Figure Painting Total - August 2016

I’ve been keeping an eye on some 1/35 scale Mexican Bandits to use with the Rules With No Name for a few years now. I finally ordered them and they came in August. There are 2 each of 8 different sculpts.
I have plans to make a Mariachi band team (like El Mariachi, Desperado, Once Upon a Time in Mexico), as well as having a larger group of regular ones in white.

So far another low purchasing year giving a solid chance to get some painting done. But the newer Games Workshop board games are calling to me. I'll probably pick some up and they will bump up my buying totals.

Aug figures bought - 16 figures painted – 0
Running total 2016 – figures bought 19, figures painted 0

Disney holiday 2016 - overview

We went to Disney. We’ve never been, but we grew up watching it on TV and seeing the rides and attractions in books and movies. We’ve always been big Disney fans. We decorate our house with Nightmare Before Christmas decorations for Halloween, we have a lot of the movies, and I even gave my wife the Disneyland viewmaster reels for her last birthday.

We weren’t sure if we should even go, with the exchange on the dollar being what it was back in February when we had to plan it, but we decided it would be our best chance. I was able to get two weeks at the end of August as holidays so we booked it. Disney World was a go!

The kids are a good ages to go; Gee is 14 and Dee is 17. They should be old enough to have good memories of the trip, and yet not too old that it isn’t still fun. Even though he is older, it was the first time flying for my son so he was a bit nervous about it.

We got some of the park travel books to make lists of rides and attractions and told the kids to go through them to list any of them they might be interested in as well but neither of them did. Gee and I are much more into the rides and Shan and Dee are not. She said that she would still ride some of the classic rides – like Space Mountain, but Dee said that he did not want to ride any roller coasters.

We booked ten days – six days at Disney, two days at Universal, and two travel days. We flew down on August 21 and flew back on August 30. We ended up adding the Sunday as an extra day at Disney for an extra $85 for the four of us – in order to get to see the It’s a Small World ride, as it was being closed down for repairs on the next day.

We’re back. We had a great time. I’ll break it down in later posts, but I wanted to mention it as the trip will have long-reaching effects on what I’m doing for quite some time.

Books read - May to August 2016

May
Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3 by Todd Wilbur
Writing and Illustrating the Graphic Novel by Mike Chinn
The Art School: An Introduction to Oil Painting by Ray Smith

June
Game Art by Matt Sainsbury
Realms – The Roleplaying game art of Tony DiTerlizzi by Tony DiTerlizzi
The World of Model Trains by Patrick Whitehouse & Allen Levy
Codex Angels of Death (2nd edition) by Rick Priestley & Jervis Johnson
A World of Pizza by Betshy Paola Sanchez

July
How Architecture Works – A Humanist’s Toolkit by Witold Rybczynski
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
Mysteries of the Mall and other Essays by Witold Rybczynski
Cartoon Capers: the history of Canadian Animators by Karen Maurkewich
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Aug
On the Seven Seas – Wargaming Rules for the Age of Piracy and Adventure c1500 – 1730 by Chris Peers
Back to the Future – The Ultimate Visual History by Michael Klastorin with Randal Atamaniuk
Why We Suck by Dr Denis Leary
Heart of Gold: 30 years of Canadian Pop Music by Martin Melhuish
Black Ops – Tactical Espionage Wargaming by Guy Bowers
Lion Rampant – Medieval Wargaming Rules by Daniel Mersey
Dragon Rampant – Fantasy Wargaming Rules by Daniel Mersey
Lythande by Marion Zimmer Bradley
As You Wish: Inconceivable tales from the making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes with Joe Layden