Soul crushing.

Work started well in that though I was tired, found it hard to focus, and swayed slightly, I didn't fall asleep. Once I'd had lunch I was much better since I actually had energy. Unfortunately from that point on I noticed the passage of time a lot more, and by the last hour was steadily getting worse. It was simply nasty, as I had no motivation and desperately wanted to go home. Thankfully work does end, and seeing my girlfriend drastically, and I can't stress this enough, drastically improved my day. My evening with her was really relaxing as we spent ages chatting and simply being happy in eachother's company. She means everything to me. I keep reminding myself of just how lucky I am. When my dad came to pick me up I didn't really want to leave but unfortunately the choice wasn't up to me. Once I got home it was a case of going on the usual anime and manga update search, webcomic reading and so forth. Unfortunately the torrent for Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society wasn't working, but eventually I found another. Similarly unfortunately there don't seem to be any seeds, so I'm currently stuck on 26.4%. As I said to my mate, I doubt it'll be done by tuesday.

I didn't bother watching any anime either, since I'd seen shedloads in the past two days and felt like taking a short break. Once all the updates are done I'll only have five to watch anyway - two episodes of Kemonozume and the updates for Love Get Chu, Kamisama Kazoku and the final for Higurashi no naku Koro ni. Hopefully the Ghost in the Shell movie won't take too long to get, because i'm quite looking forward to it. I'll not be seeing any club-related Japanese media on monday either, since the first club meeting got moved to wednesday. Considering that I'm part of the gaming club SWARM, which meets on wednesdays from 2 pm till 10 pm, I'm not going to be able to go. I will however most likely bring my laptop and a few things to fight games with. That'll certainly be interesting. For now though I'm out of stuff to say, aside from the fact that I had 365 posts as of the last one. That's certainly a full year of blogging. Till next time.

Lots of anime. Gah.

Today was entertaining, that's for sure. I got to Uni at 9.30 am-ish, thinking my tutor appointment was at 10.40 pm. As such I went 'early' at 10.25 am, only realising when I saw the sign that I'd signed up for 10.20 am. Whoops. My tutor didn't seem to overly mind, but did point out never to be late for a seminar. Whoops. That talk only lasted 10 minutes, so off I went to Brighton to buy my girlfriend's Christmas present early just to make sure it didn't get sold or anything. That was a bit pricey. Thinking I was just going to pick up a magazine I went to David's Books and Dave's Comics and ended up getting... a lot. Vaguely painful financially... A Magic the Gathering Deck for £6, the NewType USA magazine for £8.50, Bleach volume 15 for £5.50, a Genshinken model for £15, four Robot (not a series/manga I've heard of but I have seen an art book on it) small figures for £6 each, two Rozen Maiden Traumend small figures for £5 each, and finally a Capcom Fighter Collection small figure for £5. All in all, £74. Combined with the price of my girlfriend's present.... a large chuink of my wages have disappeared already, and I only got paid today. Not only that but there were 3 more models I had wanted to get, and they were £20, £32 and £40 respectively. The latter two are simply gorgeous. I want them so badly.....

After Brighton I went to Haywards Heath and into my old college. They apparently require a college ID to get in now. Thank god they weren't checking when I got there eh? I met up with a few mates then went to see some of my old teachers. I actually gate crashed my sociology teacher's class, but she seemed happy to see me and told me she'd missed my weekly drawings. It was quite flattering. I think her class were a bit weirded out by me though, she had to explain a fair amount. I also one of my english language teachers, the one who taught me how to write exam radio plays. They're what I'm worst at yet I did one n the exam and got 90 marks. I spoke with her about it and found out that the exam was out of 90, and that before the marks conversion for overall grades it was out of 70 and I'd scored 64. That was also the highest mark in my year for that module. Needless to say I was rather pleased indeed to hear that. It wasn't long before I went back home however as the afternoon was wearing on.

When I did get home I got straight to the anime. Thanks to yet more downloading of updates I had over 30 episodes of anime to watch. I simply cannot, and will not, be bothered to lost them all. I have, however, watched them all and am now pretty much up to date. In short, excellent. I still do have 5 episodes and a movie to download though, the last two episodes for Demonbane, the last episode for Utawarerumono, the last episode for Air Gear and an update for Love Get Chu. The movie happens to be the newest Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society. It's over 1 GB in size, so I'm assuming it's good quality. That brings everything to a close, so till next time.

Mini animarathon.

Hmm. University today wasn't as good as yesterday. For a start the short ICT talk this morning was quite boring. I ended up spending most of the hour randomly surfing sites instead of following the lecture. Then I had lots of spare time so walked around for a bit, and finally the law lecture was only about the extra curricular law activities, which I already knew about. However the law lecture ended one hell of a lot earlier than described on the Fresher's schedule sheet, so I was able to get home reasonably early at around 2.40 pm. As such I (eventually) got to see my girlfriend since I went round her house. Neither of us thought we'd see eachother today, and so it was really nice being able to turn up and hug her. When I'd called to tell her I could see her there was a fair amount of 'Yay!'s and cheering down the phone to me. It was really sweet and improved my day immensely. She also had the money for some Confrontation miniatures, so I've ordered those for her. I did so quite quickly after I got home, even though it takes a while to process apparently. Being able to spend more time with my girlfriend, especially when I didn't think I'd see her today, was excellent. Simply excellent. It put me in a fantastic mood, that's for sure.

I did have to return hoe however, unfortunately, so updated the forum, did my usual anime and manga update rounds, then proceeded to start watching anime. I got through the entire series of Futakoi, 13 episodes, as well as the updates (and in some cases final episodes) for School Rumble, Ouran High School Host Club, Welcome to the NHK! and Zero no Tsukaima which makes a total of 17. Not exactly huge, but not bad since I started watching quite late. Futakoi was certainly an interesting series, though a potentially incredibly painful situation to be in, loved by multiple sets of twins. Not only is there worrying about hurting one of a pair, but all the other pairs. Ouch indeed. The final for School Rumble wasn't a concrete ending, since the characters spoke of the next term. I do hope there's another series. Ouran had a good ending which wasn't a cliffhanger or abrupt, but which suited the series immensely. Good job there. Werlcome to the NHK! had a nasty revelation for the hikikomori determined to be 'cured' - the girl he liked who whisked him away did so with a group of people planning suicide. I don't think that's quite what he wants. Lastly Zero no Tsukaima was entertaining to watch. Though Saito and Louise seem to be on rocky ground, he found a plane. That has to be handy in getting back home during a solar eclipse. Looks like Louise may have to say goodbye or go with him... That wraps everything up for now, though I still have another 22 episodes to watch before the weekend if I want to reach my target. How hectic. Till next time then.

SWARM!

University today was excellent. The lecture by Craig Lind was not only thought provoking, but quite fun to partake in. He's good at making little jokes, and twisting student's words back against them, making them look utterly stupid. Thankfully he didn't twist mine. However that was from between 2 pm and 3.40 pm. From 11 am till the lecture I hung out with the SWARM group. I got to the Fresher's Fair early whilst they were still setting up, and signed up immediately. I then spent the rest opf the time chatting with them, and they're all great people with (obviously) similar hobbies to mine. I actually spent over an hour and a half -behind- their table, convining other people to join. One other Fresher actually pointed out to me that he thought I was already an established member, and the president, treasurer and event's co-ordinator also made remarks about me already being a full member. It was pretty cool indeed. After the lecture I ran to the optional Social event for Freshers, grabbed as many bisquits as I could carry, and ran back to the SWARM table. They were all quite surprised and thankful for the bisquits. I also briefly visited the Japanese club (basically anime and manga) and managed to give the girl there some sites for yet more anime and manga. Entertaining considering she uses torrents yet didn't know of the sites.

After the bisquits I helped move a few things to a member's car, then it was to the club itself. Quite handily it takes place on a wednesday from 2 pm till 10 pm, and I usually finish on 1 pm. Excellent stuff. Looks like I'll be spending the full eight hours a week with tem then, heh. We played a few games of Magic the Gathering (in which without my usual deck I was slightly lost, got picked on in the huge multiplayer games and simply died), a Werewolf game, and Bang! which is a cool western card game. My roleplay in the Werewolf game made everyone laugh repeatedly, but I kept getting burnt to death since no one believed me even when I wasn't the werewolf. I already get on well with everyone, and they're just a damn cool group in general. Even more friends! Eventually however I had to get home. I have 37 episodes of anime to watch now, but not really enough time to do so right now. As such I'll leave them for either tomorrow or friday and I'll try to get them finished before the weekend. For now I'll just finish writing this then get some rest since I do feel a bit tired. Till next time then.

