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Tag: fantasy

There are six books which I read cover to cover in January.

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The books in question.

I read Mary Robinette Kowal’s “The spare man“, “Fart Quest Vol.4“, Tom Segura’s “I’d like to play alone“, The first two “Dungeon Academy” books, and then Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Children of memory“. With a partial read of Robert Evans’ “The kid stays in the picture“. A book I feel like I should go back to now that I have cleared my schedule for reading through until July 1st, 2023. But we’ll see. It repeats itself alot, with the gambling, drinking, and adultery themes. The names, and motion pictures change, but ultimately he’s retelling the same six stories over, and over again, with that Shake or slap an hysterical woman, old Hollywood charm. The girls are prizes to be claimed, and discarded at whim. Interesting, up to a point. Not my tempo. As it were.

I’m about the start in on the N. K Jemisin Broken Earth Trilogy, so I have high hopes! Please let them be good. It would be better if they were great, but I’ll gladly take good any day of the week. Exceptional would be amazing, but a good trilogy, with no filler feeling chapters is hard to come by. Is this the authors seminal work? What they’re known for? I don’t know. I didn’t do all that much research, but a few names I trust from previous high quality references to books gave this one a thumbs up, and it has won a prestigious Sci-fi award for the whole trilogy, book by book. So that’s gotta say something positive? Doesn’t it!?!

I should really go back and try to read more of the Carl Sagan book, but it came across like a text book, so I need to be in that sort of mind set. For education rather than entertainment. That was the difference between reading about the Pluto mission, versus the Mars rover stuff. One was *a story*, the other a technical play by play, like a parts list, and engineered drawings in exploded view. One I thoroughly enjoyed as it did contain lots of education information inside the story telling, the other I detested, and only got part way through before putting it away. My labouring over a text days are done. Philosophy, Sociology, Economics, even Business Admin textbooks were a chore at times, and I’m glad I don’t have to hack my way through those sorts of things anymore.

Also I do want to know how the Grapes of Wrath ends, but who-boy, that was an exercise in patience for colloquial speech patterns. Feels like it will mean something by the end, but gah! The idea of spending the next five months reading five pages at a time to just get to the end of it feels like a total waste of my time. Can it provide a great enough epiphany at the end to warrant such a slow, halting, and seemingly unending read? I don’t see it. Not from the 150 plus pages I have all ready read. Maybe the end packs the most whallop? I don’t know. Seems fool hardy to leave your whole message for the very end. But I’m no writer of an American Classic. So he’s gotta know what he’s doing.

Today is Wednesday, and I’m looking at being pretty busy today, and this evening. The kids have things to do every night of the week excepting Friday, and the weekends. One month in and I am exhausted, so who knows how the kids are coping. I know they enjoy it all. But, I think we need to narrow down some interests, as this is a bit much. I am grateful that I get to see the improvements from gymnastics, Taekwon-do, and their dance lessons. Had I still been working downtown for any number of breweries or agencies, I’d never get the chance to see this stuff. I get to see them tey it for the first time, work at it, conquer it, then build upon it. Rather lovely – at times. Anyway, great day to you all.

Dribble, drip, drab, dram, & drop. One of these words is not like the others…

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Tuesday! It is here, and the sky is grey – again. A real Debbie Downer of a winter. I now realize why I was so happy and excited for the sunny blue skies last year. It’s because we usually just have this drab grey monotonously neutral coloured sky. These shades of grey do not inspire any sense of joy at all. But a beautiful blue sparkly, twinkling winter’s day, omg, that could be one for the story books. The gloom really does add a layer of suck, to an already dreary season. All the leaves, and flowers are gone, the colour sucked right out of the everyday. No green vibrant grass. The trees are all grey/brown, the streets are grey, the side walk, curbs, and gutters grey. Ugh! Hideous. But a big, bold, open crystal clear blue sky adds so much to a regular day. It’s a shame we do all of our lights based holidays before winter really gets going. January & February need their own lights show extravaganza of a holiday. Otherwise it all looks so damn bleak. Boo!

Almost done with January as it is. Not much longer and we’ll be looking at Valentine’s Day, then March Break & St. Patrick’s Day, then Easter, then the May 2-4 of Victoria Day, and by then POW! All the colour has come back, and lawn mowing is a thing, same with park play dates, bike riding, skateboards, and playing catch on the lawn. Spring, Summer and Fall are far superior seasons to our southern Ontario winters. So much more to get out and do! Bring it on!

Oh, reminds me. I need to sort and hang up all of yesterday’s laundry. The cycle, it never ends!

I had to put a pin in the Bob Evans book, to read something a little more contemporary & light hearted. Just opening up more space to get through it all, by reading other books from this years list now, which are shorter and less dense, as the length of the Evans book might take me a while to get through. I don’t want to miss my twelve books in a year goal, by getting slowed to a halt by one of the longer, and more densely written autobiographies. So, I figure when I feel it start to drag, I’ll put a pin in it, pick up another book that I can finish quickly, then go back to it, knowing that I haven’t squandered all of my time by not being smart about it. If that makes any sense.

