I taught on Wednesday night and stayed after my class to climb during the open hours. I had my ass handed to me since I haven't climbed in so long; I loved it. I discovered that I really miss climbing so I'm going to try to get on the wall a few days a week. Matt told me I could use the wall right after work as long as I wore my staff shirt so that takes away my excuse that the open hours are too late and I don't want to commute.

Obama won on Tuesday night, that was awesome. Laura and I stayed up to watch McCain's concession speech (very gracious) and Obama's acceptance speech before going to bed very happy. After the past two Presidential elections I didn't have much faith in the election system and even though Obama has been consistently ahead in the polls for a while I was very nervous all day on Tuesday. Now that it's all over and he won so decisevley (and the Democrats picked up seats in the House and Senate) I have a much brighter view of the future of this country.

Laura and I saw the Decemberists play last night. I wasn't hugely excited for this show because I didn't know if this band could capture my interest live. I sure was wrong. The crowd was excited and the singer wrapped several hundred people around his finger for an hour and a half. They played a lot of songs that I wasn't familiar with but towards the end of their set they shook the balconey (literaly) with O Valencia! and then ended their encore with Sons and Daughters, my favorite song.

The best part of that song is the out-tro where the band sings the phrase "hear all the bombs fade away" together. Their vocals combined with the music produces a haunting and pleasent sound. Right before this section of the song the singer paused and explained that he had written the song a few years ago and this particular part was in reference to the current administration and how the only solution he could see to making the bombs fade away was to leave. Now though, after Tuesday he said the song's meaning had changed for him and it represented his hope that the bombs would fade away because a new President had been elected who would help lead the country out of the war. That was a really poignant moment for me, made even more so when he invited 30 people up on stage to sing it with him. I really couldn't have asked for a better ending to the show.

I found this thread by dave8oy on Warseer. Take a look at the lenses on the marine here - they're incredibly detailed and look phenomenal.

by dave8oy

I am hoping to use this weekend and my day off on Tuesday to paint the last three marines for my first Crimson Fist squad and I'm going to see if I can replicate this effect.

I voted this morning! After waiting for about 45 minutes I was given a scantron (not nearly as exciting as I wanted it to be) and a marker. I marked my Obama circle, had my name checked off a list, and fed my sheet into a machine. This was way more exciting than voting absentee (which I did four years ago) and I've been pretty amped about the whole thing since last night. Laura and I are planning to stay up to watch the election coverage because I doubt I could go to sleep without knowing the outcome.

My Crimson Fists did their civic duty and voted last night as well.

third man from the right is getting his vote on

Thankfully these guys are the last bolter marines I have planned for the foreeable future in this army. That's a good thing because I'm already getting tired of painting power armour. Once these two tactical squads are done I'll start painting some Terminators or Scouts for some diversity.

I've been running a little bit since the marathon but not too much. I am signed up for a 5k this weekend in Allston somewhere and that should be a good time.

Gobama!

Lisa and I survived our marathon this past weekend but just barely. We were cruising though the first 20 or 21 miles and we were on pace to finish about 4.5 minutes under my previous marathon PR of 3:35:12 when Lisa rolled her ankle pretty badly. I wasn't about to let her miss qualifying for Boston so we started alternating running and walking. I kept a close watch on the time and we finished officially at 3:39:03 to get Lisa her sub 3:40:00.

Prior to that incident her and I were flying along. We got a slow start trying to navigate all the people but we settled into something between an 8:05 and 8:10 pace all the way until mile 20. We had a few miles under 8:00 and a few over 8:20 but mostly we were feeling really good and steady. The course was very flat and scenic which helped to offset the lack of hundreds of thousands of fans and other runners. The biggest challenge for me was mental. Towards the end (even before Lisa rolled her ankle) the miles seemed to stretch out and it felt like ages between each mile marker sign. My cardio held up fine just like in Boston and I had some stiffening of my quads again but this was significantly less since there was no three mile hill to climb.

