2007: May It Be A Happier New Year! A quick post. Arrived home a few minutes ago from my most-of-New Year's Eve time over at Crypt Leak & Abbygal 's. We had a fun time, almost ringing in the new year, eating, drinking, talking and eventually playing about 10 games of Man Bites Dog . One alcoholic drink along the way (gin & Wink was actually a nice combination) which was just fine for me. As always, my appreciation for the hospitality. The final minutes of 2006 running past, I can't say that I feel any more optimistic about 2007 than I did about 2006, nor do I feel any more capable of dealing with the problems that are dogging me from 2006 as they follow me into the new year. I keep waiting for an Exit sign to light up or a switch to throw in my head (no, I'm not necessarily courting a stroke) but I'm aware that I'm just burning time. Any true resolutions remain unset, and if that changes it'll likely remain my secret. Public declarations of resoluti...
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Magic Mirror at the End of Time Half a day remaining in 2006, and at the pace the time's been keeping through this holiday stretch it almost wouldn't feel out of line to start getting ready for work Tuesday right now. Ugh. This past Thursday Crypt Leak and Abbygal were kind enough to host another gaming session, for which I was the least prepared of any of them so far. This saw me hauling a huge number of clix with me, and not even doing that efficiently. While I generally think of myself as empathetic (though more often I simply drop the first syllable), I often confront myself anywhere from minutes to days to months or worse later with the same scene from a different perspective. So it was with part of this past Thursday. See, I was mostly irritated with myself for lack of preparation. This was made worse because I'd believed I'd brought the majority of my Marvel clix -- at least the majority of the ones that were on my list of figures to go on the 300 point te...
Dick wants us to remember that to forgive is divine! I know, this is more of a political post, but I can't help it. Reading an AP article (reproduced below) about Dick Cheney hailing Ford's pardon of Nixon -- especially now in the shadow of Saddam Hussein's rope trick dance -- I couldn't help but chuckle at the thought that he one of the spirits that visited him on Christmas Eve might have found a nervous Cheney tugging at a spectral noose around his own neck as he looks into the next few years. Associated Press Cheney Hails Ford's Pardon of Nixon By CALVIN WOODWARD and JEFF WILSON 12.30.06, 8:31 PM ET With the thunder of cannon and the whistle of a bos'n pipe, the nation's capital honored Gerald R. Ford's memory Saturday in funeral ceremonies recalling the touchstones of his life, from combat in the Pacific to a career he cherished in Congress to a presidency he did not seek. Old colleagues, today's leaders and ordinary Americans remembered him ...
Origin Update (The full 96?) I was going to simply update my post from this past Saturday, but Blogger started throwing fits via spontaneously generating superfluous code, so I thought I'd leave that post be and display the expanded list here. As before, my earlier comments are in red . After the list I'll make some general comments. CONFIRMED CHARACTERS: #01-03 Blackhawks (Stanislaus/Hendrickson/Blackhawk) Well... that's darn close to a generic, I suppose. #04-06 Phantom Lady Now we can dig out Deathstroke and have him kill her again and again. #07-09 Robotman (Cliff Steele) Good! I'm a big fan of the original Doom Patrol. The only worry is which design they'll use. #10-12 Ray I was going to say the modern one doesn't mean much to me, but then I realized the earlier version didn't really either. #13-15 Wildcat It'll be nice to see him added -- and to come that much closer to a full JSA team. I'm expecting Willpower, Toughness and Close Combat Expert...
Giddyap, Christmas! As events (which I'll mention more after the fact) threw off our Christmas Day plans, we've opened everything tonight. For the most part everyone's happy with what they received. For my part, Darren and Tammy sent me an Unpainted Huffheimer Arizona shirt, a quality item referencing a fun, quirky movie. Unless it's still too damned warm out I'll wear it to Thursday's gaming session. Thanks! Wife & kids came up with a Days of Future Past set for me, which had me happy I'd held off on picking one up for myself since it came out so soon after Supernova. A new, advanced Sentinel , Colonel Logan and Rachel Summers in her Hound mode bring me an interesting new trio, along with new rules for the Sentinels and a new map that ties into the maps from the Danger Room set. From out of the Windy City, Grant sent me the Aliens set ! Set up as a Horrorclix set, it's nonetheless something easily brought into a Heroclix game. Whether or ...
Toys! It's Christmas Eve! While such things are sadly long behind me in most respects, how many Christmas Eves was I in high anticipation of some special toy? Well, what better time for a bit of commercial nostalgia? Well, at least that's where I'm starting, with a commercial for a set of toys I was very much into -- Major Matt Mason: Mattel's Man In Space! These were likely my favorite toys of the late 1960s. They didn't even show all the cool things the Space Crawler could do. Here's another of the toys I opened on a Christmas morning long ago. It's a dangerous, evil-smelling toy that brought burns and several messes: Creepy Crawlers !: From a little later on -- something I don't believe I owned, but a grade school buddy was deeply into little racing cars so I got to play with these: Sizzlers! Jumping back into the middle sixties, this is one of those toys a cousin of mine who never asked for a toy he didn't get, it's the Electro Shot Shoot...
