Mark’s Newsletter - March 2026
March is over! It was an incredibly busy/exhausting month, so this is going to be a shorter than usual newsletter.
You’re welcome!😮💨
Side Quest
My March Side Quest was to learn to paint. I got myself a set of acrylic paint, some canvases, new brushes and an easel. I didn’t paint a single painting...or build the easel.
Life got in a way: Repairs. Family. Careers. Therapy. You can read the main reason why in the In Other News section below.
To get myself back on track, I’ll be spending the month of April watching a lot of Bob Ross and wasting a lot of paint. First, I need to assemble that easel.
In Other News
Earlier this month Patreon started allowing us to add customer URLs to your page, for free! This is a service that Substack will charge a one time $50 fee for. Since I got tired of my monthly hosting fees, I decided got skip the middleman, delete my website and move MarkL.ca to this page. It felt like the right move, and I stand by it. I’ll just have to give the About section an overhaul.
I nearly burned my house down at the start of the month, hence the reason for no completed Side Quest this month. One Saturday, I thought I was being helpful and tossed a blanket into the washing machine, turned it on and walked away. I went upstairs and read a story to my two year old, which he screamed about the entire time. During the story, I was convinced I heard snow plows scraping my street, which does happen fairly often. Once my kid stopped screaming in my ear, I realized that scraping noise was actually coming from my basement. I ran downstairs to find my laundry room flooded with smoke, but apparently it wasn’t enough to trigger a smoke detector. Once I killed the power to the room I found the blanket got sucked in underneath the agitator, blew out the motor and burned/exploded the belt that was connected to it. The next morning I went to Home Depot and purchased a new machine. Two weeks later the new machine arrived. A few days later the new machine stopped working. Yesterday I finally got a repair man out to take a look at it, and he discovered that the guy who delivered it snapped off something he shouldn’t have.
TL;DR - I set a washing machine on fire and spend the month trying to do laundry.I got to sit in on an open house meeting with the National Cartoonists Society. It was a fun experience, but I felt incredibly out of place. I do have hopes of joining one day, but seeing names I have admired for years in the same meeting gave me imposter syndrome to the nth degree. Luckily the whole thing was over Zoom, so I was able to turn off my camera after I did my introduction. I don’t belong there. Yet. Maybe one day.
Quips:
I used to post Quips daily, but this month, I didn’t get online as much as I would have liked. Honestly, that’s probably good for me.
March 14: For the first time in forever, I went out for drinks last night. I had to laugh when I saw this sign outside the men’s room. Okay, maybe I was a little drunk and found it funnier than it really was. How much coke do your customers need to do in the bathroom before it becomes such a problem that you need to purchase a neon sign?
March 21: My eldest and I try to have a Daddy/Daughter day at least once a month.
Today we went out for Starbucks and took a trip to the locally owned art supply store. Since the weather wasn’t great for being outside, she suggested we go home and make zines together. She had been really into zines lately, so that’s what we did. While we were at the art store I picked up two purple pens and two green. I made her choose between green or purple. She chose purple. I then challenged her to make a zine about that colour, with only two shades of purple in 20 minutes. I did the same with the green pens. Her zine turned out pretty good. Mine? Well…🤣
This was my first attempt at a zine, so maybe I’ll include it in the next newsletter…just for fun. I may try to do another without the restrictions of this challenge.
This concludes our Daddy/Daughter Day.
That’s all for this month! Stay tuned for the April update!