Overall the course was a lot of fun and I would have absolutely set a PR if I hadn't hung back to get Lisa across the line. However, I'm really happy with how the race ended and I'm really proud of Lisa for qualifying despite her injury.

mile	split	total
1	miss
2	17:51	17:51
3	8:18	26:09
4	8:13	34:23
5	8:08	42:31
6	8:10	50:42
7	8:22	59:05
8	8:08	1:07:13
9	8:11	1:15:24
10	8:20	1:23:45
11	7:46	1:31:32
12	8:06	1:39:38
13	8:19	1:47:57
14	7:52	1:55:50
15	7:56	2:03:46
16	8:04	2:11:51
17	8:09	2:20:01
18	8:05	2:28:06
19	8:06	2:36:13
20	8:11	2:44:24
21	8:21	2:52:45
22	8:27	3:01:12
23	9:21	3:10:34
24	9:45	3:20:20
25	8:27	3:28:48
26	8:35	3:37:23
finish	1:42	3:39:05

I started training for this during the second week in June and ended up covering 549.3 miles over the course of 18 weeks in training and the race itself. At one point during the training I missed out on a 50 mile week entirely and I spent a few weeks battling stomach problems that caused me to cut some runs short. Given all that, and the fact that I trained about 575 miles for the first marathon I am really happy with my performance here. I'm going to be running Boston in April again and I have some ideas to radically change up my training.

I took Monday off to relax and recover from the race and used to it finish off my next 5 Space Marines.

newest 5

all 10 that I've finished

I'm happy with how these guys are turning out. They're currently missing decals on their shoulder pads because I haven't figured out a good way to apply them. There is a good tutorial that I found online that I need to try out before I go wasting the decals that I need.

After rallying to tie the series 3-3, the Red Sox lost to the Rays on Sunday. It was a bummer but I'm glad they fought back and didn't roll over and give it to the Rays.

mile 13


finish!

I'll admit that I spent most of yesterday thinking about how sad it would be when the Red Sox lost Game 5 against the Rays. When I left work a little after 8pm and it was 2-0 bad guys I lost most of the enthusiasm I had for getting home quickly to watch the game. I stopped watching in the 7th inning when the Rays get a double steal on Paplebon to put men on 2nd and 3rd with no outs.

Apparently I should have more faith. The Red Sox scored 4 in the 7th, 3 in the 8th, and then sealed it in the 9th, and I missed it. I found out they won by reading the front page of someone else's Metro while I waited for the train this morning. I spent half an hour this morning at work reading articles about the win, but this one in particular does a great job of capturing the energy and intensity that I imagine accompanyed those last three innnings.

Now it's back to Tampa to play Game 6. Go Sox!

I was not really happy with the red on this model so I went at it again last night. First I added some shading to bring out the depth, and then I tried to add some more highlights and brighten up the ones that were already there. I don't think it worked very well, to be honest. I still think the red is pretty flat overall, and now that I've been screwing with it repeatedly I think it looks sloppy.

The next idea I had was to add some battle damage to distract from the poor highlighting. I didn't really think out the placement, size, or shape of the scratches much and I think the model's left side suffered as a result.

Ultimately, while I'm not happy with how he came out I think that I learned a lot of things that I can apply to the next warjack that I paint.

<-- good side, bad side -->

good side

I spent several hours this weekend painting a Khador Juggernaut and this is the result (photographed poorly - they don't show the highlights that do exist however faint):

I had a lot of trouble conceptually highlighting the huge red armour plates. My typical strategy of line highlighting was pretty useless on the vast, flat expanses that needed to be highlighted. I went for what I thought would be natural highlights but I'm not satisfied. I don't think I executed my plan correctly and I don't think I have enough contrast for the highlights to be visible. The Warmachine rulebook has some good reference pictures and I'm going to try to use them to touch up this guy. I'm also thinking of trying to paint on some battle damage, but I'd like to get the highlights correct first.

