Squirrel!

The kids got a bird feeder this summer and had been feeding the birds (and squirrels) until fall. The bag of seed for the feeder had been kept in the shed. My daughter later tells me that she had ripped the bag with her kick stand of her bike. When the wife put some of the new summer items from Christmas in the shed she found two frozen mice. So now it’s my problem to solve.

I swept out the seeds in front and added warfarin to the list of things to get at Walmart. When I got some I checked out the shed again. The seeds had been spread across the entire floor. I pulled out lawn mower and bikes and swept out the seeds from the back corners as well. I put some warfarin in the corners and was sweeping in between some racks when this foot-long brown creature goes shooting out the door.

To my credit, I did not shriek like a girl. Shan was watching from the house and can verify. But I did have get out of the shed for a moment to work through a shiver. I had been watching for small grey shapes scurrying around when sweeping but the squirrel that had made its home in our shed was a bit of a surprise to say the least.

in Hot Water?

I was woken by my wife on Saturday morning with the news that we had water in our basement. It didn’t seem to be the sewer or even melting snow. It turns out it was the water heater leaking. Luckily we still had hot water to shower but we had to get a guy out to check it.

Short version – we have a new water heater and another $1000 added to our renovation bills. We had been thinking about replacing it when we added a second bathroom but would have hoped it would have lasted until then.

On the up side, in moving the whole shelf of boxes out of the way so they could access the heater and then moving all the boxes back, I was able to gain a little more space on the shelf. This helped to absorb some of the new games from Christmas.
The down side is that that $1000 hit will have a major impact on my game fund as well as our costume plans for this year.

Life savers / Certs

Remember when we were younger? The impulse candy at the checkout was much different than it is now. We used to have the whole product line of Certs and Life Savers available as well as the Tic Tacs.
Nowadays, if you are feeling nostalgic, you may have a hard time trying to get your flavor. For me, Mixed Fruit was my Certs flavor. For Life Savers, a Butterscotch was occasionally nice but I always liked the Five-Flavor rolls (cherry, lemon, lime, orange, and pineapple). In Canada, we still have this line-up although it seems that it was changed in the states. I fondly remember the three flavor rolls that we used to get at Halloween – with the stop light colors (cherry, lemon, and lime).

Heroclix overview

Instead of focusing on Heroclix last year, I worked away at a few other systems – Starship Troopers, Monsterapocalypse, and Horrorclix. So I didn’t get as much filled in as I had hoped. Plus, one of my best sellers on ebay became flakey about halfway through the year. Still, I did meet some of last year’s goals.

I only managed to finish off one set – finally getting the Magog I needed to complete Unleashed. I’m still close on Ultimates (6+7), Mutant Mayhem (3+9), Legacy (6+11), Fantastic Forces (0+3), Armor Wars (11+1), Collateral Damage (8+1), Supernova (10+0), Avengers (0/3), Justice League (0/7), Mutations & Monsters (1/6), Crisis (0/12), Secret Invasion (2/7) and Arkham Asylum (0/8). I’m still working away at Sinister (21+3) and Origin (23+0). A new set finally came out in November and I picked up a brick and have a good amount of Hammer of Thor (11+8). Right now, I need 188 figures – 102 REVs and 86 U/SRs.
I didn’t manage to pick up any more big figures, but did get Thor’s Mighty Chariot when it came out last September. They are planning to release 3 more sets this year. I hope to keep up with the sets, ending the year still under 200 figures and keeping the Uniques/Super Rares under 100 figures. I’m still hoping to get the Spectre, one of the Fooms and maybe a Phoenix.

On Horrorclix, I greatly exceeded my goals. I completed the base set and Freakshow
(I just need one card). I only need 1 figure from The Lab and 3 figures from Nightmares plus 1 LE. I’m hoping to either be down to the 1 SR from Nightmares that I need or even finish the entire set.

Books Read 2009 - Sept to Dec

Sept
Challenges for Game Designers by Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber
Playing for Keeps by Mur Lafferty
The Howling III by Gary Brandner
Anatomy for Fantasy Artists by Glenn Fabry
How to Succeed in Anything by Really Trying by Lyman MacInnis

Oct
Bad Bosses, Crazy Coworkers & Other Office Idiots by Vicky Oliver
The Big Idea: How to make your Entrepreneurial dreams come true, from the AHA moment to your first million by Donny Deutsch with Catherine Whitney
Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded by Simon Winchester
Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon
The Survival Handbook by DK Publishing
Watching the Watchmen by Dave Gibbons, Chip Kidd, and Mike Essl
Inkspell by Cornelia Funke
Web Marketing for Small Businesses: 7 Steps to Explosive Business Growth by Stephanie Diamond

Nov
The Game Makers: The Story of Parker Brothers from Tiddledy Winks to Trivial Pursuit by Philip E Orbanes
Action Anatomy for Gamers, Animators, and Digital Artists by Takashi Iijima
Why we Suck: a feel good guide to staying fat, loud, lazy and stupid by Denis Leary
Math Doesn’t Suck: how to survive middle school math without losing your mind or breaking a nail by Danica McKellar
Design Your Life: The Pleasures and Perils of Everyday Things by Ellen and Julia Lupton
The Original Duct Tape Halloween Book by Jim and Tim, the Duct Tape Guys

Dec
Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss: The Early Days of SNL from Someone Who Was There by Tom Davis
The City Dog: The essential guide for city dwellers and their dogs by Sarah Whitehead
180 Tips and Tricks for New Teachers by Melissa Kelly
Forbidden Lego: Build the models your parents warned you against by Ulrik Pilegaard and Mike Dooley
Drawing Cutting Edge Anatomy: The Ultimate Reference Guide for Comic Book Artists by Christopher Hart
Cartooning – Create your own world of cartoons, caricatures, comics strips and magna by John Byrne
Was Superman a Spy? And other comic book legends revealed! by Brian Cronin
Drawing Vampires: Gothic Creatures of the Night by Chris Hart
Drawing Cutting Edge Comics by Christopher Hart
Kiss My Math – Showing pre-algebra who’s boss by Danica McKeller

2009 Figure painting total

In October I picked up:
5 Ork Stormboyz
Droppod
Klingon D-7 model
Oct figures bought – 7, figures painted – 0

Nothing happened in November but in Dec I got:
2 Ork Defkopters
5 Ork Nobs
Marine Commander
Dreadnaught
10 Goblin spider riders
Warhammer boxed set - 119 figures
40K boxed set - 46 figures
Arachnids – 3 Hoppers, 3 Blaster/Blister bugs
Dec figures bought – 190, figures painted – 0

I wasn't doing too bad until December. I never did get around to painting anything at all this year. Since Christmas though, I have partially assembled the Droppod and defkopters, and cleaned a bunch of the figures. I am very hopefull that I will be able to paint something soon and with this batch added to my pile, I should have a better showing in 2010.

For the end of the year, my total is 331 figures purchased, 0 figures painted. It seems a bit disappointing until you think about all those figures acquired.

Ninja goodness

Over the holidays we finally got to see Ninja Assassin. It was as much fun as we had hoped. It was good to see Sho Kusugi again. He was part of the beginning of the Ninja mania back in the day – starring in Enter the Ninja, Revenge of the Ninja, Ninja III: The Domination, as well as The Master TV series.

The fight scenes would have seemed a bit too limb-choppy if I hadn’t recently come across this site which shows what a sharp sword can actually do.

There was a bit much of CG stars being thrown. In order to remain hidden, these ninja crews must have great cleaner squads to recover all evidence.
All-in-all, if you've been missing ninjas on the screen, this one more than fills that void.