Hiatus

 Well, it has been an eventful six months, not even considering a global pandemic:

• At the end of July, I lost my job as part of a corporate restructuring.
• I spent the second half of the summer and early fall searching for a job. We set a deadline of me finding a job by mid-September. I came really close, but there's no prize for coming in second.
  
  We set the deadline based on the real estate market being still hot in September and October before slowing in November and December. We also wanted to beat the surge in Covid cases that everyone was predicting.

• Simultaneously, I was preparing the house for sale, so this meant a bit of cleaning and clearing out of junk. You can see the results of that cleaning and clearing out in the pictures of our Abbotsford house.
• We then sold the house, so the cleaning and clearing out switched to packing for our move back to Ontario.
• One day, I emerged from the basement following a job interview and my wife asked, "What's wrong with your eye?" I couldn't feel anything different so I went to a mirror. My left eye was wide open while my right eye had it's normal semi-lidded position. I basically looked a little like Bill the Cat from Bloom County
  
  
  
  
• So it was off to the family doctor, who immediately sent me to an ophthalmologist, who immediately sent me to the hospital for a CT scan.
• The CT scan showed that some muscles that control my eyes are inflamed and maybe there was a blood clot in the vein for those muscles. The swelling has moved my eyeball a little forward and that's why my eye seems to be more open.
• I got referred to an orbital specialist who ordered an MRI and then another CT scan but using a dye. The swelling has gone down some but not completely as you can see here:
  

  

  
  
  
• I did discover another side effect: I get double vision if I am looking at anything closer that about four feet. Since I work with computers, this is a distinct problem. I can see fine but only one eye at a time.
• At the end of November we moved. The movers were a disaster. They managed to dent our dining room table and mash the bed headboard. They took forever to load the truck because there were only two of them and only one knew what he was doing.
• We also discovered that despite having to wear a mask all the time, travelling by airplane in the Age of Covid was actually very pleasant and smooth provided that you ignore the fact that there is an infectious and deadly disease spreading. There was lots of room and the WestJet staff were so nice and attentive.
• After we landed, we had video with the orbit specialist. She gave me the rather alarming news that I possibly had a leak somewhere vein network or near the brain and that I was to take it easy and refrain from any exertion.
• The movers continued their disaster by taking a whole week longer than we were originally told. Then, only after we escalated to the CEO and lots pleading, they found a driver to deliver our goods to a storage locker. But the driver was alone. Thank goodness that my brother-in-law and  his son had showed up to help us, because they packed our goods into storage. I was under strict orders to not lift anything.
• We moved in with a cousin of my wife, who has generously let us stay with him until we find a more permanent home. We're repaying him through nice meals and companionship, which I'm sure everyone appreciates during this time of lock-down.
• I got to see another eye specialist in Toronto, who let me know that there was no leak and no clot. Woo hoo! The one downside is that my eye has not changed. But at least I can get new glasses to fix the double vision.
• With the clean bill of health, I started to look for a job by reaching out to a recruiter who had contacted me. In a small world coincidence, he was looking to fill a contract that had been filled by my manager at my previous job. 
• After so many rounds of interviews that stretched the hiring process out to weeks or even months, I got a contract in less than a week starting from when I reached out to the recruiter to signing the contract.

I'm hoping that 2021 continues in this way. Good times are coming, we just have to hold out until they arrive.

Nostalgia: Photos of the Stouffville House

 Having posted about the house we are leaving in Abbotsford, I found the real estate shots of our Stouffville house that me left in 2017. We did hire a staging company for this one but keen observers will note that the stager used a lot of our stuff. To be fair, we used what the stager did as ideas to furnish and decorate in our Abbotsford house such as the paint colour and the glass top tables.

We'll start with the view from the front entrance looking towards the living room at the back of the house.

We originally had a bench seat in the hallway but we replaced that with the less practical but more photogenic glass console table.

And here is the reverse view looking back.

Here is the living room from the kitchen area.

