Nearly a Disaster

Happy Halloween, first off. Watched Trick ‘r Treat tonight. It was spooky without resorting to startling you constantly for thrills. Worth watching as a Halloween tradition. My own scare occurred the day before Halloween.

The sun had gone down and I was settling in for a night of TV with my wife when a strange car pulled into my laneway. Strange, I thought, I cancelled my game night because my daughter was sick. True, she was better, but I had to cancel it Wednesday to give people a reasonable chance to get the notice. Perhaps someone was just turning around in my laneway, it happens frequently enough.

The lights on the car turned off. Curious.

I met the stranger at the door. It was my friend, allegedly oblivious to my cancellation and self-quarantine order. Little did I know the horror his arrival foreshadowed. Down to the basement we ventured, chasing away the shadows with lights. I showed him what I was working on, complained about finding the right colour of green for my WWII Canadians. Heart-stopping terror was creeping ever closer like the pumpkin-head kid from Trick ’r Treat. I couldn’t now this, it would be a little less than 24 hours before I watched the movie. If only I know then what I knew now. Maybe I could have prevented the tragedy.

The last time I was in the basement painted my session was interrupted by the start of my daughter’s fever and the resulting first-time-parent-over-reaction-in-the-face-of-swine-flu-fearmongering. Needless to say things were a little messy and I decided to quickly straighten up by shifting my GW painting tray over to the chest of drawers that is it’s home. Normally I do this sitting down, but today I was standing. What happened next may haunt my dreams for the rest of my night.

One of the painting stands holding my nearly finished WWII Canadians wobbled twice and plummeted to the cold, hard concrete floor. In their last moments, did they wonder if it would be their friend. Here is the gruesome aftermath. No damage has been repaired except a single rifle has been straightened and the miniatures re-attached to the painting stand.

Mouse over to see the back.

As you can see there is very little damage. On rifle was slightly bent and the smallest glint of bare metal on the elbow of on miniature. It’s the back row, since it’s really hard to tell which fell. You can see the brown mesh in the rear shot. If you see the miniatures in person there’s the green of the bare helmet in the divots between the brown. I like the effect, though I’d like to sharpen the sculpting of the helmets.

I finished the should insignia today and started basing and weathering. But that’s for next time. Or rather, next time should be either a gallery update or the next battle in my Picking My Battles series. Either way, something soon.

Tyler