Old Hollywood is intriguing, but – so many names, and places, and people, and actors, and motion pictures, and studios to keep track of. I have to look many of them up to get a sense of what he was gossiping, or spilling the tea over. My knowledge of Pre 1980 Hollywood is pretty bare bones to begin with. I thought this book might ignite something like an renaissance of old movies for me, but not really. At least not yet. I like it, but it’s longer than a good chunk of my other books, and even after reading seventy-eighty pages at a go, it feels as though I’m making little to no headway on finishing the damnable thing! It’s like the page count is growing as I’m reading it. Ha. I know it’s not, but it feels that way to me.

So I’ll detour for a day or two into some Fantasy realm type stuff, then hop back into the autobiography. Bim, bam, boom!

Did I Manage to Salvage the Ogre Rogue… You Tell Me. The Painting Episode: Take Two.

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So in our last painting episode I attempted something which I had not done before, a realistic human skin tone. I had the appropriate paints, I was following along step by step, and I even added flecks of mahogany, green, blue and red for that authentic splotchy skin we all have. And then I got real heavy handed with the last two layers of high lights, and washed it all away. But not before I added the blue glaze to add some of that Ogre ‘otherness‘ to his look, and it all went to dog shit.

I had some thoughts regarding going right back to primer, and trying again from the start. I was all ready nearly three hours deep on the paint job at this point, so I instead opted for a quicker fix. It wouldn’t help with my over sprayed shading issue, being that I had mostly erased all of my layered shadows. But I pressed on. Adding a new round of flecked speckles. At this point I was happy enough (I guess?), and dug in to painting the rest of him. Chainmail, cowl, hair, teeth, eyes, belt, furs and trinkets. I tried to get a rusty feel to the pauldron, but as I started with a Copper look, a blue/green patina would have worked better, in retrospect. No matter. I put his crows beak/war hammer back on, and painted that a little. In all honesty the weapon requires a lot more work at this point, but I’m over it for now.

I had some EU labels come in, and the spectre of another report or three looming, and I don’t want to invest more time on the weapon right now, as the paid work can come in at any second. Gotta stay nimble as a freelancer. Hurry up & wait is real common round these parts.

Anyway, here he is, and here is how it’ll stay for a while longer. Perhaps come January, in my down period I’ll pick him back up and polish some edges. Behold, the thing I have made.

95% complete Ogre Rogue bust I sculpted this year (2022).

It looks like a thing, so I have that going for me, which is nice. Otherwise all I have left is the no name brand Ninja Turtle character I have left to paint. Could just leave it as plain Apoxie sculpt though. That’s a thing that people do these days, just leave it in it’s original colour. I can get behind that I think.

The Rogues Gallery of 2022 sculpted items, and their paint jobs.

Changing interests.

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I have spent a great deal of time, over the last three years watching people build & make things on YouTube. Everything from home remodels, to hand made furniture, slab tables and machining. I would like to think that attempting much of this would be fun. Not that I’d be any good at it, but rather to experience it first hand, noise, smells and all. I never cared much for machining as a kid, though my father did it as a tool & die maker, thus a skilled tradesman, before moving into consulting and being a bridge between the shop floor, and the white coat techies and their sales staff. Now I wish I had access to some machining tools of my own, and an ear to bend to help figure things out. I would have had a riot of a time getting some furniture building tips from either of my grandfathers. Both of whom passed away before I even thought about doing it myself. They made chairs and tables in England, before and after the second world war, of which only one grand father had to take part. I myself had a brief stint in wood shop at school for several semesters, built some sets for a university play I was in, and then worked in a cabinet makers shop for a few months making antiques repairs, and milling up baseboards and trim for twelve hours a day, and cleaning up saw dust endlessly. So the wood shop wasn’t totally foreign to me, but I didn’t know I was going to fall for it this hard.

Now that there is no way to get it, I’d really appreciate their hard won expertise (my grandfather’s more so than the German cabinet maker). They could have sat, tea in hand, and pointed and watched as I worked on projects, chiding me for silly mistakes, or making corrections to my order of operations. Those are things I could really go for now. But alas, the furniture makers are more than a decade dead now. No video or hand books left behind of things they’d learned or wanted to pass along. I do have a hand made T square from my Grandpa Holyome. A dense hardwood straight edge he fashioned. Which I use fairly often. I’m not Mr Precise, so it works wonders on eye balled projects. I have properly machined tools too, but those I bought, they weren’t built by my family decades ago. A life time ago now.

When I get to thinking about all of that lost experience and knowledge I feel a little sad. What do they say now, like tears in the rain, or a breath on the wind. Gone.

I’m sure there were some small but strategically important hints or tweaks to techniques that would have gone a long way to improving my skills which they might have shared with me. Not only that, but to have made better memories with them. In all honesty, if they weren’t dead, they’d still be in England, on a six hour time difference. Not living next door or just up the road from me. And they’d both be in their mid nineties by now, anywhere from 94-98 years of age. But the fantasy was, nimble of mind, comfortably close at hand, teaching as we went. Cup of tea to keep them comfortable. Oh well. C’est le vie.