Halloween is some great boundary marker into the insanity that slashes its way through to the day after New Years. It is a marker of years flowing by far worse than birthday since death and taxes are on the way. I cannot think of a bright side.

This week offers a rich variety of reality clawing its way into my life. I must get papers notarized. I must transport my daughter to her various engagements. I must review my expenses. On the up side, I did complete my annual medicare exam. Yes, I am still alive and moving of my own volition, my mental facilities debatable but still existent.

All this follows an effort to sort through the smaller things that had migrated to bookshelves. I rediscovered some very old catalogs including a charming but brief one from McEwan Miniatures. I had been looking for the Jack Scruby catalog but, seeing it again, I realize that he offers neither drawings or photos of his figures. The variety is fascinating. He seemed to want to cover as much as he could.

Beyond that, I finally listed all the metal stuff that i had by scale. It is helpful to me if no one else. There was an odd moment several years ago where it seemed to me I had crossed into that mythic region where I own enough lead to make a move challenging. I hate the idea of another move but I find it hard to believe we are here to stay

I have been in Utah now for 8 months and am amazed at how little I have accomplished and how much work has been involved. I found the last set of missing figures the other day, a group of Essex Assyrian 15mm figures. They had been packed neatly in a cardboard box which the moving men inexplicably decided to pack sideways. Repairs are ongoing.

Everything is now in one place and all that is necessary is to find a better way to store than as an enormous stack of boxes in the closet. No surprise those boxes i had the foresight to keep in the bathroom back in Florida along with all the musical instruments came through unmarred. I discovered to my chagrin that hamsters are not allowed to fly on most commercial airlines so brought her and everything else left in the house to Utah in mid autumn.

There is still a lot of work to do to straighten out the house but I hope to find the time to revisit and start painting the unpainted.

i am slowly unpacking, slowly because the local carpet installers are the worst on the planet and have yet to put in the new carpet, and sadly, nothing can really be unpacked till the carpet is down.

The plastic figures seem to have taken the most hits. I find little plastic bases with nothing but feet and later footless infantry scattered through boxes. Some of the bigger sets i drove back but I am not sure everything made it. It is good to leave Florida as it falls apart but it is cold here and getting colder.

i received 2 expansion sets for Hero Quest from the ever dependable Hasbro people. I also purchased a few figures as well just to convince myself I have not fallen off the edge of the world. I hope to be back up and running though the carpet installers are threatening more delays. We will see. At least i have my books.

i am now in Salt Lake City. A trip to Japan and Taiwan kept me busy this summer but the move to Salt Lake City flattened me. On the positive side, the packers found things I had not been able to find like a range of 6mm artillery for the War of the Spanish Succession that had become buried in small unlabeled boxes.

Even now, I remain subterranean in the basement level of a house and wish for better. The painfs and brushes have yet to emerge. I have little to show for the last half year. I did finally make some modest purchases but I expect it to be a couple of months before I am back on my feet.

I read today that Model masters paints are gone. Put out by the Testors Corporation for many years, they were a guilty mainstay of the hobby. But as colors became scarce, new paints came to call. I had never been a fan of Krylon but now I have cans. And I have begun trying out Tamiya lacquer spray.

When I travel to Asia, I am always confronted with how much better they have things over there in regards to plastic model building. They seem to have everything imaginable and some things I never thought of all at a fraction of their price in the US. Want 1/700 scale WWII tanks and trucks? They have got them. Plastic 1/72 figures? Easy to find.

Which brings me to Tamiya. They offer quality materials and studied assistance that is never available in the US. Paint pens and markers, extensive weathering and masking supplies are easily found and not only from Tamiya.

But I feel bad about Model Masters. Just like I feel bad about the Mecca of modeling in Carrollton, Texas, Squadron, Inc. strolling through the warehouse was a dreamlike experience. Changing times. I guess we all change with them. Squadron was bought up by a company in Georgia and I sprayed my first batch of tanks with Tamiya dark yellow.

1957 and the biggest literary threat to merry olde England was a group of overgrown toddlers with the ability to say no and the means to back it up. Children were to be seen, not heard, and if they got hit by a car or attacked by an animal, who were they to complain?