I decided to enter a second army into the Tale of Painters on Librarium Online. In addition to my 1000 points of Crimson Fists I will be working on 500 points of Khador. The Juggernaut represents 100 points done already so my first month's submission is already take care of. Once I get those next 5 tacitcal marines done I'll have my Fists sumbission done for the month also so I think I'm in pretty good shape to take care of both.

Once these two projects are done I am thinking of doing some Cygnar models. The two that have really caught my eye are Coleman Stryker and the Journeyman Warcaster.

Coleman Stryker (image from Privateer Press)

Journeyman Warcaster (image from Privateer Press)

Khador has a feeling of steampunk Russion, and Cygnar has a knightly feel to them. I also really like the vibrant blue color of their armour.

My next marathon is coming up on Sunday. I think if I can run a 3:40 and help Lisa to qualify that I'll be happy. Somehow I managed to get a blood blister on one of my big toes; hopefully that won't be too much of a pain in the ass.

Spoony was in town this weekend for regionals. It was really good to see him. Since I had Monday off (hooray Chris Columbus!) Laura and I got brunch at the Center Street Cafe. It was really good and a lot of fun. Even though we've been dating for over two years now I still like going on dates with Laura.

The Red Sox have dropped two straight to fall behind 1-2 against the Rays. Hopefully they can pick it up tonight and bring it back to even.

I managed to assemble the next 5 marines while watching the Red Sox beat the Angles but I've been pretty busy lately and haven't had time to clean or prime them. I tried some more dynamic poses with these 5 - some of them worked and others not so much.

My taper jitters have come back. The runs that I'm doing as part of the taper have not been enough to eat up all the energy I have so I've been a little jumpy the past few days. My two runs this week have thus far been pretty good and I'm anticipating another good one this evening.

I watched the most recent debate and was generally unimpressed with both candidates. Neither one would answer a question directly and they just rehashed the same points from the previous debate. I think Obama won, but only because McCain lost worse.

While we're on the subject, I've been reading some more interesting articles about McCain and Palin. I'll be the first to admit my liberal bias, but I think it's worth giving these articles a read anyway.

A few weeks ago I sumbitted my Massachusetts voter registration paperwork and as the deadline approaches, I've been checking cityofboston.gov to see if they have processed my paperwork. They hadn't as of a few days ago so I e-mailed them but got no response. Since it is important to me that I be able to vote I called City Hall and asked about it. They told me I am registered to vote (hooray!) and that the online database isn't updated as regularly as their databases are.

Some photos from the 5k this past weekend:

My first Crimson Fist squad is done!

The three in front are the product of last week's work, and the two in back are a few months old. Those two I'm not really excited about and if I were to strip some models one day, those would be the first two I'd try.

I'm going to be building another 5 bolter marines tonight (hopefully) in an effort to knock off the boring guys first. Those 10 guys will be my first Tale of Painters II submission from the painting event going on at Librarium Online. This first ToP was the reason I finished up my Wood Elves and in six months I'm hoping it nets me 1000 points of marines.

Lisa and I ran a 5k this weekend in Somerville with some friends. I was hoping to go sub 18 and get a PR but apparently all this marathon training has blunted my speed a bit and I finished in 18:49. I'm still really happy with how I performed and I know that with a little speed work I could crush the 18 minute mark, seeing as I wasn't breathing hard at the end of this race at all.

We also did a 12 mile run this Sunday at 8:47 pace. This is also not as fast as I would have liked it to be but again I'm happy with it. After some rather poor showings on the previous weeks' long runs I was happy to get a quality run in before the marathon.

Friday after work Laura and I saw Burn After Reading. It was very well acted and the dialouge was clever and funny, but I wasn't totally sold on the movie. The plot was pretty complex and I had to focus on what was going on. This would have been fine if they had built it up to some huge climax at the end, but when the movie ended I felt let down.

I cooked burgers last night for Laura and I. Laura wasn't confident in her ability to eat a whole burger (a justifiable concern) so I made her two sliders. Early reports were positive and I haven't heard any terror stories about her body rejecting them, so I think she probably liked them.

