Christmas Book

My parents gave me a gift card for Christmas, which I converted into Kevin Dallimore's Painting and Modelling Guide: Master Class from Foundry. I haven't had a chance to read it in entirety yet. I just flipped through it for a little while and looked at the pretty pictures. Some of the sections I recognized parts of from his website tutorials, but there seems to be enough pictures and explanations to justify the cost. The painting style is somewhat controversial because of the sharp edges between colors, leading some people to say it looks like a meat chart with all the flesh tones sectioned off. I like the look, and I think all of the contrast really helps the figures stand out on the table. I'm looking forward to having a more extended look through the book, especially the suggestions for Old West characters.

I also ordered a bottle of ink and a piston converter for my fountain pen, as the pre-made cartridges only come in a few colors and are more expensive in the long run than filling your own pen. I tried it with some water and the converter seems to work pretty well. I'll have to use my current cartridge up so I can see how the converter works inside the pen. It's basically a syringe with a twist mechanism that moves the piston up and down.

Although they are far out of playoff contention, it was nice to see the Denver Broncos actually win a game this week. That Tim Tebow feller is a pretty exciting player, I suppose. I picked him up in both of my Fantasy Football leagues for the final week of the season, and he helped me win both of my games. It's the last week of the Fantasy season. Both of my teams snuck into the playoffs with the eighth and final seed. One team lost the first two games and fell into the 7th-place game for this week, which I won and gained a spot in the standings through the playoffs. The other team won a game, then lost and fell into the 3rd-place game, which  I should win for a little virtual bronze trophy. That's not as neat as getting all the way to the Gold from 8th, but it's a pretty good run considering my usual luck at postseason Fantasy Football.

It has been fun to watch so many football and basketball games on the Armed Forces Network here. My schedule lines up pretty well with the games, so I get to see most of the big matchups on a big screen. Sometimes it's hard to work in a support role, especially when I have to navigate all of the paperwork and figure out where to go when I need something. My combat arms background didn't prepare me very well to be an office jockey. But the sports on TV is nice and I may be able to get some more college out of the way, so it's not all bad.

In Which I Experience Fine German Engineering (No, Dad, Not That)

While sitting in Germany waiting for my plane to Iraq, I ordered a fountain pen online, the Lamy Safari Charcoal with a Medium nib. I have a couple of vintage pens, a Parker 51 and a little Esterbrook of some kind, but I didn't want to subject them to the abuse and possible loss that is part of the mobile military lifestyle. So I ordered the Lamy. I actually tried to get one in Mississippi, but the one pen shop I found in the phone book had recently shut down, leaving me to find it on the internet.

I've been using it for a month or so now, mostly for letter writing. It doesn't agree very much with the paper in my journal, which is lightly ridged and tends to snag the pen. But for letter writing it is pretty nice. It is nice and thick, which for me is good because holding on to smaller pens makes my hands cramp up. It puts down a decent line with the standard Lamy ink cartridges, although the ink seems a bit watery and light and the line tends to become drier as I write. I would be interested to see how it does with some different inks with more pigment to them. Overall I am pretty happy with the pen. It serves it's purpose, and for a chunky plastic low-end model it looks pretty good, fits well in the hand, and writes fairly well. I haven't had any issues with leaks or anything although I think the leaky fountain pen is more myth than reality, especially when it comes to modern models.

Posting by Coercion

My wife asked me on the phone the other day why I haven't posted on my blog recently. I don't really have a reason aside from not feeling like I have much to talk about. It is rainy season here in Iraq, so every couple of days there is a downpour and some fairly spectacular thunderstorms. I have one of those every day kind of jobs, so I work, eat, read books, go to the gym, and sleep, with a little time on the side for playing video games and calling home. It pays the bills, but being the introvert that I am, the constant presence of other people in my personal bubble is a bit taxing. And that's all I'm going to say about that. There is a guy on post who plays bagpipes, so when I walk from my room to my job I often can hear them playing in the distance. I think the bagpipes sound much better when played in the distance.

I read Battle Cry of Freedom over the last couple of weeks. It was a pretty good time-filler and gave me a pretty good general understanding of the events surrounding the American Civil War. My ability to retain information is not that great, but I think I captured a lot of it. I'm not sure what to read next on the subject of the war, though. I'll have to do some research. I've read a couple of other books (Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell and On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Dave Grossman) as well as copies of White Dwarf my wife purchases and sends to me.

