Fennec Shand

I'm not really sure how much of a fan of Fennec Shand the character I am. I love Ming-Na Wen, but mostly because of her role in Agents of Shield, not because of Star Wars. She wasn't terrible, but she really seemed to be the person who did everything that Boba Fett should have done if he didn't totally suck, which I didn't appreciate, because Boba Fett is not supposed to suck.

Her look, however, is pretty cool. I like it. So, when I went to Target today and found her on the peg, I grabbed her, and considered myself lucky. It's the first time I've seen her in the wild.

She comes with an unmasked head, and a helmeted head. I assumed that the helmet actually fit over her head, but that was not the case. It was a totally separate head with its own peg to go in the neck joint. I put the helmet on her, because that's more the kind of thing that I'm looking for on my space port.

She fits well in a Star Wars world, so she'll be perfect on the station. The only thing I might do is put a wash on the top of her head to mute that cap a little bit.

And now I've got an extra head that I could use on a different figure. Not sure who to put it on, maybe some kind of Fortnite character, but I like having the option.

Day 2

I taught Little how to mow the lawn today. It was so hot out there, but we were out in it for at least an hour.

Later, when I realized that I had to sit down and write or else already admit defeat, I was tired as hell. I made myself write anyway. I didn't get as much written as I did last night, but it was something, which is more than the night before...or the two years before that. 

So, yeah, I got 441 words today. Giving me 1,082 so far. And that is 0.36% of the way to my ultimate goal for the year. Nice.

1082 / 304475 (0.36%)

Don't worry, I'm not going to do a full on post like this every single day. Maybe once a week or so, but not every day.

Succeeding While Continuing To Fail. 30-Day Carnivore BBBE OMAD Challenge Week 2

I probably ought to re-title this challenge, because I haven't been doing the BBBE thing much at all. I'm failing to live up to it on an almost daily basis. However, the OMAD part is going pretty well. I'm doing that without any effort at all, and kicking butt in that regard. Because of that, I am continuing to lose a little bit of fat each week. That's a good thing, I guess.

Floorless

John Cusack has nothing on us. This has been one crazy summer. For a long time, our house has looked like we ran afoul of Hurricane Harvey or something, and today it really took that look to the nth degree.

When last we checked in with our intrepid home renovators, they had prepared their house for the arrival of the floor demolition crew. The next day, those guys demolished that floor.

I have to admit, it was really nice to have someone else do that for us. Taking up the tile in the kitchen had been quite an ordeal, and all along we'd expected to have to do the rest of the house ourselves too. It turned out to be affordable enough, so we had the flooring company take care of it for us, and their skill and practice made short work of the stuff.

In the space of one morning, our house looked like this.

They even got the floors under those gigantic bookshelves I have in the den.

I slid the bookcases from one side of the room to the other for them, which actually turned out to be more of a pain than I expected. Once the hardwood was gone, they just didn't slide anymore. It was more like walking them from one side to the other. But I got them moved, and they got the floors up.

Now we have two weeks to live on this mess before the new floor comes. It feels like we live in somebody's unfinished basement. It sucks, but it's temporary. Hopefully the weeks will feel like days. And I expect that they will...the two weeks will probably feel like fourteen days.

I Love You, 300,000

I'm always doing something, but as often as not, it's a waste of time. There are certain things that take priority in my life, things that I want to accomplish before shuffling off this mortal coil. One of those things is writing.

In 2019, I started a goal to write 300,000 words in a year. I set it up to run from one birthday to the next, but it went so well that by August 29th, 2020, two full months early, I made it over 300,000.

I kept writing every day until I finished the story that I was on, and then I decided to take a little break before getting back to it.

Well, it's July 1st 2022 now, and that break is finally coming to an end. It was a little longer than I meant it to be. Almost two whole years. I digressed in a lot of ways in that time. The atmosphere created by our response to Covid-19 really threw me for a loop, and I let it rob me of my happiness.

But, I'm back on the right track. Marshal Latham helped me get my health back on the right track, and now I feel secure enough that I can try writing every day again.

So, July to July, I am going doing the 300,000 words thing again. In fact, I'm going to top 2019-20. 2022-23 will be my best writing year ever. Now, I'm not making the goal a pie in the sky, I'm just making myself outdo my last total.