Before the update.

Time to write this before I start working on the forum update, otherwise I'll never manage this on time. I'm aiming to write a fair amount, as I didn't bother for the last two updates, meh. University today was much more fun. For a start when I turned up to the first lecture, there was no lecturer. It was a slight mistake on the wording of the timetable. However because of this I started chatting to several people, and I now have a new solid social group of three others, and an extended group of about four more. Tomorrow's the social club fair so I'll be able to join the Wargaming club for D&D and so forth. Excellent. The group of us went to the business and company-like organisational fair today, and I bagged a ridiculous amount of stuff. Roughly five different posters, ten various pens, a kit bag, a pair of sandals, a table cloth, a bike light, three club music CD's, a bobble hat, two neck-things for holding keys, a wallet and lighter with shedloads of club discount cards (as part of a one year membership for £1 which was pretty cool), a ridiculous amount of flyers and leaflets, several booklets on Brighton and what there is to do, various sets of candy, a small box of popcorn, another lighter from a different bar, and over thirty postcards for various clubs. Compared to my new friends, I easily got over double the amount they did, and I didn't even bother with every stall. It was quite fun indeed, if a little crowded.

The afternoon had a single compulsory lecture, which wasn't too bad at all, and an optional (and ADDITIONAL) welcome speech, so I just skipped that. I've had enough of being told welcome, plus I already knew about the aspects of University the speakers represented, and they don't really matter to me. For example security is a bit pointless as I don't live on campus and already know about personal security. As such I went home a bit early, prepared for Games Workshop, and off I went. It wasn't long before my two usual mates and girlfriend turned up, and as it was the gnome bard player's birthday he chose to have a curry in the other local pub, and ordered a rather big burger instead. How odd. After that it was to our usual pub and the D&D session. I wrapped up the campaign as it was loosing momentum, and I felt like handing over the reigns to the munchkin. Even if he is opinionated and annoying some of the time, he's DM'd before so he's bound to be better (though the feedback I got from the gnome bard player and my girlfriend was really nice. Thanks!). Once I got home when the evening out had ended I glanced at all the stuff on my bed, shrugged, then simply chatted with mates on WLM and Skype. After I finish writing this I'll be working on updating the forum, though I also have 24 episodes of anime to watch, with another 13 downloading. Guess I have a fair amount to do then. Till next time.

Aha! Early.

Now that post's out of the way, time for this one. This morning my connection still wasn't working, so unfortunately I still was unable to check for updates. Rather harshly, the miniatures I'd ordered from America arrived about five minutes before I had to leave so I didn't get much chance to look at them. A steampunk sorceror, necromancer and 'Mad Hatter' (doctor?) from Wyrd Miniatures as well as the Assassin and Undead Lady from Freebooter Miniatures, the girl Dot from Spyglass and the female Jester who I have no clue where from are all incredibly nifty. That's why I bought them after all. The Undead Lady and Female Jester are -almost- at the awesomeness level of the Forge World Death Korps of Krieg models. Heh, yeah, I really do like the Death Korps models. It's stupidly tempting to do an army of them, though as it is I'll be combining the 20 of them I have with 20 renegade Militia and 25-ish Vostroyans and making a Traitor Guard army using a Lost and the Damned list. A giant daemonic Commissar I hear? Why yes, yes indeed. I'll probably use the Be'lakor model as the base and sculpt the armour clothing, suitably torn of course. Now! To avoid getting side-tracked more, University was vaguely boring.

The introductory talk was a bit... boring. I almost fell asleep actually. Collecting my various student cards wasn't too bad, though they didn't have my main student card as the photo I'd sent had arrived. Thankfully it only took 30 seconds to take the picture and print the card so that wasn't too bad. Since I had a big gap in the middle of the day I went to Brighton and naturally visited Dave's Comics and David's Books. Aside from two manga volumes for my girlfriend I bought nothing. At University however I spotted two William Gibson books and bought them on sight. I own Neuromancer and admire his work. Not much else happened, though I managed to effectively wipe out my 50 pence printing credit as I printed out the timetable for my first month and a few other sheets. At 5 pence per sheet it was ridiculous. Meh. From now on I'll simply use my printer as it's much cheaper. The quiz I stayed for was damn boring, and the people I'd been put into a team with weren't bad per se, but I was still bloody bored. After we handed in the answers I left, as I knew we hadn't come first or last and didn't feel like hanging around. Playing Pokemon Leaf Green on the train journey back home did brighten up my day however. The book I borrowed from the University library, 'Beyond Good and Evil' by Neitzsche is also good. Not a completely boring day then. Plus when I got home my connection worked, so I have a SHEDLOAD of anime to download and watch. It may take several days to get up to date again, heh. Till next time.

Overdue Games Day.

I'm having to write this a full day late, as yesterday, or 'today' based on this post, my connection wouldn't work when I got home. It made it slightly harder to check for anime updates and so forth, that's for sure. Anyway, onto relating the day. I didn't bother going to sleep since I had to be up by 3 am, so I spent the time either preparing my pack for the day (it had a lot of food in it) or watching various music channels. Eventually I got a tiny bit bored, so quietly grabbed my PSP and glasses and spent half an hour or so playing more Pokemon Leaf Green. I've still not got that far, but then I've got less than six hours of playing time on it and the party are all near level 20 (aside from the starter who's at 22) so it's all good. When it was time to go I woke my dad, and eventually after some organising and picking up my girlfriend and I were at Games Workshop waiting for the coach. We got there early at 3.40 am instead of 4 am. Even so, the store manager was late and didn't get there till past 4.20 am. Typical. The coach journey up was relatively peaceful and quiet, though as my girlfriend was slightly cold I gave her my fleece and bought a rug at the pitstop (prompting the new staff member to make a comment about my age. I guess rugs are reserved for pensioners?).

Games Day itself was pretty fun. I got all my shopping done quite quickly, and my girlfriend was really sweet and kind and repeatedly offered to help carry my stuff, and did so without asking after we'd sat down for a bit to have snacks, since I had a fair amount. It was really kind of her. In the end I got three posters (an A3 one, an A1 one, and one even bigger....) which were free, and a binch of other expensive stuff. I shall elaborate - the Forge World Chaos Dragon at £195. Two squads of Forge World Death Korps of Krieg at £32 each. Two sets of Forge World Renegade Militia kits at £9 each. A two year subscription for White Dwarf (which got me the A1 poster free) for £60. The latest issue of White Dwarf as my subscription had run out for £4. Finally, a box of Cadian Imperial Guard for the Renegade Militia for £18. Overall that's £359. A lot in other words. Or in American, about $683. Yeah, I'm a tiny bit broke. All absolutely incredible stuff though. The Renegade Militia are cool enough, but the Death Korps are made of the resin versions of awesome, win and God. Yes, they rock THAT much. That's why I bought one set, looked at them for a short while, and went back to buy another, heh. Neither my girlfriend or I took part in the conversion competition, though as she wanted to look at the Golden Demon entries (as did I) we went and did our best to see them all. We only managed one side, ignoring the Young Bloods category, since the press of people was a bit too much.

Once we'd done evrything we wanted it was a question of waiting for time to pass really. Though I had pretty models to look at, my girlfriend didn't have much to do, so I tried to perk her up and di my best to ensure she wasn't bored with me quietly going through what I'd bought. It seemed to work as I still got her smiling and laughing. When it came to the Golden Demon awards, though we had good seats we couldn't see the winners that well. For some reason the main screen didn't show close pictures of the entries, but one that had the whole thing in view, with the Games Day and Golden Demon logos, as well as the winner's name and award level (for example Bronze) all underneath eachother and taking up a ridiculous amount of room. As such the pictures were quite small. It was vaguely irritating, but it'll be all good when the winner's booklet comes out with White Dwarf in a few months. The coach journey back wasn't too bad, though my girlfriend can get travwel sick, and when we were almost at the store felt quite bad. Thankfully she recovered really quickly, though was really tired. After dropping her off at her house with a few hugs and kisses, I returned home to find out that my internet connection didn't work. Great. As such no anime for me, and as I felt tired (no sleep then Games Day effectively wrecked me) I went to bed quite early. That's all, so till next time.

Hmm.

What to talk about? Well, instead of my plans to either paint the Bloodthirster or play Pokemon, I spent all morning dozing off in bed, and the beginning of the afternoon too. A waste of time really, but oh well. When I did get up I didn't really do much. Spent some time reading, a bit playing PSP, lots of time visiting various emulation forums, etc etc etc. Nothing all that notable really. I did update the forum arc, but didn't write any RP for my character Latenter even though he's in the middle of a fight. meh, I just don't seem to have as much motivation to write RP these days. To be honest I've felt vaguely apathetic all day, not really settling on anything for long and not overly feeling like speaking to people. I guess it's just one of those days or something. Meh. I did play as much Urban Dead as possible, and I'm up to 98 exp. Two more and I can increase the accuracy of my pistol shooting, which should make it easier for me to get bloody exp. It can be frustratingly slow at times.

