Christmas Time! And Battletech!

Christmas has come and gone again.
This year was pretty impressive in many ways. We ended up buying the biggest tree the kid's have ever had, there were piles of presents under the tree, and Santa really delivered this year (especially for Corwin!).

All of the kids got Lego sets (some came from Santa), the older kids got a Discovery Channel microscope, lots of books, the stockings were full of treats.
Jen, Paul, and Fyodor sent the kids a second generation Disney Infinity Avengers starter set for the Xbox 360 (all of the kids are nuts for it!)

And then the kids woke up Christmas morning and Corwin found this.

It's an Aircraft Carrier. The two boys flipped out when they saw it, and I don't know which of them plays with it more. They fight over it almost constantly too. It is quite large, though the picture doesn't really do it justice.

Saffron got a large Lego set, and I also gave her a CD/Radio Boombox all of her own. As well as a copy of Peter and the Wolf, narrated by Patrick Stewart. She's been listening to it, while reading a copy of the book I got when I was close to her age.

All in all, everyone got lots of presents and had a pretty good time. Bobo and I got plenty of goodies as well. Cooking stuff, cool books, the Agricola board game (which we got to play finally. Complicated, but fun  and every thing makes sense after you work your way through the rules).

I was also able to finish painting most of my new Battletech stuff that I got earlier, as well as my the tanks that I've had for a while. I decided to paint them all as a mercenary company (who's name is yet undetermined). The paint scheme matches with my Griffon and Battlemaster 'mechs as well, which gives me a current roster of six mechs and 4 tanks. I made a list of mechs that I still want to aquire as well...it's rather long. I guess it shows my tastes as well, because everything on it is from the 3025 readout.

Here's some pics of the finished mechs.

Group Shot!

Cataphract, Hatchetman and the two Marsden II heavy tanks

Marauder, Enforcer, and the two Patton/Rommel heavy tanks

I'm thinking about naming the outfit The Crimson Thunder Company

Corwin's Birthday

I'm horrible at this. My excuse is work, of course. Keeps me to busy to remember to update things properly.

But it is that time of year! Corwin's Birthday and Christmas!
Corwin is five years old now. Almost as hard to think about as Saffron turning seven in October. For his Birthday, Isabeau and I took everyone to the local Bullwinkles, where I had conveniently won a $50 gift card the last time we were there. The kids had a great time playing in the Fun Fortress, especially Osric who found a ball pit full of giant balls bigger than himself!

He had a great time. Then we played video games, a couple of prize games, and mini golf (sorta).
Then we went to Red Robin for a Birthday Dinner. Which was entertaining. We went on the Sunday that the Seahawks played the Niners, so the entire staff was dressed in Seahawks paraphernalia.
And every tv was playing the game of course. Corwin was entranced by it. First time he saw what was happening, he exclaimed that they were wrestling over the ball! And now they're doing it again!
It was fantastic.
Earlier in the day we did presents and the kids played pin the tail on the pony.

Saffron had made the pony.

All in all, everyone had a pretty good time.

Saffron's Birthday, Bullwinkles, and Halloween

In just three days it is going to be Saffron's birthday! Seven years old already...

Yesterday I took Saffron and Corwin to the Bullwinkles Restaurant and Family Fun Center (they still exist!) in Edmonds for lunch and an hour of playing games. This is the second time we've gone. It's not as good as the old one in San Jose, but I wasn't really expecting it to be. On the other hand, in addition to the video games and ticket games, the also have a mini golf course, laser tag, bumper cars, bumper boats, batting cages, aerial jungle gym, bungie jumper, and possibly a couple of other games...it's pretty big! The food there, while not five star, is not actually that bad. And the staff is pretty friendly too.

Last week I finally made it out out of the house to go and do something geeky! I made a Meetup account and managed to join (and attend) a board game day at the 'Round the Table Gamer Pub in Edmonds. It was this locations second meetup, so it's still pretty small, but the Group (named Inclusive Geekery) is pretty well established so I expect it to grow. I'm signed up to attend the next one on November 4th as well.
In addition, Bobo and I played Battletech last night for the first time in months, which was quiet nice.

