Destroyer Minis

Borked
  --26 January, 2010, 2:30:30

My aura of destruction has transferred to those around me, leaving me largely unscathed. (Except the recent spurt of aquarium water from the last post.)

Andrew was afflicted. Completely without my help, he tipped a chair onto his foot. Almost immediately after the accident he had some well-meaning visitors. One was the curious kitten, Nom, and the other had come to play in our weekly D&D. When Nom investigated the broken toe, the visitor, trying to protect Andrew, picked the kitty up and gave him a gentle, low-to-the-ground toss.

Nom's troubles began when he neglected to put out his feet. I only heard a thud, as he hit the ground, bottom first.

A couple of days later, I was on dingle berry duty. (hehehe *insert immature pun here*) It was worse than usual, since he had eaten a hairband. I removed from him six inches of cat-coated elastic. I paused for a moment, determining the nature of this object. If you're ever in a similar situation don't do that; flush first, wonder later. The insides of cats are foul smelling. I'm very thankful the hairband came out, since these can end kitties.

Nom's troubles were not over. In an accident I did not witness, he took a table runner, a kitty cushion, and a stack of junk mail and made a pile of them behind the coat tree. Unfortunately he was part of that pile, and he broke his tail.

His tail was a magnificent plume, almost as big as he is. He curled it in the air as he contemplated, and as he walked it, was a banner for his butt. Now he cannot lift it, and it hangs limp.

The end of it can still twitch his displeasure, so we expect that it will heal in time. He is somewhat subdued, in the way that infinity is diminished by subtracting one.

I'm crossing my fingers for a fast recovery.

In the meantime, here is Biff Thundermuffin. I gave him a name to match his personality and it stuck, becoming the official Darksword name.

Slow
  --14 January, 2010, 0:36:40

Fish are fun. They have little dramas and love triangles and they acquire all sorts of gruesome illnesses. As I was cleaning the tank, I noticed an odd bit of something squishy floating by. This caught my attention while I was busy siphoning water, so I paused--mid-suck--to have a look. Never, ever pause mid-suck when siphoning. The water in my tube had a fair bit of momentum behind it and did a good job of cleaning out my sinuses.

The reason I bring up fish cleaning is that I do it twice a week to keep those gruesome illnesses in check. If you follow the updates of this site on a regular basis, you may have difficulty believing that I can hold to a regular schedule. I have managed to fool my discus fish, they are happy, and healthy (not to mention fecund) and swim about fully under the impression that I am a master of timely maintenance.

Without further ado, let me present Dark Sword's Halloween special mini:

And Dark Sword's two Christmas minis:





Finally, here is Sad Panda--an internet meme and a representation of my update schedule:



For my patient and persistent readers here is a picture of Nom being cute. And some good news, the knight I was worrying about in my last post arrived intact.

Doooooom
  --4 December, 2009, 1:54:06

Some minis just don't work out well. This knight is one such mini. Seven drill bits died assembling him, many of them skewered me before they broke. My finger pads got infected...it was terrible. *melodromatic shudder* He took an ungodly number hours to paint, and my hourly wage for him was embarrassing. He is also very fragile--I gather he was never intended to be assembled, so there are no joins to speak of, other than what I drilled/sculpted. USPS tells me he arrived at his destination five days ago, but I've had no response. The recipient is a very busy man, but I fear this delay in communication is because he received a box full of knight fragments.

Charity and Catcuss
  --16 October, 2009, 23:04:42

The generous people of FrothersUnite.com are having fundraisers to support Race for Life, a cancer research foundation. To assist them, I have painted their Racing Lady for a raffle. She's a limited edition figure sculpted by Andrew Rae, and cast by Griffin Miniatures. I'll post a link to the raffle as soon as I can.



Now, you may be wondering about the nature of a catcuss. It is the phenomenon that results from the interaction of a cat (preferably small, grey, fuzzy and dumb) with a cactus. Little Cat Nom got into a fight with my cactus; first he hit it, and when he was pricked, hit it harder. He kept this up until the right paw was tired. When he let lefty have a go, I came in and broke up the fight. Nom had some choice words for this encounter, hence the cussing.

