Sunday, May 26, 2013

Back from Vacation

My dear wife and I have just returned from a week cruising the Danube.  Great fun, we were well looked after and got to see a great cross section of Hungary, Austria and Bavaria.

Vienna is now going to be the main target of our next vacation.  I have never been more comfortable in a city of more than a million, and I have been to a couple. 

This was not a military-oriented vacation, but I do include for your amusement a sample of 40mm or so toy soldiers seen on castle hill in Budapest.

I'm writing more about the tour, as a guide for disabled travelers as much as anything, on a separate page.  I'll make an announcement here when that is ready.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

SF wins for a week (or two)

OK, the rotation in 3-day units thing is not flying.  But I am making progress on the SF front, re-opening processing of the star database to refine out mass data for my future history project.

Saturday, March 16, 2013

My first weeks rotation was...

almost a complete week of being sick.  Really annoying and still not back to 100%.  After a couple of days out of line. my blood sugar is back where it needs to be so that much is good.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Trying a rotation

I have not been finishing very much lately, or really more than getting a few things started.  I want to change that; so here is my plan:
  1. Make progress on one project from a core list at least every second night
  2. Spend no more than two nights in a row on any one project
The core projects will be:
  1. The Renaissance - one of novel, background for RPG (and novel), 15mm basing or 28mm painting.  Any of these will count, but just reading will not.
  2. WWII - produce a plan to complete organization, re-base units that should be on smaller stands, and in general get going.  
  3. Science Fiction - work on the data or game models for an SF campaign, or on an SF novel set in the same future history. 
  4. Any of FPW, spaceship gaming, 6mm or 15mm SF gaming, 10mm not-SYW, or just reading what takes my fancy (but with a blog entry about the book).
On the personal side, my radical new diet has let me bring my blood sugar under control for the first time in ages so I might actually have the energy to follow along with this.
 

Friday, March 1, 2013

Scattered all over the place

So what I am up to now?
  1. Still working on the mystery novel.  Really, it is more accurate to say that I am working on the research - quattrocento Italian social history is absolutely fascinating.  There is an amazing amount of work available especially Renaissance Florence.  Not just art but building, dress, political administration, medicine, funerals ... the whole nine yards.  I am going to have to find some way both to organize what I know, and them somehow drag a plot and characters ouut of some other part of my brain.
  2. Pithead has recently released 75mm Soviet regimental guns.  My brave Don lads have been waiting for theirs for a long time.  I have no idea when I will get back to the period, but I must get in the kit!
  3. Ross has been steadily delivering painted 15mm Italian wars from my huge backlog.  I will get back to basing them shortly.
  4. Another plan I may come to regret - I have been slow to push ahead with painting my 10mm Franco-Prussian war figures for my Mars-la-Tour project.  I will be ordering a couple of packs for Heroics and Ros 1:300 French and North German infantry to see if I can get them on the table at good speed and if I like how they look.
  5. I am still going to Italian lessons; we have covered all three regular conjugations in the present tense, but mastery is far off.  Still, since Dadi & Piombo  is now available in pdf form so I bought an issue and am working to plod my way through with dictionary, grammar and verb guide.
All in all, life is going well. My dear wife and I have just had a festival of the first six seasons of the  US cop show "The Closer".  The characters are interesting and it often managers to be a pretty good "fair" mystery as well.