Exquisite Turmoil

School starts so early here.. Anya’s first day of Kindergarten is August 7th! Gosh, in Connecticut we didn’t start school until the very end of August — sometimes not until September, even. I know that they start early here to get the kids out of school before the really hot summer rolls in, but honestly, this seems kind of stupid to me. It is MUCH hotter now in the beginning of August than it is in the beginning of June. I can only think that it would be better to start school in late August and end in June, rather than ending in May. Ah well, no point complaining about it.

Anya is ridiculously excited, and can’t wait to ride the school bus. I always drove her for preschool, of course, and now she’s going bonkers over the idea of riding the bus. Now if only I could get her excited over the idea of waking up before 10am :p School starts at 9:10 (ends at 3:40) and the bus arrives at the bus stop at 8:48. I have a feeling the first few weeks of school are going to be one big fight over bed time and waking up.

There is another thing that confuses me.. school ends at 3:40 and the bus won’t be dropping her off until 4:06.. but we literally live like.. a mile from the school. How can it possibly take 30 minutes to drop her off here? Dan thinks that they drive all the way out and drop off the furthest kids, and then work their way back in, but again — that seems ridiculously stupid to me. Why not drop off the closest kids and then move out? Once the novelty of riding the bus wears off, I imagine I’ll end up picking her up from the school rather than waiting for her at the bus stop.

Anyway, off to actually work on that Varghulf x.x I don’t know why I’ve been slacking so badly lately with my painting. I think it’s because I’m not happy with how the model is turning out, so I keep putting it off…

Alas, the poor Dire Wolves have received no love today. I really was intending to get around to them, but as I was cleaning up my painting area, I caught sight of Dan’s quarrelers and decided to surprise him by greenstuffing them for him, since he had been dreading doing it. Anyway, that actually managed to take most of the day until he got home and then after dinner I went and took a nap (stupid effing migraines).

Now my poor little wolves will be relegated to the “complete at some nebulous future date” category since the Varghulf will be all dry and ready for more paintings tomorrow ^_^ Ah well, I’m sure they’ll get some more love when it comes time to attach the left arm.

While it’s not exactly gourmet, sometimes after a long day of painting all you want is a bowl of ramen! The cat loves it too, though. She’s so weird — her favourite food in the world has got to be spaghettios, but she has also been known to stick her head in a jar of black olives, lick lemon juice off of the cutting board, and enjoy a nice helping of salsa con queso. Anyway, I thought she looked so cute drooling after Dan’s ramen that I had to take a picture.

Please pardon my messy table, by the way — it’s covered in painting crap and dinner crap and looks like crap QQ Anyway, last night I finished the wing bones on the Varghulf and added more pinky tones around the rips in the wings. The cuts along his back and legs have been painted and I’ve updated the color of the flesh (just a basecoat). The right arm has been glued on and packed with greenstuff. Once that finishes curing, I’ll greenstuff up some texture for where his arm / fur are supposed to be. Then he’ll be ready to have his fur painted. Once all of his fur is painted, I can glue / greenstuff the left arm. Then I’ll just need to paint the flesh, the talons, and all of the facial detailing. A few more days, in any case. Think I might actually go for a scenic base with this model since he’s so big and pretty and all of that.

Anyway, while his arm was drying last night, I also got a bit of preliminary work done on my dire wolves. I think I’ll get a little more work done on them today as well, since I’ll need to let the Varghulf dry again after I add the texture to his right arm. Perhaps I’ll get the muscles painted up, and get in a start on the clean bones. Anyway, if I do, I’m sure I’ll post it here.

Yes, yes, I admit it — I’ve been slacking on the posts and on my painting. I got next to nothing done on the Varghulf yesterday, although I claim to have a very good reason! In an absolutely unprecedented show of compassion, my sister offered to watch the kids so that Dan and I could go and see the new Batman. I guess she went to the midnight release show and had such THO (Titty Hard On) from watching it that she decided that I HAD to see it so we could drool over Christian Bale together.

