Kickstarter Madness

I'm out of control. I blame Yeji (aka "Snickersnacks") for pretending my minor addition is "normal". I've been involved in too many Kickstarters in the last few weeks:

Reaper Bones III: The Search for Mr. Bones

The Art of Loish: A Look Behind the Scenes

...and the Ninja All-Stars I joined late:

I'm broke. But since I'm going without wine this month and I haven't bought clothes or shoes in the last year, I'm saving quite a bit? (Yeah, I'm just trying to rationalize at this point). I should probably mention at this point that I'm "pangry" since I haven't painted in awhile. I'm angry about not painting. Sure, I've painted an hour here or there, but I haven't had the satisfaction of the 3+ mini painting marathons I love so much. Every time I convince myself I have time to paint, I'm off to another project (world of podcasts, woot!) or traveling (family stuff!) or working after hours (ok there's no fun in this, let's be honest). Either that or I have to go to the grocery store or cook or go workout-- all the annoying things that I have to do since I'm adult. Boo. Oh, and I still need to choose my perks in the Kickstarters above. That takes ages for me. When I do sit down to paint, I'm grumpy and have painter's block. We actually talked about this on the most recent podcast you can listen to here:

 

Join Larry, Yeji, Clint and Mocha as they talk about painters block and some of the ways they have beat it!

Posted by Models Workshop on Monday, September 14, 2015
 

Now that my foot is mostly repaired and just bruised, I'm ready to paint-- though I'm fighting the urge to finish "The Martian" that I picked up this past weekend when traveling. It's excellent. I don't have much more to say about it than go read it. Even if you don't like space. Seriously. And if you do happen to like space, orbital engineering, or survivor-thrillers, you'll love it even more. 

 
 

Other than that, the rain's finally stopped, so I'm going to do some outdoor spray priming. Enough talking about painting, let's actually do some painting tonight! I'm so close to finishing Bailey, the only miniature I've ever painted two versions of (and the second miniature I ever painted). I only have her dagger to paint, arm to attach and after a few highlights-- she'll be done! I can't wait to put them side-by-side and see how far I've come since 2012.

Maxxing Out

On Wednesday, I planned to paint. Instead, I wound up in Urgent Care with glass in my foot.

At the beginning of September, I received the test results of some lab work they did after drawing 7+ vials of blood. Evidently I'm incredibly deficient in Vitamin D and my thyroid hormone levels are low (aka "hypothyroidism"). I'm still waiting on the results of a lab test that breaks down your body's adrenaline production levels (cortisol, norepinephrine) before I can go back in for my official diagnoses. Initially, my doctor suspected adrenal fatigue due to my symptoms. In either case, I'm tired of being tired and miserable and unable to get back to a healthy weight (notice I didn't say "skinny). 

 The week afterward, I made a promise to myself to get my act together. For 30 Days, I'm doing a Healthy Eating Challenge that involves 3 things:

  1. Workout EVERY. DAY. 
  2. Eat super-healthy & take Vitamin D supplements
  3. No alcohol

That last one sucks. I love my red wine. In any case, I can't remember the last time I went 3 days without a glass of wine. So I partied it up over labor day weekend as a last hurrah (Uh, you heard the Episode 17 MWAH podcast, right?) before I sat down and changed my routine for the better. 

For my daily workouts, I chose Insanity Max:30. It's... well, absolutely insane. You jump around with kicks and lunges and luckily I can do this in the privacy of my own home because I look like an idiot flailing about in my uncoordinated sweatiness. I huff & puff and gasp for air because I'm so out of shape but no matter-- I'm committed!  So there I am flailing about and jumping around like an idiot without my shoes (they were holding me back) and I'm doing this cross-jumping-jack-arm-punch with all my might and *OUCH* my leg buckles. What the... what did I just step... OH NO THAT'S A LOT OF BLOOD! I freaked out. I'm hobbling to the bathroom so I can wash my foot to see what the heck is in it and call Other Half who's on his way home from work like "I need your help! There's blood everywhere!" (By the way, don't do this to people. You may just give them a heart attack)

Fast forward 30 minutes: many tears have been shed, minor surgery has been performed (I was considering having him use my miniature tweezers) and this big-ass piece of glass comes out of my foot:

It's hard to tell the scale, but it's about half the size of my fingernail and it was DEEP in my foot. My foot won't stop bleeding and I'm worried there's still shards of glass in my foot that broke off from this piece. So we drive to Urgent Care and they clean the deep puncture wound and take X-Rays to make sure there aren't any more dangerous pieces of glass embedded in my foot. They think there may be some more really tiny pieces, but luckily, I'm told my foot should heal just fine and push them out eventually (say what?) with minor risk of infection. They also needed to give me a Tetanus Shot, just in case. Great. 