I've finally gotten started on my Crimson Fists. I have the two test models I did a few months ago and last night I painted up a third bolter marine. From a technical standpoint I am very very happy with how he turned out. I gave him a really smooth base coat of Regal Blue and then two highlights. The first one was a 60/40 or even 70/30 mix of Regal Blue / Ultramarines Blue that was pretty watered down. I used this in pretty broad strokes as a bridge between the basecoat and the second highlight, which very thin lines of straight Ultramarines Blue.

Looking at the model up close I was really proud how how I had executed the highlighting, but from arms length almost all of them dissapeared. Obviously that's the opposite of how I wanted the highlights to work and I'm not sure what went wrong. I went ahead and finished the model with the hope that addine the reds, metallics, and whites would help the overall effect pop. To a small extent they did but not as much as I wanted.

I'm not really sure how to fix this but I'll keep experimenting.

Last week was the last up week of my marathon training and it was capped off with the last 20 miler in the schedule. Sunday was a very rainy, cool day and I think that contributed to the pretty poor showing both Lisa and I had during the run. Neither one of us had much pop in our legs from the get-go and come mile 10ish we were both feeling pretty bad. Around Kenmore Square we both decided to slog through to the bottom of my hill and then walk up.

I'm sure the rain played a role in our poor showing but I'm not willing to give it all the credit. Neither one of the 20 milers I've done this training cycle have gone particularly well, and both times (and other times through this training) I've felt that my legs just didn't have and life in them. I don't know if this is because they're reacting poorly to the increase in mileage or if they're not recovering adequately or if the problem is something else. I hope that the three weeks of tapering gives them enough time to rest and be fresh for the race.

Other people however, don't seem to be having my problems. Haile Gebrselassie, the world record holder in the marathon, shaved 27 seconds off his previous record time to finish the Berlin marathon in 2:03:59 and become the first person to ever run a marathon under two hours and four minutes. And he's 35 years old! I think it's only a matter of a few years before someone knocks off those last few minutes and we're looking at a marathon run in under two hours.

Steve and I had a long conversation yesterday about the financial crisis currently going on. I was pretty uninformed about it and when I tried to get informed, most of the articles I was reading were assuming that I already knew what was going on. I think I have a handle on the general ideas now and I'll admit to being a little nervous about what's going to happen. My dad sent me an article a few days ago that talked about the bailout plan that was ultimately shot down.

This Thursday is the Vice-Presidential debate. I am planning on racing home after teaching on Thursday to watch it and see how Sarah Palin holds up. I am pretty scared of the prospect of her becoming the VP after watching her handle herself in this interviw with Katie Couric. Thus far she's been almost completely hidden from the national media and most every time she has spoken it's been pretty scripted. She tried standing on her feet for that interview and failed miserably, so I wonder how she's going to make up for that during the debate. The evidence against her keeps growing and I think Thursday will be a very telling moment.

A few weeks ago my parents came up to visit and brought my old Play Station. Yesterday my copy of Final Fantasy VII arrived in the mail and I'm really excited to play it. I remember the huge hype and excitement when I was in 7th or 8th grade and it came out and how even now it is hailed as one of the greatest RPGs ever made. Unfortunatley I never got a chance to play much of the game (or Final Fantasy IIX or IX) so I'm excited, as a fan of the RPG genre, to finally get to play it through.

After teaching last Thursday I finally got on the wall and climbed for the first time in what feels like months. It didn't go very well. I still remember how to make all the motions but I don't have any of my arm, core, or hand strength. I've certianly done this before with climbing but it doesn't get any less frustrating.

After a few more days of diligent painting I completed my Wild Rider Noble.

I tried a few more of the washes on him and I had some pretty good successes. I used Gryphonne Sepia on his helmet horns, Asurmen Blue in his hair, and Badab Black on the skulls on his cape and on the horse's skin. The blue worked really well on the Waywatchers earlier and continued to do so here. The black was probably the star of the show though. It really added depth to the two skulls and did a great job bringing the horse's skin together.

