Hobby Stuff

  I enjoy painting miniatures.

As you can see from the picture above, this is a multi-step process. What you see there is a nearly completed Dragon alongside a couple of units in the early stages. I like to separate my figures into the units they will be in if and when my brothers and I go back to playing Warhammer.
Mixed in are a couple of random completed guys.

The red and orange guy is completes as is the charging knight.
Simply

another angle of those two figures.

Standing alone

is some sort of cleric. Sadly, the camera I have has no better than 3x Optical Zoom. Not good enough to really show the detail. 
And this one is just too dark to see anything at all.

 I wish

the camera was better able to show detail. Orange and black are the primary colors, but I use some black, gold, silver, copper, and so forth. If you look low beneath the red robes you can see some of the silver but that is about all the visible detail.These

are actually the dwarf units once they were completed. The primary color is the silver of their armor with red trim. Their weapons are also silver with gold highlights. Their pendants are copper, their leather brown, their shoes black, and so forth.Simply another view showing the entire army. Well, all except the cannon I am still working on.

Here you can see a bit more of the detail: their yellow hair, the copper shield, the gold, black and copper instrument.  I don't think it shows the shields well which is unfortunate. 

The figure on the right center standing alone is the dwarf commander, the one slightly to his left the troll slayer. I deliberately changed up how I painted the troll slayer. Hopefully the detail shows. Here is a close-up of just the two of them, but it is not well lighted.

These From the back; yes, you have just been mooned by a miniature.

The figures below are Dwarf Thunderers. As you can see, I try to do quite a bit with highlights. The gun barrels are black, the sights are gold, the handle wooden brown. The helmets are primarily silver, the horns copper, the banding copper with gold rivets. Their beards are yellow, their gloves red, and so forth.

Another look at them, closer but darker.

The miners also have some nice detail. Look at the lantern. Gold lid, black iron, yellow lights...and the instrument to the right has some nice gold detailing. The theory behind all the gold, copper and silver is the Dwarf army is a group defending mines and thus would show signs of wealth. Besides, when grouped on the field, they look smurfing awesome. 

I wish this picture wasn't so dark as these guys are some of my favorites. Their axe blades are primarily silver but the runes etched into them I painted gold. It looks really cool. When you can see them, that is...

Time is a precious thing...let's waste some together

There are certain signs available I might have too much time on my hands. If you ever get bored, take a look at my poker writings, for example...I go WAY beyond just saying, "Oh, here was a key hand" and actually go into what I was thinking, what I think the opponent was thinking, what I think they think I was thinking...that is pretty unnecessary for a recreational player. Or check out how many movies I see on my movie review site. Or the Blazer blog I maintain during the season. And that does not even cover my research on Native Americans (a private blog I write more on that most of the others), my business research blog, or some of the books I am working on.

Someone with that many things they WRITE about surely has too much time on their hands.

Not as much time as...say...the kid who thought a good way to celebrating was to dress himself as a penis and run across stage...yeah, that'll get the girls (or boys)...(and yes, you are welcome for the picture)...but let's face it. Even the time he took in coming up with that was not completely wasted. Admit it. You laughed.

No, to truly waste time, people would have to do something like race snails...after all, what could be more fun than watching several of the slowest creatures on earth race...when they don't even know they are racing and therefore have no motivation for running? It sure is a good thing nobody is stupid enough to try that...like, racing snails or something. Oh, wait a second...

Hey, how come nobody has contacted Guinness Book of World Records about this? The World's Fastest Snail would truly be an accomplishment worth verifying. Kind of like attending the most funerals... I take it back, my time is actually spent in things of great value by comparison.

Maybe it was a sign

The marriage started in 2006. On that everyone is clear. It ended already so it clearly was not meant to be. It is too bad there was not some sign...like, you know, during the wedding ceremony, would it have been a sign things were not meant to be if her $2000 wedding dress were to have the seams come apart while she was standing at the altar and she went through the rest of the ceremony bare-butt?

Now, it seems there are lots of things to consider here. First...some people wear underwear. Just sayin'... Second, would it have been too much to temporarily stop the ceremony and enact some hasty albeit temporary repairs?

But best of all, I think it is pretty funny that the lawsuit over the incident outlasted the marriage at which the incident took place. Yeah, I am sick that way.

Here comes the two-fer

I must apologize for yesterday's ridiculous post. I mean, seriously...who writes about themed restaurants? I guess it could have been worse. I could have written about a restaurant with a death theme. Nah....that would be way too ridiculous...though NOT as ridiculous as said restaurant being denied "World's Largest Coffin" status by the Guinness Book of World Records because, and I quote..."they had yet to receive an application from Ukraine".

A non-comedic post; Heartwarming? Only if you have a heart

I think autism is overdiagnosed which is unfortunate because there are some people who truly are autistic. We are so desperate to catalog every possible illness, disease, disorder, etc. that we often take normal human behavior, label it, convince people they have it, and create an epidemic. Nevertheless, when people are truly ill or incapacitated it is genuinely sad.

Dylan Hargreaves is one of those cases. By the age of 4 he still could not utter a single word. Fortunately, he has a loving, caring family. And one of the things they did was the man gave the mother a parrot. She taught the parrot a few words. And by listening to the bird...now Dylan can break off a couple of those words.

"Now when I put him to bed he says, 'Night, night, mum'. It means the world to me."

Now, for the most part I own up to being a cold-hearted weasel but I have to admit...even I think that is pretty cool.