All I can say is.. Oh. My. God. I made Dan say things in his “Batman voice” the whole way home from the theatre. Can we say “take me now, please, Batman”? Even without Christian Bale’s complete and total sexocity, the movie was fantastic. It makes me ridiculously sad to think that Heath Ledger’s Joker won’t be making any appearances in future films.. he was absolutely outstanding.

Anyway, stupid Batman and keeping me from painting my Varghulf x.x I spent forever (okay, maybe not forever — in truth, the lure of Christian Bale Batman was too strong and I had to watch Batman Begins again) today trying to come up with something, anything to make the stupid wing bones look good, but I just can’t figure out what it needs. My first attempt was going to be a grayish color but I just kept ending up with some sort of purply.. blah. Combined with the pink fleshiness of the wings, it was making the model look very.. pastel. I don’t think that pastel is a term that can be applied to “blood-mad killers that exist only to feed”. I mean, I’m all for unconventional paint schemes and techniques / colors that showcase my femininity in my models, but a pastel Varghulf is just WRONG.

Anyway, I moved on to experimenting with shades of red, but still nothing is looking right. I do, at least, think that red is what I’m going to go with — I just need to find the right red. I’d like the very tips of the wings to be the brightest red, and then I’d like them to fade down to a brown until they finally meet with the model’s flesh. Unfortunately, however, I can’t quite find the right red.. and the right brown. Hopefully a day at the drawing board tomorrow will result in some wing bones that don’t look like complete crap. Once those are finished I will also, by necessity, have figured out the color that I’d like the flesh to be which will, of course, lead to an obvious choice for the fur.

The fate of my Varghulf rests on some teeny little ridiculously pointy (my finger still hurts, dammit) wing bones.

They’ve arrived, they’ve arrived! My VMC set is finally here! And not only are my paints here, Dan took me to my favourite restaurant (The Persian Room) for lunch, too! So far, this is shaping up to be a wonderful day.

He got called in to work, which is unfortunate, but hopefully it won’t take very long and then we can sit down to paint! I can’t wait to try out the new colors, but I don’t want to start the Varghulf until he gets home.  It still needs to be primed and he’s better at it than I am. I think it’s because he is able to shake the can more vigorously.. he’s so strong and wonderful <3

Yay for Dan being able to rebuild his mysteriously disappeared Night Goblin army!

He is the proud new owner of:

• 30 spider riders with 2 command
  
• 1 giant
  
• 1 giant spider with boss
  
• 9 ball and chain fanatics
• 2 wolf chariots
  
• 60 night goblin archers with 3 command
  
• 108 night goblins with spear and 5 command
  
• 1 new Scarsnick and Gobbla
  
• 1 old Scarsnick and Gobbla
  
• 1 ork and goblin battalion box
  
• 1 night goblin box
  
• 1 blister goblins with spears
  
• 4 night goblin fanatics blisters (3 per blister)
  
• 1 night goblin squig herder blister
  
• 4 night goblin squig herders
  
• 6 squigs
  
• 6 pairs of night goblin squig herder
  
• 20ish spider bodies missing legs
• 47 snotlings
  
• 1 stone troll metal
• 1 doom diver catapult missing 1 divers legs

All of this for the ridiculously bargain price of $280 + $20 shipping!  Guess that pretty much takes care of Dan’s second army.  That’s an easy 3000 points right there.

Poor me ;-; My paints aren’t going to get here until THURSDAY. Yes, I cry a lot. I am going into WITHDRAWAL here people. I.. need.. to.. paint.

The Varghulf is all ready to go (well, arms aren’t attached although they are pinned, but there are some parts I need to paint before I glue / greenstuff those) and I got my dire wolves all glued together tonight. That sucked, by the way. I love how the models look, but I didn’t realize how poorly sculpted their joins are. It seems to be a trend lately, with GW. Every new box I’ve opened I’ve just been stunned at how difficult it is to get the models together compared to a few years ago. It’s a little disappointing, actually. I’ll have to take some pictures of Dan’s quarrelers as an example. It’s just shameful how badly done those models are.  They’re going to need hours of greenstuffing to get them looking decent.

Anyway, off to bed with me.

