Nice Gadget drawing there. B -)-
I just felt that almost a decade was enough time to spend with the Rangers and that it was time to "go back to my roots" as a boy spending his summer vacation pouring over the science articles in his "Golden Book Encyclopedias" bought every week at the grocery store and devoted to a few favorite (mostly science fiction-themed) comic books, plus the odd paperback collection of ghost stories. I have a number of ideas I want to develop, but they all require a lot of preliminary reading and drawing practice.
Still doing things the way I always did - a pencil and ink drawing scanned in and "worked up" with an ancient copy of paintshop pro seven. I've tried photoshop and consider PSP hands down easier to use and almost as effective. They were bought out by Corell Draw just to remove a competitor, but you can still get copies on ebay at amazing prices.
Never got into MLP, but I've always maintained that one's most serious infatuations are driven entirely by subconscious reactions, be they the Rescue Rangers, MLP, Scooby Doo or the Red Sox.
Sorry things did not work out with the Navy. My older son was in the Air Force for almost six years. He signed up with the promise that they would send him to engineering school. Instead he got assigned to linguistics to study Farsi (Iranian). He basically wasted six years and a fortune in training on something he didn't want to do. He's out now and attending Tennessee Tech to get an electrician's license with plans to continue studying electrical engineering. We help him out as we can - four kids and a loony wife are a great drain. My younger son is a career student. His first degree was in "undecided" ( called "general studies"). He got a master's in journalism, which is now a dead field. He upgraded his English minor to a second major but that didn't help job-hunting any and now he is studying Geographical Information Systems - programming all those satellites for locating yourself, spying, etc.
Myself, I was a pretty gung-ho student for most of my life, but am now tired of the classroom environment and have collected about 1,000 years worth of independent reading to do.
Anyway, your Navy career sounds a heck of a lot more glamorous and exciting than my job - grubbing about in other people's blood, waste products and secretions in a hospital laboratory! B -)-
We all need to change directions sometimes. I wish you the best of luck in whatever you try to do!
I very rarely visit the old Acorn Cafe anymore, but I assume you heard that "Da Bus" passed away not long ago? That totally blindsided me - was sad about it for a while...

---Ray Jones---

Thanks, it means a lot. C: