It has been an eventful year. I had resolved to get back to blogging last summer and actually got so far as to post twice in June. Sadly, just after that last post, my mother fell on the 1st of July and struck her head. She went into the hospital to be checked out, had a massive stroke before being released, and passed on the 11th, at the age of 85. That left my father, eight years older than my mother, living alone for the first time in over sixty years. Wrapping up my mother’s affairs and ensuring that we had a system to support my father has been my highest priority since then, although things have gradually gotten easier as we came to a sustainable system. As a silver lining, I have been spending a lot of quality time with my father this past year, as I have generally been staying with him about a week each month.
This level of support has been made easier by another major transition since last summer. I retired after 42 years with my employer, on the 31st of December, so I have been free to do more or less as I pleased these past eight months. It has taken some time to develop a new routine, and my first attempt to do so required some adjustment when my wife also retired, unexpectedly, at the end of May.
As I started the year, I resolved first to play more games in the time that was available to me. The HAWKs, my club, ordinarily meet on the 1st and 3rd Friday evenings of each month, and I have been aware that the group’s retirees have been meeting for morning games on Thursdays after each club meeting. These “unofficial” meetings are fondly known as the Geezer Games. I am now a regular attendee. I have also made a more diligent effort to get out to the “official” meetings as well.
As a result of these new opportunities, as of this week, I have 46 miniatures games in my log so far for this year, so I certainly hope that I will pass the usual 52 game annual goal with games to spare. The curious thing is that I have not been able to make time for any solo gaming. I may have to declare December “solo gaming month” or some such; I have a small stack of specifically solo games piling up, as well as another stack of new games I’d like to try out.
I have been running some games as well as playing other people’s games. At the last HAWKs meeting I attended I ran a little Dragon Rampant game using my 1/72 scale fantasy collection, which I entitled “Strange Women Lying in Ponds…”, involving two rival factions attempting to seize the kingship by convincing the Lady of the Lake to give them the royal sword.
I have not been doing a lot of painting lately. This summer I have been bicycling a lot for pleasure and my health, but I expect that there will be more painting time as the weather becomes less conducive to biking. I did most of the painting on a 6mm castle from Total Battle Miniatures, but have yet to complete its basing.
I have done some work on 6mm fantasy figures intended to expand the Fantastic Battles games we have been playing. Shown here are a couple of stands of ogres from Microworld Miniatures.