This completes the 2000 point army list I've been working on for the past year.

Huzzah!

Last Monday Laura was doored by a woman in Brookline Village. She ended up getting away with just a broken elbow but the whole experience was terrifying. The two of us spend some painful hours in an ER where we got jerked around by the doctors. The next day I called Jenn because I had no idea what to do, and she reccomeneded a doctor at Boston Medical. We went and he was great, and since then Laura has been doing a lot better. Her elbow still hurts a lot, but the swelling has gone down a lot and her range of motion has improved as well.

She has another appointment next week where hopefully we'll learn that everything is healing well and that there are no more problems.

This past weekend I crushed my 12 mile run. I know that the middle six miles I was cruising really hard both down and up Heartbreak, and I know that the last three miles were a bit slower because I was pretty tired. I ended up averaging 7:49 per mile, which means that I was going faster than that for the middle six. This week is the last up week before the taper and Lisa and Ia re hoping to have a more successful 20 miler than we did two weeks ago.

I've been doing my best to crank out my last Wood Elves before October 1st. Last week I had a lot of painting time while I was taking care of Laura and I managed to finish my last Waywatcher.

Waywatcher Noble

This is the noble model, but since I couldn't find 6 distinct Waywatcher sculpts I brought this guy in to finish out the squad. I'm not as happy with this guy as I was with the blonde or gray haired Waywatchers, but I think he looks good and I'm one model closer to being done.

This weekend I made a really good start on the Wildrider Noble who is the last model I need to paint. I have him broken down into three sections, main body, arms, and horse. I finished the body (the largest part) and I hope to finish the arms tonight. Once that's done it will be a single night's work to finish off the horse and then I'll be done with the elves!

I put up a few ebay auctions for some models that I won't be using, specifically a OOP Space Marine Land Speeder and some Knights of Chaos. Both auctions have watchers and one already has a bid.

I also bought some tiny rare earth magnets after reading this post over at All Thinkgs 40k to play around with magnetizing my Space Marines.

I finished up the Waywatchers this weekend.

All five



A close up that shows the hair and details.

I'm really happy with how the hair came out on these models (the two who have it anyway) as well as their dark green cloaks. The details really help bring these models to life and they look great lined up with the rest of the army. I have two more models left for this army, and about two weeks to get them done it. The end is nigh!

I made use of some of the new Games Workshop washes on these guys, which was something I hadn't done before. I really wanted to bring some definition the their faces, so I tried the Gryphonne Sepia in several different scenarios. Overall I wasn't terribly impressed, although I will probably try once more with Devlan Mud. I had a little more luck with the bone colored armour on their chests. I started with Bleached Bone and gave a pretty liberal coating of Gryphonne Sepia over it. Again, not really a rousing success but better this time. The washes really shined on the two models with hair though. The Gryphonne Sepia helped bring a lot of contrast to the blonde hair, and Asurmen Blue was a hero on the gray hair.

While I had been hoping for more success with these new washes, I had enough to warrent me going out to purchase the Devlan Mud (brown) and Badab Black (black) ones to see what they can do. I wanted to make use of them for shading on the power armour of my Crimson Fists, so we'll see what happens. I may also try some more flesh experiments with Ogryn Flesh.

I am really itching to start my Crimson Fists army. I've been pouring over pictures online of well painted marines and I keep coming back to two painters who are very inspiring to me. The first is Cyric the Mad because of the bold and bright highlights he uses. His models have a very clean look that I like and I think his style would be easy to replicate.

The other is spikyjames. His style looks a lot less bold from far away but has a very bold effect from up close. The painting techniques he uses look quite a bit more complex but the results are incredible.

My goal with the Crimson Fists is to find a good balance between these two styles.

This past week was my first 50 mile week ever; Lisa and I ran 20 miles yesterday to cap it off. The 20 miler didn't go as well as I had hoped but after skipping a week of training for the road trip and having a rough few weeks due to stomach problems I was happy to finish at all. Lisa looks to be in phenomenal shape and I'm sure she won't have any problems qualifying for Boston.

