I think you're sauceome.

When Niles and I first moved in together, I wasn’t used to sharing my living space, and I had a really hard time learning to sleep when someone else was always there, breathing and stuff. But now I’m so used to it that while he was gone for all of four days, I had a really hard time falling asleep. I toyed with the idea of creating an ambient noise app that’s the sound of “Boyfriend in the Next Room Playing Video Games” – because then I’d seriously sleep like a baby – which led to the discussion of creating ambient noise apps for Chicago neighborhoods: “Homeless Guy Rummaging Through Dumpster”, “Random Fireworks Going Off At Unexpected Intervals”, “Neighbors Having Sex”, and “Teenage Lovers Arguing in Alley”.

Runners! I have two questions for you.

1) Is this a thing, high fiving each other for running? And if not can we make it a thing? Because it was pretty great.

2) Having been told a few horror stories, I’m a little terrified of hurting my knees. This morning during a run, just as I was hitting my stride, I had a brand new, kinda sharp pain on the side of my kneecap. I stopped right away and just walked the rest of the route. I’m not sure if I was being paranoid or not, but… is there anything I should be doing to protect my knees while I’m running? I have very good shoes, so I’m not so much worried about that. I would very much like to keep running, but not at the expense of usable knees.

Do you get it? Because it’s brushed with BALSAMic vinegar? See? The life of a punster is a difficult one, but the life of those doomed to love a punster is no cakewalk either.

Anyway, Niles made steak for Corinne and me last night, and it was delicious, and there was much conversation and probably too much wine, and that’s why this comic is late and also pretty lazy. Sorry!

So, Niles has this running joke, where whenever I tell him I can’t think of something to draw for Sauceome, he suggests doing a comic about an oil rig. It’s from some inside joke he had with a friend in college, I don’t remember exactly what it was. But every time I ask him for ideas, he says “oil rig.” He thinks it’s pretty funny. So tonight when I said, I want your help writing a Sauceome comic, he asked excitedly “Is it about an oil rig?”

No, but it IS about one of his favorite topics. Niles is an expert at making steak, perfectly seared on the outside, tender and pink on the inside. We were in a grocery store the other day, looking at the meats section, and I realized: I know very little about the cuts of meat – I mean, obviously I’ve heard the names, but I didn’t really understand which part of the animal each of them came from, or how they were different – so I made Niles give me a lesson. I learned some interesting things!

Niles now wants me to do a Sauceome comic where he explains how to make a steak perfectly, and I’m okay with that if you guys are.

PS! A while back, I drew a bunch of Pokémon butcher charts. Please don’t show them to any impressionable children.

Niles and I met some friends at Kuma’s on Sunday for some obscenely tasty burgers. They have two competing specials for March: the Maligno, with spice braised pulled chicken, sriracha, jicama slaw, and mint; and the King Bong, with garlic rosemary pulled pork, spicy mustard glazed onions, smoked Gouda, and crispy strips of prosciutto. I opted for the King Bong, and I have no regrets. The textures are complicated and interesting, and the tastes blend together extremely well. The pulled pork was maybe a little dry, but it was exceedingly well spiced, and the moisture of the melted cheese and the onions more than made up for that. The crispy strips of prosciutto were a super bonus, but honestly the mustard-glazed onions were probably my favorite part.

As always, I ate half of the burger and sat there staring at the second half, knowing full well I would regret it if I ate it, but wanting so badly to eat it anyway. Fortunately one of the servers read my mind and dropped a takeout box in front of me, so now I get to have this delicious burger again later. Hooray!

IN OTHER NEWS: I am just about done sending out the Kickstarter rewards for the Shuteye book! Which means that I can start taking orders for it in earnest. Anyone want a comic book? I’m still finishing up the last few of the more time-consuming rewards for the project, but once those are done, I’m going to be ready to move on to the next project, which I’m really excited about.

Since that one’s going to take a long while to do, I think in the interim I will finally, FINALLY be doing a Sauceome book! After long deliberations, I think I have a pretty good idea of how I want to put it together. It’s going to take a while to collect the print-ready files and lay it out, get quotes, probably run another Kickstarter campaign to fund the printing – so with any luck by that time, I’ll have sold enough Shuteye books to make room for a Sauceome book!