I've been very inconsistent with my posts as of late and that trend is likely to continue for some time. School just started back up for me (14 credits seems like a lot when you're working full-time) and I've been putting in extra hours at work evenings and weekends to help make up for the other person in my section who is out indefinitely with an injury. We also have a lot of folks in our section at various training courses, so we're a bit short-handed all around.

My wife and I have finally just about got out of the trailer and moved completely into the house. It has taken a lot longer than we'd hoped, but that's par for the course for us. With work and school keeping me so busy, my mother has been very good about helping my wife with the last bit of cleanup before we're out for good. The good news is that we found a buyer for the trailer and should be able to get that done and over with. It will be nice not to have to make the house payment and pay the lot rent for the trailer.

I've pulled out all of the figures for my starting Ork army and if I get a free weekend sometime soon I'm going to assemble them and try them out against my Space Marines list. Although it is heretical to play with all those unpainted figures it seems a shame to finally have space for tables and not get some use out of them. So I am going to paint as I can while assembling everything possible so I can have at least a large collection of game pieces rather than a large collection of boxes collecting dust. I will roll out with the Space Marines if I play in public though as they are for the most part painted.

In my class last night we had to introduce ourselves and say something that people might not guess about you. So I got ready to say I have a Basset Hound. The introductions went around the room and the lady just before me said, "I'm so-and-so, my major is such-and-such, and I have a Basset Hound." Of all the things she could have come up with, she said the very thing I was going to say. So I said that I also have a Basset Hound. Later in the class she leaned over to me and asked, "Does your Basset Hound smell bad too?" I think all Basset Hounds smell bad and steal things to chew up/eat and play with/eat.

I went to the store today and bought some stuff for lunch, and when I got my change there was a penny from 1947 among the coins. I like getting old coins in my change. The oldest one I've received as change was a year or two ago with a date of 1918. Prior to that my oldest penny was from 1927. I find it interesting that a coin can hang around that long and pass through so many pockets.

A Room of My Own

We are pretty much moved into the new place, but we still have plenty of cleaning to do and probably a couple of pickup loads of stuff still to move. As far as I can remember I've pretty much kept my pledge not to buy new figures for a while. I actually sold a few things on eBay to help us fund our move; mostly stuff that I wasn't going to get to for a while and is readily available on the market if I ever need to reacquire it. Anyway, I have most of a room to myself at the new house. My wife's desk is in there with her computer, but the rest of the room is mine. This first picture is my painting table. You can see my lamp, my airbrush compressor and the paint rack, as well as some Space Marines and Star Trek ships.

And this is my bookshelf. It's got my gaming books, some other books, and a few boxes of miniatures on it. My toolbox is there too. I didn't take a picture of the closet, but I has my comic books, the painted figures, a game mat, and some of the unpainted stuff that didn't fit on the bookshelf. I also didn't take a picture of my desk, which will hopefully not be overcome by hobby stuff. I am trying to separate my hobby things from my schoolwork and whatnot as under the old system without a painting table I had to do a lot of shuffling in order to work on one or the other.

Just so I don't appear too selfish, my wife has an area for her hobbies too. The utility room is very large and right next to the playroom, so she will have her sewing and craft tables there. That way she can work on her hobbies near the area the kid will be playing in. And speaking of the kid, he's getting to be quite large and mobile. Here he is pulled up on the baby gate and making a drooly pirate face.

And here he is rubbing his teeth together. He likes the playroom as much as he likes any place with space to roam, but the older nieces and nephews really enjoy it. So that's nice.

I have returned from my two weeks in the desert with the National Guard. There isn't much else to talk about really. I went to Hobbytown but I didn't buy anything. There are some neat things being released, but I have a big pile of figures I still need to work on.

A friend invited me to go to a Magic: The Gathering informal event at his friends' house. I did not do very well, which should be expected as I am not an avid player and these guys had every card back to 1993 memorized. I think that I am safe from having the desire to buy into Magic anytime soon. It's a huge money sink with new sets coming out quarterly. I'd have to give up my other hobbies and focus exclusively on that.

Home "Improvement"

Tonight was the night that I nearly made a ruins out of my kitchen. We got a new fridge a few days ago, and I decided to attempt the installation of the water line for the icemaker/water dispenser. After a couple of trips to Home Depot I had all of my fittings and tools. I had drilled the holes and run the water line earlier, which was a whole experience in itself. I at least managed to avoid drilling through the dishwasher, so that was a bonus. The old cold water pipe came apart fairly well and the new fittings and valves weren't too bad, but once I had most everything hooked up I had water pressure in every faucet except the sink.