I have watched some anime too, namely the most recent three updates for Innocent Venus, a new series I picked up yesterday, Zegapain, Welcome to the NHK! and Strawberry Panic. Innocent Venus is shaping up to be quite good, though there's still not much information on the little girl Venus after seven episodes, yet everyone seems to be after her. How odd. Zegapain had talk of the final plan which seemed to be quite farfetched, but hey, whatever works for them I guess. Welcome to the NHK! was seemingly the end of the guy's hikikomori lifestyle, but somehow I doubt it. The preview certainly suggested the beach wasn't all that it seemed. Strawberry Panic once again bordered on yuri for a few seconds. It was nice to see Amane remember the person she loves. Looks like all three schools will indeed be able to take part in the Etoile elections. I still have the Demonbane update to watch, but I'm not sure if I'll bother watching it today. Thanks to my mood I don't really feel like doing anything else. I guess that's it for now, till next time.

Whoops.

Guess I lost track of time. I did go to bed at around 5 am knowing my girlfriend would turn up at 1 pm, and I figured that was more than enough time for me to sleep. It was, most certainly. However I didn't get up the moment I woke, up, so ended up dozing for a while. 'For a while' means 'until my girlfriend rang and pointed out she was outside my house. Erm... whoops. Luckily I wasn't drowsy at all, but I did have to hurriedly change since I was still in my sleeping clothes. We spent some time playing Pokemon Colosseum before she did a few searches for models she could use for her Drow character for D&D. In the end she found two she really liked in the Confrontation range, so later on I guess she'll possibly be getting those. We also watched the Bleach dub together as she was interested in it, and she found some of the voices a bit... odd, just as I did. Overall though I think she liked it. In general spending time with her makes me feel really happy and content, and considering she was round for a fair while, it made my day simply excellent. I'll be seeing her on saturday after work too, not to mention spending all day with her at Games Day, so my week is especially good. If I used emoticons or such in a post I'd have something along the lines of '^^' here about now.

Unfortunately she did have to leave, but I've not got depressed. I'm still on a happy high from when she was here, so that's all good. I managed to get around to watching anime, and so far have seen the updates for Utawarerumono, Naruto, School Rumble 2nd Term and Ergo Proxy. Utawarerumono explained (in a way...) about more of the backstory and the two 'Gods' appeared. They have a long name beginjing with W, and I simply cannot be bothered to try and remember it. Even so, they're quite cool. Naruto has the trap maker arc end, yet another filler seems to be next. Will they EVER go back to the manga? I somehow doubt it. School Rumble was very good, with Harima being the main focus once again. The poor guy's so divided about what to do, but it looks like the next episode, i.e. the final, is going to be very good indeed... Last but not least, Ergo proxy continued to rock. It was rather disjointed, since a fair amount of time seems to pass between each episode, but it's still visually dark and impressive and a treat to watch. I'm looking forward to seeing how things turn out, considering Vincent's just been shot by the anti-proxy gun. I still have the Chevalier update (finally) to watch however, so I'll certainly manage to see that before I go to bed. I'm not doing anything tomorrow either, so either I'll actually get round to painting more of the Bloodthirster (not likely) or I'll end up playing Pokemon all day (very likely). Till next time then.

Sleeping once more.

I well and truly caught up with sleep today. I didn't actually go to sleep till nearly 9 am this morning, but didn't get up till 3.30 pm, so that was more than enough time really. The only really notable thing I did outside today was buying the first month train ticket for University, valid from the 25th of this month. That saves me buying it nearer the time when I'll be a bit more stressed. I also spent a fair amount of time playing games, most notably The Legend of Zelda: The Minnish Cap and Pokemon Leaf Green. Though I've played Pokemon before (many, many times) Minnish Cap was new to me, and the graphics are pretty damn good considering it's a GameBoy Advance title. It's quite sweet playing them on my PSP too. As for Pokemon I only have 4 of the little critters and I'm yet to challenge Brock the first Gym Leader. I figure I'll spend a ridiculous amount of time levelling up at the beginning, that way I can just walk straight through the first few Gyms. Some people may consider playing this game to be quite sad, but meh, I enjoy them so it's all good. Other than that, my day was pretty typical. I updated the forum where it was needed, and the new forum skin poll is almost over. I'll probably end up changing the skin relatively soon, or at the very least before I go to sleep.

I did also manage to get through some anime, but not much. I've only watched the Bleach and xxxHOLiC updates, as they were all I had at the time. Now I have Zero no Tsukaima and Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, so I'll see those after this post. Bleach was interesting, though there wasn't much fighting at all. The implication that Ishida may randomly explode was entertaining however. In xxxHOLiC Watanuki started coughing up blood because he repeatedly met up with a lady. That's obviously not exactly a good sign... From what I can tell, it's probably due to him and the lady using eachother as substitues for deceased family members. No doubt all will become clear next episode. That draws everything to a close, and considering everything I guess I should get to changing the forum now, as there's 73 diofferent images to host for it.... dang eh? Till next time.

Meh.

I had another moment of lethargy today, bot bothering to get up and do anything till just past 2 pm, where I went to Games Workshop. I annoyed the manager a little, as my little social group has been going there every tuesday only to hang around and do nothing, eventually leaving to go to the pub to play D&D. After a talk with him he's much happier as we've agreed not to do that anymore unless we have stuff to do. After my mates and girlfriend turned up we went and had a meal at the noodle place as per usual before, yes, going to the pub and playing D&D. The munchkin effectively died, since he got ambushed by wolves and couldn't take them all down. He managed to kill 2 of 4, but the remaining two pounced him and got him below 0 health. Uh-oh indeed. The gnome bard also burnt down the tavern and tried to run away, getting caught, beaten up, getting a leg broken, having all his things taken and being thrown into jail. Uh-oh for him too then. My girlfriend, the catgirl, did much better as all she did was follow my Diabolus fighter character out into the woods for him to get all his stuff that he buried for safekeeping. Unfortunately then my laptop ran out of battery, so all my D&D stuff turned off. Hmm. That ended the session.

My girlfriend and I went back to Games Workshop to hang out till she had to leave, and after that it was back to the pub to play pool. Though I'm usually terrible I did rather well, getting 5 in a row and pulling off shots that I would usually horrendously miss. I still lost however with one of my colour left on the table as the other guy completely cleared up when he got the chance, dang. After I got home the only update I had to watch was Kiba, and it was quite good. I thought the series was ending with 26, but it's not. AniDB doesn't list it as ending at all, and the series isn't anywhere near a conclusion. How interesting. I have have three updates for Muteki Kanban Musume, Tonagura! and Ouran High School Host Club to get, so I'll be watching those when they're done. I will have to go to bed reasonably early though as I need to get up tomorrow to get the train ticket for University, and then afterwards I can go to Games Workshop and do more painting on the Bloodthirster. Since I didn't do any today that'll be quite useful indeed. On thursday my girlfriend will be coming round after college and we'll be reading manga together, and I'm having a free day of friday. All in all a set of good weekly plans then. As I've run out of things to say, till next time.

Even more painting.

Yes indeed, I got even more painting done today. Zomg indeed. I went to Games Workshop at around 2.15 pm (having done nothing much in the morning)and went to work on the Bloodthirster. In the hours till the store closed I managed to finish off all the flesh, giving it a stronger red tint, repained the wing membranes black in preparation for drybrushing them, and managed to get the fur painted. I also managed to get the armour of my Diabolus fighter painted in the deep red/burgundy I was going for, so that wasn't too bad. I'd hoped to get more painting done, but I didn't actually start till just after 3 pm, and lots of time was spent waiting for the damn fur base coat to dry. Bah. The wing membranes also took a surprising amount of time. Thankfully drybrushing them won't take much time at all, so if I get up early enough tomorrow I could finish the wing membranes and make a decent start on the armour. Depending on how many layers I go for I could get the armour done quite quickly. It's the bone details that'll take the most time I reckon. Hopefully I'll also get my Diabolus fighter pretty much finished tomorrow too, which is handy. Unfortunately however after reading some comedy D&D material (yes, I'm getting even more....) I have a huge inclination to make a mime. A normal human, but a mime modelled on the Jester class, and focus on spells which create invisible objects, for example walls and boxes. Heheheheh.

