ugh. annoying day so far.

I went to the gym, went from there to the eye dr. to pick up my new lenses. Came back and immediately had trouble with a lens (not from this batch, but the same brand, one I was already wearing). Tried to take it out and clean it, but it tore in half *in my eye*, the second or third time this has happened with this brand. Ugh, bad. Drove back to the dr's office and turned in the lenses I'd just got and asked for a different kind--these have torn 3-4 times, broken, dried out constantly (I've used at least twice as much rewettign solution while I've been using these as with any others), and gotten dislodged constantly. I can't take a shower with these in; they'll come out partway through. Not good. They insisted that every other kind I'd had was *more* delicate than these (not true; the dr. herself told me these were particularly finicky and liable to drying out). Eventually I persuaded them to give me some of the kind I'd had 2-3 brands back; they dry out (which was why I got into switching to begin with), but at least they don't come apart like wet tissue paper.

So there goes 2.5 hours of my day that I'm going to have to make up sometime...

beard

It's coming back. Last week the bits around the mouth were very, very itchy, as the sharp new pointy ends of whiskers poked into skin at short range. As it gets longer, it gets more flexible and less poky. Still a bit itchy, though.

continuing game days

I missed Cold Wars, the big East-Coast spring historical miniatures gaming con. I've not been to one yet, but I was hoping maybe this time I'd make it. Perhaps Fall In (the autumn equivalent...)

But I've been doing some gaming on my own. I've won two matches so far in our local Bloodbowl league (go me!), gotten in a number of games at voltbang and chelona's weekly games nights, and ran a couple of historical miniatures battles recently. Two, most recently, I ran as part of the ongoing Prices of the East campaign I'm refereeing, battles between armies of Levantine Franks (Nick Bruner) and Syrian Turks (Andy Birtle). Before that I had a couple of Wars of the Roses battles with my friend Rocky.

More gaming ahead. I'm not sure if I'll be able to make it to Games Night this week, but I am going to try to get to Bloodbowl again tomorrow night. I have a game slated with my elusive friend bidger this Sunday, and more battles with Rocky the Sunday after. There's plenty of table space, so if others would like to come over for these Sunday games, the more the merrier.

I've got a lot of projects to work on related to gaming as well. I have a Perfect Captain-like campaign about the 1798 Irish revolt that I want to finish and test. I'd like to use either the PC's 18th century skirmish game or a variant of Warhammer ECW to run some French & Indian War games. I want to try to adapt the Princes of the East model to run a game on 11th century Spain, but I need to do lots more reading first. And I need to run up Pistolado cards for ECW so Rocky and I (and others?) can try out our adaptation of Spanish Fury: Battles for the English Civil Wars. Plus try out Might of Arms with Alexandrian battles or Punic Wars ones. And test my adaptation of "The Last Crusade" or "Red Actions" for Spanish Civil War. And play Age of Eagles. And figure out what to do with my 25mm early Imperial Romans. And play some Arab Revolt battles with Last Crusade. And some Zulu War, Indian Mutiny, or Boer War battles with Savage Wars of Peace. And then there're those Jacobite troops and their Hanoverian adversaries to refight Falkirk with. And... and...

All of which assumes a ton of painting getting done. Which seems unlikely, but necessary. How does that work, I wonder?

P.S. The icon is not *my* work; I *wish* I were that good. It's figures painted by Jeff Jonas. His work is amazing!