And here is the reverse showing the kitchen from the living room.

Swinging a bit to the left, we have the dining area, which includes sliding doors to go outside to the back yard. The back yard wasn't too much to look at, basically a 40x20 foot area with a small patio and a loud air conditioner.

The landing of the stairs, which you would see the moment you stepped in the doors and looked to your left and then the stairs themselves.

The office, with a view out the front and a faked daybed. It's really just a bunch of boxes with a bed cover on them. We always intended to have a daybed in there though.

The main bedroom with a view out the back.

The ensuite bathroom, which was double in size over the Abbotsford bathroom, but nowhere near as nice. I much prefer a proper dedicated shower over the tub/shower combo.

Finally, the guest bedroom.

Maybe I'll be able to dig up the Brampton house. If so, I'll post those pix as well.

 

Gaming Stuff Packed

 Here is my miniature life reduced to a few boxes.

One big black box contains most of my Chain of Command 28mm miniatures and terrain. The only bits that it doesn't contain, trees and buildings, are in the grey box with the blue top. The other big black box contains miscellaneous gaming stuff including my lead mountain.

The white shelving unit is my bit box. It used to also contain my paints, which have been replaced by 15mm ECW figures and the forests and buildings of my 2mm board.

The yellow box and Mary Kay bag contain my 6mm figures and terrain, both finished and based and unfinished. The Mary Kay bag is seriously the best thing a miniature gamer could use for traveling to gaming events. It has 4 boxes on trays for miniatures to go in with slide out access. Rules will fit in front of the boxes. The top part (originally meant for lipsticks) can lift out and is where I put all of my trees in. I can put some tall buildings in there as well. The side pouches are nice areas to put gaming equipment in such as dice, measuring tapes, containers of tokens, and so on. The bag has both a nice carry handle and a good strap for carrying on your shoulder. 

And here is my travel boxes with reading material. Because I might not be able to get to the other miniature boxes for 6 months or so as they go into storage, I have some miniature supplies to tide me over. I packed my 15mm tanks in there, a whole bunch of toothpicks, stir sticks, and other bits of wood so that I can do some terrain crafting, especially when we self-isolate after moving. I also put my 15mm Americans in there just in case I feel like painting. Speaking of paints, that's what the tackle box contains.

I'm quite proud of how compact my collection is at the moment.

Photos of the Abbotsford House

 We're into the home stretch of packing to leave, but I thought I would post the real estate pictures of the house. Please ignore the distortions that the photographer uses to make it look bigger and brighter. I do want to point out that we really didn't stage the house too much so it does/did look like this once we finished our renovations. 

Let's start with a video. 

And here is what it looked like through photos:

It is a raised ranch style house with the entrance half way between the levels. This is the view of the upper level after you climb the stairs and look to your left.

I miss our fish but we had to rehome them. Here is the view from the living room looking into the dining area.

Here is the opposite view from the previous one. The stairs are immediately behind the sofa.

Here is the view from in front of the fireplace. You can see the kitchen.

Here is the dining area with the French doors to the deck.

This is the view of the kitchen you get if you go from the top of the stairs and continue forward.

And here is the view looking from deep in the kitchen over the island and into the living room.

Here is the opposite view of the kitchen. This is pretty much as we bought the house with the only real change being replacing the ugly tiles with the vinyl planks.  

The main bedroom.

The ensuite bathroom, which has to be the smallest but nicest bathroom we have ever had. It's not much bigger that what you would find on a cruise ship, but it does have a fantastic shower with bench, much more storage that you would think, and heated flooring.

This is the shower, which we rebuilt completely. Originally, it had a fiberglass shell that led to a 30 inch by 30 inch shower. Getting rid of the shell and moving one wall over by 8 inches (so that it actually conforms to the blueprints!) doubled its size.

The guest bedroom.

The home office.

The main bathroom, where you would hardly notice the 8" it gave up to the ensuite bathroom.

The main room downstairs, which became my hobby room and COVID office.

