Not much to talk about at the moment. I don't really ever get around to doing much on National Guard weekends as I spend a couple of days doing whatever the mission is for the weekend and by the time I get home on Sunday all I want to do is take a nap. This weekend my allergies hit me pretty hard on Sunday morning and I was pretty much incapacitated for the rest of the day and didn't sleep very well last night. I'm glad today was an off-day at my job because I don't know that I would've made it in this morning. I had to do a urinalysis Sunday afternoon before I could leave and I just could not pee. I drank enough water that my stomach actually began to hurt and finally was able to get the job done, but it was pretty ridiculous. I think the allergy pills I took were a factor.

We drove our Humvees from the desert back to the armory on Sunday, and on the way home we passed a big motorcycle club out on a Sunday ride. Almost every biker extended a wave or a thumbs-up to us, as did many individuals in other vehicles throughout the trip. It's one of those things that makes a guy feel good about wearing the uniform.

I got my Assault on Black Reach set for 40k, but haven't had much time to look through the components thus far. There are certainly plenty of models on the sprues. They don't really come with a lot of the optional bits, but I can't really complain much as the price point is so low.

My Fantasy Baseball season has taken a bad turn. I failed to realize that the playoffs started last week and didn't manage either of my head-to-head teams very well until it was too late in the week to play catch-up. I wound up losing both games and falling to the fifth-place games in both weeks. So hopefully I can at least salvage a couple of fifth-place finishes this week. My roto team that was in first place when I left for guard weekend was in third place when I got back. I'll be working on getting those points back so I can hopefully pull off one championship this year. My other roto team has fallen pretty far back in the standings and I'll be pretty lucky if I can get it into even a third-place trophy.

And the Fantasy Football season started on Thursday. After the two games tonight we'll see how I did. I feel all right about my teams, but Fantasy Football is so hit or miss from week to week that it's hard to know how you'll do. Luckily the big Tom Brady injury only negatively affected one of my teams, as for the most part Patriots players were too overpriced in drafts for me to grab them.

Today I went down to the DMV and got my motorcycle endorsement. So now I can ride home from work at night legally, which is always a good thing. The guy who processed my paperwork at the DMV did everything in such a slow and deliberate manner that I think he does it on purpose to annoy customers. The little half-smirk he had on his face lends my theory some credence. There was a customer there who kept trying to jump the line. When you go into the DMV you take a number and they call up the numbers in order, so it's generally pretty obvious when it's your turn. She jumped up every time a number was called and went to the open counter only to get sent back when the real number-holder got there. It was pretty entertaining to watch. I'm having more fun riding the bike now that I have a few days out on the public streets. I still get nervous because people really don't see motorcycles. There's an intersection on the way to work with a Yield sign that most idiots treat as a merge sign, rolling straight through into the lane without looking left. They couldn't see me in my truck, and with the bike it's ten times worse. Every couple days I have to swing wide left and gas it a little to avoid getting creamed. Still working on riding one-handed so I can shake my fist or make rude gestures. I manage to do the motorcyclist wave when passing oncoming bikes, but I think shaking my fist might cause the bike to become unstable. And speaking of driving/riding like a moron, here's a little video out of Australia that is pretty hilarious.



My big fantasy baseball trade (I traded away Jimmy Rollins and Nick Markakis for Jhonny Peralta and Vladimir Guerrero) has started working out the way I envisioned. The players I got have had a smoking couple of days, so I'm up on the trade by 7 runs, 3 home runs, 5 RBIs. The guy I traded with has only got one or two stolen bases out of the players I gave him and batting averages are extremely close for both sides. I am worried that giving him Nick Markakis could have been a bad move as he's been pretty hot, but I didn't really have any other outfielders that he would bite on. I think the trend will continue and hopefully the changes I made to my pitching rotation will pay off and put me back in contention in that league. My head-to-head teams are slowly dropping in the standings, as my teams started out very hot and have cooled down since the All-Star break. I should still make the playoffs, but it's going to be a tough post-season for me.