So, in 2020, I finished off that challenge with 304,474 words. If I get 304,475 then I win. Of course, I think I've learned from my mistakes. If I can manage to get myself writing every day like that, I'm not going to take any breaks again. It's going to stay. I won't let it go, just like I won't ever give up on healthy eating again. So, I expect to get a lot more than 304,475. That's just the basement for my ambitions.

Today, even though it was kind of a struggle to get myself started, I wrote 641 words. That's plenty. I'm going to build up just like I did last time. This first month is to get myself back in the habit. Remembering to write every day will be enough of a struggle for now to even worry about how many words I'm writing.

Next month, I'll have to get 500 a day (which I guess I already hit today). Then the month after that will be 1,000. That's the same ramp up that I did last time.

I'm worried that life may get in the way of this, but I'm going to plunge forward anyway. There's a lot of things up in the air right now, and my life may change significantly in the next few months. Hopefully I can still manage to write every day through it all. I'll have to see what I can do, but I'll be reporting in here often, so you can cheer me on if you'd like.

I'd certainly appreciate it.

Happy Canada Day

Merry Canada Day to all my crazy Canucky friends, including my good wife, who puts up with me probably just because she's Canadian, and therefore too polite to tell me what she really thinks of me.

This picture is from last year. Sadly, I can't find my flag right now. It's in a box somewhere, but it would take all day to discover where. Next year, I'll have my flag stand up, and it'll be simple to locate.

The Skeleton Crew Expands

I was talking with Rish on the phone the other day while he was shopping at Ross. He was telling me what he was finding there, and I was a little jealous. First of all, he found for the second time, this Roblox figure called Noob.

At least, I think it's called Noob. It may be called Noob Attack - Mech Mobility, which is a pretty lame name, but you never know. I don't play the game, so I'm completely clueless.

There's not a lot of Roblox figures that I'd like to buy, but this is definitely one of them. It's a droid with some really fun old-fashioned styling. I've looked at a bunch of Rosses since he told me he'd found it the first time, and I've not seen anything like it, but now here he is finding it again.

A second later though, he really got my attention when he said he'd found the Jazwares six-inch Fortnite Skull Trooper. I gasped, and asked him if he would buy it for me and save it until he sends out a big package full like he often does.

He scoffed, saying that we usually see all the same things at Ross eventually, but he gave in and bought it for me.

Well, a week or so later, he was proven right. I was at Ross, and they'd received a few new Fortnite figures to put up for sale, but none of them we're ones I was interested in. Just as I was about to leave, I noticed Fortnite boxes at the very beginning of the toy section that I'd overlooked when I walked in. It was, not one, but three Skull Troopers.

"I win," I said, and went to the register and bought them all.

I've already got a few Skull Troopers, but none of them are like these. The ones I have are the seven inch scale ones produced by McFarlane Toys.

I've talked about them before on the blog (it's buried in the middle of this post about my Halloween decorations in 2020). I thought it would be rad to mix the two versions together. These guys are the biggest dudes in the group, but there's some shorter ones too.

So, here's the additions.

I decided that even though the others were buried in a storage tub somewhere, I had to find them and get a picture of them all together. So, after a little digging, here you go.

I didn't get out the big guys' weapons, just put them in the back. What do you think? Does it look good? Are the six-inch guys too short?

In my book idea that I have for these guys, I have a character planned that's much shorter than the three big ones. I named him after my friend Murray that I work with, who is also pretty short, but such a great guy all the same. Isn't it weird how you can be short and still a good person? Who'd have thought that possible? (that's a joke, don't take it personally).

Since I was in the storage tub, I also got out this WWE figure that I bought, and put her with the Skeleton Crew.

She's the Smurfette of the group, and the one who makes a bond with the little girl that they have to rescue from drug cartel thugs. 

Mostly, I just wanted to try making a girl for the Skeleton Crew, and I thought it would be easiest with this figure because she's already wearing all black. All I need to do is paint the bones on her...and give her a skull face, I suppose. That'll be the hard part. Just need to paint her face white, at least, since her platinum blond hair is basically white.

So, now I have three Skull Troopers, and Rish has one he bought for me too. I'm going to have to tell him that he was right, and that he didn't need to buy it for me after all. If he has the receipt, I'll allow him to return it, but I think I'd still like to have it. I really do love these guys, and they make great Halloween decorations. I now have them in 7-inch, 6-inch, and 4-inch scale. I wonder if they made any in that new 2-inch scale...