And lastly, Halloween is right around the corner! We've been getting our first real taste of Washington weather this week as well. Lots of rain, and some strong wind (gusts up to 60mph!).
The weather is supposed to be wet on Halloween, which will be exciting. Isabeau is hard at work on Saffron's Elsa dress

Here's Saffron is trying it on for size! Saffron decided that she wanted the coronation dress.
Corwin is going to be a Robot, and Osric is going as Buzz Lightyear.

Life in general, Warcraft in particular

It's Nuts.

And as a result, I keep forgetting to post.

Things haven't really changed much since the last post, though I did stop by one of the local game shops to ask about Battletech. It's called Mogu Games, and as far as Battletech is concerned it was a bust. They still have a few items on clearance but no one plays regularly, so if I want to do Battletech again I'll need to start hunting on web for groups (or start my own). There is at least one other game store in Everett that I want to check out, and if I can find a group looking for a noob then I might start playing 40k instead. I have magnetized the turrets on my Patton/Rommel tanks, so now I can start painting them! And I can magnetize my Marder tanks as well. Painting them will be interesting.

Work is work. I've been doing overtime on a fairly regular basis, usually no more than an hour a day but it adds up. I've been doing Saturdays on a regular basis as well, from 6am to 12pm.


Isabeau and I started playing World of Warcraft again, partly just to have something nerdy to do together. There have been a ton of changes in preparation for the next expansion coming out, some good and some very bad (poor Hunters). One of the good things in my opinion is the Stat Squish. The last expansion in particular (but cataclysm too) saw an insanely stupid level of Hit Point inflation and what not, with some PCs hitting the 800k range. I had something like 620k, and the squish has dropped me down to about 77k. The seem to have fixed Protection Paladins a bit, because Darthic doesn't suck anymore, which makes me happy. Blood DKs however got a bit of the short end of the stick, having lost two of their main attacks, Heart strike and Frost strike. This leaves them a little short in the rotation which could be a problem as a tank. Hunters got pretty f****d though. Bobo is mad. So am I.
But enough of that.
One of the nicest things that changed is damage scaling. Going up against a lower level target usually didn't do much other than they couldn't hurt you very well. Damage went up a little, but nothing drastic. Until Now. Bobo and I two-manned the Lich King Saturday night, steam rolling through the raid in about half an hour, and most of that was spend healing the damn green dragon. The Lich King himself died so fast that we actually skipped phases. I kept waiting for him to kill us and it just never happened. During the airship battle, I jumped to the enemy ship only to have bobo hammer it so fast that it ran away with me still on board. I had to suicide. It was sorta like "Right! Time to whoop ass! Where's everyone going?!"
We had tried to do the raid just a week before the new patch, and it had sucked horribly. We kept getting to the airship and failing. We literally could not get past it. Then, a couple days ago I was helping Bobo quest on one of her alts, and I casually smacked a target for about 300k damage. From my tank. That's when we decided to try the Lich King again.
I also finished leveling Jafnharr up to 90, so there's that too.

I'm going save what else I have for another post, which I will start prepping tomorrow.

Until next time, Good Night!

Hello again!

I haven't done a new post recently, and the simple reason is that I have been way to tired to do one.
I haven't lost much weight at my new job, but it is doing great things for my withered muscles!

As such, I will try and make this a long post to get caught up with everything that has been happening.

First up, the new job.
I've been working for Magnum for about five weeks now, started out boxing units for the first three weeks. Once I started boxing, I found out just how much variety there is in these units. The weigh anywhere from 10 or 15 pounds for the mini units (I think these are more for RVs) up to 70 pounds for the big boys. Most units are for sale for the US, but a selection is for Europe as well, and gets special stickers to show it.
A couple weeks ago I got moved to the final testing station, and that's what I've been doing since. This next week I will likely get moved to the "High Pot" station and get trained on that. Once I have been trained on that, we will start doing a revolving stations setup, so that no one will get stuck doing any one thing for an entire shift. I look forward to this.
The facility has its own mini gym on site for any employees who feel like working out over lunch/breaks, which is interesting.
Also, I am the oldest person in the shipping department.  Not certain how that makes me feel.

Outside of work, things have been pretty quiet. We have been going to the Seattle Woodland Park Zoo on a regular basis, and picked up a membership on our first trip we liked it so much. Also, it is pretty inexpensive to visit/get a membership. It is a fairly large zoo, but the way it is laid out is very nice because it makes it feel like you have more space to yourself, with most of the popular exhibits spread out. We have taken lots of pictures, lol. Here are a few of our favorites. We all really like the wolves and bears. Every time we have visited the wolves have been hanging out right next to the fence.

Other than the zoo, last week we went to the local library where Isabeau and I got cards. Saffron got her very first library card as well! The library itself is really nice and the kids section has a large play area with toys to keep kids entertained.

As far as geekery goes....basically nada. What with working full time, I haven't had a lot of time to get out. Plus, what little free time we have, Isabeau and I would rather spend together right now. There will be time enough for geekery and all that.

I have been getting some painting done, however. I'll post pics of that later. Mostly working on my Orks. Bruce's Boyz just got reinforced with a couple purchases off ebay, in the form of a trio of Killa Kans, 5 Nobz, and a scratch built warbuggy (which was advertised as an ork truck, but is way to small, which is why no one else bid on it). I still have to paint my Stormboyz, Grots, assemble and paint my Trukk, the nobz, and the kans...I have a fair bit of orks...

That's all for now!

A new job!

One of the jobs I sent my resume to panned out and I went in for an interview Friday morning.

The company is called Magnum Energy and they primarily design and manufacture inverters for mobile and renewable energy applications (think RVs and solar arrays). I will be working on the assembly line in the final stage (testing/packaging/shipping).
It is going to involve a LOT of heavy lifting and working on my feet, so it's a good thing I don't shy from hard work. The inverters weigh about 70 lbs. a piece and I will be doing boxing to start for my first two weeks. This means moving the assembled inverter from the table to a box and the box into a taping machine as many as 200 times a day. This should do a good job of kicking my ass into shape!
I will be working from 7am to 3:30pm, which will still leave me with the rest of the day to relax, play with the kids, and make dinner as necessary.

I'm fairly excited about it, as it seems like a solid company to work for and I like the people I've met so far.
I also like the idea of working for a "Made in the U.S.A." company.

And so barring any sudden disasters, I will be starting work on the 7th.

Oh crap, we've been here for a week already!

>.> .... <.<

So yeah. It's already been a week!
We arrive last Tuesday afternoon and it has been a mad house since. Between unloading the truck, getting things tucked away, and organizing furniture, we have been very busy bees.
On top of that we had to get our new licenses for Washington (which, actually, was super easy. Also, very very different from California!). Next is registering the car, then getting AAA set up....But at least we have the interwebs!
We had to go with Comcast for that...D:
But it is very fast! I am currently downloading State of Decay at something like 1.9mbps. Which is insane to me.

Isabeau and I have also been applying to jobs this week, trying to get settled in that respect as well.

So, the apartment complex!
It's seems very nice so far. When we arrived and got the paperwork settled, we started to unload on our own (we had scheduled to have helpers come on Wednesday to help with the heavy stuff), and much to our surprise a bunch of kids from the complex just came out and volunteered to help unload! Crazy! Saffron has managed to become friends with a couple of siblings named Kaylee and Sunny (a young lady and her little brother) and has been playing with them a lot on the little playground.
Which is next to the lake!

Which has flocks of ducks and geese (which it is illegal to harass)

I will be taking more pictures of the complex and the kids to post in the next couple of days (hopefully).
Our locations pretty fantastic as well. We are a short walk from just about anything (except for a Target), and just a block from the main through fair in Everett. Despite that, the place is almost unnaturally quiet...
There is also a large and very nice playground  that is just a short walk from us, that we have gone to almost everyday since finding it.

That's all for now, I am hopefully going to get another post up soon.

Updates on moving and stuff

So far we are still trying to line up an apartment and it's been going slowly. I've gotten responses on two apartments that I've emailed, one just said thanks but we already filled it, the other was pretty promising but ultimately the corporate end wasn't comfortable with renting a two bedroom to a family of five...

So, we are going to broaden our search to include Bremerton (which is directly across the Puget Sound from Seattle, and is connect to it by a ferry), and points between Bremerton and Tacoma. Spots in Bremerton seem to be more inexpensive than Tacoma, so that's a plus.It'll mean a longer drive if we get jobs in Tacoma (about half an hour drive), but there is the prospect of Isabeau being able to work for the YMCA in Bremerton itself.

We are still hopefully going to be moving sometime between June 15th and July 1st. Though the heat here has me wishing I could go now...

Sometime in the first week of June I hope to take a trip by plane up to the area to look at apartments first hand. And finalize anything we might have lined up (hopefully).

I am still looking into anything that is entry level and related to machining and have applied to one place, but haven't heard anything back yet.

In school news, next Tuesday is my final! I am pretty pleased with this semester and I feel like I've got a good grasp of the principles. I am not worried about the final at all. My teacher has also complimented me on my ability to pick things up, and on my mechanical aptitude. He thinks I'll do pretty well for myself in the trade.

Shop projects and looking for a place to stay

Machining
My first semester in Machine Tech is winding down and I am finishing up the last bits that I have left. Don't have much to do now, just need to finish cutting a peg for the slot in the spring center and I will have finished my assigned projects.
So far I have finished a c-clamp and learned how to grind a high speed steel cutting tool.

The c-clamp! No where near perfect, but perfectly functional. I need to place a pad of some kind on the end of the screw, but I will probably buy a rubber foot for that.

This is the cutting tool. Took a HSS blank and ground the end into the proper shape. Works surprisingly well for being rather ugly...It actually leaves a better finish than the carbide tips we've been using on the lathes. The carbide will remove large quantities of material, but leaves a rougher finish.

The Big Move
We're getting closer to our planned move dates, and this week Isabeau and I will be working on a form email to send out to prospective rentals. I've been using a website called Padmapper, which consolidates rental listings from several different sources and displays them on Google maps.
Currently we've been looking at Tacoma and there are several apartments that are listed in North Tacoma, quite close to the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium (huge plus). So we'll be sending sending out feelers this week.

Also, if you don't already you should check out Isabeau's blog, The Weekly What-What.

Crazy Days

Yeeeaaahhhh.....A new post is way way way overdue.

Things have been quite crazy around here for the last two weeks. I'm still trying to adjust to not getting up super early and going to market every weekend. Isabeau and I both had a week off from school right after my last day, which we spent packing and organizing stuff in the house. Despite not working at this time, I feel like things have gotten even more hectic...I just haven't had the energy to update the blog as a result.

The important stuff.
My last weekend as a manager for the CFMA has come and gone (two weeks ago..oops.), and as expected goodbyes are always bittersweet.The day started with Johnny and I, soon joined by Keri. Then Doug and Gail arrived and told me drop everything and I wasn't going to be doing anything for the rest of the day.

Then they gave the farewell gift.

Cute card , right? Showcasing the many long years I've been doing the farmers markets. Including the time I did a petting zoo for Doug and Gail some 17 years ago (top left).

But wait! This doesn't show the scale! I'll include a size reference for the next shot.



Bam

Doug towed me around the market gathering signatures and taking pictures with the entirety of the Mountain View Farms Market. I am going to need a photo hosting service for those, because it's something like 100 pictures.
Oh, wait! There were so many signatures that they had to use the back!

Yeah. Bittersweet. These last five years that I have spent as a manager have been some of the most valuable years of my life. It's had moments that have strained me as a human being, testing my limits, and even pushed me past those limits more than once. But the things that it taught me and the incredible people that I have met will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Auf Wiedersehen.



P.S.
Bonus Pics!

Rob and Eric. I would have had a hell of a time keeping my sanity if these two hadn't been around.

I'm gonna miss those ugly mugs...

OMFG! It's a Post!

