New Direction (and not that boy band)

Ok, where do I start?  At one point several years ago I was updating this semi-regularly (did 99 posts back in 2007) but that hasn't been happening - what 2 posts last year, and this is the first for this year.  So much for my dozens of readers (yes, I did have one entry with a whopping 31 views.  Have to be careful I don't get a big head on that one).

I think that this was an outlet for my frustrations, anger and bad feelings - mostly from work.  Well for a little over 4 1/2 years (4 years, 7 months, 1 week to be exact) my work stress has been pretty much gone.  That is what comes from working for a great company.  How great you say?  We have been awarded "Best Place to Work" from the Dayton Business Journal for the last two years, as well as winning it for the Dayton Daily News this past year and a similar (ok, now I'm being lazy) award for Greene county.  A healthy, growing company.  Respect for everyone the company and the work they do.  Not perfect, but I have no desire to even look anywhere else.

Better than working with a bunch of monkeys trying to f**k a basketball (and I still don't know where I heard that term).  But much less need to share it and get it out of my system.

But I do need to update this more - I feel guilty when I don't because I know both of my remaining readers are hanging on every word.  I won't write about work - I don't have any coworkers that I can complain about, and as for what I do - I like and want to keep my job, so I don't need to be publicly blasting it on the interwebs.

So if not work, then fun?  What do I do for fun.  Beer.  And Games.  More games than beer, but I do a little home brewing.  I tried to start a blog on that - did a whopping 2 entries there.  I don't know enough, and with my job going well I don't drink enough to be able to really talk about beer.

That leaves games.  Not those new fangled flashy video games (get off my lawn!) but real board and miniature games.  Games that (usually) require a flesh and blood person to play with.  And not Monopoly (what may be the WORST board game ever made).  Games like Settlers of Catan, Pandemic, Flashpoint.  Board games that you might see on Table Top (I have all but 2 of the games they did on their first season).

I also love miniature games.  I've been playing Warhammer Fantasy Battles for over 12 years now, and have created several fun, themed armies, including The United Greenskin Postal Service, The Grateful Undead, Da Beach Boyz, The Drunk Dwarves and The Fire Eaters Ogre Tribe.  When it still existed, I also played Confrontation (with Wolfen and Ophidians ).  I have started playing Mantic's Kings of War, fielding Abyssal Dwarfs, and started demoing this game at Origins and GenCon this past summer, which has led me to become a Mantic Pathfinder (basically a volunteer who does demos of their games).

I've actually won a few awards; mostly "favorite army/general's choice" (voted on by all the players in a tournament for any reason they like), a few "best painted" and even fewer (I think 3) overall winner awards. (One was for a Confrontation tournament - where the award was a Scourge Bearer statue that I painted up and use as my avatar EVERYWHERE).

So games mostly, but not restricted to, miniatures will be my main focus for this blog.  It will probably still include the annual Christmas letter and anything else I thik of - but you have seen how much I do other stuff lately.

I'll try to keep it funny and interesting (yes, I missed both those goals with this post, didn't I?), but I will warn both of my readers (boy, that is making a big assumption that two people will still be able to find this at all) that there will be some 'advertising' as part of me being a pathfinder.