The H o l i d ay s -- at Last! I've been holding off on posts recently in part because I've simply been too tired and mostly because I found myself holding off until I could say "I'm done!" Well, that last part isn't happening just yet -- but I'm getting close. The pic up top, and the next side shot, are courtesy of Crypt Leak , who use the camera in his new phone to catch this... enthusiastic bit of seasonal, vehicular dress-up. Click on each image to get a larger view. The nativity scene in the grillwork is somewhat inspired. This was in a parking lot near El Cancun, where we (this being a trio including Jason, CL's assistant) decided to have lunch on that last work day before the holiday break. My wife had been in the hospital a week earlier, from Monday the 11th through Monday the 18th, and there were follow-up visits and multiple runs to the pharmacy throughout this past week, which meant another week of havoc wreaked on the work schedule, though ...
Looking towards Origin (Updated 12/26, as full REV & unique list is added.) The niggardly dispatch of information about new sets from Wizkids has seen people fishing about for any and all news for this DC set, the first new expansion for 2007. Above is the best shot of the artwork that'll be on the boxes, and here to the right is apparently what we'll be seeing in the figure gallery as a set symbol once they start revealing any of the figures from the set. While their offices are shut down for the holiday weekend there's some hope (however slim) that the pieces are in place for him to trigger the first of the set's sneak peeks in the next day or so. Since it's been made clear that the Heroclix Brand Manager (Mark Tuttle) is the one who decides when such things are done, here's hoping he'll decide to do so instead of trying to starve us into getting excited about the January Horrorclix expansion, for which he is also the Brand Manager. (If that's the...
B r o u - h o - h o Another of those holiday culture clashes you may have read about: Airport removes Christmas trees to avoid lawsuit . A report from ABC claims the rabbi "asked" (though since it was part of a legal action, perhaps "demanded" would be more in order, "the port of Seattle, which runs the airport, to build an eight-foot menorah and hold a lighting ceremony." That's a critical difference, as it's not as if another religious group with a December holiday offered to donate something -- leaving it to the airport authorities to simply deal with the logistics of whether or not they had the space to accomodate it -- but if this story is true the demand was for the port authority to not only construct the giant menorah but to arrange a lighting ceremony. If true, then the rabbi deserves to be seen as the source of the problem rather than someone who brings a solution. The 1989 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that both Christmas trees and menorah...
Tonight's the company Christmas party, which naturally enough makes me want to do something else. Still, it reminds me of the coming season in a warped fashion, so here's this. So, here's something posted, claiming to be the cast of Scrubs worked into the Charlie Brown Christmas roles. I believe I've seen most of an episode of the sitcom during its first season and that was about it. It's difficult carving out time for a sitcom. Tags : Charlie Brown Christmas , Scrubs re-dub
Kibbles & Bits Well, really just some bits. Nothing specific to post about, but it'd been three days since my most recent post, so even a brief post seemed a better idea than none. I'm in the same spot that likely many of you are, trying to juggle time and finances in getting ready for the holidays. I'm having even less patience than usual with work items as being pinned down there finds me thinking about what I could be getting done otherwise. It's a wintry Spring fever. I know this is going to only intensify in the near future, especially if I don't knock down the stack of pre-holiday items. This Saturday's the company Christmas party, and I'm finding myself looking forward to it even less than usual. I'll be keeping my time there to a minimum. It's no fault of the company (well, there's one decision I won't go into that rankles me), it's just that I don't enjoy these things. There are obviously many people who do -- including ...
Rock, Paper, Scissors Not getting home until after 3:30 this morning definitely threw my schedule off. A day lost to some domestic tasks, shopping, meal prep, some family business, a little movie watching and some attempts to sleep. Only sleeping for three to four hours at a stretch continues to leave me... un-recharged. Hopefully I'll manage a longer stretch tonight; coming up on a Monday morning the only thing that's worth betting on is that I'll feel most like sleeping when the time comes to get up and start getting ready for the work week. CL & A , as ever, were wonderful hosts, and three out of household pets were happy to hang out with us for as long as we wished. That was for yesterday's gaming day , which had several things that worked out, including all five of us being there. We didn't get a start with the game until 4:30 or so Saturday afternoon. At least at this level of player experience paring it down to 500 pt builds (from the odd 640-ish ones th...
Push! Kept busy today, and just as importantly I kept away from work for the day. I still need some sleep -- didn't get anywhere near enough last night and when I dropped for a brief nap in the late morning, and with a gaming day coming up over at Crypt Leak & Abbygal 's on Saturday I'll need to be rested. I prepared the main meal - a hit-as-you-please one - for Saturday at the same time I was waiting for Friday's dinner to finish cooking. Simmering in the crock pot is a beef stew I'll make final adjustments to in the morning. Extremely unseasonal warmth -- which became sticky Friday as some rain started to fall -- has been cleared out by the system that swept across so much of the nation in the past 36 hours. We're headed for highs around 30 degrees cooler Saturday than the near 70 we saw Friday, and that's fine with me. For many of you similar drops have happened, and in some cases that's meant snow and ice. As for the game day prep, I still draw...