Desk?

Start of a work desk. Maybe.

The new yard seems popular with my leporid brothers and sisters.

Still daydreaming about painting and games. Mostly still occupied with miserable shit.

Black Scorpion Pirate Giant

In more positive news, just before I moved I scored an amazing deal on a figure I've wanted for a while, but has always been out of my price range. Even better is that it is really well painted. In fact, the paint job alone is worth twice what I paid. In fact, I'm pretty sure the figure retailed for around twice what I paid, so this was a super bargain. 

Photo doesn't do it justice. I don't have a painting & photo desk set up yet, so this was the best I could do. At least I knew where to find my reliable old reference figure, for scale!

After I uploaded the pic to photobucket, I noticed a similarity to another recent pic...

:) The resemblance is uncanny...

Settling In and an Uncertain Future

We're getting settled into the new house, while completing the last of the cleaning at the old house. Most of my stuff is in storage for now. I've been debating how to arrange a multi-function desk for both work, painting, etc. Even that is seeming like a daunting problem right now. I'm not even certain where will be much room for my books, etc. To be honest, it's starting to seem like it's going to be a giant hassle and I'm still not going to be able to play any actual games -- not only are games vs. others still out of reach (due to time/schedule impossibilities), but I no longer have anywhere to set up solo (or remote) games. So, for now everything's packed away anyway, I'm just going to see how things play out before considering going back into retirement.

I'm beginning to feel that the interests of my past are increasingly incompatible with the limitations of my current life & commitments.

The Eagle Has Landed

Most of the pieces parts have made it to the new house. Now to put it all together.

I'm still hoping to work out a painting desk. Optimistically thougb, it's probably a few weeks before I have spacetime for any potential painting/hobby stuff

Oldhammer Shirt

I'm not normally one for selfies, but my Oldhammer in the New World shirt arrived this past week, and I thought I'd add my own photo to those on the FB group. Trying to make my best Sad Hobbit face as I pack up my (extremely messy) painting table, in the background. (At the risk of jinxing things, the move has been going pretty smoothly so far.)

Movin' Right Along (Goodbye Attic)

Movin' right along...

Well, the moving is more like this...

I'm in the process of packing the attic. Most of the pre-move cleaning and maintenance on the new house is done. Although we've been packing and moving stuff into storage for a couple weeks, I've finally hit the point where I need to pack the "active" areas of my art & gaming stuff. And it's bringing me down, more than just a little, because there's simply no room at the new house. Most of it's going into damp-basement storage, or being sold or trashed. I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with some alternate ideas. I've been spoiled by the luxury (relatively speaking) of having this attic for the past few years. So I think I'm just having some adjustment issues -- as well as a bit of bitterness over the cause & conditions of this move.

eBay Pro-Tip

This is long overdue, but I finally de-cluttered saved eBay searches quite a bit.

Tired of seeing certain sellers spam the hell out of a category or keyword with scams?

Yeah... that's an Old Glory Ice Troll. Still in production. A pack of 4 different figures (I spotted three of them from this pack in one of my searches) will set you back $18 direct from the manufacturer. Or $10.80 if you're an Old Glory Army member. You can order all you like. The staff at Old Glory are really helpful. If you wanted to get 1000 of these "Rare" figures cast up, I'm sure they'd be happy to oblige. So you can get them as easy as that for $4.50 (or less!) each.

This particular seller spams eBay with thousands of "Rare" figures like this... still in production, but at big mark-ups. The same unsold crap posted over and over again... for years. If they want to prey on unsuspecting buyers, that's their business. Sleazy business, but theirs. My own concern is that I don't want my followed search results to be cluttered with hundreds of their garbage ads.

I've previously looked into blocking sellers, but eBay only lets you block buyers. (The company really has become more pro-seller focused over the years, allowing scam artists and "career eBayers" to overwhelm the old "yard sale" feel of the site long ago.) But I finally discovered this trick in the Advanced Search settings....

