So a little bit late, just a couple weeks, I sent the files on Thursday to Kinko’s online printing service to get issue #15 of the Cerebus the Newsletter published. I selected a 70 lb “offset paper” rather then the 90 lb cardstock I had used for the previous cover. I wanted a paper that would be heavier then the interior pages, but that would be too hard to fold. . .Not that the first cover was too hard to fold, it just didn’t leave a nice clean edge.

On Saturday night after seeing a movie and getting some tasty eats with a friend, I headed over to the  Kinko’s store to see how the order was coming. The clerk said it was all set and pulled out 3 boxes. I opened one up and voila: correlated, stapled and folded! I looked through a copy to ensure the pages were in the correct order (thank you page #s), and yuppers: all set.

Cerebus the Newsletter #15 is now available for  purchase at the Friends of Cerebus page using paypal buttons. If the paypal button gives you grief for whatever reason, feel free to paypal me the amount to the email address cerebusfangirl at cerebusfangirl dot com with a note stating issue #15 so I know that the “free” money isn’t really free.

The contents you ask? Well, what about the cover first:

An excellent job by Fink! (pencils) and David Branstetter (inks and tone).  Jeff Tundis also provided not only an in depth article about Cerebus statues he did an short comic entitled “Sisters”. Rob Imes and Dave Ryan each provided a Cerebus piece of art and I contributed a review of Cerebus Archive.

The title graphic is also of mine creation, I think next time I’ll push the name of it down a bit more from the Friends of Cerebus presents bar (a direct homage to the Aardvark-Vanaheim presents bar from the covers of Cerebus). I’m also thinking of what more can we do with the Friends of Cerebus – it is a fanclub for Cerebus, at least that is what it started out as back in the early 1980s.  If you’ve got any ideas, please feel free to email me.

So me and a friend took off this past Monday to go to the New England Patriots training camp. I may not be able to get tickets to a game at reasonable prices, but I can sure afford the ‘free’ tag on training camp admittance and parking. So we headed over to Gillette Stadium for the 9:30 am practice. The parking lot wasn’t crowded that badly – plenty of cars already there, but still tons of room to park and not that far from the fields.

The practice fields are right by the stadium, just to the east of it. Walking up to them, there are two full size football fields with field goal posts. There are bleachers to that run along the long side of one of the fields, and a grassy slope on the other side of the fields closest to the stadium – also on that side were bleachers that were for friends and family of the team. The other two sides of the field were not open to the public.

Morning practice was in full pads and uniforms. The red jerseys being the quarterbacks, the white jerseys being offense and the blue jerseys are defense. I don’t know all the different things they ran though, but when the quarterbacks all lined up and the receivers and running backs did some different routes, there were a lot of balls in the air. Here Brady airs one out to Joey Galloway who is in front of Kevin Faulk:

Brady was moving around like his knee was all good. It was nice to see. I can’t wait to see him take some snaps in a real game at full speed, but watching him move around in practice did give me some confidence for the up coming season. They did some defense vs offense drills as well:

There is a period count down clock in the corner of the fields where the grassy slope side meets up with the side with the bleachers, where the people who want to watch walk up to the fields. After 11 periods of differing time frames, the morning practice ended and everyone was cleared out.

We headed out and grabbed some ice cream at the baskin robbins in the Patriot Place mall. We then walked around the Bass Pro Shops, and after some lunch at a restaurant on route 1, we headed back for afternoon practice.

More series of drills and scrimmages, and the guys were only in shorts and a different set of pads, as they didn’t appear as “bulky” as they did in morning practice:

It was a fun time watching the guys run around and toss the ball back and forth. Since it was free, it was totally worth sitting in the hot sun and watching them practice. Now only if their games were reasonably priced. . .or at least tickets would be obtainable at face value.