I finished up assembling the Orcs that I've got. I hate watching the clock wind down until it's time to leave for work.

I assembled a couple ranks of Orcs today, but I will need another box of them to finish off the unit. I was going to work on the Rat Ogre I've been painting, but I ended up only fixing a few spots I'd missed with the initial ink wash.

My brother came over for the weekend and I think he had a pretty good time. We played a quick session of D & D and visitied a couple of the local hobby shops to have a look around. My brother-in-law had to work on Monday, so the big three-way Pirate brawl didn't happen. I did get a game in with my brother, as well as a request from my sister to let her play sometime. Hopefully sometime this week I'll be able to get a game in with her.

My dad has gone all-digital with his music, so when we went over to pick up my brother he gave us a stereo with a 100-disc cd changer and some speakers. I set it up when we got home and managed to avoid having anything blow up. We can't turn up the volume too much, as the neighbors will complain.

There was some drama on the Boise Warhammer message board this week, as a new member joined up and started advertising a campaign that conflicts with the one already in the planning stages. The conversation got pretty rough, and I'm waiting to see what happens. Both campaigns sound interesting to me, but I don't know if I'll even have time to play in one of them.

Table the Label, and Wear Your Own Name

I'm going to go on a bit of a reality/elimination show rant here. Mike has been keeping up with a particular contestant on the show America's Got Talent who calls himself Boy Shakira. Basically, he skips around the stage in a wig and a skimpy outfit. There is no talent involved whatsoever. But the only judge who seems to realize this is David Hasselhoff, so Boy Shakira keeps getting bumped to the next round. With apologies to the Hoff, any show that makes him look like the voice of reason is a show that should not be on television. He can play the rescuing hero (The Spongebob Squarepants Movie, Baywatch) and the fool (Hooked on a Feeling, the drunky drunkerton video in which his 9-year old daughter tells him off for his alcoholism), but playing the only person in the room who gets it right is not a role that fits him.

The other day the show America's Next Top Model was on the TV in the break room at work. My issue with that show is really an issue with fashion in general. The girls on the show are downright scrawny, with ribs and shoulder blades and hipbones jutting out all over the place. They are obviously trying very hard to maintain extremely unhealthy weights, and are still complaining that they are too fat. It's disgusting, sad, and unattractive. It's a problem on a cultural level that has been discussed in much more depth than I can handle, but it'd be nice if people (women especially) could be happy with whatever size is healthy for them instead of constantly striving to be skeletal. I think with men the ideal image is more of a muscular build that causes some people to take steroids and whatnot in order to get huge, often with tragic results like the recent murder-suicide involving pro wrestler Chris Benoit and the debacle that is Barry Bonds' pursuit of the career home-run record. In either case, folks need to wake up and realize that some of us will never look like Arnold or whatever emaciated model is famous right now and instead concentrate on being healthy.

In happier news, my miniature pirate force is about to get a lot bigger as I snagged 40 Old Glory pirates for $0.75 apiece from a poster on The Miniatures Page.

My little brother is pretty excited to come over for the weekend, so that's good. Hopefully we'll be able to get a lot of different games in while he's here.

We got a new rat today to keep Herbert company. We haven't named her yet, but they're having a great time chasing each other around the cage. It's going to make my Basset Hound crazy as he seems to think they're squirrels that need him to bite them.

I played through the computer game Close Combat: A Bridge Too Far again. I think it was originally released in 1997, but I still enjoy it. It's sort of a WWII RTS that takes you through Operation Market Garden. I'd really like to get a couple of games from Matrix Games, but they are rather expensive and very time-intensive. I'd say they come close to being a computerized Avalon Hill game on a huge scale. Probably not the sort of thing to get into just before school starts. They do have a Close Combat title based on the Eastern Front that I'd like to try out.

I think that's everything. I'll close up with a video featuring some advice from Mr. T.

My brother-in-law and I tried out the Blood and Swash rules last night, with six pirates on each side. I think we played the rules for reloading weapons wrong, as shooting seemed a little overpowered in the game. I think the rules were meant to have shooting be an occasional thing, with the focus being on swordplay and swashbuckling. I also think we played some of the other attacks in the wrong way, using a Save roll for every defender rather than rolling against the stat listed on the chart. We'll get it all sorted out this weekend, though, when my little brother comes over to visit. In the game last night, my brother-in-law's leader was able to fend off several of my lesser pirates and win the game.

I tried to do some painting on the Rat Ogre tonight, but I didn't get very far before I lost my motivation for painting. I put some clearcoat on the bartender and the barmaid. After that I fiddled around with planning for my WWII Eastern Front skirmish project. I'm still trying to decide whether I should go with Micro Armour scale or 15mm scale. So far I've been able to find all of the miniatures I need for my scenarios in Micro Armour scale, but I don't know the 15mm manufacturers well enough to find all the figures in 15mm.

Then I made up some stat cards for all of my pirate miniatures. I personalized them a little bit by cropping a headshot for each pirate and gluing it onto an index card. Then I used the tables in the Blood & Swash rule booklet to roll up the various stats for the figures. I may have my little brother over for a day or two this weekend, and hopefully we'll be able to play a game. I don't have a tavern built yet, but we can probably rig up some sort of scenario on the table using felt for terrain. If we end up playing I'll try to take pictures so I can post them here.

Herbert has been enjoying her new cage immensely. Every so often she'll come flying out of her cardboard house and jump up all of the ramps to the top of the cage, and then she'll jump back down to the bottom.

Well, I finished painting up the one barmaid, but the other one looks so bad that I may dunk her in some Simple Green and start over. This one looks pretty bad too, but not so bad that it'd be worth stripping the paint off and starting over. Besides, I'd like to run my tavern brawl game sometime this year. In the meantime, I'm working on another Rat Ogre for my Skaven and slowly assembling a unit of Warhammer Orcs.

In other news, we went to the pet store to get a rat to feed to our snake, and we ended up getting an addition for Herbert's cage. It's basically a big wire box with three levels and some ramps that clamps down over the top of a ten-gallon aquarium. We were going to get another rat to keep Herbert company, but all three pet stores we went to either had male rats only or no rats at all. Herbert will have to wait on getting a friend until Wednesday or Thursday when more rats come in.

I suppose it's a little strange for us to have some rats for feeding and some rats as pets, but Herbert is practically a family member now, as well as being a bit large for our snake to eat without trouble. I'm working on getting her to trust me enough that she can run around on my desk every day. I can't let her run too free because our Basset Hound wants to eat her. When we put her new cage addition on the aquarium, he stood by my desk whining for me to let her out so he could eat her.

I'm about 70% finished with painting one barmaid, and I hope to have the pair of them all painted up by the time I go to work on Tuesday. Their faces don't look that great, I just can't seem to paint female faces.

I Love Technology

I'm sure my new computer is quite awesome and will be a great asset in my life, but so far it's been a pain in my butt. I spent all of tonight getting my computer and my mp3 player to talk to each other. Finally I was able to download the correct software in the correct order and am in the process of transferring my music. Unfortunately, since I spent the entire evening doing that I wasn't able to spend it listening to music and painting miniatures. Well, my computer just informed me that there isn't enough space in my music library for a couple thousand mp3s, which is odd, since I've got some 300 GB of hard drive left. Off I go to another hour or two of frustration...