I had to go into the crawlspace approximately seventy-five times to turn the water on and off. There are a lot of spiderwebs down there, and I saw at least one rather large Black Widow. I hate spiderwebs and dust and especially poisonous spiders. They make my skin crawl. I think they're neat and all, but not when I'm crawling around in their habitat. I didn't get bitten, so that's a plus.

But I couldn't get the water pressure to be more than a trickle and I was becoming angry. I banged around for a while and then took a break to clear my head. I had partially disassembled the faucet already, but an article I read led me to believe that the problem was deeper inside the faucet. I dug around and pulled the faucet all apart, sprayed water all over the kitchen, and felt some pretty big pieces of grit come through. Then I put it back together again and it worked better than it had before. And the water dispenser on the fridge isn't pumping out black water anymore. And my wife is still talking to me. So tonight I have been to the depths of despair and the heights of triumph. It worked out all right in the end.

The Update

After a few months of searching and offering and waiting and inspecting and signing paperwork we finally have purchased a house. We signed the papers yesterday and everything processed today, so we've started the process of moving in. We went over there today to drop some stuff off and wait for the locksmith to come and change the locks out.

As soon as we showed the neighbors from one house over came over to introduce themselves. Later another neighbor came over to talk to us. We mentioned that we were waiting on the water to be turned on, which the city couldn't do until Monday. He mentioned that he worked for the city and could turn on our water tonight after reading out meter and leaving a message at the office. So we got water a couple days early.

Now I'm really tired, so I am going to bed.

Not much to post about. The kid likes to play inside of boxes. He's popping some more teeth out in the top to go with his lower teeth.

Packing up for the move is going fairly well, but the living room is so full of boxes that it is difficult to walk through the house. It would be lame if the house fell through at the last minute and I had to move all that stuff back into the rest of the house.

I reworked my Imperial Guard lists to include the models that I like and want to paint and play with. It should still be a good army to game with; I think I hit most of my bases as far as anti-tank and anti-infantry. I'm a little short on Troop choices, though. I may have to alter the lists again to increase my Troop selections.

Packing Up

We are hoping to close on the house within the next week, so we've been packing our stuff up in boxes and staging it for loading in the truck. It is a pain, especially when you've packed ten or fifteen boxes of stuff and the room doesn't really look any different. But we're making progress. Hopefully by the end of the weekend we can have most of the small non-essential stuff ready to go. Then we just have to wait for the paperwork side of things to go through.

In between packing boxes I've been trying to work out army lists for 40k. After building my initial Imperial Guard list I felt that it didn't have enough figures to stand up against Space Marines or Orks. So I am looking for ways to increase the number of figures without sacrificing too much in the way of firepower. I've also been reading up on various tactics and builds that work, although I think playing the Math Hammer game takes away from the aspects of army-building that appeal to me most. I redid my Space Marine lists again, but I think I am going to switch them back again, as I wound up without a great variety of units. I'd like to pack a few different things into my lists rather than running (and painting) a million of the exact same thing.

The Pledge

I recently made my own version of the Pledge. It doesn't involve painting a certain number of figures; I just am not allowed to purchase any new figures until sometime in August. Hobby supplies are okay. So far I've made it. I had a close call at the hobby shop with the new GW Temple of Skulls. The sticker price on it is rather high, but the store discount is pretty good on certain items and the box containing the model is much larger than I expected. But I refrained from getting it. I did buy a couple of jars of paint and a book on building scenery. The new Land Speeder Storm transport for Space Marine Scouts and the Ironclad Dreadnought are being released soon, and I'd really like to pick up the Warhammer Fantasy Empire starter box as well as a Steam Tank. But I've made it this far fairly easily and I may extend my Pledge another month or two just to save some money.

I've got plenty of stuff to keep me busy; I may transition a bit more into buying bits here and there on eBay for conversions rather than buying new box sets all the time. Or combining the two like I did with my Assault Terminators. With the five Terminator bodies from Assault on Black Reach you can turn a five-man Assault Terminator box into a ten-man Squad with five Thunder Hammer/Storm Shields and five Lightning Claws.

Finished Reading The Last Chancers

I finished reading The Last Chancers a day or two ago. I felt that the last book in the collection was the weakest. It's probably just personal preference, as the last book took some turns that I didn't care for. I don't want to post any spoilers, but the story included more Chaos than the others. The various Chaos armies are probably my least favorite parts of the Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k universes. They just don't do anything for me the way that much of the other background does. As with anything, your experience and preference may vary. I will still be building a portion of my army to reflect the Last Chancers and even have one or two characters from the last book modelled in the army, but overall I was disappointed with the way the series ended.