I Hate Decals

I have been making some small headway on my X-wing.  I painted up the pilot (Luke himself) and then I applied the decals to his helmet and to the control panel in the cockpit.  I hadn’t applied decals since I was a teenager.  For my first decal, my 13 year old self resurfaced and I completely botched the job.  I didn’t trim the decal and it wouldn’t stick.  There is supposed to be a red strip on Luke’s helmet with a yellow patch at the front.  It’s now in the garbage.  I did a bit better job on the rest, but it’s a steep learning curve.

The next step is to assemble the fuselage and do some priming.

As an aside, I have been getting some grief from my wife over my pronunciation of decal.  I pronounce it with a long e sound (deecal) while my wife pronounces it with a short e sound and hardly any a (decl).  She says I sound American and I say I don’t care.  How do you guys say it?

Outside the Comfort Zone

As I mentioned in my last post, I have started working on the FineMolds 1/72 scale X-Wing.  My progress has been extremely slow for a couple of reasons.  First, The process is quite a bit more complex than putting together a miniature the has 10 parts at the most.  I have taken a lot of time to read articles written by people that have built the model and what they did.  I have spent more time than was really necessary examining the instructions and thinking about how I was going to do things.  The second reason is that I haven’t built a scale model since I was in high school.  Back then I wasn’t very careful or patient.  I always ended up with glue on everything and would often put things in the wrong place because I hadn’t read the instructions through or very carefully.  So, now I find myself fretting every time I glue something that it will be in the wrong place.  I am totally mental!

Anyway, this is what I have accomplished in all of this time.  I just need to paint up the pilot and then I can install the cockpit in the fuselage.  Then I can get the airbrush out and start painting.    I hope I can loosen up and get more done in less time, so there is something to post in a shorter time frame.

Aside: Adventures in Cord Cutting

Every summer my wife and I suspend our cable service because we don’t watch any TV.  Up north we have daylight until 10:30pm during the summer and we would just rather be outside.  In the fall, we would reactive our account.  We found that the past couple of years, we had cable mostly so I could watch live sports.  That was a pretty expensive proposition.  With both of us walking the picket line this past fall, we decided to cancel the cable and see if we missed it.  It turns out that two and a half months into the TV season, we rarely miss the 1000 channels that we never watched.  If and when we want to watch something, it will be available elsewhere a la carte.  We have found that we don’t watch enough TV to even make Netflix worthwhile!

This of course left the question of how to watch my sports.  For this year, I have forsaken NFL football and it hurts.  It hurts so damn bad!  But, with the late start of school, I have been at work most Sundays and the rest of the weekend is spent doing all of the things that didn’t get done during the week.  I could not bring myself to give up NHL hockey.  So, I purchased NHL Game Center.  Game Center is a streaming service. I can watch games on my TV through the Xbox, on my PC or on my tablet.  So far, I am pleased with the service.  There are some quirky things that happen, like cutting out commercials and intermission shows on some feeds, so you only have a screen saver to watch.  However, on the whole, the stream is good and when it’s not, it’s usually from my end.  The best part is that the price is only a fraction of what we were paying for cable.  I’m currently in negotiations with my better half to have some of the savings transferred to the hobby fund.  Fingers crossed.

I Think This Counts

I haven’t done much or really anything hobby like lately, so I’m going to make the call that building Lego counts.  As a Kindergarten teacher, I prowl the toy department of Wal-Mart looking for things for the classroom.  Last weekend I found something for Mr. Nowell.  I found a Lego B-Wing.  I walked away thinking I really didn’t need  Lego.  I’m an adult for cryin’ out loud!  That train of thought lasted about 5 minutes and I went back and bought it.  I spent that Sunday afternoon building the beast.  It was surprisingly fun.  It reminded me of my days doing plastic model kits as a teenager.  There were lots of little pieces and lots of instructions to follow.  The final product was pretty cool and I’m glad I splurged.  The only complaint I have is that the wings are too weak to support the ship so you have to lay it on it’s back.  A display stand would have been really nice.  I think I’ll build my own in the next little while, so I can show it off in the nerd room.

My Lego experience has inspired me to take some time off from miniature painting.  I bought a FineMolds 1:72 scale X-Wing kit a while back.  I am going to put aside the Judicator and work on the X-Wing for a while.  Maybe it will work as a palate cleanser and I’ll be reinvigorated to paint miniatures, because I sure haven’t lately.  Fingers crossed!