Diet so far

I started my diet after Christmas and appear to have lost about 3-5lbs since then, I'm not entire sure, because it seems to fluctuate, perhaps water loss or something, or I need to weigh myself at specific times, anyway on average I'm weighing less.

My Diet plan such that it is, is to to cut down a little on everything and cut out snacks totally except events.

To achieve this no biscuits, cakes, crisps, crackers, wafer exist in my house and none are bought. On the general cut down thing I take 2 cobs in lieu of 3 to work, buy a loaf of bread half the size, and put out smaller portions on my plate. I've supplemented one whole meal for a baked potato with a bit of cheese & swapped oven chips for boiled potatoes.

My nibbles now are only fruit, 2 or 3 apples a day when peckish, plus orange, grapes, I've no fruit juice or fizzy drinks in the house, so its fruit tea or water.

The other area I've cut out is visit to sandwich van which visits where I work, where I regularly purchased pasties, cakes and cheese and bacon melts, which as I've typed this have made me drool.

I'm no diet expert, but it seem to be working, I need to increase my activity, which the spring and summer I hope will do.

Then just need to keep it up loose another 4-6 lbs and by the summer I may be back to where I was in summer 2006 (or better), which was 1 1/2 stone lighter than I was in summer 2004.

Battle plans

This weekend I finally got to play the Ascendancy war game I had been painting figures for, modelling a mine entrance (see photo below of finished mine) for & designing tactics for.

I had everything finished by Thursday although Friday I received an email saying players were sending extra troops meaning extra figures so had to dig into my old figure supply and find something suitable. The only problem area being a female Fey player who generally wears green, having nothing suitable she was represented by a green wraith (see photo below)

Saturday I had early start since I wanted a friendly face to help play the game so arranged to pick up my friend Dave from Coventry, thankfully his other half Julie agreed to pick him up and take him home. I therefore up by 6.30am I collected Dave who wants to write his own rules system, so I him gave lots of alternative approaches to think about and before I knew it our conversation had returned us to Ripley.

The game was taking place in the Chimera shop, my job being mainly to record what happened for a write up post battle for the players. I also looked after the player’s character figures while Andy looked after the bad guys and JohnT and Dave played the main forces Generals.

During the game I was visited by Jock, then an hour later his wife Bridgette who brought me a surprise present to let me make creamy latte coffees ,while Julie also gave a present of another box of Cherry & Cinnamon tea, so thanks to both of them.

The game lasted about 4 and half hours and was evenly matched until the last role of the dice, when the Ascendancy player’s side won, but only just.

Post battle a War hammer player turned up with her army and asked for a refresher course in the rules, JohnT and Dave obliged while I cleared things away, ready for shop closing.

We all then went for bite to eat at the pub, before retreating to Andy house for chat, unfortunately for Julie and Heather mainly about rules and war games.

By 10pm however my early start and war game had took its toll and mentally I was ready to retire so left for home to find my cat Jasmine sitting in the upstairs window of my house, she had been shut upstairs all day, but somehow managed to cross her legs until I got home.

Finding that old tube of glue.

I have been busy painting, modelling and gathering forces for a Warhammer battle based in the Ascendancy world.

My 1st task was dusting off old Citadel miniature figures, lots of dwarves mounted on bits of cardboard with crude by today's standard plaster bases, these all needed the chipped paintwork touching up and then re-basing on Games workshop plastic bases.

Then I needed to help with the opposing forces, so found some old chaos thugs marauders which I had based but not painted, so these 30 figures were painted, varnished and made ready.


The scenario is based on a bolt by forces from a remote unprotected mine to safety with a ancient artifact, so last night I started scratch building a 1/60 th scale mine entrance to decorate the board, built from cardboard, balsa wood, plaster and rocks.
Building it will be a close call allowing for drying time of the plaster, and paint, so the model had to built last night, unprepared I had no materials, so nipped to the garage for glue, used some exterior filler instead of quick drying plaster, and found myself searching for small rocks by torchlight to decorate the feature, now undercoated, just needs the final paint job and few decorations.