It's been a while since my last post, things have been a little...rough, these last couple of weeks. Despite that I don't have a ton of stuff to talk about. Osric continues to be a little terror, Corwin is still causing difficulties with the potty training, and Saffron has been singing and dancing to the tune of the Frozen movie, which we got on Tuesday.

I've officially told my bosses when my last day of work will be, so that's under the bridge now. We are still looking at going up to Washington around the end of May to find a place to stay, and our intention is to be moved up around mid June.

Last Saturday I had the day off, and we went to the Game Kastle Flea Market. Isabeau managed to find an expansion pack to Dominion, which is one of our favorite game. We picked up a second Black Lanner 'mech for her as well, but I have since discovered that it is missing the sprue that has its legs. I am going to have to take it back and see about exchanging it. This actually the second 'mech that we've gotten from Ironwind Metals that has been missing parts from the sealed pack.

As far as my personal haul from the flea market, I managed to score some pretty good stuff.

This is most of what I got. The current codex for the Orks, a box set of Gretchin (aka Grots) and a Runtherder, an Ork buggy, and a set of three Deffcoptas which I got for free from the guy who was selling the codex. I also got a box with a whole bunch of miniatures from another wargame, which I am going to see about selling on EBay.

A couple of close ups now.

This is the Ork Buggy. It may or may not be fairly old, but I only paid $2 for it so hey. I plan on removing the wheels and reattaching them so that they actually turn.

And these are the Deffcoptas, fully assembled. Pretty snazzy looking, actually. I was expecting them to be broken or needing repairs but they were actually in perfect condition.

That's all for today! I am planning on doing a write up about a new game that I got this week, called Bannered Saga. Hopefully I will have it done by Monday. If you like turn based tactical RPGs starring Vikings and Giants, where every decision you make can have long term consequences and it stars characters you can actually relate to and even like...then hurry up and by this game. Its on GOG.com right now.

Ebay update and a nicely painted miniature

Not too much to say, I managed to sell all of the stuff I had posted and netted sixty bucks out of it. I am going to try and sell some books and another couple of miniatures that I have lying around.
Of course I have spent a LOT more on Ebay. I currently have my own decent army of Orks (about 41 all told including the Warboss. See him below). Plus chaos, dark angels marines, and token imperial guard.
And I'm not finished...yet.
Mainly I am looking for vehicles for the Orks, and maybe some more imperial guard footsloggers and vehicles.

Here is the Orky Warboss!

The picture doesn't show all the details, but I am quite happy with how he came out.
Especially his purple pants of doom. Also, his tunic. looks nice and filthy.

Damn, I did it again!

Things have been pretty damn dicey of late, especially around the markets. This last weekend was stressful enough that I just didn't have the energy to try and post something...Sorry!

News of note, things have been progressing in my Machine class. I have mostly been working on lathes, as our first project is 90% lathe work. It's been about equal in the frustrating and fascinating departments...many machines seem to be pretty rough around the edges and aren't very precise anymore which makes it challenging when your drilling to a specific depth and you have to rely on the machine to tell you how far you've gone. But I managed to finish all of the lathe work for that project last night, and I got to start on the next project which is all mill work.
I like the mills already. Not certain why yet, but maybe I just like how they work.

In related news, I have decided to drop my other machine class, the blueprints and math one. Not because it's difficult in the slightest, but because I am not getting anything at all of value out of the class. If I am going to sit in that decrepit room for 2 hours, I want to learn something damnit! The teacher can't teach, but seems to be making certain that everyone is going to pass the class.
So, yeah.
Fuck that.

I am going to try and have another post ready for Monday ahead of time, so look for another then!

Apologies and a Book Review

Right, first off I'll apologize for not posting on Monday. The weekend was nuts and I was very stressed out as a result. I didn't have the wherewithal to do a post. I'll do better, I promise!

Today I am going to do my first book review!

POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD!

Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest.
Disclosure: I am not a fan of the Steampunk genre. I don't have anything against it, but I guess I just don't get it either. Take it as you will.