There wasn't actually much anime for me to watch. I saw the last two episodes of Comic Party Revolution and the updates for Ah! My Goddess second season, Black Blood Brothers and Witchblade. Comic Party was entertaining in a slightly odd way. Considering it's based in the 'real' world with no special powers or anything, it was vaguely odd how the main male character managed to conjure a fake girl from his imagination who actually interected with others. Oh well. It was still a good series to watch. Ah! My Goddess covered the chapters with the evil little tea pot which appears as something the perceiver finds irresistably cute. Quite amusing. As for Black Blood Brothers, the older brother wasn't as impressive as he was in the first episode. For a start he landed in some water whilst avoiding a suppression team, and was immediately weakened. What a stupid mistake to make considering it was a tiny fountain. Meh. Witchblade was just as intriguing as it's previous episodes, with one of the bio-mechanoid freaks still seemingly posessing his humanity. I wonder how that'll turn out, since he's the first of his kind to actually get away from Witchblade. With luck there'll be more anime updates soon. Till there is, I'll continue to read D&D material (as I now have the first 300 Dragon magazines and a few past that number but sporadic) and plan things for my campaign. Till next time. (Gee damn I really want to make a Mime model....)

Blah. Just blah.

The title describes work today perfectly. To elaborate, it wasn't fun at all, and felt incredibly draining and soul crushing. I was on a normal till but had an endless queue of customers, which always seems to make my efforts feel futile, and I swear I only got through the day thanks to thinking of my girlfriend and counting down the time minute by minute, little segments at a time. It wasn't a pleasant day. At all. On the plus side however as I now no longer work wednesdays I don't need to go to work till saturday, when I'll see my girlfriend as always, then the day after both of us will be going to Games Day. Pretty nifty stuff indeed. Spending time with my girlfriend today was nice and relaxing as always, and, though it didn't get rid of all the stress from work, it certainly helped my demeanour. We spent a lot of time just talking about stuff and us, it was nice to work out exactly where we were and how things were going. Af of tomorrow we'll have been going out for five and a half months, so that's not bad. Not bad at all, and as she makes me really happy I hope it keeps going. We also watched anime in the evening before I went, as it's a sunday, and Fullmetal Alchemist was good as per usual. Mezzo DSA was a bit... odd, but there you go. Overall it's been a pretty strange series.

Not long after I got home I checked the forum and there hadn't been much activity, so I checked for anime updates and there hadn't been many of those either. I finally got around to watching the end of Binbou Shimai Monogatari and it was a sweet, if cliche-like, ending. The update for Blood+ was good too, with the two Queens, Saya and Diva, finally fighting properly. As the next episode is the last, yet the fight between the Queens is over, I doubt there'll be something impressive and climatic. If it ends up being angsty and suddenly becoming the happy ending of everyone's dreams I shall be quite annoyed. A single episode of Comic Party Revolution got seen, and though I enjoyed the episode itself, I found that it's slowness (only twice normal speed instead of four times) irritated me slightly. I guess I'm used to faster episodes now, heh.

My plans for tomorrow will probably revolve around going to Games Workshop to paint the Diabolus fighter and Bloodthirster I've been working on, and then watching anime in the evening when I get back. That's assuming I get up in the morning of course. I'm likely to have a lay in for some time, so it's a work in progress plan I suppose. Till next time then.

Busy work eh?

You may notice this post is vaguiely shorter than normal. This is due to me not having anything interesting to say, and also because I don't feel like writing much. I didn't get to bed till 3.30 am this morning, whoops. That was most definitely my own fault, as I'd remained awake to burn more stuff to DVD, as I'd finished getting all of Red Dwarf at long last. Luckily I got enough sleep for me to run (about four hours) and boy did I need those hours. Work was intensely busy, but I did my best to maintain a pleasant demeanour and cheery disposition so the day passed quickly enough. I managed to change my hours so I no longer work on a wednesday as I have University coming up, and I'll be abot to have this coming wednesday blissfully free, as I have University the next week. I've also finally got the holiday authorised for Games Day, as I pointed out that I'd paid to go, and that it's a once a year event. It was a big relief when the holiday was allowed, heh. After work I saw my girlfriend again, and, naturally, that made my day much better indeed and made me forget most of my bad work day (till now at any rate). I'm feeling more and more comfortable spending time with her, and I always seem to count down till the time I see her next. Kinda mushy I guess, but she makes me happy so it's all good.

Once I got home after watching a sizable chunk of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers extended edition at her house I went straight to the forum. There's currently a poll running as to a new skin for the forum, but it's not made much headway. Somewhere between eight and ten votes (i.e. eight, nine or ten, not nine....) but I didn't pay that much attention. One of the cooler ones has three votes where some of the others have two, so I guess there's a vague indication for a winner so far. I also don't have much anime to watch. Five episodes of Comic Party Revolution remain, but as they're in .mkv format I probably won't watch them till later when I have lots of time. I also have the updates for Welcome to the NHK! (a fantastic series) and Coyote Ragtime Show (again, another fantastic series). It's not long till I have the second dubbed Bleach episode to watch too, nifty stuff. At any rate I'll be off, so till next time.

Not far away.

352nd post eh? Not too far until I have a year's worth. The day was a relatively slow one as I didn't bother getting up till 3 pm. Yep, I spent most of the day in bed. I'd gone to bed yesterday remarkably early at around midnight and woke at maybe 8 am, but couldn't be bothered to get up. I suppose resting when awake is the way I catch up on sleep or something. At any rate my afternoon was spent getting passport photos for my University cards then not really doing much at all. I watched a bit of anime sporadically, namely the updates that I had left, whilst I got a few more. I did however need to spend some time working out the problems with my printer, which culminated in uninstalling it, deleting everything, reinstalling it, changing most of the settings and swearing at it a few times. It seemed to do the trick though, as now it works quite happily. I also (finally) wrote up a post for Latenter on the Soul Society forum and updated the arc again. I made the post vaguely longer than usual since I hadn't RP'd during the last update, so no doubt I guess I'm slightly behind. I also spoke with a few friends on WLM (I'm still talking to one actually) and I got some more D&D stuff worked out as my bard friend wanted to sort out some stuff regarding his equipment and new pet Boar. How strange, heh.

One new anime series I've picked up is Black Blood Brothers. Though not much was explained in the first episode, the older brother of the pair has powers that rival those of Neo from the Matrix trilogy. He managed to stop bullets in the air, though I assume it was to do with his purple aura rather than simply manipulating reality to his whim. It was also rather funny when he punished the younger brother for running around the ship. He simply flicked his finger and the little brother, who was a fair distance away, slammed up and down into the floor and sideways into the wall, making craters. That had me laughing for a bit. At that point it was pretty obvious that they weren't human, since it'd have killed a normal person (though on reflection since this is anime many normal people can get shot multiple times and still have time for final words). I've also watched an episode of Comic Party Revolution, and once I get through the remaining 12 I'll be up to date again. Considering at one point I had 42 episodes to watch, that's not bad. I'm also very, very slowly getting the D&D Dragon magazines, though as the first collection torrent was unavailable I'll not be able to get the first 80, and the collection only goes up to 250. Considering that there's over 340 by now, I'll need to do a tiny bit more searching. Ah well. Till next time.

A nifty day.

The day started earlier than usual, as I'd not bothered to go to bed. I'd remained awake to sculpt the Diabolus, watch some anime, sculpt more, watch a bit more anime, and so forth. At one point I'd thought the sculpting was done, then saw I still have the bottom of a sash to do. Once that was cured I primed the model, only to realise I'd forgotten to make the tail. That was slightly vexing. In the end I did get it completely made and primed, so now all that lies ahead is to actually paint it. By the time I'd finished the model it'd taken roughly six or so hours to complete from start to finish. Not too bad really. I din't bother going to bed as by then I was finishing up the Basilisk anime. I watched all 23 remaining episodes of the series, and it had a great ending. Not really suited to those who want blissful happy endings, but it was a great series. It wasn't actually long before my munchkin friend came over, and we had a fair few discussions about D&D and how his campaign would turn out. He approved the Diabolus fighter I'd written up barely hours before his arrival, and so I was good to go should his campaign suddenly start. I hosted a D&D session with just his character as he seperates from the group anyway, and he had a(n annoying for him) run in with a Rust Monster. He kissed his armour and one of his axes goodbye.

