Why yes, I do still exist.

You may have noticed that I haven't posted in six months.  Or more likely you haven't noticed because it's not like I had a lot of followers before things tailed off.

At any rate, I'm back.  I hope.

I had a bad case of depression over the winter but I think I've finally kicked it.  I won't go into too much detail save that I was always tired and there never seemed anything worth writing about.

Also when I started this blog my original intent was to try and write at least one post a day even though I knew that I was tempermentally unsuited to that goal and I quickly found myself running out of things to write about.  From now on while I will try and post more often, I am not going to hold myself to any sort of artificial goal.  If I have something on my mind I want to post about, great.  If not, that's fine too.

So what am I up to now that I've crawled out of my cave?  Well I am getting active in science fiction fandom again.  The mess that was the latest Hugo nominations list was part of it.  (A fuller rant on that subject will be forthcoming.)  I'm going to be at BayCon in San Mateo at the end of May if anyone wants to meet up.

I've been getting back into painting historical miniatures again.  This time World War One naval minis in the 1:2400 scale.  I'm starting off with the British and German ships that fought the Battle of Dogger Bank in 1915.

Here is the HMS Lion.  I'm not entirely happy with it as I think I painted the yellow teak deck too gold of a shade but for a first try in a very long time, it's not bad.  The nickel is there for a size comparison.

I'm doing a fair amount of board and role-playing gaming.  I'm sure this will provide plenty of subjects for posts going forward.

And with the US presidential campaign entering the general election phase you can expect a fair amount of politics from me.  You've been warned.

That's if for now.  Until I return, please enjoy the Anonymous Orange (tm) that I received in the mail earlier this week.

I aten't dead

(With apologies to Granny Weatherwax)

In case you haven't noticed I haven't posted much - okay, at all -  for a couple months.  I've been dealing with some personal issues including a minor outbreak of depression and I've just had a hard time motivating myself.  I even passed on commenting on the actual Hugo Awards this year.

Part of it has been being totally swamped at work, part has been family health issues and part has just been a general sense of malaise with the world.  There's a cartoon that periodically pops up on Facebook (and of course I now can't find a copy) where a woman is speaking to a man and says, "My desire to stay informed about the world is conflicting with my desire to stay sane."  That about sums up how I've been feeling about current events lately.

Fortunately I have lots of good friends who are willing to be there for me when I am down and I am finally working my way out of the black pit of despair.

I think I'm mostly over it now and will start posting more geeky goodness in the near future.