I had a similar experience with a candle today. It was leaking lilac scented wax onto the floor, so I rushed over and tilted it (after blowing it out) so that the wax would stop dripping. Somehow the hot wax gushed down my arm, and up my sleeve, affixing me to my shirt. As I rushed off to pour cold water onto it, Nom rushed in to investigate this new opponent. He whacked the wax while it was still tacky, making it stick to his little paw tufts. He got it off mostly, now his feet are the most pleasant smelling cat feet that one is likely to encounter.

If you're not mopping...
  --4 October, 2009, 1:04:08

Then you're not cooking. Around my house, small disasters and flying stuff are pretty common. I am the destroyer, after all. So it's not really noteworthy that I launched a bowl of rice dressing (vinegar and mirin.) It soaked my pants, shoes, the floor...and the kitten. Poor Nom had wandered into my blast radius at just the wrong time. Poor, stinky, sticky, grumpy little cat.

Here is the voodoo witch from Freebooter Miniatures. She has fireflies. : )

OMG orchids
  --7 September, 2009, 13:15:10

If you have ever wondered what my ears look like, there are some good pictures of them in the Gencon catalog. Both left and right ears! You'll find them on pages 99 and 100.

There was some fun on the way back from gencon. I remembered, at the security check point, that I had failed to remove my scalpel and ice pick from my backpack. Naturally the fine security folks wanted to have a look. I waited calmly while they poked around my bag, wondering if I could convince them to throw out just the scalpel blade. Ordering the handles online is a pain. So I was quite surprised when they declared a box of Andrew's cards to be the culprit. These cards were (accidentally) dumped on the floor and found to be safe.

Painting Darksword's assassin frog is the most fun I've had (while painting) all summer. The futility of being sneaky when one is bright yellow just cracks me up. A friend commented (talking to the frog) "Oh sweetie, you're *so* incognito."




My roommate works at an orchid wholesaler who changed venues recently. This transition caused some orchid hardship, which makes them unsellable. The poor things were compost bound! 100 bedraggled orchids found their way to my house. Anyone in the area need some plants?

I've kept a few...


There have some good adventures:

We visited Ape Caves on the hottest day in memory...106F. I have mittens because it's 46F in the cave.


Granite Mountain is the prettiest peak I've climbed.

Magical Bendy Spear
  --18 August, 2009, 20:33:50

I got home from Gencon late last night. The first thing I did was scrape the remains of a very decomposed hatchet fish off the filter. The other fish were so happy to see me, that one of them presented me with a tape worm. *sigh* Aren't fish fun?

My diorama took second place this year at Privateer's contest. The big spear bent badly--both on the way there, and the way back. Fortunately I was able to bend it back into place both times without any damage. GW metalics must be very forgiving. Neat.

Lich Lord Asphyxious--the big dead guy on the rock--used his feat to reanimate some of his fallen warriors to deal with the Redeemer warjack. For good reason, the Redeemer destroyed his Bone Jack which was a cute, evil, death flea. I'd be mad too.

Gencon Oops
  --12 August, 2009, 21:32:00

Gencon left my name off my class. If you've been having trouble finding it, there ya go. I'm only teaching one class at Gencon and it is Saturday at 2:00PM. If you want in, show up at the class area and ask for me.

Gencon
  --11 August, 2009, 21:12:30

I'm off to Gencon tomorrow so early in the morning that it'll pretty much still be night.

Like most years, the painting class I teach is sold out. There is usually a spot or two from people who have to cancel, so please come by.

This update's mini is the Jester made by Coolminiornot.


This week's adventure was a trip to Carbon Glacier.


Nom is entirely grey, except for one white whisker. Unfortunately he broke it, so now it's just a white stub.

I finished the minis I'm bringing to Gencon at about midnight last night, so I'm very sleepy right now.

Nom Updates and More
  --24 July, 2009, 11:56:29

Nom has grown up to be a handsome little man-cat. He was denominated and de-manned the day before yesterday. The recovery is going well, he seems to have forgotten what he was angry about. Short-memoried cats are quite pleasant that way.

Some of the fun things he's been up to in the past couple of weeks include:
*Chasing a wasp up my trousers. It was a male Ichneumonidae--I knew that entomology class would come in handy. Fortunately I wasn't stung.

*Falling into the bathtub during my baths. (4 times)*edit*

*Falling into the toilet.

I've been slacking quite a bit, but I have gotten some painting done, including something neat to take to Gencon. There won't be pics of that until after the show, but for now here is the Teniente:



At least my slacking has been fun.Here are links to various photo albums generated by said fun: