CY6 Order Placed

An addendum to this morning's post. I placed an order to I-94 Enterprises for some Wildcats, Dauntlesses, Devastators, P-36s, Vals and Zeros. Not a ton of them, but enough to boost my existing forces to be able to do the Coral Sea scenarios and most of the Midway scenarios. Of greater concern will be collecting enough players!

The P-36s are just for something different. I'm thinking about painting two of them as Pearl Harbor defenders, and two in Chinese markings. Which means I will need Chinese markings. Which means I might as well get some I-16s and maybe even some P-26s. Which means I might as well get some Nates and Nells. See how this works?

Addendum the second: I just worked out a fairly quick wishlist, on top of what I ordered this morning, and it came to $325. Yeah, that's not happening.

Taking Flight: In a CY6 Mood

Maybe it's because tomorrow is December 7, maybe it's because Spartacon is coming up in a month, I don't know, but I got in a bit of a Check Your Six! mood last night. I updated the CY6 link at the top of this blog to accurately reflect the forces I have thus far. The only thing to complete on that list is I need to apply decals to the Kates.

As you can see, it's heavily slanted to Pacific carrier warfare. However, I have for some time considered starting a collection for the Chinese theater, and possibly even some British for Burma, etc.

So as is a gamer's wont, I started compiling yet another wishlist, and analyzing old wishlists. On the one hand, I like CY6 because you don't need a hundred minis, but when I start looking at what I do want, it does add up quickly. And I need to remind myself my hobby finances have still not improved that much. Plus I did just buy a new model Indy car last week...

So I could wait a month and buy direct from I-94 at Spartacon, or I could order some now.

Or come to the realization I don't have an opponent to play any time soon and bag the whole project. Sigh.

Serenity Now

So my wife is often saying I need more relaxing hobbies. Usually that comes after I express some frustration at a poor paint job. This weekend it was a direct result of college football.

Suffice to say my team lost a big game, and consequently got the proverbial shaft in the broken system that is the BCS. I'm not naive, I know it's all about money and not merit, and I should recognize it's just a valuable lesson that life is not fair, but it really, really ticked me off. I've been steadily weaning myself from college football for years, going from having season tickets and watching every game I could on TV, to dropping the tickets and watching most of my team's games on TV and few others. My respect - and hence my interest in this particular hobby - is dwindling further. It's just frustrating to see something I once enjoyed be destroyed by greed. But I guess that's humanity for you.

At least this could open up more time for my many other hobbies.

For the record, I'm generally not nearly as upset at a paint job or modelling dilemma as my wife thinks I am. I think it's just an misinterpretation of expression. (Though a few rusted bolts on the Mustang have led to some colorful language out in the garage...) Anyone else have this issue? Should I take up meditation? Does he look relaxed?

Fast Friday: John Andretti 1997 Ford

While my primary motorsport interest is definitely Indy cars, I do occasionally build something with fenders. But as you'll see the more of these I post, I tend to build cars driven by drivers associated in some way to Indy.

Take for example this 1997 driven by John Andretti. John, of course, is the nephew of Mario and cousin of Michael. His dad is Mario's twin brother Aldo. Racing seems to be a family thing a lot of times. Take the Unsers, Bettenhausens, Pettys and Allisons, among others. But few carry the panache of the Andrettis.

This is actually the "newest" NASCAR model I have done, though I have a Tony Stewart kit I need to build one of these days from 2003. John didn't enjoy the greatest success in NASCAR, but he did drive this car to victory in the July race at Daytona. Still, few can question he is one of the most versatile drivers out there, having also competed in drag racers and other forms of racing.

If memory serves, this was a Revell kit with decals from Slixx, but I could be wrong on that. I'm also pretty sure I used Testors lacquer for the paint.

Spirit of '76 at Up the Creek Brewing

It's been a busy couple of weeks over at Up the Creek Brewing. I have a Belgian Dubbel carbonating at the moment that will be ready for labeling and conditioning in the fridge this weekend. That's right on schedule for some holiday consumption!

And there's also an oatmeal stout contentedly fermenting away in the keg. That had some good krausen earlier in the week, and has settled down and is looking good. That's a good week or maybe two from bottling, which means I won't be drinking any until mid-January at the earliest. Should be good on some cold winter nights.

In the meantime, I opened this one up last week for dinner one night. It was made earlier last summer, but still has a great taste. Mr. Beer labels it as a colonial red ale, so I took the revolutionary approach of renaming it 1776 Ale. Astute observers may notice a certain resemblance between my label and a classic Avalon Hill game from many moons ago...

Cheers!

Tale of the Tape

I spent about a half hour this morning doing nothing but taping up my Foyt Olds in preparation for applying the black stripe down the side. Sorry for the lack of photos lately, I haven't been able to set up an area and haul anything out to shoot. Hopefully shots of the Foyt Olds soon.

Goals: Somewhat Met

As expected, it was a busy long weekend. But perhaps even busier than I thought.

Wednesday shopping turned into a mini-saga and took far longer than expected, but I did get a lot done.

Thursday was Thursday.

Friday I did get the leaves raked and the lights up, with much internal snipping and sniping with my wife. And I got caught up in helping rearrange the living room. Lonnng story we shan't go into. And a social evening out.

That carried on until Saturday, when I finally just stopped for a little while to watch football. Then it was off to dinner out and another shopping excursion.

Sunday I did some cyber shopping and some other computer work - that took a while, too. Finally by late Sunday afternoon I was pretty done for.

So what does that mean for hobbies? Zero accomplishment on the Mustang. Nada. So that's frustrating. And on the scale cars, I got the tires painted and wheels assembled on the Foyt Olds, and the orange paint polished reasonably well. I need to mask and get the black on. Oh, and I got a front support and the spoiler prepped for paint (forgot to do them in the first round...)

And I did get a bottle of stout to fermenting in the keg. That could be the long-term best accomplishment of the weekend.