Having a serious retro weekend. Downloaded an Intellivision emulator yesterday, which Grete has been playing loads of old Intellivision games on. Downloaded a speccy emulator again, and then a whole bunch of games overnight, and played a few of them today. Bomb Jack on the speccy! Just awesome 😉 Those special effects are astounding. Also got MAME and am now trying out loads of ROM’s. The memories they evoke are weird.

As it happens, uk.culture.nostalgia.1980s has just been created on usenet as well, which doesn’t help 😉

I’ve been browsing e-bay looking at the Big Tracks 😉

I should probably be in bed, but that’s the story of my Sundays really.

Been a rather busy few weeks. I’ve been working a lot, weekends, evenings, on-call, usual stuff. Finally things are starting to get busy at work again which is nice.

Socially things are picking up. We managed to get a game of the Wheel of Time RPG yesterday, with some friends we met at an LRP event a few years back. New game, new GM (to us, he’s GM’ed before, and we know him, but we’ve never played in one of his table-top games), new system, new characters, so generally nervy beginning with people trying to work out who’s who. Another friend turned up unexpectedly today as well, which was nice.

The house is on the market with a new agency. Different tactic, but with luck it’ll be sold in a month or so (fingers crossed, they seemed confident). If we do sell it, I’m not sure what we’ll do! Drink and be merry after recovering from the shock I guess.

My feelings towards the Halifax company are worse than ever. After treating us very unsatisfactorily over our mortgage during the last 5 years, the estate agency side didn’t do us much good either [we appreciate their help looking after the place, which is outside of their normal remit, but failing to sell the place in over 18 months is a bit disappointing, and then having to pay £80+ just to terminate our contract is annoying. We knew we’d have to do it, but it still sucks. {especially as their currently doing no sale no fee offers, and they wouldn’t do that for us retrospectively}].

I think I’ll try and get another couple of hours sleep. I’ve had a cup of tea, which has calmed me down a bit (I know, weird), so with any luck I may doze off until the alarm goes off at 7:30.

Can’t sleep. Feeling a touch light-headed, and everything seems to be moving very slowly, while I’m moving very quickly. Odd sensation, sure it’s not normal.

I guess I’ll pay tomorrow for being awake at 4:26am, but there you go.

Progress, however small, is still progress. We’ve dropped the contract for selling our house with the Halifax – 20 months on their books and no progress at all! And it costs us £75 to get out of it as well, still. We’re going to give another agency a go, and while the fees are steep if we do sell, they seem confident they can sell the property within 4 to 6 weeks, and because of the price they are talking about, we’ll still be in the black afterwards even with the steep fees.

Another batch of skeletons painted, which makes 40 in total. Far more than I’ve painted in ages, and I’m quite pleased with myself. I’ve started in earnest on the zombies, but they’re more detailed, and more varied (since they are clothed), and I want to get a theme, without making them all exactly the same colour [with the skeletons I kept a theme by doing certain bits of trim in purple]. Might do some more with the zombies tomorrow.

House stuff is a little tantalising, we had a leaflet posted from a place which said ‘market value paid’, but it turns out they are a middle-man type company which finds property for people currently renting who want to buy. Grete’s going to show them around, and we’ll see how it goes, but I’m less confident now I know what they really do, than I was when we weren’t sure. It would mean having to drop the contract with the Halifax as well (£70 charge for doing so, sigh). Still, fingers crossed eh?

27 skeletons into the 40 I had originally, only 13 more to go, they are undercoated and base coated, so it’s a quick brown/black/chestnut wash, then metal bitz and then wood/leather and then a couple of washes over those, and perhaps some purple bits. Wooohooo. I think I can safely say that 27 miniatures in two days is the most I’ve ever painted, which I’m taking as a good sign. I looked at the zombies, but they’re wearing clothes which are going to be annoying if I want a range of colours, which I think I might. Guess I could pick say, three options, and split the group into three, and then quickly bash each set out, before moving onto the next.

Feels good anyway, and I’ve finally almost got over the ‘these must be perfect’ mentality I have with miniatures. I can reserve that for the individual pieces I do, but for the mass-combat troops, I really ought to just paint the buggers and move on. So many miniatures, so little time 😉

It’s the new year, so Best Wishes to Everyone for 2002. Best wishes to myself and Grete too, this is the year where we sort ourselves out. Without doubt.

Perhaps one quick photo of some of the competed skeletons, hang on ….[click for a bigger image]

Argh! Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I hate life (sometimes).

Well, I feel far more relaxed knowing I don’t have to go to work for another few days, and that when I do, it’ll be nice and quiet.

Lord of the Rings was a weird experience for me. Excellent company, we took up an entire row in the cinema 🙂 However, I’m not sure how good the film was, and I haven’t stuck a review for it on Review-a-rama yet either. I need to see it again to work out how much I liked it. However, as the days go on, I’m remembering more and more of the good bits.

It’s only when I get to relax like this, do I realise how uptight and stressed out work makes me. I should do some calming exercises during my lunch hour or something.