That game lasted for a couple of hours then he had to leave. By the time I got back from the station after walking with him my girlfriend had arrived, as on thursdays she most fortuitously only has a lesson in the morning, leaving her afternoon free. As such she was able to arrive not long before 1 pm. That was exceedingly nice I have to admit. My other friend arrived not long after and once my girlfriend finished creating a Drow character for the munchkin's campaign (which will no doubt be toned down, as my fighter was and isn't as harsh) as well as finished updating her sheet, the next D&D session was underway. The intrepid adventurers plowed on into the Plane of Shadow, and it was almost impressive how quickly they ran into trouble with wolves and a warg. The gnome bard did however manage to rescue a rather large boar, which I believe he's going to try and tame since I agreed it could be used as a riding boar (as per the Bleach anime). To help with the warg my Diabolus fighter made a needed appearance, as the Human paladin hadn't gone through the portal, nor had the Dwarf fighter. That leaves only a cat-girl ranger and gnome bard. Not exactly the best at combat melee. Eventually they got to Balefire, City of Lanterns and all was good.

In the late evening, once my girlfriend had left and my mate was just about to a small problem struck my PC. The annoying NTLDR file not found error, which meant I had to take the side of my compuer tower off, disconnect and reconnect the cabls to make sure, then change which disk to boot from. A bit of annoying hassle, meh. I also got through more anime, namely nine updates including the first episode of Comic Party Revolution. Now I just have 12 of that series to watch and the updates for Demonbane, Strawberry Panic, and Blood+. I'll not go into detail of what I watched today, as to be honest I now need to go to sleep as my eyes are trying to close. As such, till next time.

A touch of sculpting.

I didn't go to bed last night till 5 am, intending to get up at 11 am. I was up till 5 am as I was working on my Diabolus fighter model. I know I've already made a Diabolus sorceror, by my munchkin friend, who'll be running the next campaign (oh god...) asked me to be a fighter just so my girlfriend and other mate stand a chance. How encouraging don't you think? He was nice enouch to allow the Diabolus' favoured class to be fighter instead of sorceror, and so I'd started to make one. I used the hand and head from the new plastic chaos warriors, the legs from an ungor (again) and the main body from an Empire hero clad in full plate. Needless to say, there was lots of hefty cutting involved. Gee damn. I mostly got the basic work done such as limbs and so forth, though for one forearm hosting the hand holding an axe I had to improvise - a bit of plastic rod. I didn't have a suitable piece to use. Meh. Though I'd gone to bed at 5 am I woke up at 9 am, so didn't bother getting out of bed till 1 pm, wasting my morning entirely. When I did get up I did some of the base sculpting work on the Diabolus, such as actually fleshing out the arm and adding clothing to the upper legs in preparation for armour later. Work itself was boring and rather dead, so I ended up doing lots of mini jobs with nothing eventful happening really.

After I got home I continued to download anime, and I now have quite a hefty chunk to watch. I only actually watched the first episode of basilisk last night, so I have a fair few to go. I got back to sculpting, getting more of the armour plates done on the figure's right arm, beefing up the shoulder plate on the left arm, adding armour and straps to the left forearm and adding some of the leg armour. Here's what he looks like so far -

As you can see from the blue painted parts I cannibalised one of my Mordheim figures... I still need to lower the chainmail skirt-thing and add another segment to the blue armour on the upper legs, as well as a strap for the right shoulder armour plate and an additional final armour plate on top of it. Once that's done I can add the straps for the two shin-plates then sculpt in the rest of the sash as if it goes under the armour, as well as finishing off the sash tie behind the model as the bottom of it had to be removed when I chopped of the human legs. Poor thing. There's a fair amount to go, but I've got the bulk of it done at least.

Anime-wise I have - all 13 episodes of Comic party Revolution, 23 episodes of Basilisk and the updates for Bleach, School Rumble, Kiba, Blood+, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, and Honey & Clover II. That's 42 episodes. It... may take me a while. On the plus side I can watch a bunch then go back to sculpting as the green stuff'll be cured. Nifty stuff. As such, till next time.

Painting once more.

I had to get up earlier today, since I wanted to actually do something and not lounge around aimlessly. In the end after my usual morning routine I left the house and got to Games Workshop at roughly 12.50 pm or so, as I wanted to get a decent amount of painting in. I'd once more brought my Forge World Bloodthirster and got started on touching up the painting I'd done last time. I managed to rehighlight and reshade to get rid of the overly dark areas and shine. Once that was done I moved onto painting the other wing, which took a while thanks to having to try and reach parts where other bits of the model were in the way. Once I'd got that up to the standard of the rest, I moved onto the lower half of the model. There wasn't much there to paint at all, so it didn't take long to do the flesh base coat and initial ink layer. Before I got time to highlight and finish shading the guy I'd played last, with his Space Marines, turned up, so I challenged him to a game. I only had my Bloodthirster. He accepted. To cut a long story short, most of his army couldn't even hurt me, and against the main thing which could, his combat Dreadnought, my daemon got 11 out of 11 hits, and each one was a penetrating hit (I needed to roll over two on two dice to get a penetrating...) Needless to say, it exploded (five times) before it got to attack. After that it was a case of killing his army piece by piece. Out of eight wounds I lost two which wasn't too bad. My daemon was only 888 points, and he had a 1,000 point army. Mwahahahaha!

Not long after my two mates arrived, and again shortly after that my girlfriend. We went to the noodle place again, and this time I was determined to eat dessert. It was very nice indeed. We quickly moved to the pub to get the D&D session underway, and it went great indeed. Everyone reached the end portal which leads to the main adventure itself (the really big one, heh) with the customary two near-death experiences. One was caused when my girlfriend's character accidentally got the munchkin player's waraxe in her back. Whoops eh? Luckily she survived, and the session ended there for the night as it was quarter to nine. My girlfriend's character, as well as the munchkin, went up a level, so she's level three, he's level four and rapidly getting harsh, and the poor bard is still level two. I was actually quite impressed that the munchkin managed to negotiate his way through a room with two lizardfolk without provoking them. Usually he goes in axe swinging. It was an interesting, if unexpected, change. My girlfriend's dad actually turned up not long after, and sat with us whilst having a beer before he left and took my girlfriend home. For once I wasn't upset when she left, as we'd had a great evening together and she'd said some lovely things to me. The bard player had to leave a short while after, and so me and the munchkin sat outside chatting till my dad turned up and I had to go home. Thursday is going to be interesting, as the munchkin is coming round in the early morning till midday, the bard is arriving at roughly midday and going in the evening, and my girlfriend will hopefully be arriving after college and also leaving in the evening.

Not only did I have a day out, but when I got home I updated the forum too, including the arc as a few more people had posted. I didn't write anything for my character, as I didn't really feel like spending the time on it today as it's getting late. Instead I came here to write this on time. I've also spent some time getting more series, namely Basilisk and Comic Party Revolution. I have the first 13 episodes of Basilisk and two of Comic Party Revolution to watch, not to mention the Ergo Proxy and Kiba updates to get. Busy busy busy eh? Tomorrow morning I also have to get some passport photographs, for my NUS card and SLB card for university, before going to work in the afternoon and pointing out that I'll no longer be able to work wednesdays since my university timetable will no doubt clash. As that covers everything, I guess I'll go watch a bit of anime. Till next time then.

A day out.

My grilfriend arrived early again today, which is always a good thing, and it wasn't long before we set out to brighton. My dad gave us a lift to the station, but when I went to withdraw money I noticed one thing which wasn't overly helpful. I'd left my wallet at home. As such we had to walk back to my place for me to get it, then walk back to the station as my dad had moved on to doing his daily routine. We managed to get to Brighton without incident though, which was good. Dave's Comics and David's Books had lots of nifty stuff as per usual but I didn't actually buy anything. I saw a few more RPG books, Shadowrun, which I actually got yesterday, and True20, the very core of a D20 system which allows the creation of any type of world setting using a system I like. That was great, so when I got home I got it. Now I can make that steampunk/cyberpunk/'Oh god, zombies!' world with rules similar to D&D, meaning I can carry across quite a few aspects from the normal campaign, as well as critters and so forth. Quite handy indeed really. After that we went down to the cinema to see if anything was on, but unfortunately there didn't seem to be anything good. As such we walked to the pier and then around the lanes. One thing which really deeply annoyed me was that I couldn't find Games Workshop. It was immensely irksome. My girlfriend couldn't find it either, so I ended up taking my stress out of some graphical zombies in House of the Dead 3. Damn security guard eventually killed me. Bah. After that we went back home and she got dropped off early since she has college tomorrow and I would assume needs to prepare. I'll see her tomorrow at Games Workshop, so that's all good.

