Entertainment For All

A while ago, Jeff and I invested in a tabletop miniature wargame called Warhammer 40K. We each bought armies off of ebay so we could play against each other. We have other friends with armies, but it's hard to schedule games when they take hours to complete.

Jeff and I picked different races for our armies. I have Necrons (skeleton looking robots):

and Jeff has the Imperial Guard (humans):




There are also Orks, Tau, Eldar, Tyranids, and Chaos. The game is set up on a 4x6 area. Each race has their own rules and advantages, and your army is set up using a point limit (each character is worth a certain amount of points, so you build the strongest army you can). It is a lot of fun. Here are some pictures of recent battles:




Jeff beats me more often than not, but it's still enjoyable. His units are cheaper than mine are, so he is able to field a lot more miniatures. They look really intimidating when he sets up. Plus, he gets tanks. My necrons, though, have incredible saves, making them really hard to kill, and are very dangerous in close combat.

A part of the fun of this game is the personalized pieces. If you buy a miniature new, you have to glue its pieces together (which can take a while if it has a lot of small pieces) and paint it (which takes a lot longer). Since we bought our armies used, they came already put together and somewhat painted. Mine were awful. I'm working on repainting them so I can have a better looking army. Jeff's army has so many figurines that the previous owner just primed most of the pieces and played with them gray. It is going to take a long time for his to paint them all.

Meanwhile, while Jeff and I enjoy our game, our cats entertain themselves another way- by bringing more mice into the house.



It doesn't help that they keep losing the mice under the couch or the piano. Stupid cats.

My Mother Taught Me

I wanted to post this because I want to show off what my mother taught me long ago.

I don't sew often, and I'm not very good at it, but I absolutely love that I know how to do it when the occasion arises. One such occasion came up when my friend invited me to an anime convention down in St George. We get a little crazy when we're around each other and both decided to dress up, finalizing our plans the morning before leaving. That gave us a little less than 24 hours to put together our outfits.

I decided to go as Katara, from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
(This is just someone's picture of her, but it's the best one I could find with the costume I copied):


I'm actually very proud of what I was able to accomplish since I also had to work that day. I went to the DI after work and picked up a blue dress, boots, a white long sleeve shirt and a blue long sleeve shirt.

After 5 hours of sewing (and an all nighter), I came up with this:



Like I said, I was pretty proud. I used my old scrubs for the pants and didn't end up using the blue shirt (I was going to make gloves out of it). I didn't really measure much since I was in a huge hurry, and the neck was a little more open than I meant it to be. In the end, though, I just needed to wear a tank top underneath and it was fine.

I don't have pictures of myself in the costume, but I thought I would share this before I re-donated everything.

I love my mother and I'm so glad she took the time to teach me such a useful skill and she always makes sure my sewing machine is working properly.