I have this amazing sister and brother-in-law who like to buy & paint miniature fantasy figures. They were nice enough to pick me up a set of minis while visiting the factory store recently (at my request (begging, pleading, request…same thing, right?)) and mail it to me.

I waited patiently for the package to come, being careful not to annoy them with my reminders to actually put it in the mail.

Once it arrived, I anxiously opened the package and studied the figures, knowing that I only had a few pieces of artwork from the gaming publisher and a few other references to go on for color schemes. Another amazing sister was visiting for the summer and agreed to go paint shopping with me. We hit up a local hobby store that proved to be thin on the necessary supplies, so we ventured to an actual gaming store an hour and a half away to pick up the required supplies and another mini (since we were there). I then set about the task of painting the minis.

I had looked for a good magnifying apparatus before starting, but was unsuccessful, so I decided to just go for it even though I could barely make out the tiny figures details. Once a base coat was applied things were a bit easier to see, but still required a steadier hand than mine for details.

The results are below, and I think are fairly successful for a first attempt. The macro images show a number of flaws that I will address when I obtain a magnifying object to paint under. Still, I’m happy with them and I think this will be a long term hobby.

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My wife actually helped to paint some of the details on Balazar The Summoner and offered some advice on techniques. My sister, two brothers, and two nephews fed my ego by stating how good they looked and how much talent I was showing by the results. My daughter even said they looked OK.

Thanks to everyone for your support. I’ll try to enjoy my hobby in a bit more refrained mode going forward as I am sure everyone has heard enough about it lately. :)

Here’s some pictures I took as some random silliness was taking place at my Dad’s. The chautauqau info pics are from a magazine I found at the library and I wanted to capture the info to look up later as the magazine was not available for checkout.

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Some pictures I took of interesting things (imo) as I walked my route.

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There are a lot of interesting places and views in town, so if you happen to be up early and see me walking and taking pictures, don’t be alarmed, I’m not planning any robberies or anything.

So, we went to the Greenfield Farmers Market the other day and bought, among other things, a quart of fresh blackberries from an Amish lady. I love blackberry cobbler, so that’s the plan for these guys. My wife, who is apparently not much of a fan of cobbler, said “get me a recipe and I’ll make it.”

Thinking healthy I figured I’d try looking on the Sparkpeople site for a user submitted recipe and  here it is:

http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=167560

Now, to see how it turns out!

As promised in my related post I have taken some better pictures. I took the dice to a strange land, rarely seen; the outdoors.

Seriously, they turned out ok using my faithful camera box (AKA storage bin, really the duct tape of the camera box world in my opinion). Here they are:

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I mentioned Sparkpeople.com in my last post. Sparkpeople is a great web site for getting motivated, finding answers, locating workout buddies, learning how to eat healthy and tracking your fitness goals. It’s probably like some of the other sites like Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers but it is free. I’ve not used those sites, so I can’t be sure.

I like MapMyFitness.com for mapping my routes, but they want you to pay them to print the routes and utilize other features.

Sparkpeople makes maps?

I’ve just made do with it up to now. I discovered this morning, as I logged into Sparkpeople.com to log my workout, that they now too have a mapping application similar to that offered by MapMyFitness.com. And, being Sparkpeople.com, it is free!

Here’s my route on their tool: http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/fitness_maps_home.asp?ab=0&rt=mjcoFly}{Ni@cSsJXeEHkOzDkZ|HdDlXxEkApBnMtMuDdDcAeEaZhNcDpIOxDIx@KFxE

Well, it seems it is that time again when I study recent pictures taken of me and realize that it is, in fact, not my imagination that I have been eating too much and doing too little.

I’ll fall back on two trusty tools I used while in Florida:

• Sparkpeople.com
• MapMyFitness.com

Both are excellent tools and the first thing I did was ccreate a route for the town I live in now.

My goal was to get started when I hit town since I did not have excuse of big city traffic anymore. I was quick to jump on other excuses such as snow, rain, too many chores after the move, and the perennial favorite; “I don’t feel like it right now.”

That’s done with. I’m going to be chugging water and getting out there!

Here’s a link to the course if you’d like to join me: http://www.mapmyfitness.com/route/detail/20369076/

I ordered some dice from eBay earlier in the week and they arrived today!

It’s ensemble of 100 dice plus some bonus item for a total of 107 dice!

I chose bonus options of 5 jumbo 20 sided dice that were offered. I also received in the kit two metallic blank 6 sided dice, which was an awesome surprise!

The complete breakdown of the kit is as follows:

Here’s a (bad) picture:

I plan to take some better pictures than this and will post them when I have them.

Included in the package was one complete set (D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, D20) of smoke tinted dice. All in all it amounts to 9 complete sets, plus plenty of extras of D20’s and D8’s. Mix that in with the other complete set I purchased before plus some extra D6’s and we should be able to have some good sized games around here!

Anybody got any extra dice bags? :) Actually my wife said she could make me some. A skill I did not ask if she had when we got married, but should have!

Hi all! I have added another game to the site called Bru. It’s one of those games that once you start, time may just begin to warp a bit. Enjoy!

Click the image to go to the game.

Hi all! I have just added added a new game to the site called Mystic Jungle. It’s a flash game for your enjoyment.

Click the image to go to the game.