Day: 22 August 2016

Cooking Fat

On 22nd August 2016

Moving on from yesterday post about my being down and depressed, how about something a bit more positive for today!

So here is Cookie and Megan, Cookie was my Nana’s cat, but since she had to move into sheltered accommodation, Cookie now lives with us, he used to live with us about 10 years ago, but my Nana kind of stole him off us.

So we already have 3 cats, Sweep Misty and Jenny, when Cookie came to live we use, we were told he had been done, this was it turned out, a lie. Cookie went on to have kittens with both Sweep and Misty, who are mother and daughter, one of those kittens was Maggie who is also currently living with us. Jenny is Mistys kitten from a few years later, so we have 5 related cats living with is right now.

Cookie and Megan have grown so close that we can’t separate them, at night Cookie sleeps wrapped around Megan’s head and he spends as much time as he can with her. Maggie however doesn’t like other cats too much so we are currently searching, without much luck thus-far for a new home for her, but Cookie won’t be going anywhere due to his bond with Megan.

One little tidbit about Cookie, his real name is Cooking Fat, my idiot uncle was his first owner and called him that, you just swap the first letters around, needless to say he just gets Cookie, or sometine Mr. Fat!

Anyway if anyone fancies a black 10 year old female cat who likes the outside a lot and is a bit of hard work, let me know!

What I am Modelling

At the moment I am modelling mostly Age of Sigmar models from the Storm of Sigmar set, I finished the Blood Warriors up and have moved onto the Liberators whom I am doing as Celestial Vindicators cause I love the colour scheme, not sure if I will stick with it for my final Stormcast colour scheme but this far I like it.

I am also working on some initial Word Bearers and you can see here on my painting table a Legion Champion/ Veteran, kitbashed from the Legion Champion kit, Wors Bearers heads and plastic MKIV Marines. Not pictured is a jump pack Chaplin I am working on.

What I am Reading

Books are still proving a chore for me at the moment and I am still working my way through Angels of Caliban from my Librarium membership in June. So far the book is quite good, I am halfway through it now, but I am finding the change in Zahariels motivation from the previous two Dark Angels books in the serious to be a bit hard to swallow.

I know it’s not serious Sci-Fi and just glorified bolter porn, but I do quite enjoy the Horus Heresy novels, probably because I enjoy the game so much, but it feels like the last vestige of action Sci-Fi novels that hasn’t been polluted by Vox Day and his awful followers.

Audiobook wise I just finished the Outcast Dead and Wolf Hunt. The first one is just a mess of continuity errors and a plot that makes little sense at times, in fact at one point when asked their motivation, one of the main characters replies “Just Because”.

It’s a shame as it could have offered some interesting insights into the life for ordinary citizens of the Imperium and the political ongoings in the Imperial House and with the Astra Telepathica, but instead we got this mess, but it does have a Samurai Witch Hunter which is kinda cool. Too many characters without any real development time for them, a final fight that just leaves you feeling empty because characters are there and then suddenly not there, and a real anti-climax.

Wolf Hunt is a lot better and sets up a later novel a little bit as well, which is cool and I will eventually pick up that plot strand in time. It really should have been part of the Outcast Dead as it resolves the huge continuity error and ties up all the loose ends, but I suppose a short story to tie it all up is better than noting.

What I am Playing

I meant to have a game of Forbidden Island with Megan today, but my head has been hurting something rotten and it’s really hot, so I ended up having a three hour nap instead. Was a bit disappointed in that to be honest as its been a while since I have played a game.

I am also playing some Pokemon Go, I just reached Level 20 yesterday. It’s a hard game to play when you are stuck in the sticks, my village has just one Pokestop and it’s a bit of a walk away for me, so I frequently run out of Pokeballs to catch all those Weedles and Rattatas

What I am Backing

At the moment on Kickstarter I am backing Cognition #1 Mirror, Mirror. It’s a comic written by the amazingly talented Ken Reynolds, an old school friend of mine and illustrated by Sam Bentley. I backed the Issue #0 and quite enjoyed these steampunk stories of a steam powered robot with a human soul and a demoniacally possessed mouse from Victorian England.

Go ahead and give it a look, plenty of the pledge levels allow you to get issue #0 as well and the artwork is sublime.

What I am Spending

Not much this month, I have been a bit short on money having overspent in Cardiff when the good folks at Firestorm Games had a price too good to ignore for a deal with both Deathwatch Overkill, Death Masque and the Deathwatch Data Cards!

