Two More

I finished up two more pirates.

I Haven't Posted for a While

I haven't posted much lately, mostly because I haven't done much worth posting about. I haven't painted any miniatures since the pirate captain because I'm lazy and I've been taking about an hour a day to work out on the bench my wife and I bought a month or so ago. Hopefully I will be able to gain some weight with my new workout and diet plan. We'll see how it goes. Maybe I will paint some miniatures next week.

We saw Nacho Libre, the new Jared Hess and Jack Black movie, tonight. It was pretty good. I liked it. I will probably buy the DVD and watch it in my own home. It was also nice that there wasn't a lot of profanity and whatnot in the movie. There's too much of that stuff in movies, in my opinion, and it's nice to see that there are some filmmakers putting fairly wholesome stuff out there.

Captain!

A Motley Assortment of Scurvy Dogs

I enjoyed painting the first pirate of the day so much that I painted another one this evening. Unfortunately, this crew is missing a captain to lead them, so maybe that will be my next project. But for now I have a few photos of the pirates I've painted so far:

Good Things Always Come in Threes

Instead of sleeping after work (I work from 1:30 a.m. until 10:00 a.m. on Mondays) I painted another pirate. I got a little more complicated on this one, attempting to expand my palette and give his clothing a weathered look. I think I succeeded for the most part. I'm slowly learning the ins and out of mixing new colors and adding white to create highlights for colors I don't have lighter versions of. Anyway, here are the photos:

My Second Pirate (Now With Better Pictures!)

Today I painted up my second pirate. He was a little more complicated than the first one due to the fact that he's sculpted with a vest, a belt, and a bandolier of throwing knives. But he still painted up very quickly. I also figured out how to get better close-ups of the faces, so that's exciting. Here are the photos:

Yarrrrrrr!

I painted up my first pirate today. He painted up very quickly and turned out very well. I think he looks like a pirate Jim Croce. The pictures don't do him justice, as I haven't been able to get my camera to take close-up shots. Here are the photos:

It Took You Long Enough...

I finally finished the Sisters Repentia that have been giving me so much hassle. The paint jobs aren't great, but the miniatures are finished and they aren't too awful. I at least won't be too ashamed to put them on the table with the rest of my army. The squad seems pretty small because I only have five Sisters in it plus the Mistress. I didn't want to use too many points on this squad, though, because the figures seemed overcosted. I figure I'll bulk up the squad a little by having the Priest attached to them, which makes sense according to the background as well. Since the Sisters Repentia are all about dying gloriously for the Emporer, it would follow that the Priest would run around with them shouting out their last rites and ensuring that they would be rewarded in the afterlife for their actions. Now I can finish up a couple of Skaven units or maybe paint up my first miniatures, a group of 18 Foundry Pirates that I bought almost ten years ago but never painted. I primed them a couple of days ago, so I should be able to paint them up and maybe run a small game of Blood and Swash. But for now I'll bask in the glory of finishing this unit. Here are a couple of pictures:

Well, It's About Time

After putting it off for way too long, I pushed through and finished the Mistress for the Sisters Repentia. It's not the greatest paint job ever, but it looks a little better than bare metal. Mostly I'm just happy to have her off my painting table. Here are the pics:

X-Men III Spoilers, and My Close Encounter With the Hulk

My wife made me go to the movies today, which was good, because I never would have gone to see X-Men III without her making me go. Sometimes wives make you do things that are good for you even if you feel grumpy about it at the beginning. Here's where the spoiler is. I got pretty broken up when Professor X died. I'm not sure what exactly got to me about it, but I had to really work hard not to tear up. Ever since I got back from Iraq I've had moments where I get emotional like that. It doesn't feel very manly. Maybe it's just because I'm a nerd.

Here's my story about meeting the Hulk. When we got to the theater, there was only one lady at the ticket booth, so there was a bit of a line and it was about two minutes after the movie was supposed to start. We were about fifth in line and it took a few minutes to get each group in front of us through. The guy in front of us was a fairly large man (not muscular large, he was all blubber) and had his wife with him. His wife went over by the theater entrance to wait while he bought the tickets. He asked the lady for two tickets, but she only charged him for and gave him one ticket. Apparently he didn't want to miss the previews before X-Men III or something, because he hulked out at her mistake. He punched the window and yelled into the microphone, "That's only one ticket! I told you to give me two tickets! Give me another ticket!" It was amazing, and exactly the sort of display that gives comic book fans a bad name. As soon as she printed the ticket he reached under the window and grabbed the tickets, receipt, and the theater's copy of the receipt and ran through the door into the theater. The lady was so shocked that we had to wait and have another person come into the booth and sell us our tickets. Despite the delay, we still had time to buy popcorn and get into the theater before the previews were half over. But I'm sure the seats we got weren't as good as the seats The Hulk got.

