Thoramel

I've had a lot of great pets over the year so it's hard to say which memory is my favorite. But this morning, after having to throw our cat out of the bedroom last night for being mischievous while I was trying to sleep, there was a line of cat toys (and a couple of dog toys) starting at the bedroom door going down the stairs through the front room then through the living room and into the TV room leading to his box of toys. Seriously, there was a different toy every few feet from the toy box to the bedroom door. No idea what the heck he was thinking, but I suspect I'll be telling this story as a favorite for a while.

Here's all the merfolk from the Bones V Kickstarter. I've been working on these off and on for about a year and really enjoyed them. I didn't spend a ton of time on them, but then they were so well designed and easy to paint I didn't need to. When I started this I was looking for something a little more colorful to paint, and since these were already getting painted as part of a nautical themed project I've got going, they fit perfectly for that. I'm really looking forward to these hitting the table. I've got some Evil DM plans to drag unsuspecting characters beneath the waves! First up, the group shot: This one is my favorite. She even got a pet shark. Cheers all and thanks for looking!

Not really. It's just more recycle to deal with. Besides, the local newspaper around here is just rewritten stories from the wire services, tons of advertising, and the political opinions of the ownership dressed up as news. I don't need any of that. I will occasionally read the homeless newspaper that's produced around here. It's written and distributed by folks who are, or have been, homeless. And all the money goes to helping them out. Plus it's a perspective on local events that you definitely won't find anywhere else.

The best one directed at me was "Are you trying to get me drunk and take advantage of me? Because you don't have to get me drunk." We have been together 28 years now. I'm usually pretty oblivious to such things, but that one was direct enough to understand. My wife says I still get hit on/receive pick up lines all the time. But I can't tell so I just assume she's saying that kind of thing to boost my confidence. I was about to say it would be one of the various messaging apps. But I have several of those and depending on who you are in my life you get to use a different one. So the actual time spent messaging is broken up among several applications. But I probably use the camera on the phone on a daily basis. So instead, the camera app is likely the most used.

This past weekend I took part in a three day bachelor party I had planned for my oldest friend who finally went and met someone he wants to settle down with. People flew in from all over the country to participate. There were feats of strength, skill and intelligence, a bunch of great food and way more alcohol than was necessary was consumed. And it all culminated in a great hardcore/metal show on Sunday night. Then yesterday, while all the unlucky out of towners had to fly home, I spent the entire day on the couch recuperating and contemplating whether I should buy my liver a Get Well Soon card. I think though that in the end there were a couple of great lessons learned... First, even well into middle age it's possible to find love, which makes me pretty happy. And secondly, a bunch of guys in their 40's and 50's should not act like they're a bunch of guys in their 20's. Seriously, I'm still sore.

I generally prefer Marvel over DC, for both movies and comics. Hadn't really read any comics since the early eighties. Then my wife recently got me a subscription to Marvel's online comic database and I tried re-reading some of that old stuff. Man some of that writing was just dumb as all get out. It was fun taking the walk down memory lane, but the newer stuff is far, far better. Nope, never had an aquarium. Had a terrarium with a tarantula in it for a couple of decades until it died around the age of 30. That was given to me by someone who had no idea how to care for it though, I'm generally not a fan of critters in cages. We've got an aquarium at work that the fish folk (they're not actual fish folk, like some sort of Lovecraftian Deep One, they're ichthyologists. But everyone calls them the fish folk) keep stocked with common native species. It's nice to be able to show interns and other non-biology people what some of the area's most basic species look like. It's not very good for pictures as they keep it is surrounded by a large cardboard box that helps simulate the low light conditions the fish in there would normally live in.

I did not see that. But I wholly support that right for everyone!

After counting it looks like I'm still able to name 11 Muppets from the Muppet Show. That number rises to 12 if you count Elton John as a Muppet. And since, during his performance of Crocodile Rock on the Muppet Show he was wearing more sequins and feathers than your average Muppet cast member, I do count him. Of course that doesn't include anything from Fraggle Rock, Sesame Street, The Dark Crystal, or Labyrinth (David Bowie is also an honorary Muppet in my mind). Gonzo is probably my favorite.

I never share aspects of my own spirituality or what forms that may take. I find that to be a deeply private thing.

It's only Tuesday, but it's already been one of those weeks where you'd just like to tell everyone what to go do with themselves. So last night, when I sat down to paint a bit, this seemed like the appropriate miniature to work on. I was going to put it on my office desk, but my wife saw me loading it up this morning and now it's hers. That's okay though, I bought ten of these in the Kickstarter. Because sometimes the world needs extra middle fingers directed at it. Cheers all and thanks for looking.

I'm the laid back kind of person when it comes to life's little annoyances. As far as I'm concerned no amount of getting stressed or angry has ever resulted in a better outcome or made a problem get fixed faster.