By default, you can search within a single seller's listings. But you can reverse that in the pull-down menu to exclude a seller. I haven't tried it, but I'm guessing you can add multiple sellers using commas. But for now, there is only one douchebag seller that I need to block to cut out about 90% of the spam I see on eBay.

This is probably common knowledge to many. But for those who are a bit... behind the times, like me, I figured I would pass on my new found enlightenment. ;)

Two Things I Need

I need to make this mug idea a reality. (Luckily, it's easy to get a one-off custom mug these days.)

I also need to get this shirt...

All Quiet on the...

I've been quiet the past month, largely because I've been really busy. That's a bit of a "good news/bad news" story. I'll start with the good. A lot of it has been personal & family stuff. Everyone seems to be getting married this Spring/Summer, as well as the usual assortment of other events & activities. I'm even trying to enjoy the outdoors and get a bit more active, too. I'm the crazy old man on a skateboard for the first time in something like 25 years, and I'm finally learning how to swim!

I also finally got back into a long overdue vinyl (multiple) toy commission project. I didn't measure, but he's something like 8"-9" tall.

I'm not sure if I shared the other two before. (I haven't completed no. 03 yet, he's been the big hold-up lately, before I finally decided to go ahead and work on nos. 04 & 05 recently.) They're on my art & toy page. Blog. Whatevs. I also painted a little one for my niece's birthday. She's been repainting Littlest Pet Shop toys (more or less a similar thing) as well as doing a lot of drawing. I had briefly wondered if it was a little too weird/creepy for a young kid, but she's the only reason I know what Five Nights at Freddy's is, so I'm probably safe. :)



So now to the bad news. We have been living in the top two floors of a a duplex for years. Things started off OK, but unfortunately the family below us moved a few years ago, and since then we've had a string of bad tenants living below us, as well as some problems with one of the neighbors. Not minor nuisances - I mean serious threats to health and safety. I feel that we should have called in Exterminatus long ago.

So we are hunting for a single family home. No more mystery tenants and their problems.

Hunting for a rental home sucks.

Of the limited choice available, it boils down to this: you can have a nice house in a shitty school system, or a shitty house in a quality school system. This is something I've never had to deal with until recently. In fact, one of the reasons we live where we currently do is the great schools. Unfortunately, the only options around here leave us at the mercy of sharing a house or apartment with mystery tenants, and that has not been working out.

Naturally I am concerned with how this will impact my gaming hobby. ;) Not that I've gamed much, but I still daydream about that part. We still haven't signed a lease, so there is a lot still up in the air. However, we did find a rare nice home in a good (well, one of the best around, actually) school districts. The problem is... it's small. Probably no gaming table, and I'm not even sure how a painting desk will pan out. I will consider it a challenge in downsizing and efficiency.

Also, moving into a single means my small gaming budget is going to be crunched further. Luckily I think I'm set with quite a bit to paint for a while. In fact, I just scored a rare eBay bargain, and acquired some of the middle-era Citadel metal wight cavalry on plastic skeletal horses, and the all metal mounted wight lord.

Lastly, I have been feeling the itch to start a very small scale sci-fi skirmishing project. I've been envying a lot of the oldschool Rogue Trader projects I've seen on other blogs & forums. So maybe something like that, or Inquisimunda. Or maybe something along the lines of Space Hulk in gameplay -- confined combat, limited scope, and accessible to solo play. Some friends and I used to play very small point games of 2nd ed. 40k on Space Hulk & Adv. Space Crusade tiles and enjoyed that quite a bit, too. Not sure... I like the idea of avoiding "armies" -- so more like rogue traders, pirates, etc.

One More Fimir.... THEN back to Marienburg

So I lied a little.... just one more Fomorian/Fimir before really working on a lot of Marienburgers. (In truth, I have just cleaned, prepped & primed a pile of halberdiers -- just no real paint work on them yet.)

This is "Morrighu - Fomorian Witch" from Krakon games. Second pic next to a couple of my conversions for scale comparison.