It's quite a task for her to go and get the magazine, as being pregnant with twins she doesn't get around so well, and my 2-year old is obsessed with several of the objects in Hobbytown (just like his dad) and wants to run around and play. They have a table with a wooden train track and some kid-sized shopping carts that he likes to push around the store. The kid is crazy about anything he can push around, like carts and strollers. When we went to the zoo in Mississippi he didn't care about the animals at all. He just wanted to get out and push the stroller. We had to bribe him with a ride on the zoo train just to get him to look at the animals and stay in the stroller. He loves wheels, which is fine until you're trying to get him to leave Hobbytown and he is trying to load up the little shopping cart with toys so he can push it around. Believe me, a toddler can scatter toys much faster than two adults can put them away. One of us usually has to drag him screaming and kicking from the store while the other cleans up and purchases the items. My wife handles it by going and buying my magazine while he's at the sitter's house. But either way I appreciate the effort on her part to make sure I have the things I want while I'm here.

She also has mailed my box of paints and Dwarves to me, so when that arrives I will try to incorporate some painting into my schedule. It will depend largely on whether or not I get into some university courses, as those will take up most of my time. Right now it's not looking like I will get in, so I may wind up painting a pile of Dwarves while I'm here. I'm not sure how I will get them home safely once painted, but I will worry about that later. Other than that I haven't done much hobby-related aside from the usual planning and window shopping. I obtained a bunch of Foundry figures for Old West gaming as well as a couple handfuls of Foundry Pirates from an eBay auction one of the posters on The Miniatures Page was running. I've been trying to determine a starting point for my 6mm ACW project, but haven't got any further than I was a year or more ago.

There are some new Skaven models on the way for Warhammer Fantasy that look interesting, although they won't liely fit in with my current army. I consider the Skaven to be in three distinct sculpting styles which I refer to as early, middle, and new. Most of my collection are from the middle style, with a few of the early sculpts for things that never got produced in the middle style. I have some unbuilt stuff in all three styles, but the whole thing is a logistical mess. As any good wargames project should be, I suppose.

I've also been thinking a lot about the Lord of the Rings, especially with some new elite figures out for the Moria Goblins faction. I've got a fair number of Goblins already, some of them are even painted. I also have some Easterlings painted and a pile of them in reserve. I also have a fair number of Dwarves, and I'd like to build up an army of Gondor as natural enemies to the Easterlings. But again that's all in the future. All I know for sure is that for me the Lord of the Rings figures have been some of the most enjoyable figures to put paint on. They seem to be made to take paint well, even in the hands of someone like me. The poses are a little repetitive sometimes, but using a few different hair or trim colors can even that out somewhat.

I guess that's about it for today. I will probably continue to post with some irregularity, but that will vary according to my mood and my access to a computer with an internet connection. Things are going fairly well and I am looking forward to coming home on leave in a couple of months and hopefully meeting our two new babies, assuming they cooperate.

Anniversaries

Yesterday was a significant day for my family. My wife and I have now been married for six years, and it was also my son's second birthday. I consider myself very lucky to have both of them in my life. We did not get to celebrate together, but at the end of this week we will be able to spend a few days together before I ship out for my tour overseas. I hope to return home for a couple of weeks when the twins are born and then return to finish out my deployment. I'm grateful for the support of friends and family while I'm away.

One of my regrets from my last deployment is that I didn't keep any record of what I was doing and thinking from day to day. A lot of it is pretty fuzzy for me now, and a lot of it I don't really remember anymore. That really goes for many of the events of my life. I don't know that it will be very exciting, but maybe it will be good to look back on somewhere down the road. To that end, I ordered a journal from the Rogue Journals website. The day after I ordered it the announcement came out that any mail arriving after the 5th would be returned to sender, so I sent a message to their customer support requesting to be billed for expedited shipping or for my order to be cancelled. I promptly received a reply thanking me for my military service and explaining that expedited shipping would be provided at no extra charge. The journal arrived yesterday and is exactly what I was looking for.

I've been meaning to post something about the Lord of the Rings miniature games, but the past few days have been pretty busy with training. I may get around to it at some point.

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Getting a Handle on the Vision

Over the past few days I've had some time to sit down with my notebook and write down a short paragraph explaining my vision for each army or period. It's not anything too concrete, with figure lists and color schemes, just a brief description of what I envision when I think about the project. A lot of my projects are pretty well filled out as far as figure acquisition, but I really need to do some painting. I also need a lot of terrain. But there are a lot of projects that just require some paint before I could start playing small games. Most can be built up in small blocks, starting with things I've already got.

I was also able to download a couple digital issues of Battlegames magazine, so I've been reading through those. Of course, the danger of reading about the hobby is that new project ideas rear up in your mind. I'm planning on doing Dark Ages games in 28mm, but after reading issue 23 of Battlegames, I'm becoming convinced that 6mm is the right scale for later Medieval action. I may have to add that to my project notebook.