When I was very little I used to tell people I wanted to be a pizza maker and spin the dough in the air. Later I realized we were dirt poor and I just wanted to get to a point in life where I wasn't constantly worried about money. I do have some future goals which involves converting a portion of the family farm into a forested wetland which stems from some noble, if naive, ideas about attempting to leave the world in better shape than I found it I did work in a pizza place as one of the many jobs I held while getting my wife and myself through college. In fact I can still spin the dough around in the air. So you know, mission accomplished. As a result of getting through college and getting decent jobs I rarely worry about being so poor I lose everything. If you've ever been that kind of poor though you never really quit worrying about it. We also have actual pensions, so fingers crossed that whole not being dirt poor thing is behind me for good (knocks on wood). Still working on the farm thing. For the pizza thing I worked nights in a pizza shop. For the not being poor thing my wife and I went to college. We kind of did it in stages though. My wife is a few years older than me so she went first while I worked as much as possible to keep a roof over our heads. I think I averaged something like 64 hours a week for the last three years of her education. I even managed to get a couple of community college classes under my belt while doing it. Then after she graduated and got a good job I went back to school and got my degree while she kept the lights on and food on the table. It worked and now we both have decent jobs, pensions and a union that helps protect us from unreasonable management. For the farm thing I've drawn up plans to plant and create a forested wetland over a period of ten years starting with changing the hydrology in one field and then planting it with native herbaceous vegetation and about 400 woody stems per acre of various shrub and tree species. That's not going to be cheap, so I've shopped the plan around looking for grant money to do so. Unfortunately it's just outside of a watershed where there is plenty of money for this kind of work and I've been having trouble finding any organizations in our watershed with the funding for restoration. The next step is talking to some mitigation bankers who build these environments to sell "credits"to developers who impact wetlands elsewhere as a way of compensating for ecosystem loss. That route could tie my hands on what I could do with the land in the future, but they'd pay me a lot more per acre to restore this than what I'm getting for rent on the land. Also, I have to find someone who doesn't mind that I'm planning on leaving a few acres of land out of this plan in order to build a house at the back of the fields some day where I can retire away from people.

I went to a one year old's birthday party for my cousin's umpteenth kid. Normally I would avoid such things but I haven't seen him or his family in quite some time so it seemed like the right thing to do. While there I had to interact with numerous children under the age of five. Could have been just a few, could have been dozens. They all look the same to me. Normally having a conversation with a stunted little proto-human that insists on touching you with their sticky hands is way out of my comfort zone. And I had to do just that multiple times throughout the afternoon. But by the end of the day several of the kids there had learned a couple of new finger gestures and I didn't pick up any nasty kid germs. so I guess it went okay.

My "me time" typically takes the form of hobbying or going hiking. In the case of the former I've got a little corner of my attic set up with all my hobby stuff, a stereo, and a beer fridge. It's also a screen free zone so nothing can intrude on my relaxation time. And if it's the latter I've got access to quite a few private preserves and restoration projects within an hour of my house, so I can just drive to one of those and find a nice mucky swamp or stream to go poke around in where I know absolutely no one will be bothering me.

Bit of both. I can act like an extrovert when necessary, like at work or social functions. And I do try to have a relationship with some of my neighbors (fewer and fewer though as it becomes less of a working class community and more of an upper class district). I even make the occasional new friend, which seems harder as I get older. But the most relaxing times in my life are when I'm alone or just with my wife. And, like Glitterwolf said, I have a certain limit to how much of that extroverted behavior I can take.

I don't really thrift or go to garage/estate sales. I'm not a big fan of shopping in the first place. So adding in having to go through bins or boxes of other people's stuff is just a non starter for me. My wife enjoys that kind of thing though and has added several unique items of art and furniture to our home over the years. And dear god it is all ugly. I would throw it all out in a split second if I thought I could get away with it.

Oh yeah, plenty of good and bad memories. There was that Skinny Puppy - Last Rights tour where they simulated an assassination of the lead singer on stage at the end of the show. It was super convincing and a bit traumatic. I remember seeing Ian Astbury of The Cult get mad at some biker scumbag and jump off stage and beat him with a tambourine on the Sonic Temple tour. I was at a Grateful Dead show in Indiana in 95 when a bunch of hippies tore down the fence around the amphitheater and swarmed into the show. That was kind of crazy and I think Keller Williams wrote a song about that. Got to see Gogol Bordello at a private club so small that I got to dance with the female singer during the song Immigraniada, that was just awesome. Saw the Chieftains with the Cincinnati ballet back in the 80s, they put on a heck of a great folk show and kept messing with the tempo and throwing off the dancers to the point where one walked off stage, which was hilarious. I saw Davy Jones perform on a flat bed trailer at a pizza festival in Toledo, OH for $2 one time and that guy put way more love and talent into that little show than some bands I've seen at giant stadiums for a lot more money, that performance is kind of burned in my memory because it was just so energetic and positive. Anyways, I do believe I'm rambling, this list could go on and on, but we'll stop it there. No pictures. Given my age most of these occurred before everyone had a camera in their pocket. And I just don't take a lot of photos when enjoying a live show. I regret never having seen Frank Zappa. Had a few opportunities and figured he'd be touring forever, now if I want to see a band I make the effort just in case. I've got tickets to go see They Might Be Giants perform the entire Flood album at the end of the month. I've seen them several times and they always put on a great show, so looking forward to this one.

