It’s been a week since I have been back from the cruise. I’ve been fairly busy. I joined 24hour fitness where I go to continue running on machines as I did on the cruise. I also cracked open the Wii fit that I bought a few weeks ago from Circuit City online. It arrived the week before I went on the cruise and didn’t have much of an urge to crack the sucker open. I also got to the Tekkaman Evil kit primed; I have uploaded the new progress pictures – but at least I’m getting work on it, I hope to finish it this week, or at least get very close to completion.
The Wii Fit. My roommate has a Wii, so I just moved it to the big screen and synced it up with the fit board. I’ve seen a few videos and have read a few things about the board but didn’t really think much of it. For just shits and grins, I started on it last Thursday. I did about an hour of “working out”; and to my surprise, I did feel like I got a fairly decent amount of exercise. The yoga poses are interesting, and trying to keep balance while holding poses is an interesting feat. The strength exercises are pretty good, your typical exercises, and I’m starting to build up to more reps. The more time spent on the thing, the more exercises are opened up and more reps are allowed. I did hour long workouts with the various exercises and games for Thursday through Saturday. Rockband 2 came out on Sunday and that day went to nothing but playing Rock Band. However, the exercise on the wii, the running I do at the gym, and a healthier diet should significantly reduce my weight and get me well on the way to what I looked like about 10 years ago.. weee….
On to the commission kit. I finished sanding all the parts and threw them into the purple power bath to soak over night. I normally do not need to wash plastic kits before painting, but there were several reason for doing so this time. The kit is old, like 15+ years old. I have been slow at working on it so in time, dust, oily fingers from handling, etc have had ample time to attach to the plastic. This will wreak havoc when I go to prime and paint. After the purple power dip, the parts went into a water bath to rinse everything off. Then into the ultrasonic cleaner for a little run before fishing out all the parts and allowing them to fully dry. Once dry, I sprayed on Mr Surfacer 1000 primer over all the pieces. Of all the pieces, only about 5 need additional attention to fix surface defects such as over zealous sanding, small holes where the seam didn’t get completely fixed. A little light curing putty should remedy everything. Once I get that done and re-primed, I can get down to painting. The paint job isn’t anything fancy so it should not take me too long to get that done. We’ll see how this week goes.
I finally got time to judge the September Mecha Model Comp “Blue” Contest. I’ve been fairly busy with other extra curricular activities, and this has given me an opportunity to distance myself from the site to see if it’ll grow, which is has been doing steadily. I was a little worried that my involvement will harm the growth of the site. Tetsujin has been doing an excellent job, and much kudos to him for keeping the damn thing alive.
Rock Band 2 came out for the PS3 yesterday and I went to pick up the new bundle (new guitar and new drums). Jay, Terry and I ended up playing from 3 or so until 12. Travis came over for a bit to play as well. Playing the challenges will unlock each level that essentially unlocks all the songs – probably the quickest method to unlock all the songs. The drums are wireless and much quieter than the first set. I was using my original kick pedal, but after several hours of pounding on the damn thing, the replaced fix that I put in a few months back gave out. I’ll see about fixing it again as I don’t care much for the rather stiff and unbroken in new kick pedal. I’ve only played the drums and did a few songs on vocals. But I’ll probably only play it again when people are over. This will help keep me focused on exercising and getting work done on the Tekkaman Evil.
Saturday will be this month’s model build gathering. I need to keep some of the demos going, and keep attracting new blood. I missed out on OrangeCon so I didn’t get to see if the build gathering’s efforts are seen. I know Dan (Funaka) made his presence known. I’m going to start pushing for folks to finish stuff. The real problem is that most folks only get to build when they’re at my place. I’d like to start a gallery on the site for kits worked on at the gatherings; and start posting more progress pictures and completed pictures as well. I think there is a bit of inspiration somewhere in doing something akin to that. I can set up the photo studio as well. We’re almost functioning as a club now. Gotta keep the momentum going and not turn completely into a social event… something that I’m very much part of the problem. I have to get my butt into gear and build as well.
Hopefully, my next update will include some progress pictures for the commission kit. I still need to finish Kanu, I’ve been lazy on masking off the cape and just finishing the damn thing. The rest of her is done, only the cape/robe thingy stands to be finished.
