Ivy holding a baby alligator on the Everglades Saturday, after her birthday cruise.

For years, Ivy and I have wanted to celebrate her birthday with a Cruise, and for her 50th last week we did just that. Luckily for us, one of the nerdiest cruises to ever sail the seas came along just in time.

The JoCo Cruise Crazy was a great week of on-ship entertainment featuring Jonathan Coulton and several other nerd demi-gods including John Hodgman, Peter Sagal, Molly Lewis, Wil Wheaton, Bill Corbett & Kevin Murphy, Paul and Storm, Mike Phirman and others. Over 24 hours of programming and never a dull moment.

I was already indebted to Jonathan and John for taking time out at Neil Gaiman’s 50th birthday party in New Orleans last month to comfort Ivy when I was rushed off to the hospital. They both remembered her as well on the cruise, and we got to spend some extra time talking to John, Bill and Kevin, who are comics fans in addition to being all around nice guys, and incredibly funny.

Also on the ship were two webcartoonists, David Willis (who was celebrating his honeymoon with the lovely Maggie) and evil genius David Rees. Rees’ comedy was a thing of wonder. As our hero Peter Sagal put it: “I don’t know what he does, but he does it really well.”

(Willis was wearing an Axe Cop shirt when he met Sagal, btw, and Sagal recognized it right away. NERD! <3 )

Watch for Ivy’s two part write-up on the cruise at her blog later in the day. She’ll have a lot more detail than me.

I’m returning to blogging today after an extended winter break. A lot has happened in the world of comics in the last couple of weeks, some of which I hope to get to in the next few days, but for now, I hope you all had a great New Year celebration—and will have a great year to go with it.