As for Fantasy Football I somehow managed to schedule my first draft for drill weekend and so the software auto-drafted my team. Mot of my picks turned out pretty well, but my receiving corps is pretty weak. My running backs aren't exactly the ones that I would've chosen either, mostly due to durability issues. I'm looking at a starting lineup of:

QB - Tom Brady
WR - Torry Holt
WR - Marvin Harrison
WR - Chris Chambers
RB - Frank Gore
RB - Brandon Jacobs
TE - Jason Witten
K - Stephen Gostkowski
DEF - Minnesota Vikings

It's a decent team with top-ranked players at the QB, TE, K, and DEF spots but the potential for injury and/or struggles at the WR and RB spots mean I'll probably be playing the waivers a lot to keep the team competitive. I suppose that's about enough about Fantasy Sports for now.

On the miniature wargaming front I am still doing a lot more thinking about projects and making very little progress toward actually completing any of them. There are so many different armies and warbands that I'd like to plan/purchase/prep/paint but when the time comes to actually get started I find that I have very little motivation. I saw some photos today on the Grimsby Wargaming blog of a game featuring hundreds (if not over 1000) figures on the table. The historical period doesn't interest me much but the idea of massed lead and plastic (plastic may be considered heresy among the Grimsby group but I tend to prefer plastic figures) is quite titillating to those of the wargamer persuasion, although it is a rare gamer who actually has a large force painted for any of his periods and genres of interest.

I was unable to hold out until I had enough Honor Points for my PvP boots, so I bought the PvP cloak and had an Agility enchantment put on it. Then I found out about the daily fishing quests with all of their awesome prizes, so I've been leveling up my fishing skill instead of playing battlegrounds. Once I get my fishing skill up to a decent level I'll go back to the battlegrounds and just do the fishing daily quest every day.

My Goblin Warboss on Gigantic Spider arrived the other day, after some concern on my part about whether it would get here. I was notified by e-mail that it was on backorder a week or two ago and with Games Workshop it seems that backorder is one step away from discontinued, especially since this model is a collector's edition and Games Workshop has been making drastic changes to their catalog lately. The model is quite impressive, with no fewer than 16 parts. It should be a bear to assemble, and hopefully I can give it a good paint job.

I didn't make any more progress on the Easterlings, as we had overtime last night and I was tired. I was too tired even to bake some chicken nuggets and tater tots in the oven.

On the Fantasy Sports front, I won the TMP Hockey League championship. I've made it to the championship round in both of my Basketball head-to-head leagues and I should win one of my rotisserie leagues. The other rotisserie team made a good run at a trophy spot around midseason, but has floundered ever since and should finish out of the top three. The Fantasy Baseball season has started out fairly well, but it's too early to really analyze my teams much.

We went and saw the baby today, or at least we saw something that the nurse said was a baby. To me it looked a lot like an x-ray of a chicken nugget. Since I couldn't make out any of the details I have labeled the photo below as it was explained to me. The good news is that everything seems to be going well.

Edit: On second read, it appears that the red label doesn't appear very well on the photo. The red label says: BABY. So the blob in the red square is the actual baby. The umbilical cord is not actually visible in this picture, but it's in the general area indicated by the blue line. The yolk sack is apparently a food source for the nugget baby until the umbilical cord and the p-word that rhymes with magenta complete the formation process. And that, my friends, is how babby is formed.

Not much else to post about at the moment, so I'm off to bed. I've got my final Fantasy Baseball draft of the year tomorrow and I don't want to sleep through it.

My National Guard unit is going through a transition right now, and as part of the changes, my job was changed from M1A1 Abrams Crewman to Cavalry Scout. So I had to spend the last couple of weeks going to a school about my new job. There are actually two branches to the Scout job, the Humvee side and the Bradley side. I did the Humvee course a few months ago, and this month I took the Bradley course. For those who are not militarily inclined, here is a Bradley:

The training was fairly typical military fare, with long hours and lot of boredom punctuated with a few fun activities. I got to play with some plastic explosive, a grenade launcher, several machine guns, and fire a bunch of rounds from the main gun of the Bradley itself. The Bradley gun is fun to fire, but it's a little different sort of fun than firing a tank. The cannon on the M1A1 makes a big boom that is hard to top as far as thrill factor.

The Bradley gun is more like a machine gun on steroids. It's fun to shoot because you can fire five rounds off in a matter of seconds and watch them all follow each other into the target. They're not huge rounds (a box of 30 probably weigh the same as one round for the Abrams, give or take 20 pounds), but they're still fun to shoot. So that's what I've been doing the last couple of weeks.

