The Glorious Appearing

This strip is... about two weeks overdue. It's due to a series of unfortunate events involving an ear infection and a trip to New York and me having to leave America and my girlfriend for two months while I came back to England to get a visa.
And I'm still on Eastern Standard Time.

This strip also took me a long time to do because I have to get used to using this laptop while I'm here. Bah. I hate laptop keyboards, not only because they're all cramped up and with the most awkward layout known to man, but also because they have annoying keys that don't register unless you hit them squarely and firmly, which makes fast typing impossible because of all the letters that inevitably just go missing along the way.
Because laptop screens are invariably low-quality, I also have my monitor plugged into this so I can check colours and quality on it -- the laptop makes everything look murky and dull, like it's all been partially desaturated. Couple that with the slow processing speed on this (compared with either my old desktop that got stolen, or Mary's new desktop) and it takes a long time to get this strip together. Plus, I've been out of practice for two weeks, which doesn't help matters.

I have another couple of weeks of this to do (and Mary and I need to discover how to co-write something via IM) and then some guest-written comics I'm doing the art for.
In the meantime I have to get my stuff together for a visa interview (which will cause me to miss the Neil Gaiman signing in Manchester) and also work on NaNoWriMo throughout November. Full plate, in other words.