Ok! Here we finally are for another update of Average Joe!
So I write this the morning after one of the hotter days that we get down here in Geelong – the mercury tipped 38° yesterday (that’s 100.4° for you crazy Fahrenheit types ;-P), made much the worse by my choir singing three times at church (1 x mass, 2 x carols services). As most of you can probably guess, singing in the heat can take a lot out of you (especially in a flowing choir robe), and add that on to the fact that the total time spent rehearsing and performing yesterday came to about 6.5 hours…I hope I can be forgiven for not finishing off the day’s post!
Yet here we are; the last post before Christmas day even having a small cameo from the big guy in red himself! When I was writing this strip, I wanted to try and make it clear that they had been wasting a bit of their time at the shopping centre (something I am famed for doing myself when sent there to pick up just one thing) rather than looking for the disintegrator the whole time, but I wanted to try and show this visually rather than having to say it in the conversation. I was kicking around a few ideas until I went to do a bit of my own christmas shopping the other day and saw the long line of excited kids milling around Santa’s grotto amidst the throng of bored looking parents. It immediately made me think of Joe and our favourite mad scientist in the same roles 
So with Christmas coming up, I’m not planning to update on Wednesday – I figure everyone will be too busy with Christmas/boxing day celebrations anyway – but I do intend to post an update on Sunday. I’ll give some more info on how the rest of the update schedule will be organised from then, as I did promise my wife I’d take a break from the strip over the Christmas break and spend some time with her, so I’ll have to see how many strips I can belt out over the next few days to determine whether the updates will be twice-a-week or back to weekly for the holiday season
Take care, Averagelves, and I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, or at least holiday if you don’t celebrate the festival itself
Terence MacManus