The book is a little over 400 pages long, which makes for a decent read for most people, but I read really fast. It took me a day to finish it and I wasn't reading it non-stop.
Set in a fictional Seattle of the 1880s, the blurb on the cover says that it is a steampunk-zombie-airship adventure, and while it has all of those things it doesn't go particularly far with any of them. Airships, while integral to certain parts of the plot, actually have very little page time for one thing.
Zombies are set up early in the book, caused by a strange gas that seeps up from under Seattle. The gas becomes an omni-present threat in the book, but no attempt is really made to explain it or justify it. It just exists to make zombies. And apparently to make drugs, which is touched on as a moral grey point a couple of times between characters then never mentioned again.
As far as the steampunk part goes, I don't know if I would call it steampunk. It features a few weird science devices that are greeted with a somewhat muted response indicating, to me at least, that these things are not all that rare (not common, but not rare). But in the book only two "scientists" are ever mentioned, which may or may not mean anything to anyone. Also, as far as I can tell none of these devices are powered by steam. Electricity, mechanical operation, hydraulics, but no steam. This is probably me nitpicking, and I could very well be wrong about the definition of steampunk.
The characters themselves are varied but not well fleshed out or convincing, and much of the story seems to hinge more upon the character of people who are dead than on those who are alive. Some characters are more than a little stereotyped (two out of three airship smuggler captains were Han Solos).
I think that the best I can say is that the pace moved forward at a breakneck speed.

All in all, I didn't like the book. It didn't do anything for me, it didn't pull me in or invest me in it. If you want something that has airships, weird science, guns, magic powers, and even a city of the dead full of zombies, I would recommend the Grimnoir Chronicles by Larry Correia.

Unboxing my Vengeance! (pic heavy)

I received my copy of Dark Vengeance on Wednesday this week, so Isabeau and I opened it up together and started assembling it! This has however thoroughly distracted me so today's post is late. Oops.

Teh Box of Vengeance. Pretty hefty as well. 

As you can see, Isabeau had the camera phone...Lookit that ugly mug! Only a God of Chaos could love that! Also, I had to put pants on to take this picture. But I'm weird like that. The red things in the pictures are Line of Sight/Measuring sticks, they run out to a distance of 18 inches.

All of the contents of teh Box of Vengeance. Looking through the mini rulebook, there are a lot of changes in how the game works since 2nd edition (go figure, their up to 6th edition now). All told the box contains 48 miniatures. On the Chaos side of things, you have 20 Cultists (divided into close combat and ranged units), 6 Chaos Chosen, 1 Helbrute, and 1 Chaos Lord. The Dark Angels army has 10 Tactical Marines, 5 Deathwing Terminators, 3 Ravenwing Assault Bikes, 1 Librarian Psyker, and 1 Company Master.

Me assembling some of the miniatures. I didn't take any good pictures of the assembly, but these minis are designed to go together without glue, using pegs and slots and whatnot. Most of them go together fairly snugly, but needed to be glued together for strength.

Close up of the assembly.

A Cultist! This one is pretty cool, he has a trenchcoat and a drum fed autogun.

Chaos Assemble! The lighting in the apartment sucks for taking pictures....

All in all, I think it's a pretty good set. You get a lot of bang for your buck compared to how much this stuff would cost individually. The Chaos Marines, Lord, and Helbrute are very very spiky (painfully so) and might be hard to reuse for some chaos armies. The Dark Angels minis are also clearly identified as Dark Angels, so you would need to do some customizing to use for other Chapters.

EBayin' like a Boss

So...yeah. EBay. Baaaaaad place for me to be. Last couple of weeks I have been perusing miniatures and this week I made my first purchase!

Bam! 20 Ork Boyz! Made out pretty well as they only cost $26.51 after shipping was added on. Seeing as how they normally go for $29.99 for just 10 Boyz, I feel pretty good about it. This gives me a start on my own Greenskin Horde, though it pales in comparison to Isabeaus massive horde of grots and boyz.
I will also probably be picking up a set of Dark Vengeance off of EBay. This will give me a solid start on both Chaos and Dark Angels armies....which means I will have small quantities of faux Imperial Guard, Orks, Space Marines, and Chaos. If nothing else I can have a great time skirmishing against myself!