Nearly done, I've collected the other figures, scanned over a copy of the current rules which a similar enough to the old rules I played 20 odd years ago, so that only leaves collecting my opponent and playing the game, all of which I'm looking forward to.

A few of 250 dwarves re-based

Jasmine started her figure collection.

On Friday after work I returned home to find 4 of the 10 war games figure painted the previous night missing from table I left them out on, the culprit was obviously Jasmine my cat. 2 of the figures were easily found having just been patted on the floor, the 3rd was eventually found no worse for wear in the cats bed, the 4th was elusive. Torch in hand I looked under all the furniture not easily moved, finding a lost Barclay card bill, lots of beads, ping pong balls, old batteries, & tube of mints all knocked under bookcases and sideboards by Jasmine, I also found cobwebs in area's not normally cleaned, but no figure. The figure was eventually found behind cushion on the settee.
Not content with just collecting figures Jasmine also wants to paint them, while sitting on my knee her tail has wofted in to the yellow and black paint pots, at least they are non toxic and easily cleaned acrylic paints, since she failed to paint the figures instead painted my fleece.

By Saturday it was time to use the figures in a Warhammer 40K game in the Chimera shop. Advertised to start at 11am I dropped of the terrain at 10 and went round to pick up Jock and have a coffee, by the time I had returned we had 4 kids waiting with their armies to play. We managed 2 games Orc & Tyrannids v's Space Marines & Eldar, however because it was so popular I didn't get to use my newly painted figures. We also had a audience of kids and patient parents who had not played before and what with Jocks insisting we make weapon noises when we rolled the dice putwwr, putwwr, daka, daka daka, woooom, etc. some intelligent frothing over kids it was a very noisy lively game. By the 2nd game our youngest player Gabriel joined in to control a 3rd of Orc/Tyranid forces (For some reason Jock kept calling Gabriel, Gabrielle as in Xena) who can only roll dice by throwing them across the room, although by the end of the day I insisted that all the kids playing were giving dice rolling lessons, since they either shake them in there hand for half an hour, roll them onto the floor, or into figures to knock them over.

It was good day enjoyed myself, didn't get to play Jock with my new painted figures.

The Chimera shop owner asked if I was coming to the paint club on today, however today I intend stay at home and do homely things.

Good idea to camp in sub zero temperatures?

This weekend I attended a larp event in a reproduction Viking village full of poor fitting shutters and draughty thin walls, I was not expecting to be warm but was sufficiently comfortable to make the whole event very tolerable.

On Friday after a very wet start, the skies cleared and the temperature dropped overnight sufficient to freeze the puddles so wearing my thermal underwear I tucked myself away in a 3 seasons sleeping bag, fully enclosed so only my nose was exposed, then covered in a 2nd sleeping bag and blankets I managed to feel cosy enough to sleep.
So I slept about 4 hours until around 5am when my bladder became desperate for the loo, surviving another hour I resisted the bitter cold I could feel outside my warm world but could last no longer, so in thermal underwear I left my sleeping bag found my boots in the dark and walked to the loo and back over frozen mud.
By the time I returned my bedding was cold and I could not warm myself back again to feel comfortable but stayed in bed till just before 8 when Julie got up, put the kettle on and started a fire.

The only other side effect of the cold was the butane gas preferred to stay in liquid form in the can so barely produced enough heat to boil a kettle, solved by putting the cans under my clothing and swapping cans between uses.

The rest of the weekend was slightly warmer, and we also discovered fire in the huts which although very smoky and needing a shutter open to create an air flow warmed the hut a degree or more.

The event itself was good, a good main plot that allowed for plenty of skills to be used, overall I enjoyed myself. There where plenty of players new and old, and chance to pass on various pieces of information gained during downtime.
It felt a little strange to be there as player not ref, but I quickly got over it although still wished at certain quiet moments to get in there and move things along, finish odd plot areas that were left from the last Strangehaven event, although if numbers improve for the site as they did I've been told Strangehaven will probably re-start for 2009.

