Today was a pretty good day. I felt like I got a lot done at work, which is always a nice feeling. The paperwork is in for a bit of a promotion for me which comes with about an 11% raise, so I'm hoping HRO will approve it. If it goes through it will about cover the difference between the house payment and the trailer rent we're paying now.

The HVAC guy went to our prospective house and fixed the furnace, so that shouldn't be a dealbreaker for our loan. I've been shopping for homeowner's insurance and it looks like it will be a little cheaper than I anticipated. Our agent said the numbers I'd gotten so far seemed high, but to me they sounded a lot lower than I had projected in my mind. My projections weren't based on fact at all, but it's better to go high and be relieved than to lowball it and be frustrated. It's starting to look like this may come through for us. One of the guys at work drives a commuter-ride van that picks up right near the house so if I can take advantage of that I will save tons of money on gas, especially during the months when it's too nasty to ride my motorcycle in to work. It's about double the commute from there to work than it is from here to work, and that could get pretty spendy even if I am driving my wife's car in place of my truck.

My wife and the Chomper (he's popped out his second tooth now) went and ran errands this evening so I watched the Astros play the Rangers and painted Scouts. The Astros lost, but the good side of that is that the Rangers' pitcher is on a couple of my fantasy teams and his numbers helped me out quite a bit. I had a tough decision to make between painting Scouts and compiling the parts for my initial Imperial Guard list. In the end the Scouts won; the Heavy Bolter guy is the closest to being finished so I have attached a picture of him below. He still needs some details, highlights, and his head and arms need painted. They're starting to look pretty good, though. Close-up you can see that my brush isn't very steady, but at gaming length they look just about right.

Once I'm done with my Scouts I think I will paint the Razorback just to complete the 750-point force. I'm more pumped up about the Imperial Guard right now than I am about Orks, but I can fit more fun stuff into the Ork list at 750 points than Guard. By the time I get through my HQ Squad and an Infantry Platoon there aren't a lot of points for anything else. I see a lot of people getting around that by running Veteran or Penal Legion squads in place of infantry platoons, but in my mind the lack of numbers seems like it could cause trouble. It also seems to go against the main traits of the Guard as a sheer mass of men grinding out victories for the Emperor. I did manage to fit a couple of Sentinels into the list, and the 1500-point list manages to add Valkyrie and Leman Russ support to the army.

I may find a way to fit some Gretchin and Stormboyz into the painting schedule during my Guard push, though. I may even decide to alternate units from each army to keep me from getting bored with one. I want to paint some Assault Terminators as well. I had originally planned to do all five with Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields, but I've been reading and it seems it may be better to do a mix of weapons. We'll see. Hopefully I'll be so busy moving to a new place in the next month that I won't have time to paint.