Behind my hobby area and office was an extra area that we used as a spill-over bedroom.

The view of the deck after stepping out onto it from the dining area.

This is the view of the deck. To the very right are the French doors in the dining area that you use to get onto the deck. The raised area where the red umbrella is is where the pool used to be. We removed the pool because it was a nasty cheap one that had not been properly winterized.

The main seating area, which we used extensively over our three summers in the house. 

The house from the back across the back yard. The deck is massive but there's still plenty of yard. This picture is taken between the pear tree on the right and the plum "tree" on the left.

This is easily the best house we have ever owned and we're a bit sad to leave it much quicker than we had planned.

On the Move Again

 I got laid off at the end of July. I gave myself six weeks to find a new job at the same salary or else we'd sell the house and move back to Ontario. There were a few reasons for this timeline:

• Housing sales start to dip in October and selling in November and December is much tougher.
• Prices on houses had remained strong because of low mortgage rates combined with limited inventory.
• COVID-19 seemed to be spiking again and we definitely wanted to be on the market before 14 days after the long weekend. We definitely didn't want to be trying to sell during a lockdown.

We got a very good offer last weekend, and with me narrowly missing out on a job that could have kept me in Abbotsford, we had to take the offer.

I'll miss all the great people I've met here in British Columbia, my co-workers, my neighbours, and the gamers who attend Trumpeter and those who don't.

Meanwhile, this is a shot of my workbench, research library, and my gaming storage cupboard. I had cleaned up considerably to the showings, so this area is usually not so tidy. 

The one cool thing I found is that my 2mm terrain project is basically the exact same size as the top of my gaming cupboard. This was not planned but sometimes things just work out.

Socially Distanced Gaming

 So, at the beginning of the month, word went out that the naval gaming group would be holding a socially distanced naval game.

I was intrigued.

So how does one safely wargame while maintaining a safe 2 metres apart? The answer is to hold a game outdoors and to extend the ranges significantly.

(I'm the shadow in the middle on the right. This was the perspective from the Dunkerque at the start of the game. )

We met at a concreted reservoir. I was given the USS South Dakota (I think). The scenario started with a group of 4 Japanese battleships. Their goal was to break out and they would win if any of their ships did. The surrounding battleships were broken into two sides and spaced out individually surrounding the Japanese ships in a gigantic circle about 50 feet in diameter. Each ship was given a specific enemy to sink to win. Mine was the HMS Hood.

I faced an immediate problem. The two ships that were closest to me were on the other side. Additionally, one of those ships, an Italian BB, had my ship as its target. Worse, I would have to get past the Dunkerque to get to the Hood. The cherry on the trouble sundae was that the Japanese ships immediately headed in my direction.

My only real option was to sail away from the Italian ship and from the Japanese ships, so I turned tail and ran. My plan worked as well as could be expected. Because I ran away, the Japanese ships instead concentrated on the Dunkerque and Hood. The Japanese players struggled to get the range right but they did some pretty significant damage to the Dunkerque, knocking her out for three turns.

But the Japanese ships were taking a pounding from all of the other ships and this played a role in keeping the Dunkerque afloat. I had turned around to get ready to take out the Dunkerque but she came back to life.

At this point we called the game. It was an interesting experience to play and I would do it again.

Problem with Panzers

So I've run into a problem with my plan to create transformable tanks. My suspicion that the German Pz III and Pz IV conversions were going to be tougher than the Allied tanks has proven to be correct.

The problem is that the guns come in pieces: a piece with the barrel (one for each type of gun) and a piece without (only one). I was hoping to drill out a hole in each piece and insert my magnets, but there just isn't quite enough depth. I tried replacing one of the magnets with a piece of steel, but it won't work.

I haven't given up on my plan though.

I'm going to attempt to cast the piece without the barrel. I'm going to create a mold and then use 5 minute epoxy to make enough parts so that each gun will have both parts. 

Wish me luck. My next posting with detail how I did it and how it turned out.