Settling In

We’re getting there.  Madame Padre and I have been in the house for a few weeks now.   90% of the boxes are unpacked.   Some of the paintings and family photos are hung.   Some new furniture arrives on Friday.   Madame Padre has her favourite bench swing set up in the backyard and appears to be enjoying it.

 

Luigi has been helping unpack boxes.

 

The wargames room had one wall that was an odd shade of lime green, like a sickly sherbet.  I had some tan paint left over from an upstairs room, just enough to cover it.  I guess you could say this is my first hobby painting in the new house.

 

Tonight I found the fun paints.   Looking forward to using them again.

I’ve had a week to get used to my new job.   The view out of my window is nice.   I’m in the old base high school that has been repurposed for several units, including the Canadian Forces Chaplain School.   My position requires me to be bilingual (French and English) so I have some time to brush up my rusty French before les etudiants arrive.

Most importantly, Madame Padre and I had our first meeting with her oncologist today.  We liked him a lot. As he put it, the surgery got out all the visible “junk”, and now the task is to get rid of all the microscopic junk.   To do that, Mdme. will be starting chemotherapy in a week and she is planning to tackle it head on, as she does everything.  I’m very proud of her.   Thanks for all your kind wishes and support, they’re much appreciated.

Onwards ad upwards.

Cheers and blessings,

MP+

 

Packed and On the Move

The last week has passed in a blur.   On Sunday Kay and I headed up to Barrie, our new home, since we had an appointment with or lawyer early Monday to close the sale of our new house.  We travelled in convoy, me leading the way in Appa the Volksbison, our 1985 VW Westfalia which behaved beautifully thanks to a new water pump.  Money well spent, as there are many hills on the roads north to Barrie, and Appa behaved well climbing each of them.  Sunday we stayed at a KOA, which is a very mainstream, family friendly campground.   Well, calling it camping is a bit of a stretch when there is a pizza parlour and video games centre in the heart of the campground, but it was cheerful, cheap and convenient.

Stuff with lawyers and real estate always leaves my stomach in knots, and we had some last minute drama on Monday verifying that the insurance for the new house was in place, but by 5pm, on Madame Padre’s birthday no less, we walked through the door of our new house.  Am I a classy guy for buying my wife a new house as a birthday present, or what?  Madame P wanted some painting done before the furniture arrived, since two of the bedrooms were done in garish orange and blue colours, as is the fashion for children’s bedrooms these days.   These bedrooms are to be repurposed as studies/offices, so we wanted to get that done before they were full of books and bookcases and thus much harder to paint.

Parked in our backyard, Appa was our bedroom for the two days we painted.   One of the blessings of a slightly older house is the larger lot and mature trees.   Lots of trees.  All of Kay’s talents as a shade gardener will be called on.

We also had a chance to visit the regional hospital while in Barrie, and get Madame registered with the cancer centre.    We are very impressed at how quickly her file is being handled now.  She has a CT scan to schedule sometime next week, and a visit with her new oncologist at the end of the month.  Thank you all for your kind wishes, emails, and prayers, they are much appreciated and we are better for them.

Then back to Kitchener on Wednesday night.  The packers, two young women and a man, arrived on our doorstep Wednesday morning and worked through the day.   Here is the sad sight of my wargames room and painting bench, all packed uo and ready to load on the truck.  

Even though it was a big space, it was dark and I won’t miss it.  I am trading space for light, as the new games room has glorious fluorescent lamps.  It will be heaven.

 Most of those boxes are full of my wargames stuff.   It’s an alarming amount of kit, as Madame occasionally remarks, apropos of nothing.

 

Madame bids farewell to the moving van, which was loaded and driving off by noon today.

 By early afternoon tomorrow we will have finished cleaning the house and loading some of Kay's plants, and we will be on the way.  Truck arrives at the new place on Monday morning and I report to my new job on Wednesday.  Busy times ahead.

Tonight we are in a hotel, and we went to see Terminator Genisys.   We both enjoyed watching a 68 year old Arnold S do the robot schtick, but found the banging and smashing around to be a bit tiresome, and the time travel stuff makes my head hurt.

Blessings,

MP+

Turnipograd Rises

In yesterday’s post on a Russian front battle there were some 15mm buildings featured.   Almost of them are from the Northern Russian Village set published by Paper Terrain.  As I’ve said here before, I am a fan of Paper Terrain.  This company provides a cheap and cheerful way to get decent looking terrain on the table in quantity.

I’ve gotten pretty good at assembling this stuff.    All you need is a good pair of scissors, a sharp knife for scoring the folds, glue (I prefer white carpenter’s glue, slightly diluted) and patience.   I can assemble one of these sheets in an hour while keeping one eye on Netflix, and that’s allowing time for the glue to dry between stages.

As I mentioned a few posts back, I’ve been on a basing blitz of late.   I have all but one of the buildings assembled in the PT Village set, but only five based so far. The bases show off the buildings well and allow me to use the nice little fences that come with each building.  Here is Turnipograd in happier times. 

And a sad dystopian vision of what will happen should Turnipograd ever fall into the bloodstained hands of the fascist invader.  The ruined versions of the buildings are quite useful.  Sadly, for the 4Ground models, I would have to purchase the ruined versions, which for now is an expense too far.

Of course a Mad Padre model village has to have a church.

 

Presumably this church has been repurposed by the Party as a granary or something.   Scott W includes a gold-painted wooden knob for the onion dome, which is a nice touch.  There is also a proper Orthodox cross to put on the top of the dome, though I don’t think such a cross would be approved of by Comrade Stalin.

A street view in Turnipograd.

 

A tidy little farm on a busy (Battlefront resin) road.  Judging from those tank tracks leading right up to the window, it looks like someone applied the brakes just in time.

 

That’s a 4Ground laser-cut MDF Russian house mixed with a Paper Terrain outbuilding, fence and woodpile.   They work well together, I think.

I’m thinking this is either a school or a party headquarters?  Or possibly a community hall where the Junior Pioneers can stage their children’s pageant, “Comrade Stalin’s Glorious Fiver Year Plan for Increased Agricultural Production”?

Defenders of Turnipograd.  These buildings work well with my 15mm models.

 

They also work well with 20mm models, or at least, with 1/76 scale.  These fascist invaders will soon be crushed by the Red Army, don’t worry.

So that’s the lot.  All now boxed and packed away - movers come in a week!  Very little time left for wargaming projects.  Hopefully Turnipograd will see some use in the fall or whenever I cross swords with the dastardly Kampfgruppe Manto.

 

These figures bring my 2015 totals to:

28mm:  Foot Figures: 19; Mounted Figures: 10

20mm:  Vehicles: 1; Artillery: 1 

15mm: Armour/Vehicles: 5; 15mm Scenic Pieces: 5

6mm:  Scenic pieces:  7

Kilometres Run: 252