Alex's even longer post thread.

[Alex]

We've been watching a lot of AEW wrestling lately as well as older WCW stuff. As WWE shed's performers, they seem to be hoovering them up, not to mention using talent that is... uhm, past their sell-by date (but still good to see these older wrestlers again in a nostalgic way). It does remind me somewhat of the old Monday night wars (although as Vince McMahon pointed out AEW has nowhere near their viewers back then).

Then again, as I understand it neither does the WWE.

Warm and wet weather today, but the dark grey clouds promise more rain to come.  Kristi is out at a meeting at the moment. Hopefully, she can avoid the heavier showers. This leaves me and Ash with him running around while I try to do some computer programming. He does not make it easy to concentrate, to say the least lol.

When I am not working on programming I am working on D&D. As well as my regular Friday night game I am writing a one-shot adventure for people who are going to be playing soon after a long break to reintroduce them to the rules before we start a new game with one of the DMing.

Reminds me, I need to work on their character sheets as I am just going to give them pregenerated ones for this adventure. Not something I would normally do, but for a one session game it would take longer to generate everyone's character on the night than it would to play the game.

[Alex]

Spending the weekend in Aberdeen. Ash has a hospital appointment first thing on Monday morning (too early to get a train), and there is a train strike on Sunday so we headed up on Saturday. Delays on the line meant it was nearly 16:00 before we got into town so by the time we'd got to our hotel room and dropped our luggage off we didn't have a lot of time to get around the shops before things closed.

Still I did manage to find an entirely new games shop, visit another one (which was having a big sale on so I had to buy a new board game) and then pick up a couple of DVDs. My nephew lives in the town, so he joined us in the hotel bar and then we went out for a few drinks since Kristi and Ash were going back to the room. Ended up back at his place for a game of Cards Against Humanity.

Meeting up with my older brother and his wife for breakfast this morning (along with Cameron and Jess). Since I couldn't get tomorrow off work I'll need to get a bus home (damn train strike, the bus is a long journey but Kristi did pick me up a series of comics to read on the way called Miskatonic).

[Alex]

When I saw on the news about a mass shooting in the south of England a couple of days ago, I messaged a friend who lives down there to make sure she and her family were all ok. She wasn't aware of what was happening. I took that as a good sign (for her anyway). She messaged me back last night to say that she wants friends with one of the women and the three-year-old girl who was shot.

Since then I've been trying to think of something comforting to say in return. What can you say when 5 lives have been snuffed out by some trump supporting incel with a shotgun? What a freaking loser.

Got a surprise when I saw on the news this morning that the Afgan government was preparing to surrender to the Taliban. How many lives were wasted in kicking them out? If they weren't willing to see the job done properly, they shouldn't have sent us in, in the first place.

Had Cameron and Jess visit yesterday and played some board and card games with them (Block Mania, Monty Python Fluxx and Disney Munchkin). In the first one I managed to keep my block standing while the four of us sent our troops to attack each others, right up until the last turn where someone set a fire in my basement power room. The fire caused the room to collapse which set off a chain reaction that ended up collapsing my entire building. Oh well, there is always next time.

Got the back garden sorted out today as well as dealing with the compost heap. Had to put aftershave on my hands to get rid of the smell of it off them though. Urgh. Got a friend coming up from England to visit for a couple of days. He is doing a tour of Scotland on his motorbike. The weather is looking a bit grim for biking, but hopefully he'll have a good time regardless.

[Alex]

The Cinema Club has opened back up as part of the whole easing of Covid restrictions. Supposed to be showing The Sound of Metal, which sounds like a snoozefest type movie, so I am currently watching Monster Hunter in the hope that no one is going to turn up to watch the proper film.

It is 14:00 now which is the official start time. No one else here. 

[Alex]

Finally managed to get to see the Ray Harryhausen exhibition today. Here are a few photos from it.

















Never seen an Oscar in real life before.






I'd love to have one of these for my D&D games.






FRom an abandoned attempt to make War of the Worlds.




Poor Mighty Joe Young has seen better days.

[Alex]

[Alex]

Think this is my favourite.

[Alex]

[Alex]

[Trevor]

I would still watch any of these 100 times over (knowing the time and effort that went into making them) above any of the CGI crap we have today. 

[Trevor]

Finally managed to get to see the Ray Harryhausen exhibition today. Here are a few photos from it.

Yo Alex, where did you get a pic of my (almost) mother in law? 

[Alex]

Got up this morning, really wishing I could just stay in bed and ignore the world outside. I just did not want to go to work.

Went in and discovered I had the day off.
...
...
...

Anyway, I painted up this little guy.



Because, well who doesn't need a Leprechaun with a chainsaw?

[Alex]

Ok, so that picture is a little bigger than I planned.

[Alex]

Got into work for what is our busiest week out of the (lunar) month only to find everyone else is either isolating due to Covid or is on leave and I am doing everything ourselves.

Then I got the news that Ash needed to get a Covid test. I am fine as long as that doesn't come back positive, if it does then I need to go into isolation too and we have no one to man the office.

Yeah, that would be a problem right there.

Oh well, we will just have to cross that bridge if and when we come to it.

We've had a burning hot toddler decide to join us in bed sometime around 2 to 4 every night since the weekend. It's a fever, but it is on the low end of things so we are keeping a close eye on him.

Finding watching the worldwide (well in the first world anyway), wave of people quitting their jobs. Will it lead to higher wages as employers try to recruit/hang on to workers? During the Black Plague, wages shot up thanks to the shortage of labour so it isn't exactly the same situation but as long as you didn't actually catch it, the Plague was good for the ordinary people in that way (I am not suggesting we should unleash a pandemic of those proportions simply to get a wage increase).

Mind you I wonder if those who have made it quite clear they don't care about the numbers that have died due to Covid thus far would have any different an opinion on something far more lethal? Sadly I doubt it. When you are talking about the numbers of people dying, the numbers become a bit meaningless. If your immediate friends and family are affected, then that is a tragedy. Someone telling you say 800,000, or a third of the population have died is a bit harder to process and actually translate into something relatable even if we can recognise it as a bad thing. If you don't care about one such number, why should you care if it is slightly or hugely greater?

From the sounds of the weather reports, we are getting our last week of summer weather this week. We will have to do our best to ensure we enjoy the sunshine while we have it.

[Alex]

Picked up a board game called Nemesis. It's pretty much Aliens without the IP. Anyway, I saw this figure and just had to pick it up to use in the game.



Unfortunately, the white undercoat didn't go on evenly and went all crumbly, so the final product wasn't as smooth as I had hoped, but it is about as close to the suits from Alien as I can make them. I am nowhere near talented to get them looking like .

Hell, even if I was, I doubt I'd spend the extra time it would take.

Anyway, this is one of the Aliens. Shorter head, a pair of scythe-like limbs over the shoulders and twin tails, but I think you can see where the inspiration came from...