Here's the bones version of the colossal skeleton I painted up for the RCL large group challenge. I haven't had a ton of time to paint lately, so this is a bit of a rush job and I may go back and do some touch ups at a later date (I always say that, but rarely do it). But I like it regardless and so I thought I'd show it off here. I was a bit dismayed when I got it seeing as how bendy the original bones material is and was a little worried of it holding up under its own weight. But once I started getting it glued down I realized it isn't heavy enough to have the droopiness problems some of the other bones models have. The bendiness worked well though as I ended up wanting him in a more bent over pose and that was fairly easy to achieve with this figure. The small gravestones on the base are from Hammerlot games out of Spain. Which seems like a pretty fun company with some great horror related stuff. I'm going to get some mean looks from my players when I throw this down on the table among the existing hordes of skeletons I already have ready to go! Cheers all and thanks for looking!

Yeah, not looking forward to that.

Yep, I'm a fan of pretty much all live performances. Most of the time I'll go and see them live as it's just a better experience. But man, musical theater is getting way too pricey. The second string cast of Hamilton has been through here a couple of times and a single ticket to see that (if you're lucky enough to get one) was in the hundreds of dollars. At those prices I'm going to stay home. Thankfully not everything has gotten that expensive though. I'm going to see Sick of it All and They Might Be Giants later this month. Now that I think of it, two tickets to each of those shows (including tickmaster's extortionate fees) are cheaper than a single ticket to Hamilton. I made that exact same mistake several years back! Thought I was going to see a Dracula play, got ballet instead. What was weird was that it was at the theater where we have plays and musicals and opera and such instead of at the ballet met where you'd expect it.

We've got those same laws, but I doubt your average late night/early morning scrap picker cares much about securing his load of junk and/or stolen metal.

Well today is off to a wonderful start. Driving into work early this morning and some kind of junk flew out of a busted up old pickup in front of me. Tried to swerve to miss it but saw it to late. Now I'm sitting here with a busted up front end and a flat tire waiting on a tow truck.

I'd prefer to live in a rural environment, as far away from other people as possible. And we have plans on building a retirement home some day either on the farm, or we may buy a little bit of land down in Appalachia and disappear down there. That being said, I currently choose to live in an urban environment because as much as I don't like living packed in with people I absolutely despise commuting. So as long as my offices are downtown, so am I. It's got some benefits though, I can walk or bike just about everywhere, I'm close to all the shopping and restaurants I'd ever need, and there's a great library and museum within walking distance. Thankfully, my job gets me out into wild spaces on a pretty regular basis, so I've got plenty of opportunities to get away from the concrete jungle and decompress. Which makes it not so bad.

I'll try anything on a cheeseburger, as long as it's something I can eat. The more interesting stuff the better, as long as it doesn't get so big I can't fit it in my mouth. On top of a neighbor's three story house. No idea how he got up there, but I had to climb out on their roof to get him down. Yes and yes. 28: Well, it was a very busy February. So sure. But it's looking like an even busier spring, So I'm guessing I'll eventually be missing my February levels of busy-ness. 29: Probably most of them, but Greyhawk is the only one I can remember right now. 30: Nope. 31: No, but one of my players shared his business head shot with the group recently, and his character mini in our Shadowrun-ish world is due for some touch ups. So I'm going to paint it to match his professional photo. That should illicit a few chuckles around the table.

22: Nope, never heard of it. 23: I've played a few weird ones I thought were really fun that I think folks should try if they're so inclined. Kobolds Ate My Baby is great fun, more so if you like to drink whiskey and shout a lot while you game. Cats of Catthulhu is fun if you like playing a cat that battles cosmic horror. Plus the art is just fun. Everyone is John is a one page rpg where you are one of the personalities of John, a guy suffering from multiple personality issues. You compete with the other players to take control of John and achieve your own goals. That's one of the few I've gotten non gaming people to enjoy. I occasionally play in a group that still uses 2e rules. One of the players recently suggested we try 5e out as a way to see how far things have progressed. We vetoed that crap.