Oops...and Geekery

Well, that didn't last long. I had money when I last posted...now I don't and I'm still unemployed. Joy. What to do, what to do...

Still, on more positive terms, my geekery is slowly progressing. I played my first game of Hordes last week and I can see the appeal...the added element of resource management is a welcome one in a skirmish level game. I just need to play more games and develop some solid tactics and strategies. I've got some ideas, but my real weakness at the moment is the fact that I'm unfamiliar with the forces my opponents will be fielding, especially when I come up against Warmachine players. I think the best I can do for now is to focus on my own force and hope for the best...I'm certainly not going to go out and spend a fortune buying the various books I'd need to research other forces.

I'm a little disappointed by Privateer Press, it has to be said. They have some nice models, but they've really decieved customers, I think, with some truly excellent paint-jobs. The models are good but not as good as they, perhaps, make out. Casting is frequently shoddy and I don't think there's a single model I own (of theirs) that isn't going to need the application of some modelling clay to bring it up to par (let alone look good). Still, they've done a good job with their rules and I'm not going to be spending the hundreds of pounds I spend on GW stuff buying Hordes.

On the subject of GW stuff, my Skaven army is finally approaching a point where I don't have any more infantry left to assemble! That's some 300+ models of Core Infantry alone. I've still got some new Stormvermin left to clean up and my "Fanatic Clanrats" (made up primarily of Plague Monk figures and any odd models I've got left over from other sources) that will be pushing my Screaming Bell. Speaking of which, once I have some spare cash (which may be some time!) I'll have to invest in a Bell kit to finish off my 'scratch build'. I've also invested in a new Doomwheel, so I'm only a Warp-Lightning Cannon away from a competitive list! Woo. Mostly, though, I need to get making up some movement trays...shifting units of 40+ isn't easy without a decent tray and cardboard approximations just don't cut it.

Most of the Warhammer I've been playing of late is against my dads' Bretonnians. Neither of us have been taking anything cheesy and the games have been fairly balanced...his heavy cavalry against my crappy infantry. I've lost a little of the love I once had for Warpfire Throwers...they're very good against infantry, where you have time to line them up for a decent shot or two, but against faster moving things, the old WFT suffers from "Move or Fire" a lot more and is certainly not worth the 70pts you pay for it. On the other hand, the Poisoned Wind Mortar being able to ignore armour and fire on the move, combined with the disintegration of guess-range artillery, are a god-send againt Brets.

I've finally given Rat Ogres a field test and I'm not that impressed. The lack of an armour save makes them kinda vulnerable, but they do hit very hard if you can get them in the right place. Having said that, compared to Giant Rats, you don't appear to get that much. For each Rat Ogre, you can buy 8 Giant Rats. That's more than twice as many Wounds and with Wave of Rats, you're actually getting more attacks over the same frontage. It's true that those attacks are at significantly lower Strength, but I'm still umming and erring about it. The only problem with fielding Giant Rats instead of Rat Ogres is getting hold of the bloody things...quite why GW decided that you should only be able to get 6 G.Rats at a go and even then you have to buy 2 Rat Ogres with them, I don't know. I'd like to field units of 60 Rats, but it's just out of the question from a purely monetary point of view...even if I wasn't skint! Still, I'll keep an eye on eBay and I might get lucky.

It's been a while...

It's been a good long while since I last posted anything here, but not much has really happened in the meantime. Aside from moving to Swansea and (eventually) finding a job washing pots, I've done nothing constructive at all. Oh, I quit the pot-wash job after somehow managing to do it for 11 months; I couldn't bring myself to work there for an entire year. This leaves me with the same conundrum that I had the last time I posted...I need work and have no idea how to get any. Or rather, I do have lots of ideas on what I could potentially do, but don't know which ones to follow up first. I do have one advantage over my previous position, inasmuch as I've got some money this time, so paying for a training course isn't out of the question. The problem is that I no longer wish to be a chef. I've worked in a kitchen and watched chefs at work, even done a little bit myself and have come to the conclusion that I would rather leave my culinary skills at home. This means that all my ideas before about following that ambition have swirled nicely down the drain in a pretty pattern.

Where does this leave me? It leaves me dog-sitting at my parents because they think I have nothing better to do with my time than be stranded in the arse-end of Carmarthenshire. Not only that but I have my sister practically begging me to go to Holland with her in a couple of weeks after helping her move into her new flat, despite knowing that I have no reliable or easy way to get from Carmarthen to Hertford. I'd like to go back to Holland (it has been a couple of years), but I really don't have the time (especially given the past two weeks having been wasted) and I'm not sure if I can drum up the effort for it. On eof the most frustrating things about being unemployed is not having very little money, it's not the uncertainty of ever finding a job, but it's the assumptions that other people make about what you do with your time. Sure, you don't get up and do something constructive every day, but every day someone pulls you away from your normal routine to "help them out" is a day that you are definitely not doing something constructive towards your own needs! This pisses me off, especially when those same people constantly badger you with really unhelpful suggestions that you can't follow up on because you're always doing them a favour. Sigh.

