I’m on a business trip at the moment in San Francisco, and after much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair, I’ve finally accepted the fact that the technical difficulties I’m having with getting today’s strip together won’t be resolved until I get back to L.A. tonight. Sorry for the delay and thanks for your patience!

So last night (Sunday) the Schuetzes celebrated my sister Linda’s (inspiration for Xinda, knitter of the Angry Scarf) birthday at my parents’ house. The plan was to start the festivities around 6pm, have dinner, cake and presents, and be done by 8:30 or so. I figured that would leave me enough time to get back to the BOTcave a little after 9pm, and have the strip finished around 1 or 2am.

Well. That was the plan. Unfortunately, my sister’s car wouldn’t start, and after much time spent trying to figure out whether it was her key fob, battery or electrical system, we ended up calling AAA, the driver for which promptly got lost in North Hollywood, and didn’t make it to my parents’ until sometime after 9pm. After arriving and doing some tests, AAA thankfully got the car started and my sister was on her way (I believe she’s taking it to the dealership today.) The point being that after my sister left, and I was able to get all my stuff together (laundry and leftovers and such), I didn’t end up leaving Mom & Popbot’s until after 11pm. By the time I got home my ETA for the strip was somewhere around 4:30am, and I just couldn’t manage it as I had an important meeting at work this morning that I had to get into the office earlier than usual for.

Anyway, this is just a long way of saying that you should totally blame Linda for today’s missing strip while also wishing her a Happy Birthday!

Okay, so now I’m convinced the Fates are conspiring against me putting out new JEFbot strips. At least the reason for the delay this time is a bit more fun: Longtime readers will remember I took a hiatus a while back to film a horror movie called Grey Skies. Well, after picking up numerous festival awards (including the Audience Choice Award at Shriekfest and the Best Feature Film Award at the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival) and a limited theatrical run, Grey Skies is now available on DVD! (And as it so happened, the DVD release party was last night, and I got home too late to finish today’s strip.)

If you’re interested in seeing the movie (which also stars Michael Cornacchia, the inspiration for The Cornfather in the strip), it’s now available on Amazon.com, just in time for Halloween! Here’s the link:
• Grey Skies DVD

And here are my previous posts about my time in Michigan filming the movie:
• Grey Matter_01.The Arrival
• Grey Matter_02.The First Week
• Grey Matter_03.Nights Into Dreams
• Grey Matter_04.Parting Grey Skies

Unless something unforeseen occurs (and I wouldn’t rule that out,) I’ve completely cleared my schedule the next two days so I can get to JEFbot as soon as I get home from work, which means I can practically guarantee that I’ll be back on schedule this Friday with a new strip as we start wrapping up The Angry Scarf storyline! Once again, I thank you for your patience and understanding as Life sometimes gets in the way of me working on JEFbot, which is still one of the biggest passions in my world right now, and which I excitedly look forward to returning to after the past couple weeks of distractions!