On Sunday I got back home to a pile of cardboard litter and brown gorilla fur created Jasmine as a present to impress Julie and Dave who stopped for a warm drink or two on the way home.
I was very tired by then, and Julie looking particularly sleepy and she had another hour and half drive, so after a shower and food (baked potato and cheese) I fell asleep on the sofa with a cat asleep on my chest from around 8.30 until 11.30 when I found enough energy to relocate to my bed.

Shopping, painting, eating

On Saturday evening I went out for meal with friends for my mate Steve's birthday, we had to stay close to there home because of his wife Deb being on call to hospital where her friend is in the hospice since a cancer she has fought for several years is now reaching a conclusion. Deb is very close to her friend and cared for her, she as been in tears many times over the last 3 or 4 years with the ups and down of her friends illness, but enjoyed the distraction of night out.

Unfortunately the theme of this post is hospitals, since another of my friends Linda, young Chris's mother for those who know him, she went to the hospital for barium meal the day before, this apparently is very heavy liquid that leaves you very loose and with stools the weight of lead. After the meal we went back to Ste & Deb's, Linda needed to go and disappeared, 30 minutes later she had not returned, because as we found out her poo was stuck in the loo, so much to her embarrassment and sorry to say our amusement she was equipped with plastic bags to remove the item.

The rest of my weekend was spent shopping and at home painting toy soldiers, I purchased a large figure case like the one Julie bought Dave, a few figures and paints from Chimera shop, high tech thermal leggings and top for winter camping, and tea strainer thing for steeping loose tea in mug.

I also started a phys-rep for use at a future AscendancyLRP event, which involved destroying a broken pocket watch.

Painting figures and building props at the moment involves a space on a table the size of computer keyboard, (because I move my PC keyboard out the way) that combined with Jasmine my cat insisting on sitting on my knee and nudging my elbow while I paint is making it all more difficult than it should be. AndyL has the right technique on my second visit of the weekend he had engaged kid's visiting the shop in undercoating his figures for him.

Painting toy soldiers

New Years day I decided to paint some wargames figures for the 1st time in well ages, by that I mean possibly 10 years, and at least 5, can't remeber when I last got my figure painting brushes out.
Anyway my figures of choice were a selection of Games Workshop Eldar on jet bikes, these were plastic figures and what I did realise is how long they would actual take to assemble so it was Thursday evening by the time the glue had set and the undercoat sprayed, I put my basic coat of paint on as the picture below, but I think I have another 3 or 4 hours work yet, but I must say the break in painting history was worthwhile since I'm actually enjoying painting the figures again, plus I have a reason, a target which is another game in Chimera shop with my mate Jock and anyone else who wishes to join in. Jock received a few packs of GW figures and as also started painting again.
I have ordered another pack of Eldar figures which I hope to collect this weekend if they arrive.

New Year

I have a New Years resolution and that's to loose weight, after loosing 1 1/2 stone in 2005/2006 I put 3/4 stone back on in 2007, I want to loose weight again, so that means reducing comfort foods like those cakes I love, I've already cut out crisps, biscuits, & ice cream, sweets I can do with out anyway, so my next target is bread, currently I consume a loaf and 12 bread rolls a week, I want to halve that by buying a smaller loaf of bread or freezing half and buying less rolls, then I need to replace the pizza in my diet with something more healthy (suggestion welcome).

That's my New Years resolution, I actually spent my New Eve at Tom & Esther's with Julie and Dave, the only other person I knew there was Niki, it was a quiet party the kind I like, perhaps a little too much Maelstrom but I should not complain I was in the majority of Ascendancy players at Sam's party and perhaps we went on bit much there in front of other guest.

The other thing I did at the party was sniff Esther scents from the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab something I been fascinated by since Esther, Helen and few others started collecting all these scents with wonderful names like Mad Sweeney, Burial, Cheshire Cat, I tried on Neil Gaiman's Agnus Nutter which smells of Gun Powder and the one that made me interested in smelling them in the 1st place. They were great by the way one day I will order some, not sure what I will do with them if I get them, gifts perhaps who knows.

So Happy New Year everyone.