Today at work part of the dock smelled like Barbecue-flavored chips, so every time I drove past that area I got hungry. I actually got to a point where I was salivating and having hunger pangs because I needed to be eating some chips. At lunch time I ran out to my car and went to the gas station to buy some chips. It wasn't the healthiest lunch, but I needed to have some chips right then or I was going to go nuts.

The Fantasy Baseball season is going okay. I have three teams in the top 3 or so spots and one team that is slowly making it's way up from 9th place. With a couple of good weeks I could get that team into playoff contention. The Fantasy Football magazines have started coming out, so I'm pretty excited about that. Fantasy Football is fun, but I find it more difficult than Fantasy Baseball or Fantasy Basketball. I think it's because each player only gets one chance during the week to produce stats. In the other sports, a couple bad outings in a week can be balanced out by some good outings. Players have more chances to achieve what you've projected for them. In Fantasy Football, whatever your player gets on that day is what you get for the week, good or bad.

I recently discovered that there is going to be a new MMORPG coming out called Pirates of the Burning Sea, and I'm cautiously excited about it. I want to be head-over-heels exploding with joy about it, but there is the off chance that it could not be very fun for a variety of reasons. I think the thing that worries me the most is that a historically-based Pirate MMO will be limited by the geography and timeline of the real 1700s. I'm not sure how the game will be able to grow beyond its original release and still stay "in character." But I'll probably buy it and pony up my subscription fee every month until it stops being fun.

The Fantasy Basketball Season is Over...

The NBA season ended yesterday, and so did the Fantasy Basketball playoffs. I did extremely well this year, with all four of my teams receiving little digital trophies. In my head-to-head leagues I got a 1st-place finish and a 2nd-place finish. The 2nd-place finish would have been a championship if I had played Rajon Rondo on the last day of the season instead of playing Nene Hilario. Oh well, second is still okay. In my Rotisserie leagues I had a 1st-place finish and a 3rd-place finish, and I was the only person in both of those leagues to use up my full allotment of games at every position.

The Fantasy Baseball season is well under way, and my teams need to pick up the pace. I think I'll be okay, though. I drafted well and the season is a long one.

I also am almost done with the Battle Nuns. I just need to finish up the bases and add some dullcoat to the places that shouldn't be shiny.

The Fantasy Basketball season is almost over. I have managed to reach the final round in both of my head-to-head leagues, and I like my chances of winning both of those leagues, or at least splitting them with one first-place trophy and one second-place finish. One of my rotisserie-league teams is in a bitter back-and-forth fight with another team for 2nd place. My other rotisserie-league team just took the first-place spot from the team that's held the top spot all season. I'm hoping I can hold on to it, and end up with four 2nd-place or better trophies this season.

The first week of the Fantasy Baseball season started out well for me, but ended in disaster. A lot of my best players got shut-out by the weather this week, and my place in the standings took a free-fall. I've got plenty of time to make it up, though, as the baseball season lasts forever. This daily roster-management is getting me down. Next year I might go for the leagues that have a weekly roster, so I only have to switch my players around one time every week.

It's occured to me that I sounded quite angry in my last post's remarks about the Reaper Warlord army packs. I suppose it's because I am heavily invested in three partial armies for the game, and the changes to the distribution system stand to cost me a lot more money than I really want to spend. That leaves me in the lurch, as I either lose by having three partial armies that I was excited about painting or by spending a bunch of extra money to finish them out. I think I'll just paint my Warhammer and Supersystem stuff until the situation sorts itself out or I break down and buy the rest of the models I need.

I recently got a gift certificate from Wyrd Miniatures and ordered their Misaki, Warmaiden figure, which came in the mail a couple of days ago. It's a cool sculpt and I've seen a few painted up that look really nice. My issue is that it will take some doing to get it assembled and looking right before I paint it. The figure comes in four pieces: body, rock base, head, and weapon with hand attached. The feet don't seem to rest correctly on the rock, so I'll have to do something about that. I can't seem to get the head matched up to the neck, so I'll have to work up a way to attach that. And the weapon was bent all the way around in a loop and looks to be extremely fragile and impossible to straighten entirely. There are also several metal tabs poking off of the figure, at least one on every piece. They will have to be clipped off and then I'll have to work the areas where they attachedto the point where I can paint them. To me it seems like a lot of effort just to prep a mini for painting.