This is taking FOREVER. The end result had better be worth the LOE. I’m through getting the steel down (likely the longest step) on everything; far table has copper, near table is getting it. Left to do: skulls, wires, battery covers, base for lights. Then oils, then lights.

Also, all the scatter and small 1-wall pieces are unprimed as of yet.

I’ve been feeling a little isolated lately.

That’s kind of my fault. Rejecting the major social networks is both healthy and righteous, but it closes a number of windows to keeping up with people. We’re COVID-cautious, which means a lot traditional avenues of socialization are closed to us, especially while we’re in Winter.

For example:

I’m not gaming at game stores, and that means tournaments are entirely out of the picture. They’ve fired up Infinity tournaments at Huzzah Hobbies again and, although I’m not doing tournaments… if they’re gonna do tournaments, it’s a good thing they’re doing Infinity tournaments. I might feel some residual possessiveness, but I’ve been not running Infinity tournaments longer than I ran them, so it’s unquestionably good that the scene is moving on. I want it to be successful! So, I swung by to say hello, wish everyone luck, and drop off some prize support.

I feel like: every time I crawl out of my hole, I quickly smack into evidence that what we’ve been doing is absolutely the right thing. I was the only person masked. A stranger decided to lecture me on an understanding of herd immunity that isn’t applicable here. Friends said they’d had COVID-19 three times, five(!) times. I got some “It sucks,” “It’s no big deal,” and “I’ve had serious short-term memory issues since” from the same people.

(How you reconcile “no big deal” and “serious memory issues” or “once everyone gets it it’ll go away” and “I’ve had it many, many times”…)

They’re doing what’s right for them… but clearly I won’t be playing in the game store again any time soon.

Anyway that’s the problem. So, solutions:

RPGS – I’m going to give online RPG gaming a shot. I’m years behind everyone else on this, I know, but remember: my normal workday is 6+ hours trapped in web conferences. The idea of doing that recreationally is… challenging… but I miss people, I miss RPGs. So, I’m going to give it a shot next week – my old gang, OSE, Discord, and owlbear.rodeo.

I hope it works. I’m optimistic. Wish me luck. I want it to be successful enough that I just keep doing it, week to week.

Wargaming – As I’ve said: gaming at Huzzah’s not on the table. That’s a bummer… but a couple of times over the past two years, I’ve had someone over to game on the porch (we’ve got a lovely screened-in porch) or (masked) in the basement and it worked great. I need to do that more! I almost certainly would be doing it more if it weren’t for inertia: work tends to be pretty draining and I spend most of my free time painting and it’s just easier to keep doing that. So, I’m going to make an active effort to get folks (especially folks I haven’t gamed with in a while) to come over to the house for some porch gaming or masked basement gaming.

(Well, once I’m done with this damned Arks of Omen terrain: working on terrain really screws up my gaming space.)

Mission Impossible series

I watched a promo video for some stunt they’re doing in the next Mission Impossible movie and it reminded me that I don’t think I’ve seen a single MI movie more than once and that I don’t remember anything whatsoever about any of them. I had time, so: I rewatched all of them.

Only one of them is bad (2), and even that I think that’s a factor of it aging very, very badly and vaguely recall it landing ok enough when it came out. The rest are, at minimum, entertaining with high-end action.

The first, in my opinion, was the best. It’s the least Cruise-y of the series, but I liked it the most.

I’d rank them 1, 5, 6, 4, 3, 2 and I won’t lie and claim I’m not looking forward to 7.

The ‘G’ Word

The ‘G’ word in question here is “Government” – this is an Adam (Adam Ruins Everything) Conover, Barak Obama funded semi-adaptation of Michael Lewis’ The Fifth Risk, which I rate very highly.

Where Lewis’ book is about the vital, literally life-saving services the US federal government provides and how dangerous it is to hand the agencies that provide these services to Trump-appointees who are at best unqualified to supervise them and at worst actively working to undermine them… Conover takes a somewhat different tack. Instead of centering things around a no-longer administration, he themes each episode around a service, discusses why it’s important and what good the federal government provides, and then talks about where how it falls short on that service.

It was an easy, entertaining watch that I’d recommend especially since The Fifth Risk is a little less timely.

House of Styx

I’ve really enjoyed all of Derek Künsken’s books, and this one was no exception. I wish he could develop the post-heist a bit more, but the world building he does is so interesting, and the heisting is always fun. They’re squarely in the Alastair Reynolds space where the science might as well be space magic but he’s convincing enough to make it feel hard sci-fi if you’ve got a BA in English.

I’ve seen some folks posting photos of the models they finished in a month. That sounds like a fun way to track progress, so here’s my first.