Lisa and I went on a nice 12 mile run yesterday. I felt like I was gliding along at a really nice pace for the first 10.5 miles, and then I felt like I ground out a good finish up South Huntington, but my watch told me that I was just under 9 minute miles for the whole thing. That's a lot slower that I thought I was going (and hoped I was going) but I'm still pretty happy with the run overall.

This week tops out at 50 miles, 20 of which will be run on Sunday. I've never run that much in a week, and 20 mile runs are always a daunting prospect. This week will be a good indicator of where my training is now and how I'll be for the marathon.

Laura and I were at Cambridgeside Galleria this weekend getting some clothes and I decided to stop into the Petsmart there to see if they had any neons. They did and I ended up bringing home a dozen of them (although I only asked for 10). The attrition rate was pretty awful and I ended up losing five of them at an alarming rate, but the remaining seven seem to be doing alright. They are still pretty skittish and like to hide in the back corner behind some plants, but they were moving around pretty well when I woke up this morning. Their eating has been pretty sparse thus far but I'm sure they'll get hungry eventually.

I finally sat down last week and started painting some Waywatchers.

I have most of the major color blocks done (skin, tabards, cloaks, and cloak details) with just the leather left before the massive detailing begins. These models have tons and tons of little things all over them; my goal is to finish the leather in the next few days and then do the detailing on one or two a night. Even though these photos don't show it, the highlighting on their cloaks looks really good. I took my time and paid attention to where the highlights should go and at the end I was really happy with how it came out.

More Crimson Fists painting research. A guy named spikyjames (who is already in my big thread of marines) does some really excellent work with marines. His poses and conversions look very realistic and dynamic and his highlighting is fantastic.

His Ultramarines are painted with the following (taken from his Warseer project log):

1- base coat of midnight blue allover
2- regal blue on all the armour plates leaving midnight in all the recess's
3- 1st highlight of 50/50 regalblue/ultramarine bluefairly fat around the edges of the armour
4- 2nd highlight ultramarine blue around all the edges of the armour(edging only)
5- 3rd and final highlight space wolf grey only on the extreme edges of the armour plates

This produces something that looks like this:

I think I can replicate this effect (not nearly as well, but enough). I really like how step 3 in his process adds something akin to a glow on all of the edges, instead of an extreme highlight. I also like the white dots he adds to the back of the lenses; I've seen it before and I'm going to try to incoprate it into my Fists.

I finally got a start on my Waywatchers. Right now their skin and smocks are painted, and I hope to get some of their camouflage done tonight. The models are very detailed and I've been taking my time on them. Thus far they've turned out pretty well and I hope I can do them justice. I tried using some washes of Gryphonne Sepia on their faces to bring out the details but I don't think it worked terribly well.

After taking a week off of running I wanted to come right back and get into the swing of things. My plan was to run 4, 5, 6, and 7 miles starting on Monday, take a break on Friday, and then return with the normal rotation on Saturday and Sunday. For some reason I ran the 4 and 5 milers at around 7:15 pace per mile and I'm paying for it now. My legs have been sore and tight for two days and I'm going to cut the 7 miles down to 4 to try to work the soreness out before this weekend.

Those two runs pretty much cemented for me that I won't be able to qualify for Boston this year. That pace of 7:15 is what I need to run per mile in order to hit the 3:10:59 qualifing time, and if I can barely hit it on 9 miles over two days I suspect that I won't be able to hit it for the full 26.2 I'm surprisingly unconcerned however and I still think I can get a PR at the race.

I've been here (and by that I mean driving across the country) for the past week.

The blog ends with our arrival in Vegas sometime on Friday night. I was exhausted and passed right out. Saturday we spent at the pool drinking beer and swimming (sometimes at the same time!) before donning suits and heading out to the casinos. I ended up losing 200 bucks playing blackjack and craps, but it was a fun time. I'm going to miss Spoony a lot, but he'll be around for ultimate and we made plans to meet up at some big Warhammer tournament sometime next year.

