Ugh! Time For The Switchover

It's one of my least favorite things, but it leads to one of my favorite things, so I guess you have to take the good and take the bad. You take them both and then you have the facts of life.

Yup, that's what I was doing this weekend. That is my study, half-denuded. You can see that there are plenty of holes in the shelves, because I took the Halloween decorations down. Once I can get them packed away safely and stuffed into the closet again, I'll open up the other one of those plastic totes and start unloading my Christmas decorations.

I know, you're not supposed to decorate for Christmas until the day after Thanksgiving, but if I wait that long, I'll only get a week or so with the stuff, because it takes me forever to get it all up. I've got to get started now, or else I will just get despondent and say it isn't worth the effort and never have any decorations at all.

Oh, here's something that I think I forgot to ever include in any of my Halloween decorations posts. I forgot to take a picture of this Halloween decoration and show it off. 

This is a Lego house that my wife gave to me a while back. Okay, it isn't Lego. It's fake Legos...also, it's miniature fake Legos. These things are tiny. They're probably half the size of regular Legos, but it feels like it's more like 1/3 the size when I try to use my fat fingers to assemble the thing.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. I certainly do. I love Legos. Fake or not.

Ain't Wastin' Time

Only two days past Halloween yesterday, and I was at work recording football games for the sports guys when this commercial came on during one of them.

Please excuse the crappy pictures, but I tried as quickly as I could to get my camera out to get a shot before the commercial ended. Yessir, that is the John Travolta as Santa Claus commercial. Already running while Halloween's corpse isn't even cold yet.

What's in your wallet?

Well, if you're anything like me, there ain't a damn thing in your wallet. Inflation done emptied that thing out. Thanks for asking, Santa.

Do I Really Need To Add Lars Ulrich?

Having Ollie's nearby may not be a good thing after all. I've been spending a little too much money there lately. Case in point, the other day, while I was chatting with Rish on the phone, I was doing my usual trip to Ross. Ollie's is nearby, so it's now been added to my list of places to stop. I went into the Ollies, and to my surprise, among the usual cast off figures that nobody wants were four Figrin D'ans from the Star Wars Black Series. That's the six-inch scale figures. It's mostly what I collect for display. All the 3.75-inch collecting that I do is only for the Ankletown Station setup.

Four of them! That's a lot. That's more than half of the band, and now I could get them all for half of their original price. I wanted to, but had decided against collecting a set of the Modal Nodes, because getting seven figures would be prohibitively expensive. I've got three kids on our car insurance. We can barely afford our electric bill and don't get me started on the prices at the grocery store. But, if the figures are half price...maybe?

I debated it for a while, (They were $10 a piece. That's $40, and I seldom spend that much money at once on toys. I shop at Ross for a reason. Oh, and I did mention how everything costs way more than it used to? I sure haven't gotten a big raise to make up for that disparity, that's for sure), however, I finally gave in and bought the four guys.

They're pretty cool. Each one comes with three instruments, so even though they're identical, they can pass as different guys in the band...they're aliens after all. Who can tell one Bith from another, right?

They look pretty good all lined up blowing their space-horns.

I have an awful lot of leftover instruments though.

I guess I could probably use them in designing stuff on Ankletown Station. So, I'll find a use for all of this.

Now, there's two different figures in the Black Series Modal Nodes. They're both identical figures, but one comes with the three horns, the other one comes with the three larger instruments, and is sold as a deluxe figure. That one's name is Nalan Cheel. 

All I need is one Nalan Cheel, which is selling for a lot more than those Figrin D'ans are going for on eBay right now. I could get one of him, one or two more Figrin D'ans, and have the whole band. That's going be at least as expensive as what I've bought so far. I did run out to the other Ollie's that opened up on my way to work the next day, and they had no Figrin D'ans. So, I may have to pay full-price...or worse...to get the others. 

Is it worth it? Maybe I won't bother. Those four get the point across, right? Star Wars band. Awesome! Who cares about the drummer and bass player and keyboardist in a rock band anyway. All that matters are the lead guitarists and the singers. Quick, without looking on Google, tell me the name of the drummer and bassist on Van Halen...or AC/DC...or Aerosmith. Pretty much the only way a drummer gets his name out there is by being an asshole like Lars Ulrich or by having a huge schlong and giving it to Pamela Anderson like Tommy Lee. I don't see Nalan Cheel managing that kind of fame.

Wizards and Angels Now Available In eBook!

New short story collection available now! It's Wizards and Angels: The Short Fiction Collection, Volume Four.

This will be my last short story collection for a while. I've used up all my short stuff, and it's pretty much all available and out there now. From here on out, I'll have to start publishing my novels. 

This one has a really good mix of stuff. It includes nine stories: From Another World, The Shortest Ghost Story Ever Told, Undo, Unfortunate, Dr. Claw, Pre-owned, Long-Term Memory, Black Angel, and Digital Wizards. A few of those are from many moons ago, such as "The Shortest Ghost Story Ever Told" or "Black Angel" and some of them are from this very year such as "Pre-Owned" or "Digital Wizards." "Digital Wizards" is a novella, and takes up the lion's share of the page count. Rather than describe each story separately, I just linked to the post where I released them in their standalone versions.

So far, Wizards and Angels is only available as an eBook on Amazon. My next order of business is to get the other formats ready for publishing. The paperback and hardcover will certainly be next, and over the next two months I will get the audio recorded and edited. So, depending on what your favorite format is, you can get it now or expect it to be a long shortly. I'll do a post when each format comes online as well so you won't miss it, don't worry. I hope you enjoy.