The forum arc didn't need updating again today, as a few of the members still haven't got round to posting thanks to hectic schedules. That's fine with me, I don't mind waiting at all as it's less work overall, heh. In Achaea my pet's bug free as far as I can tell, so that's great too. Unfortunately however the heat from walking around this afternoon meant I had a harsh headache, so I had a bit of a nap for a couple of hours after I got in. After I got up again I only had two episodes of anime to watch too, so that didn't take long at all. They were a Blood+ update and Welcome to the NHK! episode. The first didn't really have much fighting at all, but kai managed to tell Saya how he felt for her, even if just a little. At any rate it still made her happy. NHK was far funnier in that 'oddball' sense. It's starting to look up for the hikkikomori, though the preview for the next episode seems to have it all dissolve in a shedload of paranoia. Poor guy, heheheh. Immense fun to watch that show. I also happen to have progressed on to getting Red Dwarf season 8, which is the final season I think. I can't currently be bothered to go and check. As it's monday today no doubt there'll be more updates for me tomorrow to watch, so that's all good. Not only that, but I get to run another session of D&D tomorrow with my mates. Excellent stuff. All that I need now is for my headache to go away. Till next time.

Much better.

The general lack of stomach pain today meant that, even though it was fiendishly busy, the day passed by relatively well. I was on a normal till, and the time seemed to fly past. Each time I checked another 15 minutes or half an hour had gone by, which was pretty nifty indeed. I spent most of my lunch chatting with a mate who's under 18, so she's had to move off of checkouts. Recently they changed policy so only those aged 18 or over can work on tills, apparently because someone under 18 sold alcohol to another person underage. Whoops indeed eh? This means she's now on the deli counter for six or so weeks till her birthday. The rest of my work day simply consisted of scanning items, so it's a bit pointless talking about that. After work I went round to my girlfriend's home again and spent a fair amount of time working out small details with her about her wanted Drow D&D character. We came up with a name, and she started to write a... certainly different type of history. I've not heard of many Drow whyo'd wanted to be a baker... After that we had dinner and proceeded to watch anime. Full Metal Alchemist has finally got to the point where Al has the philosopher's stone inside his suit of armour, and Scar seems to be gone once again. The series is slowly but surely reaching the climax. Mezzo Forte was weird, involving a mummy, curse, and transport, but it was entertaining at least.

At home I didn't need to update the forum much, as there'd only been a single other post after my last update in the arc, which is quite handy for me. Also in Achaea most of the little problems with my pet have been fixed, so there's only one set reaction which is causing a small degree of confusion now. Hopefully that'll be fixed soon. I also got round to watching some anime, which I mentioned yesterday. he Ah! My Goddess second season update and the two Zegapain episodes. Ah! My Goddess had more of the two Urd's. Since Urd is my favourite character in that series, it was a fun episode to watch. Zegapain was a lot more dramatic and with useful knowledge about where their server was. Quite risky actually, but it may pay off for them. I also got half of the way through the first dubbed episode of Bleach before my connection started giving me grief again. Lately it's been acting up, and all it's managed to really do is piss me off. Oh well. So far the dub of Bleach is vaguely strange, but not bad per se. It'll take a bit of getting used to. I still have Zero no tsukaima to watch, as well as BinBoun Shimai Monogatari and another update for Ah! My Goddess second season when they're done. I've also found a stash, around almost 3 GB, of GURPS books, of which steampunk and cyberpunk are included. Excellent, as I want to make a cross between a Steampunk and Cyberpunk world (essentially Victoriana with lots of modern-ish situations and people, incorporating vaguely futuristic technology that's viewed as practically magic by some of the more 'common' class of people. I intend to write a lot for it...) which involves zombies. Yes, zombies. Implausible? Hell yes. Fun? I'd damn well hope so, mwahahahaha. Till next time then.

General pain.

Well on thursday evening I'd developed a generic abdominal/stomach pain which had lasted all through yesterday. Guess what? That's right, it lasted all through today too. It sucked and made work quite uncomfortable indeed. Thankfully I got through most of it by breaking time down into manageable segments, such as, 'Oho, in another ten minutes it'll only be half an hour till another hour has passed. Nifty.' A bit pointless, but meh. It does help me cope when the pressure of work simply gets too much, and the idea 'God, four more hours to go...' is unappealing. Which it is most of the time actually. Work itself generally passed without incident, though in the afternoon a deaf girl was placed on the till infront of me, and from the looks of things had received less training that I had when I started. In other words, barely any training. As such she needed to ask for help quite a bit, and, providing I spoke slowly, she understood the help I gave her. She also learnt about the other methods of payment aside from cash and normal card, and what to do with multiples, most produce with PLU codes, etc etc. Her training must have been seriously lacking, but it was enjoyable helping her, and she was a nice friendly person. It certainly made my afternoon less 'gragh', that was for sure.

After work, still vaguely in pain, I went to see my girlfriend. Though she couldn't really do much, she did get me a hot water bottle, and it was nice cuddling up with her and just relaxing. I also took a 'nap' later on, and when she found out that I'd actually been awake all that time doing nothing, she felt quite guilty that she'd been watching a film, even though I'd said I didn't mind her going off to watch a film. Odd, but I think I made her feel better after talking to her. Unfortunately I had to say bye when my ride arrived to pick me up, but I'll thankfully see her tomorrow as per usual. After arriving home I noticed I didn't have any new anime to watch as I was up to date, so I did the usual rounds and found three updates - two episodes of Zegapain and one of Ah! My Goddess second season. hose should be done soon with any luck and I'll be able to watch them before I go to bed. Last night I'd also found Ran Online, an MMO similar to other Korean and Chinese mmo's, with similar skills and advancement, but set in mysterious schools. That was funny enough to prompt me to get it. Seriously, google it and go to the site, go to the 'Study@Ran' tab near-ish the top and go to 'Monsters'. It had me laughing for a while. Unfortunately the client I'd downloaded was corrupt and so didn't work, and none of the other servers were fast at all (with expected finish times of over 12 hours). This means that it's unlikely that I'll even be able to try the game, which is quite annoying indeed. Le sigh. At any rate that's all for now, so till next time.

Sleeping.

Most of my day today was spent sleeping, or resting in bed. I didn't actually get up till around 4 pm. This was mostly due to how I felt overall, since for some reason I had a fair amount of abdominal pain. The nosebleeds thanks to the heat weren't all that fun either. When I did get up I happily saw my girlfriend on WLm, so I managed to talk to her till she left, then I figured I may as well watch some anime. I got through all 13 episodes of Comic Party and the four specials. It was quite fun to watch, and the specials were exceedingly strange. Seeing a guy get into the realm of doujinshi (the polite realm) and facing it's hardships was pretty interesting. No doubt it's harder in real life. After that I got a few models stuck together and filled any gaps. I managed Ebric the human fighter, J'Peau the human thief, the Ghoul King and two other Ghouls, as well as a Warmachine model I'd bought a few days ago. Though I added base detail to the base, such as slate for the most part, I've not sanded them yet. I'll probably get round to that later when more are put together. Once I'd done that I figured I should update the forum arc, and so I did. People are posting impressively fast in it. It looks like there's going to be a fair amount of exp awarded indeed the next time I update, which'll be tomorrow when I get home.

Once all those jobs had been done I went back to anime, as I had series updates to watch. Ergo Proxy, Honey & Clover II, Ouran High School Host Club and Strawberry Panic. Ergo Proxy had yet another strange, very strange, Proxy. It was vaguely surreal, but Pino was nice enough to persuade Vincent to avoid it without actually talling him why. Considering the fact that when two Proxies meet they -have- to fight, that was quite a peaceful result. Honey & Clover II was full of angst on the part of one guy, and determination on the part of another. Morita (I think that's how his name is spelt) heard of hagu's condition and immediately went to her and told her he wanted to be with her. Such action was no doubt prompted by her accident, and that it could've been even worse. In Ouran there was yet another case of 'helping' someone, and drama at the end - the guy they were 'helping' saw haruhi was a girl when he walked in on her changing. The preview for next episode was, needless to say, entertaining. Nagisa finally got most of her pain out by crying in Strawberry Panic, looking towards the future with a positive outlook instead of remaining down about her situation with Shizuma. A good change then. Unfortunately that was all my anime so I didn't get to watch any more. Having not much else to do I came here to write this, and soon I'll be going to sleep again. After all, I have work tomorrow morning. Till next time then.

Order!

Ah bliss, the Heresy Miniatures order arrived today! Excellent excellent stuff. The ghouls are even cooler models 'in the flesh' as it were, and the J'Peau and Ebric models are rather nifty indeed. The extra ten display bases are also a most welcome addition. I'll probably end up ordering more later on, since the cost of the Hasslefree Miniatures order has risen to nearly £35 taking into account all the 'anti-zombie' people I want to buy. I'm not doing the order yet, but I'll probably go through with it at the end of the month, along with another Heresy Miniatures order (mostly for yet more display bases and, if they're released, the newer daemons). Yeah, I know I'm possibly ordering a tad too much, but meh, I can afford it, and meh, the models are hella-cool. Not only that, but I got up quite soon after as my girlfriend rang at around 9.15 am-ish to say she'd be round quite early, so off I went to shower as per usual, and half way through she actually arrived. That was quite nifty, being able to snuggle once I'd got dressed and so forth. She spent part of the morning playing Pokemon Colosseum, and a greater part just spending time with me. That made my morning incredibly good indeed. By 1.30 pm or so my other mate, the non-munchkin one, had arrived, and so my day got even better since he's a good mate.

We didn't actually get round to playing D&D for a couple of hours. We all spent some time just chatting and surfing the net for a bit, then we had a game of Munchkin. It was really enjoyable, and had a shedload of cards since I own every Munchkin game set, such as Munchkin, Star Munchkin, Munchkin Fu, Munchin Bites, Munchkin Blender and all the smaller packs. It only lasted a bit less than an hour, but was a great laugh. At first my mate started well, then floundered as I caught up. Suddenly however my girlfriend started doing ridiculous well, getting shedloads of bonuses, and before long she'd left us both in the dust as she'd gone straight past us to victory. Unexpected, but entertaining. We decided to play D&D not long after that, and with food out of the way I set everything up and off we went. Strangely without the other friend things went a lot smoother, and both my non-munchkin mate and girlfriend had a lot more fun. For a start there was a lot more joking, and yet again another two near death experiences. Well three, as the Gnome seemed to have a penchant for nearly dying. Unlucky bugger. ll in all the session was really good, and the pair (with the two main NPC's) made a good deal of progress. Next session they may just reach the next important part. never mind the fact that they're resting for days to get all their life back, yet only have food for one day.... I knew I was forgetting something...

Though I set priority on some files for the Comic Party anime, it took several days to get them downloaded, and completely ignored the priority. They all finished pretty much at the same time, which was a bit annoying, but oh well. I therefore have 13 episodes of Comic party to watch, as well the all the extras for the series and the updates for School Rumble and Air Gear. I'll probably watch a few then update the forum again, as an arc has started, so it needs to be updated at least twice a day. I'll most likely finish up the anime tomorrow as I'm not doing anything in particular. Also in Achaea I've not got my pet yet, but I'm sure it'll turn up soon. Till next time then.

Dead.

I was vaguely startled when awakened by a loud dad today as he handed me a small padded envelope. Inside it I was happy to find the dice I ordered, a little box of 36 swirly black-patterned dice with the dots picked out in red. They look rather cool. It's tempting to get some of the other colours, but for now I shall resist. Maybe next paycheck... Since it was remotely early I went straight back to sleep, or in all actuality drowsy rest, before needing to get up just a bit past midday. Plumbers were round adding radiators to the house and needed to get into my room to put in place the piping for the radiator outside in the conservatory. that was mildly annoying, since now I have two pipes fronning from the ceiling to the floor, to the left of my computer desk. f I wanted to lean against the wall they'd be in the way. Bah. I passed the few hours I had till work generally sitting in the front room eating breakfast (very slowly) whilst watching cartoons. In other words, quality time. Work itself was, to put it bluntly, dead. It was ridiculously quiet throughout the six hours I was working. I have no clue why there were so few customers. Admittedly all the kids going back to school may have explained the quiet at first, but I highly doubt they'd still be at school at 5 pm or later. Meh, I spent most of the time doing odd jobs. On the plus side, it wasn't stressful at all, just vaguely boring.

Once I got home I wasted a lot of time simply going through all the miniatures on the Hasslefree Miniatures site which shares a forum with Heresy Miniatures. They have some nice stuff, and calculating the price of an order should I place one there, it was £22.50. Again, maybe next paycheck... I did get round to updating the forum, as well as playing Achaea for a few hours waiting for my pet. Unfortunately it didn't arrive, so I guess it's not a simple build (I did ask for one of it's reactions to be 'complex', implying it'll take them longer to do). I've also heard that the Guild canges have been pretty much fully implemented in SilkRoad Online now, with only the odd proposed feature still missing. This means after I finish watching anime I'll log on to see all the Guild goodness. I only have four anime episodes to watch anyway, one of which is actually an OVA. They're Bleach, Utawarerumono, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and the OVA Hoshizora Kiseki. I can't quite remember what the OVA is about, but what I saw of the animation looked good enough to prompt me to get it. Since I tend to watch at four times the usual speed, I doubt getting through these four will take that long... After SRO I'll most likely go back to Achaea just to kill a few things. It'll be an interesting experience. Till next time.

More dark red.

I didn't actually go to bed last night as I hadn't been overly tired, and felt like playing Achaea for a change. I ended up spending around 900,000 gold in the game, meaning I was quite poor, purchasing lots of credits to get me to 900, since I felt like getting a custom pet. It'd been a while since I'd last been on, and I'd had a pet long ago which had needed to be recalled due to a minor missed detail. I'd spent some time talking with the members of the House, and a few of the older guys there remembered me which was pretty nifty. Since I was curious about what kind of pets I could have I'd emailed the Pet's department for Achaea. Unfortunately clockwork or construct pets were out of the question according to the reply, so I'ver sent another enquiring about the possibility of a Roc or giant praying mantis. Either of those would be pretty cool. After I finished up on Achaea it was so early, i.e. past 6 am, that I didn't bother going to sleep and all was well. I did have a nap from 10 am to 2 pm, where I wasn't really asleep but merely resting, and that helped with how I felt overall. Once it was around 2 pm I went to Games Workshop early to continue painting the Bloodthirster. I got the rest of the upper torso flesh and one wing to the same stage as the head and other arm, but I don't think I watered down the ink enough as it dried vaguely shiny and overly dark in some areas. It looks like I'll need to re-highlight a few areas before I finish up the shading, then I can do the very final highlights. At that point I'll only have a wing and the lower half of the model to finish off flesh-wise, then I can move onto the armour.

Later on in the evening my girlfriend turned up which always makes my day better, and the pair of us with our usual two friends went to the noodle place once more. It was my turn to pay, but the bill wasn't that high overall considering there were four of us. After that we moved to the pub next to the Games Workshop for the D&D session, and happily my girlfriend didn't have to leave till 9 pm, so we got a reasonable session of D&D in. There were two very close deaths, one for my girlfriend and one for the Munchkin (a player who values his character's strength above all else) who owns the dwarf fighter. Other than that however they did really well, and the Munchkin found a ridiculous amount of gold. At level two he took on two level two Orc Barbarians with his Dwarf Fighter and won, going down to a single point of life. That definitely got him to level three, plus all the associated gold. I did stop the session when everyone planned to rest, as I'd started to feel a bit under the weather. It was most likely due to the lack of sleep combined with the fact that I don't sleep much anyway, but I started feeling better later when I'd had a coke. Sugar is key after all. I also arranged for my girlfriend and the non-munchkin to come round of thursday for more D&D. Since munchkin-boy split away from the group yet again it'll be easy enough continuing the adventure even though he can't make it round.

Sadly I only had one episode of anime to watch - an xxxHOLiC update. The way the request was handled was quite harsh, and the fee for such an act was immensely cruel. That's what you get for being a murderer I suppose. Hopefully there'll be more anime updates later. Thankfully I do have other stuff to watch, such as Red Dwarf, and I figure Achaea can eat up more time since I plan to getting back into the game once I get the pet. I will, however, be going to sleep relatively early today. Though I don't have work till 3 pm tomorrow, I figure a full night's sleep may do me good. On that note therefore, till next time.

Bloodthirsty painting.

It was a relatively relaxing, if vaguely boring for the morning, day. I didn't bother getting up till around 1.40 pm since I didn't really have anything to do. Once I did get up I pretty much just watched a few more episodes of anime, most notably Moon Phase. Enjoyable to watch, plus it passed some of the time. Later on in the afternoon at around 4 pm I went to Games Workshop to get some paint and actually get round to painting something that I've had for a long while. I'd wanted to go earlier, but unfortunately my dad was out and I didn't want to take the bus whilst transporting a large easily breakable model. When I got there the use of black spray was pretty much needed, but afterwards the Forge World Bloodthirster was primed and ready to go. I'd filled in the gaps around the wings with green stuff last night, so it was ready to get painted. Unfortunately I didn't have much time to paint, so I just focused on the head, neck and upper chest area, and it's left arm. I only got the flesh there mostly done, but there's only a few stages left till it's finished. I started with a 50/50 mix of purple and red all over, then roughly highlighted with a 30/50/20 mix of purple, red and black. After that I highlighted with 80/20 red and black and the base coats were done. I then inked everything with a 40/40/20 mix of brown ink, red ink, and black, with lots of water added to thin it down. Once that had dried I added a bit more black, thinned it down a bit more, and selectively applied it to the recesses as additional shading. Now all I have to do is another layer of selective dark shading to bring out the smallest details, a final highlight with a lighter flesh (well, red) tone and then a final stage of shading just to mute the highlights down to the right level. All I need to do then is all the other flesh and armour, details, bone, and so on and so forth.... Lots in other words.