My New Car

Well, the car down in Vegas didn't work out due to some poor communication on the part of the seller. I sent out about four e-mails, four messages on eBay, and called approximately seven times to try to set up a time and place to meet up so I could make my flight plans, and the people ignored me entirely until today, at which point they called and asked where I was and made a bunch of excuses about how they didn't get any of my e-mails or phone messages. According to their auction, they wanted 35% within 48 hours, but as of that time they hadn't even sent me any contact information or preferences on how to get the money from me to them. We both agreed not to leave any feedback on the transaction and I think they were happy for the chance to try to sell the car for a little more money than what I bid for it. They seemed pretty flaky from the getgo and I wasn't about to fly down to Vegas if I wasn't 100% sure that I would be able to get in touch with them and come home with the car. I didn't want to risk $600 (two round-trip tickets) on people who don't answer their phones and e-mails when they sell a car. So that went poorly.

Here's the good news. I found another car in the local classified ads. It's a 1986 Nissan 300ZX. I called the guy this morning after I got done with the yahoos in Nevada and he said to stop by his hangar (he runs an airplane dealership) in the afternoon. So we did. We took it for a test drive and kicked the tires a little and decided that it was good to go. There are a couple of cosmetic things wrong with it, but nothing that can't be either ignored or fixed. Everything important works well. We bought it and drove it home. We paid $2300 for it and it lists for about $4000. I like it a lot. Here's a picture:

Today we did land navigation, crawled around in the dirt, and threw a few training grenades. The real highlight of the day for me was seeing a couple of huge Black Widows down in badger holes. I am terrified of poisonous spiders, but I love to look at them.

My wife let me get one of the Wal-Mart boxes of baseball cards and I got quite a few cards I didn't have. Now I've got about 260 out of the 400 cards in the 2006 Fleer Baseball set. I also got an Albert Pujols game-used jersey card, which I might try selling to recover some of the cost of the box.

Then I wasted a bunch of the day and stayed up way too late playing Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords. For anyone who likes strategy games, I recommend that you check it out. I especially like building my own spaceships, even if they do die a lot. I am going to be so tired tomorrow.

I'm excited about my new car. I just hope everything goes well and we make it back home in one piece.

I still have the Sisters Repentia Mistress sitting on my desk and I continue to studiously ignore her. I just don't have the motivation to paint that figure. There are too many roadblocks. Maybe in another couple of days I will be able to do it. But right now I'm going to put the pizza away and go to bed.

Fantasy Baseball

My Fantasy Baseball situation has changed a little. In League #1 I went 8-9-0 last week and dropped to 11th out of 14. In League #2 I went 5-4-1 and stayed in 10th out of 12. I gained a couple of points in League #3 and now I'm ranked 9th of 12. I'd love to build some momentum and finish up better than I've started.

I Bought a Car Today

Well, I bought a car today. My wife and I have been watching a bunch of cars on eBay and we've bid on several, but we always got outbid or something. We finally came through on a 1987 Nissan 300ZX. It's got plenty of miles on it and the interior isn't in the greatest shape, but the description says it runs well and that's all that really matters to me. I can buy new seats for $50 or just put seatcovers on them if I'm that bothered by tears and whatnot. With about four hours left the car was only up to about $500, so we put in a bid for a little over $1,000. It immediately jumped up to $780 and then we left for my brother's birthday party (he turned 10 today). Once the car had about 30 minutes left we watched it, fully expecting someone to snipe it at the last minute. But no one else bid and we won it. The only issue we might have is that the car is in Las Vegas, so we'll have to try to get time off of work to fly down there and get it. Hopefully we'll be able to do that this weekend. Then I'll take it to the local Z-car shop and have them look it over and tune it up for me. Hopefully everything goes well with the pickup and drive back home. If not, I'm sure I'll post about it here. Here's a little picture of the car:

As far as hobby stuff goes, I am pretty well hung up on the Sisters Repentia squad. Yesterday or the day before I stripped all of the paint off of the Sisters and started painting the Mistress. I'm having a tough time getting her done up well, though. It seems like she's just not sculpted as well as I'd like, so a lot of parts are very indistinct as to where one detail ends and another begins. It could just be a bad casting, too. I think I'll just have to get through painting this squad as fast as I can so I can move on to other things. Maybe I'll at least finish up the Mistress tomorrow and reprime the Sisters.