So here I am $300 later with my foot and pride wounded, and my arm super-sore from the shot. I requested them to put the shot in my non-dominant arm so I can still paint this weekend. I was planning on visiting some family since it's both my Dad & sister's birthday this weekend. However, the left half of my body is basically useless. I've even been trying to do some yoga that keeps me off of my heel so I can still get my daily workout in. I'm also proud that despite the minor trauma of the evening, I didn't give into the temptation of wine or junk food. Day 2 of my Healthy Eating Challenge was a success! I'm just telling my co-workers I'm training to be a ninja! Next week, I work out with caltrops!

I haven't decided if I'll be traveling this weekend, but I know I can hobble to my painting desk and get some painting done tonight. While I can't do much else, I know I can still do my part in recording a Models Workshop After Hours podcast tonight-- they usually post on Sundays. I think we'll be talking about "Who to Break out of Painter's Block" this week as well as highlighting a current Kickstarter that people may be interested in. Stay tuned! 

Parties & Podcasts

I hope everyone had a lovely Labor Day weekend! It was a busy one for me-- I helped entertain visiting friends, watched the Acquisitions Incorporated D&D from PAX Prime, drove 7 hours roundtrip to attend a best friend's wedding shower, and dipped my toes into the world of podcasting! Last week, @SnickernackS reached out to me about my bummer-of-an-experience on a local game store (seriously, I have the worst luck!). We chatted about it and thought it would be a great idea for a podcast-- what to do/not to do, how to act, what to bring, etc. She put me in contact with Larry over at Models Workshop who also runs their podcast and they asked me to be a guest on the upcoming episode. Excellent! We're all in different time zones, so we originally decided to record fairly late (10pm-12am midnight on Saturday night my time). However, I had an epic adventure trying to get home in time to record. Here's what happened... 

On Saturday morning, I loaded up the car and drove to another city to attend a party-- a wedding shower to be specific. It was a lovely shower with friends and family, and I wouldn't have missed it for the world, even if it did take me over 4 hours navigating a horrible storm along the way that made me an entire hour late! After the party, I headed home knowing that if I ran into more storms, I would barely make it in time to eat and prepare for the podcast that night. By the time I made it home over 10 hours after I'd left, I was glad I'd acquired my "Podcast Loot" well beforehand. Check it out!

As luck would have it, the crew was ready to record early and I still needed to familiarize myself with the recording program and calibrate the settings on my Snowball microphone. Whoops! Luckily they were patient enough to walk me through it before we recorded and I scanned over the notes fairly quickly. During my personal disorganized scramble, I had completely forgotten that I hadn't anything that day besides two deviled eggs, a miniature lobster-topped cracker thingy, and a mini chocolate mousse dessert cube (which was delicious by the way). I had a long, socially-taxing day and being super-nervous about my first podcast, I decided to pour a glass of wine. (Lesson learned: don't drink on an empty stomach, especially during a podcast) Looking back, we definitely lived up to the "After Hours" aspect-- more party than podcast toward the end! 

Our podcast started off with a bang and it was like going to a pub party with a bunch of your fun mates who love to laugh and joke about inappropriate things. Yeji, Clint, and Larry are a freaking riot! Their podcasts are generally 1.5 hours long, but we just kept having fun and kept the tapes rolling- we ended up recording over 2 hours and 15 minutes! It was casual and fun and hopefully I didn't embarrass myself too much. What did we talk about? Oh right! Our main topic revolved around Painting Classes. I popped in to talk a little bit about my Troll Night experience but more importantly, reflect on what I think makes a successful class. 

  1. Set Clear Expectations
    • Is this a Paint Night with friends that get together and paint casually?
    • Is this a Class where instruction will be given. Is it for beginners?
    • What should people bring? (Palette, water cup, miniature, etc 
  2. Plan Thoughtfully
    • What topics will you cover?
    • Will there be materials/miniatures provided? Outline of technique(s) you'll cover?
    • What style of class is this? Instructor demos or guided paint-along?
  3. Be Social Aware & Compassionate
    • Be welcoming (especially to those new to painting!)
    • Make people feel comfortable-- have an ice breaker and/or help introduce others
    • Be patient. Give constructive feedback appropriate to each individual's skill level

We go into more detail in the podcast along with some less-helpful-but-more-hilarious drunken rambling later on. If you're interested in either, have a listen here and don't forget to follow Models Workshop on Twitter!

Other than the epic podcast, I've been playing with the idea of streaming on Twitch. One year ago, I discovered Twitch and had future daydream of buying a webcam and streaming live online as I painted. I finally bought one! Since we've been talking so much about online painting hang-outs, it may become a reality in the near future now that I've made my own account. Getting set up on Twitch seems fairly daunting, but I think it'd be fun to interact with people online and grow both my skills and the community at the same time! Here's Dannin Deepaxe looking sassy and limbless as I play with camera settings-- don't worry, her arm's almost done and soon to be attached! 

What do you think? Would you tune in to watch and interact with a miniature painter on Twitch?