I also got through a fair amount of anime once I got home, which has brought me up to date once again. The remaining 7 episodes of Moon Phase, latest two updates for Welcome to the NHK!, and Kiba as well as Demonbane. Only 11 episodes so technically not many. Moon Phase was a great series and I enjoyed it a fair amount. It had the usual cliche 'not really admitting how you feel, yet the other person knows anyway' scenario going on, but it suited the series. The ending was pretty good too, and didn't end of a pointless cliffhanger. It may have had plot holes, but I didn't really notice any. Welcome to the NHK! was also quite funny, where the poor guy got himself into even more worse situations. Kiba had impressive firey tactics from one of Zed's shard creatures, and Roia had some of her past explained to her, and the adverse meeting with her mother eventually went well though she had to say goodbye. Demonbane was certainly packed with fanservice, and the guy's actions, when under the influence of a certain fog, were decidedly risky. The way he apologised at the end didn't exactly help either, considering how he meant well but was incredibly offensive. Ah, how cliche yet again. After all that I've not got any new anime to watch, so it's back to Red Dwarf. I'm on to getting the fourth series now. At the moment however I'm vaguely watching the cast commentary on the first series of Black Books. Till next time then.

Comparitively relaxing.

Apparrently, according to my work colleagues,it was just as busy today as it was yesterday. However, unlike yesterday, I was placed on a normal till. Oho. This meant that I never had more than four people in my queue, so it was actually quite relaxing as yesterday's work shirf was still fresh in my mind. I found it so much calmer in fact that I told the checkout runners that I wanted to have the last break out of all of us working. As such though I started at 10 am, my break was at 2.05 pm, and I didn't mind at all. I didn't even feel tired. By the time my break ended there was only an hour and 55 minutes to go, which was quite pleasant and easy to cope with. When there's only two hours of a shift left I call it the 'last stretch' usually, with the last hour being called the 'end zone' as the finish is in sight. Naturally a bit of positive thinking is involved, as when I just reach one of these two points it's only 5 minutes till I can happily say 'Ah, less than two (or one) hours to go.' making it seem like a much shorter time. Stress is all in the mind after all, and it's little tactics like these that help me to actually retain my sanity rather than, say, savage all the customers in my queue and run out the store screaming like a madman. I have to admit, it'd be pretty cool if someone else at a till did that though. Certainly mild entertainment at least.

After work my girlfriend's presence once again made my day a heck of a lot better, and we spent some time looking for a Drow model since in the next D&D campaign she wants to be one of those. We didn't have much luck finding a good one, but I did point her towards the Forge World Chaos Dragon, as it has painted pictures up now. Hot damn it looks good. Ridiculously so in fact. The thing is, I was originally aiming to get the Greater Daemon of Slaanesh for £85 this Games Day, but the Chaos Dragon is so much more uber.... with the corresponding price of £195. Ouch. I can afford it though, which is the annoying thing, as I now can't really decide what to get. Ah well, I have over 20 days to work it out... After I got home I decided to actually watch anime after updating the forum (what there was to update at any rate) and got through 11 episodes of Moon Phase. At least, 11 so far tonight. I was planning to watch a shedload of anime tomorrow, but figured since I had time today I may as well. It's quite an enjoyable series. It has relationships, fighting, vampires, and above all, nekomimi. How interesting, heh. In ten minutes I'll have the remaining 12 episodes of the series to watch, so that should use up a bit of time. I'll probably leave a few for tomorrow though. I also have the update for Binbou Shimai Monogatari to watch, but yet again, that's more likely to appear tomorrow. Till next time then.

Hell on Earth.

Grarrggh. That could, if infused with a proper sense of pain, explain my working day. It was fine till 11.15 am, nothing to complain about. I'd been placed on an express till for the day, and it wasn't that busy. Then it simply exploded into a whirling maelstrom of customers. It wasn't that enjoyable. My first break finished at 12.36 pm. The longest a person can legally work without a break is four hours. My next break started at 4.30 pm. That's pretty much the full four hours, with an endless tirade of customers. It was, to put it bluntly, the title of this post. I say again, grarrggh. On the plus side, the breaks themselves weren't too bad. In the morning one I got round to buying a colour print cartridge. In the afternoon break I actually got my discount card too. It was only two months late after being lost by my manager. I did however buy the first series of Black Books and managed to use it, so some discount already. Bonus. Of course going back to work after the breaks ended was highly unpleasant, but I suppose work isn't meant to be easy. Thankfully when work ended I got to see my girlfriend, which, as you can imagine, was a ridiculous improvement. We played a British trivia game with her family in the evening, and I was roughly a middle-player. I wasn't winning, but neither was I losing.

After I got home I started playing Black Books as I updated the forum, and after a few episodes figured I'd put the new cartridge into the printer with the other black one so it actually had both spots filled. A few test pages later and I reckon the D&D campaign will be getting quite a few more maps. I've not managed to watch any anime though. I still have five episodes of Moon Phase and the updates for Zero no Tsukaima, Ouran High School Host Club and Strawberry Panic. As I have work tomorrow I highly doubt that I'll be able to watch them all, if any. More likely than not they'll be left for monday as I'm not doing anything specifically on that day, so I'll most likely spend it sleeping and then watching anime. Tomorrow I'll probably not have much time, as work will (hopefully not) be just as hellish, and I'll just get wrecked by it. le sigh. For now though it's beginning to get so late it's almost early, so I'll end it here. Till next time then.

Zomg, spending.

Well I had a sleep in this morning as I didn't really have anything to do. In the end I got up just past midday since spending all day in bed, though relaxing, would get nothing done. I decided to go to brighton to get the latest NewType USA magazine as per my usual 'end of the month' trip there, and so off I went. Thankfully I'd got my wages this morning, so I easily had enough money. Disaster struck when I reached dave's Comics however. They had the magazine, fair enough, but also two, yes TWO, new Mon-Sieur Bome models. Technically three. One of them was actually a pair, Eclair and Lumiere from the Kiddy Grade anime. I'd seen this series before and liked it, and the figures were nice so I bought them. The second was a character called Ignis, and she looked freaking cool indeed, and is the last of the baker's dozen for the current set. Overall I only have five of the set, and there are another two at Dave's Comics, but since those other two aren't the best ones out of the lot I haven't bought them. Yet. When I went a few shops down into David's Books, I was just browsing. However, disaster against struck. Ages ago I'd wanted to get a Gunslinger Spawn model in Dave's Comics which had been £35. They'd had it for about 2 years, but when I went in to buy it, it'd been sold a week or so before. That annoyed me. Yet today, they had it in David's Books for just £20.... It was mine the moment I saw it. As such I spent quite a bit today.... Ow....

Once I got home I did my best to sneak in, but my dad spotted me and saw I'd bought stuff. He asked how much and I didn't tell him, so both he and my step mum knew that 'not much really' meant 'expensive, don't ask'. Even so, my step mum loved the Spawn and Ignis models and was quite enthusiastic about them. My dad also admitted the Mon-Sieur Bome models were nice, and as such I escaped another lecture of spending money, heh. I swear I'll not spend this much again, as it's slightly painful to do so. At the end of the month there's also Games Day up in Birmingham, so I'll need to save the rest of this month's paycheck for there, just in case... (Forge World Greater Daemon of Slaanesh here I come...) Anime-wise there's not been that much, so I just had the Sky Girls OVA to watch. It was pretty good, what with the three female pilots being lolita, and flying cool machines whilst unleashing vast amounts of ammunition on the evil creature-thing. As such, enjoyable. Over the course of updating the forum constantly (as my character's in an active thread for once) a few more episodes of anime became available. I'd decided to get the whole series of Moon Phase as it was shown in NewType USA, and I remembered it'd been in there a while ago. It has a little vampire girl who likes wearing cat ears. I expect I'll like it. There's two episodes of that to watch at the moment, and I also have the Srawberry Panic and Ouran High School Host Club updates to watch when they're done. Should I run out of stuff to get, I'll go back to getting the Red Dwarf series. I only have the first two series, hmm. Till next time then.