I only managed one run over the past week, which is a bit troubling to me. The one was a gorgeous 2 hour, 14 mile run along the coast of Lake Michigan that I was feeling really good about. I'm planning on doing 4 miles today, and increasing one or two miles every day depending on how I'm feeling.

At this point I don't think I'll be able to qualify for Boston this year, but I'm still going to train hard and do my best. I think I over-simplified the type of training I'm going to need to do in order to qualify, but I think the mistakes I made this time around will help me later on.

Spoon and I stopped at a comics / gaming store in Albuquerque so I could get a copy of White Dwarf to read in the airport. I ended up getting a few back issues and I really enjoyed reading it. There are all sorts of good tutorials and articles and tons of detailed shots of very well painted miniatures. I ordered a subscription today along with the Dark Elves and High Elves Army books. I've also been doing some more research into my Crimson Fists, so I need to get in gear and finish off those seven Wood Elves.

My laptop still hasn't arrived, but I know they've charged my credit card; hopefully it arrives soon.

Also, photos from Laura and my trip to New York!

Laura and her brother.

Me looking weird.

A fountain in a park.

Times Square.

Again.

Post No Bills (I love these stencils).

My running has been going a lot better lately. Whatever stomach problems were ailing me over the previous few weeks seem to have largely left. Most of my runs go off without any problems and hopefully I am back on track. Currently I have run 825 miles this year (and 875 since I started training for the Boston Marathon in December).

I found out recently that Kenny Florian, one of my favorite UFC fighters, is opening a training center in Brookline. I've toyed with the idea of taking Jiu-Jitsu classes and this was a really cool opportunity to do that. I signed up for their mailing list and got an e-mail today letting me know that there would be early registration this Friday and that classes would be starting on September 2nd. While these dates suck for me, I'm still really interested and will keep checking their website to see what's going on.

Last night Laura and I went to look at a bike for her in Cambridge. She took a ride on this bike (a Redline 925) and really liked it. She's been having some issues finding a bike that would fit her, but this one seemed to work really well. We're going to do a little bit more research before she commits to anything but this guy seemed pretty awesome.

After the bike shop we went to Newbury Comics and I bought a few CDs. I got the new Gaslight Anthem album which I've been listening to online for a while, a CD by the Flobots (which was the first hip-hop record I've ever purchased) and Boston's self titled album. Since Keely is taking his records back in September I was going to be without his Boston LP, which was pretty unacceptable. They've all been really good albums thus far and I think they'll be a lot of fun on the road trip.

After a good evening drinking with Jason (his last night in Boston - sad!) Laura and I woke up early on Saturday morning to build bookshelves.

Lumber arrives by night.

Framed.

Assembling the shelves.

Done!

Action shot!

This was a ton of fun and a great way to spend most of a Saturday. I learned a lot about making things like this (measure everything, don't assume anything) and when I get the lumber for for the smaller shelf I'm pretty sure I won't have any of the problems we had with the first two.

The top shelf there are miscellaneous unpainted models, including some Vostroyans, Chaos Marines, and a fair amount of Khador minis from Warmachine. Below that is 1000 - 1500 points of Space Marines that will be my project after the Wood Elves get done. Under them, barely visible, is about 1700 points of Wood Elves.

My running took a pretty big down-turn this weekend. Lisa and I embarked on what was supposed to be a 17 mile run down and back up Heartbreak Hill, but we both ended up walking the final three miles to our respective houses. My legs felt terrible the whole 8.5 miles out and while they felt a little better on the trek up Heartbreak (weird) by the time we got to the top I was totally spent.

I don't really know what's been going on with my running. I'm going to try to start paying more attention to my diet and being more rigorous sticking to my schedule but I'm not really convinced that either of those things are the culprit.

Spoony and I are going out to Framingham tonight to get some fish for my tank. If all goes well I'll come home tonight with a small school of Neons and possibly some Corys.