Of course, the children grew up and gave the world abominations like the Mersey Beat and the British Invasion. We had been warned. The warnings went unheeded. Without death and destruction to thwart them, children make demands.

in 1957, the response was obvious. Smuggle a brief case full of dynamite into their classroom or test fire a new super cannon with nuclear shells on the town where they live. Precocious toddlers must learn to play by the rules.

Did we? For the most part, I remember staying quiet when we went to the movies, keeping a respectful distance when the elders were talking, and having such mundane hobbies as model building, stamp collecting and of course gathering small plastic armies who patrolled the living room and were occasionally missing in action.

So what was the problem? Well, no one else was following the rules. They hated Jews, hated smart little kids, and did not look kindly on any child who knew the difference between a Spad XIII and an S.E.5-a. They did not come after me with sticks of dynamite but did put me in a class for slow learners and memorably to sessions with the school counselor. Which is to say that childhood was a difficult experience papered over with the illusion that it was a normal childhood.

So how does my child fare? She explores the minefield of childhood at a distance. The pandemic has kept her a step removed. Is she too bright for her own good? Doubtful. Will she say no? Hopefully. Will they bring her a suitcase full of tnt? They better not.

School resumes tomorrow. For the first time in weeks, I painted a little. The above tiny group is a partial result. The figure in front was an unpainted holdover. Once again, I marveled at the deficiencies in my work.

At the moment, I am priming with a white enamel undercoat. I have enough figures to keep me excruciatingly busy and expect a shipment from the Last Square and a seller on e-bay any day now. Satisfaction comes from knowing that I am getting closer to an ideal balance between time spent and quality. I have taken to correcting this and that, turning figures upside so that all the flaws become shockingly visible.

I remain retired. I left my job without even a fare you well card. It is ok. It was my last job and I could not say there were any memorable moments other than struggling back after trying to walk a half mile at lunch.

I did notice that the e-bay seller trying to peddle a group of Archive Miniatures space aphids as Ral Partha frog people finally made a sale. Good for him.

When I look at these, I feel like I owe Tom Meier an apology. Where is all that gorgeous facial detail now buried under a layer of poorly applied acrylic paints? Well, they are not quite done. Leonardo Da Vinci said art is not finished but abandoned. Though not art, it applies here. There is a point where you give up, where you have chased things far enough.

I have always wondered about the motivation for creating this line. It was certainly poorly represented at the time. Even now, the 15th century mercenaries and the wars they fought remain like some remote thing seldom mentioned. When I bought my first packs, I purchased arquebusiers thinking that anyone carrying a gun would hold a significant place in battle. Oops.

Meier had urged Ral Partha refocus on fantasy figures. The market for fantasy was considerable compared to the rather limited number of people who might even have heard of landsknects let alone were eager to buy a package of them. The Condottieri Range was never easy to find in the dark ages when there was no Internet. The Ral Partha booth at Historicon had an enormous box of them for $1 a piece at the time.

Sadly, the range was never expanded though it certainly cried out for a greater variety. Grenadiers in marching order might be indistinguishable as individuals but landsknects were much more varied.

Now, I look at the large group of figures and see it as a sign of misspent youth. Lots of figures but not enough. Lots of painting but hardly adequate. In fact, the figures remain unused while a set of Hinchliffe English Civil War figures purchased at roughly the same time have seen routine use with additions from Old Glory and Wargames Foundry. In some ways, the incredible detail and the limited variety has kept me away. Now, I am looking again and can hopefully offer something to showcase Meier’s brilliant achievement.

I think I understand why people play golf when they retire, not that it seems anymore meaningful to me but I like to think I understand, the way I think I understand why the blue head wrasse produces a super male. It is not relevant to my life but nice to know why people make these choices.

I reach retirement age shortly and, after years of avoiding staff reductions and hanging on through half a dozen, I will finally be set out to graze. Not that I can look back on a lifetime of work with considerable satisfaction.

My best moments are odd ones and few related to work. I recall an intense period of on-call overtime working through a charity event featuring Nell Carter. I went down to the abandoned service trays of food at 5 in the morning and ate what I pleased. It was not good but satisfying. Not much else stands out in my mind except a long history of working for people who wanted to make programmers superfluous. Moving IT centers to India seemed to be the next best thing.

But of course this is neither here nor there. People get what they expect to get. At one company, a programmer found a discarded printout showing all raises and ratings everyone was to receive at the end of the year. Somehow, we always lived up to their limited expectations.

Ok, so I will retire but I am not going to play golf.