On the other hand of EBay, I started several auctions myself to try and finance my further miniature purchases. I am selling an Imperial Guard Hellhound, Chief Librarian Tigurius, and a lot of six Legion of the Damned Space Marines. These are all things I have had hanging around. The Hellhound is still in its box and on its sprues, so I should get a pretty good price for it. Tigurius could go for god knows what, and the marines will probably sell pretty well if they sell (Legion of the Damned are weird like that).

Scheduling the Posts

I've decided after listening to recommendations that I am going to cut back on the number of posts I make each week. If I post too much I run the risk of running out of things to talk about and then I would have longer dry spells between posts.

So, I think that I will start posting things on Mondays and Fridays, and we'll see how that goes for a week or two. Mondays I can talk about things that happen over the weekend, and Fridays I can discuss the stuff that happened during the week. If this works out well, then we'll stick with it, or I might experiment anyway.

That's all for tonight.

Happy Hollow

About two weeks ago Isabeau and I took the kids to Happy Hollow Park and Zoo in San Jose on one of our rare days off.
The kids had a LOT of fun and we got some really good pictures!

 Isabeau and Osric looking at the Lemurs!

 By the Turkey Vultures. We have several pictures from this area, but I think this one is the best.

 One of the clearest pictures we have taken of Corwin in a very long time. He looks pretty adorable.

 On the teeter totter

 All three kids got to ride in a giant bowl swing and they loved the heck out of it, as evidenced by Ozzies giant smile!

And then the two big kids wanted to ride the giant stone turtle on the way out.

The Machines!

So, second week of classes down, about to go into the third week, and I am still not certain how I feel. The Shop Math/Blueprints class has only improved marginally and that's because we stopped looking at the math book entirely and focused on the blueprint book on Thursday. That one was interesting and the first time I felt that I was learning something. From the sound of things, we will be focusing on that book almost exclusively for the time being.

Things we touched on Thursday included isometric views, orthographic drawing, Third Angle vs First Angle symbols (which I am still not clear on, as the differences between the two are both subtle and glaringly obvious), Detail Drawings, how to read things, tolerances and their meanings...Maximum Material Condition and Least Material Condition (which were actually pretty cool to talk about)...
It was kind of a lot to cover in a single class, and nothing went into real detail. Especially the First Angle/Third Angle bit. I will have to study up on that on my own.

The Intro class was a lot more exciting on Thursday, because we got the Detail Drawings and instructions for our first hands on project! We will be making a Spring Center, which is intended to help center an object on a lathe or mill so that you can more accurately cut it. Though the one I am making doesn't look the one at the website.

Here is a picture of the piece of steel I am working on. All we managed to do in three hours on Thursday was cut our pieces of steel, face one end, and drill a center hole so that we can cut the piece down to the proper diameter next week.

The Imperial Guard

Warning! Picture Intensive!
Next in the miniature lineup is the completed faux Imperial Guard unit that I've been working on lately. Probably going to call them the 1st Gavinrad Imperial Guard Regiment, Bravo Company, 2nd Platoon. So far there are only 18 of them in total, but I will be picking up another box of 18 pretty soon as well as a heavy weapons section to back them up.

 First picture is all of them together. Currently split into 3 units, a squad of Lasguns, a squad of Autoguns, and a Command Squad. Each of the two squads has a Grenade launcher backing it up.

 The start of the Command Squad. Consists of a flamer, 2 boltguns, and the officer who has a lasgun and a sword.

 The Autogun squad on its own. Though I may have to call them a Lasgun squad as well.

 Lasguns likewise.

 Closeup of the Lasgun Sergeant.

 Autogun Sergeant

 Autogunner with a grenade in his mitt.

 This dude is one of my favorites. Bolter and a sword.

And the officer.

I am currently reading up on the Imperial Guard Codex (granted, its the second edition codex) so that I can actually figure out a small army to field. The hardest and most expensive part will be the vehicles, as I'll probably need to go with GW stuff for that and that stuff is not cheap.