This past Saturday my sister hosted a Welcome Home dinner for me. It was pretty nice. My mother and most of my siblings were there, as well as some aunts and cousins, some friends, and some other folks from church. It was nice to see everyone and meet some of the people I hadn't before, specifically my third sister's new husband. I made an attempt to connect with each person who showed up, and I hope I was able to make everyone feel that I appreciated their presence. I felt a little silly about having a party in my honor, as this particular tour overseas wasn't all that crazy for me. My jobs were pretty easy, I had a fairly regular work schedule, and there wasn't a whole lot of hardship or deprivation. The hardest part for me was dealing with the people in the unit I was transferred to just prior to the mobilization. My wife had a much rougher year than I did, having to deal with the toddler, the twin infants, and running the rest of the household while I was gone. It will be nice for me to get back to my home unit once my leave is over. I did receive a Joint Service Commendation Medal in the mail recently, from a unit I worked under for the first few months of the tour. It was supposed to be kind of a crap detail, but it turned out to be the best part of the deployment for me, and I got a shiny medal out of it.

Also on Saturday we went to a carnival being held to raise funds for a little girl in our church who has leukemia. Our oldest boy had a pretty good time. He rode on a horse for the first time. We were kind of surprised that he got on the horse without any fuss, as he has historically been pretty wary of livestock. He didn't want to pet the horse, but he was pretty happy to get in the saddle and ride around the block. He really didn't want to stop riding. Later he told my wife that he likes horses, but cows are scary.

I've seen some very nicely painted Dreadfleet ships on the internet, including these ones. I've also read some positive reviews of the game on various blogs. When it was first announced I didn't have much interest in the game, but I'm warming up to it. I've got a big backlog of stuff to get to on the hobby side of things, but stuff like Dreadfleet and Space Hulk you can just pick up and play. It would be nice to paint up my Space Hulk figures, but it's not entirely necessary. I borrowed the above photo from BloodyBeast.com, which I've linked to in the paragraph. There are plenty of additional photos there.

Tomorrow I am planning on participating in another week of D & D Encounters. I had hoped to find a miniature to represent my character, but time got away from me and I won't even have a bare metal figure in-hand, much less a painted one. There is one Reaper figure I like for my Dragonborn Warlock, but I never got around to ordering it. I'm not sure how long the current campaign will run anyway, as I think I've come in pretty close to the end of things. I'll have to think about it. I'd probably have better luck at finding a figure if I picked a more conventional class and race, but that didn't enter my mind when I rolled the character up.

And today I installed an intake kit in my car, which was much less frustrating than I thought it would be. I guess that's a good thing. I didn't even wind up with extra parts! I feel like the intake improves the performance of the car, but it might be wishful thinking on my part. Next up for my car is some new brakes and a windshield. I think I'll let a professional install the windshield, though. I also have some stuff to do on my wife's van, which ought to be fun. They don't sell a high-flow intake kits for minivans, so I just had to settle for replacing her air filter. And at some point I will get around to finding a space in the house for my hobby area and maybe even put some paint on some figures.