Mississippi is still muggy and warm, although not as much as it was earlier in the week. The leaders in my new unit finally discovered that I have a little more time-in-grade than many of the other guys at my level, so I got a job title upgrade and some extra duties. It's nothing spectacular, mostly tracking down information and volun-telling guys to fill work details. It doesn't help my popularity, but I try to pull as many details as my guys do, so hopefully they won't be too butthurt when their turn comes around. I'm looking forward to taking a few days on pass soon and finally getting to my post overseas. I wasn't made to live in the South, so I'll gladly get on that plane, hopefully to never set foot in Camp Shelby again.

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Planning Mode

I am still in Camp Shelby, enjoying the humidity and those good Army rations. I've spent my free hours considering the wargaming projects that interest me. I've considered trying to get some sort of plan or timeline down on paper, but that would probably require several hours (days, weeks?) of consideration and list shuffling. I inventoried all of my Warhammer and Warhammer 40k figures before I left home, but didn't get around to the other game systems and historical periods in the hobby room. It is occasionally quite maddening to be here, away from all of my books and toys. I'm actually looking forward to falling in on our positions overseas, as the pre-mobilization process seems to be the worst part of being deployed. Once there, rumors are that we will have a (relatively) decent amount of personal space, where I will be able to make some progress on personal pursuits, like miniature armies and higher education. I've been looking at online education opportunities, and may try to take a few university courses through the BYU distance learning program. But for the most part I've been itching to get at my paints and my figures. It'd be really nice to play some games with my figures before my kids are old enough to move out of the house.

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The Boy

My wife sent me this picture of my boy frozen in awe by the sight of a whole wall of shoes. He likes shoes a lot because putting his shoes on usually means he is going to go outside. He also likes to put my boots and shoes on and walk around the house.

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Window Shopping

Today there was a break in training and a bus running into town, so I rode to the mall and did some window shopping for shoes. I tried to find some gaming or comic shops, but there weren't any where the bus was running.

It was an okay trip. I saw plenty of things I'd been looking at online and spent some time being tempted by the Jordan Retro IX Citrus, the Six Rings, and the Pro Strong in Stealth/University Blue/Light Graphite. I also looked at a whole pile of running shoes. Other than shoes, there wasn't much of interest. I looked at hats and jerseys a bit, but there weren't any featuring players or teams I'm a fan of.

A lot of folks were walking around with babies and toddlers, which made me a little homesick for the wife and kid. They're in the South right now visiting her family, and from what I hear my boy has enjoyed playing with his cousins.

Earlier in the day my platoon went to the Armed Forces Museum here on post. We kind of got rushed through it, but there were some pretty neat displays, including an M2A2 'Mae West' Light Tank and a lot of rifles, swords, pistols and knives. I'd have liked to have more than 45 minutes to get through it all, but I'll take what I can get.

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Absence

I'm still in Mississippi without a whole lot to report. I took an operator's course on the MRAP family of vehicles and I get another course on uparmored SUVs in a few days, so I've been doing plenty of driving along with the usual pre-mobilization stuff. The lack of a good internet connection is a little taxing, but I am able to read blogs, visit The Miniatures Page, and keep up with my Fantasy Sports teams on my phone. The thing that really hurts is that the music on my music player includes stuff that validates my permissions occasionally, so without the ability to sign in I am locked out of a good portion of my songs. The training events have been back-to-back-to-back lately, so I haven't had much personal time outside of reading White Dwarf before I go to sleep.

Although I am almost always at some sort of training, it wouldn't be the Army if I didn't spend much of that time waiting in a line of some sort. I can't paint figures or play games during that dead time, but I can think about all of the projects I'd like to be working on. Now that I'm away from my painting table, all I can think about (besides my family, of course) is all of the projects I want to be working on. Most of it is just fleshing out projects that were already on a burner or fantasizing about ordering a big batch of books and figures, but it helps to pass the time, and hopefully will spark me to get a lot done whenever I get back to my painting table.

My wife went in for the big ultrasound a few days ago. The babies both look healthy and it still appears that we'll be having another two boys. It's going to be crazy, but I think we're both looking forward to having some new additions early next year.

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I've spent the last couple of weeks enjoying Mississippi with my Army friends. The weather and humidity have calmed down quite a bit, so the last few days have been rather nice. We are pretty well locked down on post, so I haven't been able to see much outside of the immediate area. The training is all right. I wouldn't be a soldier if I didn't have complaints, but nothing stands out as particularly miserable.

In my free time I've been trying to play through Dawn of War: Winter Assault, but I've been stuck on one specific mission. I think I just need some extra time to make a plan and do it right instead of winging it and getting overrun by Orks.

There hasn't been much time for any other gaming-related stuff, but my wife sent me the latest White Dwarf and I'm looking forward to giving that a read.

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