I had an odd experience with baseball cards today. I bought a "Fat Pack" of 2006 Fleer at Wal-Mart because I've been working on the set as a little side project to my renewed interest in Fantasy Baseball. Previously I had purchased four of these packs (200 cards) and only received one double. This pack mirrored one of the other packs card for card except for one player. So I basically paid $5 to get one common card for my set. I'm trying hard to be mad about it, but that's life. It just seems interesting that they would be packed like that. I wish they were a little more random.

More Thoughts on Flesh Tones

I think that I'm going to go buy a bunch of the Reaper barbarian and viking miniatures so I can work on painting flesh tones. At the local Hobbytown I cleared off a peg on the wall and put at least 9 or 10 barbarian and viking-type miniatures on it (no worries about messing up their sorting, as there is no organization to their Reaper wall at all). My only problem with buying them is that I don't have much use for them except to practice painting skin. Maybe I'll just get one or two and go from there. Part of the appeal of this hobby is the fact that I can build up my painting skills and thus improve myself as I work on my armies. If I just run away from painting skin I'm selling myself short.

I've come up with a plan for getting a car (or truck) and a motorcycle. I think I've even got my wife to sign off on it as well. For the amount of money I have right now I won't be able to get as much bike as I want and I'll be up a creek when winter comes around and I don't have anything to take to work. So I'm going to hold off on a motorcycle for a while and instead try to find either a little Toyota truck or maybe a sporty little car like a Nissan 300ZX or 240SX.

And now for the master plan for getting a bike. It involves waiting, but I think it'll pay off in the end. I've been considering ending my comic book collecting for a while now because I don't think I get a very good bang/buck ratio from comics, but I couldn't ever take that last step to cancel my monthly order (usually around $100/month). My willpower is a bit weak when it comes to my collections. Due to budget constraints I missed my order last month and I don't think I'll be able to get caught up. The good side of this is that I now have a clean break to jump off of the comic wagon. The other good side is that I can probably sell my collection on eBay and make a fair amount of cash to jumpstart my motorcycle saving. The other other good side is that my wife says we can still put the $100/month from comics into the savings for a bike. It shouldn't take too long to save up some cash and by then I'll have my license and have cash on hand for whenever the right deal swings my way. Ultimately it turns out better than it would if I bought a bike now.

And now for an update on my Fantasy Baseball season so far. It's not pretty. Baseball has always been my weakest fantasy sport as I don't follow baseball very closely. In my main league I'm ranked 10th out of 14 teams and in both of my other leagues I'm ranked 10th out of 12 teams. But, I've made a bunch of changes and learned a lot, so I'm starting to turn things around. I'm looking to at least make the playoffs in my two head-to-head leagues and salvage something out of my Rotisserie league's season, even if all I learn is what to look for in my draft next season.

Flesh Problems

After I got home from my Army stuff, I took an hour-long nap to get myself ready for the evening. By hour-long, I mean I slept for 3 1/2 hours. I just didn't want to wake up.

Then I worked on my Sisters Repentia squad. The flesh tones are killing me. I think I'm going to have to strip the paint off of them again and start over. My other complaint with these minis is that there are so many tiny details all over them that it's difficult to tell what is skin, what is clothing, and what is something else. I'm glad I saved the box they came in, so I can use the Games Workshop paint jobs as a guide. It looks like I was making things a bit too complicated for myself. I was originally going to use three colors, like I did for the Priest, but then things got ugly and I started adding more in an attempt to salvage it. On the GW figures it looks like they used two colors and kept it really simple. So that's my next plan. I think I'll have to use several coats of thinned-down paint so I can get good coverage without it being all lumpy. It should be a good learning experience, if nothing else. I think that once I'm done with this unit, I'll finish the Immolator and the Skaven unit I was working on previously.

I was going to paint today, but I didn't. I also had the worst experience ever at A & W. Holy crap. Also, we bought Kingdom Hearts II for my wife. And the cutest baby in the world came over to visit. My sister's baby is the happiest, cutest little girl in the world, and no one can dispute that.

Red Rick is my Personal Hero

As I mentioned at some point in the past, I was the winner of a prize from Red Rick's website (a link is in my links list). He let me choose $15 of free stuff from any Micro Armour manufacturer. As I haven't really given a lot of thought to my WWII project yet, I chose a couple of sample packs from GHQ. They arrived today, along with a bottle of Leninade. In the U.S. sample pack I got a Sherman, a Dodge ambulance, a 155mm Howitzer, and some infantry. In the German pack, I got a Panther G, an 88, a Kfz15 Radio Car, and some infantry. They are awesome, but extremely small. I may have to look at 15mm for my WWII games. Of course, small could equal easy-to-paint, so I may stick with Micro Armour. But the main point is that Red Rick is the man and you should check out his site, comrades.