I've been doing some research into Space Marine painting as I get closer to being done with my elves. After looking at a bunch of forums and blogs, I think I've identified the style of marine I'm looking for - bold and clean highlights on top of a clean basecoat. I have a few examples below, none of which were painted by me. You can get a better sense of the paint job if you click on the images to see larger versions.

painted by static grass

painted by rev

painted by lemfresh

painted by Cyric the Mad

painted by From the Warp



painted by kkoene


painted by spikyjames


painted by lone pilgrim

The last guy is the final step in a really great highlighting tutorial from From the Warp. The colors aren't the same, but the principles apply and I'm going to use this to paint up my third Crimson Fist test model. I've done a few tests already (here), and while they are in the spirit of my vision, they are also messy and unrefined. I think this tutorial will help me get them more in line with what I'm looking for. I've also found this article from Tau Online that gives a very detailed description of how to highlight marines.

Laura and I went climbing last night and it was a pretty big disaster for me. My technique is still around by all of my forearm and hand strength is out the window. Laura got to the top of an 11b, which is a pretty big deal considering she'd never gone up anything harder than a 10c before. She looked really good doing it to, probably a lot better than I did.

My running has been a huge roller coaster lately. Some days (like Wendesday) I can't finish a run because I have horrible stomach problems. Other days (like yesterday) I can crush a four mile run with 6:30 miles. I'm planning to skip another 4 miler I had planned for today and to start being more conscious of what I eat and when on days with runs scheduled. I hope this will get me back on track to healthy, stomach problem free runs. I am also planning on shifting my training away from the schedule I've been on since December (rest, short, medium, short, rest, medium, long) to a new plan that Culla reccomends. The new plan calls for three key workouts a week (tempo, long, and track) plus two other days of easier miles. This is really new stuff for me, and really intimidating, but he thinks it will help push me to the 3:10 time I need to qualify for Boston.

I am pretty sure that my fish tank is fully cycled, so hopefully I can get it stocked with some Neon Tetras soon. I found out recently that I had bought a 10 gallon tank (and not a 5 gallon like I had assumed), which means that I can put a few other fish in there. Currently I'm thinking about a school of Pygmy Corydoras, but I'm not sure how available they around here. Hopefuly when I get to the store I can take a look at what they have and make some decisions based on that.

Wow, lots of links!

Apparently I missed most of July here.

Marathon training has been going pretty well. I've been a lot less tense about nailing workouts this time around. I'm still doing all of them, but I'm a lot more willing to play with my two rest days and shuffle around the schedule to fit in with my life, as opposed to fitting my life into my marathon training. I am a bit concerned about my ability to qualify for Boston though. The idea of 7:15 miles is pretty daunting and I haven't done much to improve my time. I did run 4 miles yesterday at 6:53 pace, but I was pretty tired out at the end. I might talk to some friends who know what they're doing to see what I should be doing.

My climbing has been almost non-existent since the beginning of the month. Laura and I keep making plans and then canceling them because we're both exhausted from the week. We're looking to get there this week sometime, but who can say.

Wildwood was awesome, except for Drew breaking his clavicle. We didn't win a trophy due to massive thunderstorms, but the ultimate was fun and the party was great. Laura and I had a lot of fun together and I hope to repeat again next year.

This past weekend was Dar and Katie's wedding. I will admit to being in denial right up until the ceremony itself, but something about all the tuxes, dresses, flowers, and church made me finally deal with it. The ceremony was very nice and everyone seemed to really enjoy it. The reception was also a very classy affair with lots of food, dancing, and booze (at one point I had three drinks in front of me). Daryl and Katie seemed genuinely happy and that is probably the point.

I finished a unit of Wildriders for my Elf army, which leaves me with only 7 more models until completion.

I have (I think) all of the models I want for my Crimson Fist army at this point, which I will start painting once the elves are done. Through the wonders of ebay I purchased $290.00 worth of figures for $219.37, which is 25% off retail. This hobby is pretty damn expensive but being patient and smart on ebay really helps.