :) One of the most vocal was the (very talented herself) author, Kidlitosphere organizer, and wonderfully silly Robin Brande. One of the things we talked about once or five times was how much she'd like a t-shirt design done of the "Not For Robots" banner and also of the cropped "Not A Robot" design that Laini had printed up as a pin and was giving out all weekend. It features some art I did for Laini's banner and when she mentioned it, I felt silly that I hadn't thought of that either. Anyhow, thanks Robin, and here are three of the shirt options among others on my Cafe Press store:





I should note for those interested, that if you DO happen to order a shirt or other apparel item, request the "Heat Transfer" printing option whenever it's available for that item. It's not always an option depending on the shirt style, but I think it looks much better.

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As Laini mentioned on her blog yesterday, we were supposed to have our almost 50 year old furnace replaced yesterday by an installer named Vlad. She also mentioned that I immediately called him (to Laini, not to him) "Vlad the Installer." (click here, if you're not sure where my (bad???) pun comes from). Our suspicions grew when he first showed up REALLY early for the appointment:



And then he asked me to help him get the new furnace out of the box:



Okay, enough with the bad jokes (maybe). Actually, as it turns out, he didn't end up doing the job since some building code or other required him to put in a "return air" vent and he didn't seem to want to get into our crawl space (he said there were too many pipes between the heater's base and where the vent would go) and because of that, he didn't think the job could be done and left. Right after he left, I looked down in the crawl space and guess what???? Not a single pipe! So, Vlad, I'm not sure why you didn't want to install our heater, but know that an hour later, another installer was out here saying he could totally do the job completely up to code AND (!!! bonus!!!) he wouldn't try to snack on our necks.