WorldCon and My Dark Place

By michael

On 22nd August 2016

In Blog

This weekend was MidAmericon II, this years WorldCon and I really wish I could have been there. Next year it comes closer to home, to Helsinki in fact, but I still can’t get there.

Since I feel ill and had the accident, well I haven’t been able to work beyond the occasional day demoing games, and that doesn’t really pay the bills. I am left dependent on ESA and PIP, I am in a pretty bad way, so I do get the maximum amount of money I am entitled to, and Lindsay is on a decent wage for the North East. But I am still left with very little at the end of it, and things like WorldCon are simply so far out of my budget, even when they are in Finland that it’s unreal.Despite a year of planning, I tearfully had to accept that I was never going to get to Helsinki, it was a hard decision to make, but even if I saved like a trooper, stopped buying books and models, I would struggle to afford to eat or get membership and enjoy myself after transport and lodgings were paid for

It lead me to a dark place, which was one reason I gave up blogging for a while. That coming on top of my Nana’s health deteriorating rapidly, Kings of the North collapsing and the resulting fallout, and my needing to take my diabetes a lot more seriously, left me so very low. I don’t think I let on to the world too much, but I spent a lot of time crying over what a disaster my life was.

Thankfully I have the love of two amazing women in my life and Lindsay and Megan pulled me out of the pit, they cleaned me up and got me through the darkness for my sisters wedding, which I was still not mentally prepared for how difficult it was going to be. When I left home my sister was barely 12 and I guess I have never really accepted that she grew up, despite her having a child, until her wedding day. She looked radiant and has become an amazing young woman, and that kinda knocked me back a bit, I just wasn’t ready for it, but she is all grown up and married now. I just wish we were closer, I love her and all, but we have lived a long way from each other for so many years, that our relationship is just not as close as I would like it to be.

After that I had the UK Games Expo, which I was only able to attend for 2 days this year, and I loved every minute of it. I worked one day and I was a plain punter the next, I wish I had been there for the whole time, but I had to transport my Nana back to Newcastle after my sisters wedding. Being there was amazing and I really wish I got to do more events like it, I saw people who I rarely get to see, and Lindsay always wonders why I somehow being the social butterfly with lots of friends at gaming events, when it’s usually her. I guess it comes from my time as an MiB where I did a lot of networking and volunteering at events, normally I am very shy and socially awkward but games people are my people.

Anyway when we returned from Birmingham, via Warhammer World of course, the three of us sat down and decided that we needed to get to conventions more, especially seeing how much I come alive at them. And we weren’t talking about the glorified market places that make up the majority of conventions in the UK, such as those ran by Showmasters or MCM, we wanted to do proper conventions. So we of course had to keep the UK Games Expo on the list, and we decided to add on EasterCon, the British SciFi convention, something I had not been to for 15 years now. There are others I would have like to have gone to such as Novacon, but my budget will only stretch so far.

It means putting £50 a month away into savings which will really stretch my budget a lot, but it will be worth it in the end, I know it’s not WorldCon, but it’s still the kind of event I love, discussing and enjoying the kind of literature that makes me so happy, it’s by no means a consolidation prize.

I guess things got dark for me because Helsinki was something I had my heart set on every since they launched their bid, I went to LonCon3 as a games demonstrator and it’s probably one of the great highlights of my life, so I was hoping to replicate that joy and fun in Finland. But I have to learn to live within my means more, I am no longer and MiB so those doors no longer open to me as they once did, so I have to be more domestic in my ambitions and desires.

But that said there is the bid to bring WorldCon to Dublin, I am on the volunteer list, and I should really help make that happen by getting the word out in the north east more, we have plenty of Sci-Fi fans here after all!

But in general the past few months have been a bit of a wake up call for me, I need to essentially reboot my life, I need to get out more, despite my mobility issues (though Pokemon Go has helped with this a little), I need to read more, I used to devour 2 or 3 books a week, now it takes me 3 weeks to read a single novel. I need to create more, I am not a good writer but it does get the juices flowing and I enjoyed my initial steps in podcasting, I need to look after my body more and try and get a bit of the weight shifted. But most important of all I need to get my head properly in a place where I can handle life and the stuff it’s been throwing my way of late, I want to think my health situation will improve, but I have to stop getting so down and self-destructive when it doesn’t happen.

So that’s me, signing off and that’s where I am at, I am better than I was, but still not 100%.