I’ve been anxiously awaiting the delivery of my new VMC paints (I think I mentioned before that I don’t want to paint anything else until they arrive). I’ve dutifully checked outside my parents’ front door every day (about 700 times) and today there was a tag on the door that they tried to deliver but since no one answered, they’d redeliver on Monday or the package could be picked up today after 6:15.

I was so excited, GDI >.< Anyway, I popped on FedEx’s website to see if there was any chance the package would be back at the office before 6:15 so that I could get it sooner.. and realized that the tracker said the package weighed half a pound. Now, obviously 72 paints in a carrying case is not going to weigh half a pound. So it turns out that it’s really just some crap paperwork for my dad from his old job. BLAAAAAH. I WANT MY PAINTS.

I am dying to get more work done on my army. I swear, I can’t stand waiting much longer. On another shitty note, I realized when my spearhead arrived that the Varghulf is on a 60mm base. Or is it 50mm? Anyway, it’s definitely not a 40mm, therefore I can’t enter it in the contest.

Yay. And yet another shitty note… Dan just called me. They’re cutting four classes from WAR. Hammerer, Choppa, Knight of the Blazing Sun, and Black Guard. This just.. completely unbalances the game. Empire and Dark Elves get no tank? How the hell are they supposed to hold a line against their counterparts (Chaos and High Elves) who have all four classes? And in the Orc v. Dwarf scene.. Squig Herders and Engineers are going to run rampart without their smack-ass classes to keep them in check.

Not to mention, they’re also cutting out four of the six capital cities. One of the major points about WAR that they’ve been touting is being able to capture the capital city of your opposing force, beat up his leader and like.. tear down his statues. Now only two races get that dubious privilege?

I’ll be completely honest here and say that — this puts a serious damper on my desire to play the game. Dan and I have already ordered our collector’s editions, so we’ll be playing in the open beta together.. but I rather expect that we won’t be putting in our credit cards for that monthly subscription fee.

I mean, come on.. the class I most want the play is the Disciple of Khaine, so now I get to play a healer with no tank? I realize that I can travel on over to the Orc or Chaos area and snag myself a nice Black Orc or Chosen, but I DON’T WANT TO. I want to run around with a sexy elf man in the DARK ELF area, doing DARK ELF public quests and battling HIGH ELVES.

Browsing around The War Store today, I stumbled across the celebrity testimonials. I was expecting to just find a couple of you know.. D-list actors who happen to play Warhammer, figured it would be amusing. What I found was so much better. It’s actually.. indescribable. You’ll have to read it for yourself to truly appreciate the beauty of it. To entice you to do so (please, please go read them all), I give you Chuck Norris’ endorsement of The War Store.

TheWarStore is the only place tough enough to handle orders for Chuck Norris

My name is Chuck Norris. I’m here to tell you some facts about TheWarStore.com. Neal is the the toughest guy in the online hobby business. I taught him everything he knows.

• TheWarStore doesn’t lower prices. Neal glares at them until they fall on their own.
• When I play 40k, I just use one miniature. But it is me, so I always win.
• TheWarStore doesn’t actually send packages to the post office. I just roundhouse kick them to your door.
• When I play D&D, the GameMaster doesn’t ask me to make a ‘to-hit’ roll. He asks me to roll a ‘how far did you kick their head off’ roll.
• TheWarStore prices just don’t beat the competition. It makes their store burst into flame, collapse, and then the rubble disintegrates.
• I play Blood Angels. I don’t have to paint them to make them look good; I just leave them around the room when I fight people.
• If I wanted, I could make GW sell to me at a discount, but I would rather buy from Neal at TheWarStore.

Some people take this hobby way too seriously. Don’t misunderstand — I am obsessed with Warhammer, I adore Warhammer, and I take my Warhammer seriously.. but I don’t really consider it acceptable to take the hobby so seriously that you spoil other people’s ability to enjoy the game.

Not really feeling like bitching about it, so here’s an awesome picture from a thread on DakkaDakka.

I mean, seriously — tell me that isn’t the awesomest thing ever? If someone plopped that down on the table in front of me, I would absolutely play a game with them. How could you not? I mean, except for the fact that Anya would bitch me out for killing Elmo or something.. They’re just hilarious.