Anyways, the latest plan of action (if it can be called that) is to see about finding work (again) and going back to college to re-do my Maths A-Level and get a decent grade. Following that, the plan is to hopefully return to University as a mature Student and study Philosophy and Maths, possibly followed up by a PhD. and/or PGCE and look into going into teaching. I'd be good at being many things, but I think I'd excel at being a teacher; I've the patience of a brick and a couldn't care less if someone isn't willing to let me help them help themselves...they say teaching is a stressful job but stress falls off me like water off the proverbial duck. It's a long term plan and it ends with me having a bunch of qualifications as well as a bunch of experience in service industry jobs. That's got to be better than just the service industry experience, right?

Had a visit from Ellie the other day and she suggested working the oil rigs in Siberia like she did a few years back. I could do that, but would they employ me? I've no experience in engineering or similar and the closest I have to a qualification in the field is my rather poorly graded Maths and Physics A-levels. It's a thought though. At least it wold get me out of the country for a while...learn a new language...meet some new people...earn some significant money (for a change)...sounds pretty good on paper, but is it ever going to happen? I doubt it.

The joys of lampyland

Having spent last weekend in Lampyland, I have come to realise just how shite my life on the farm is becoming. Seriously, before last Friday the last time I was in a social place (i.e. the pub) must have been at least 3 months ago...I mean, how crap is that? Sure, I've been to Archeon/Roman events and to family do's and such, but it's just not the same as going out with your mates, having a few drinks (well...maybe more than just a few drinks) and having yourself a good time. The point is, is that I spend far too much time speaking to animals (and on this damned laptop....curse it! curse it thrice and damn it to Hades!) and not enough time speaking to people I don't yet know.

The problem is that I'm not entirely sure how to remedy this. Fucking off to France is one option; at least I'll meet some new people. There is, however, the slight hiccup of the language barrier (my French is not, let's face it, exactly fluent). Another option is moving away somewhere, but that has the inherent speed-bump of my not having any money...no money=can't get house/flat, can't get house/flat=can't get job, can't get job=no money. I'm kinda screwed any way you want to look at it.

Anyway, I just wanted to get a bit of ranting done and I've never been one for raising my voice, so clickety-clacking at a keyboard is pretty much my vent for anything I feel need to get (well...shout) off my chest.

Makin' Money

Been looking at potential work and going to France is becoming increasingly attractive. Fot about £500 I can go on a Chalet Host course and, apparantly, doing so practically guarantees work for the winter...that's 3 months income, including a load of freebies like accomodation, ski pass and such. Tempting indeed. For the moment though, I'm earning a bit of cash doing manual labour, which is proving to be tough work...I'm definitely going to be a little more buff than I was by next week! I'm hoping to learn a little vegetarian cookery, as I'm staying with my "employer", who also happens to be a veggie...it always pays to learn something new, I guess. Anyway, dinner is being served, so I shall end this short entry here.

What to do, what to do...

Having been away in Holland for the past 10 days (playing Romans...yay!), I'm back home (at mums) wondering what to do with myself...aside from cleaning out the pigs and sheep and looking after my niece whilst mum's at work that is. I had considered moving up to York, but I'm not as enthused about that as I was before going to Holland. Portsmouth and Cardiff are also options with merits of their own, but again I'm not so enthused about going somewhere else to settle down. As with last year after I got back from Holland, I've been gripped by a wanderlust and after a particularly vivid dream last night about opening a small tea-room/cafe at some point in the future, I'm revisiting a desire I once had some years ago; to travel the world with a purpose to learn to cook all manner of exotic and (to the average British citizen) bizarre dishes. From Moroccan and Indian to Caribbean and Japanese cuisine I want to spend a few years working my way from place to place picking up what I can. The only problem is that I A) have no money and B)wouldn't know where to start. I've considered just packing a bag and going, but without any sort of plan I foresee doing that resulting in either a very short trip indeed or everything going extremely pear-shaped (which is not a good thing...unless you're a pear, of course). Oh I just thought of another problem ("C", I suppose); my mastery of foreign languages is not exactly amazing, what with only a rudimentary grasp of French to supplement my native tongue. Hmm...I'll have to do more thinking.

Another perspective

Well I got my new glasses today and though I don't need to wear them all the time, I figured I'd 'wear them in', so to speak, so I've had them on for a couple of hours now. The main thing I've noticed about wearing glasses is that you have practically no peripheral vision! It's really disorienting and even though my vision is sharper and clearer when wearing glasses, I'd actually say that my visual perceptive abilities are somewhat reduced. It seems odd to say it, but it's true. I'm finding that I'm so focused on what I can see through the glasses that anything in my peripherals is largely ignored/unnoticed. I can't see how this is a good thing if I ever learn to drive; I'm supposedly short-sighted enough for it to be illegal for me to drive without correction, but if I drive with these things on, I'm going to be a)worrying about what I'm not noticing and b)looking all over the place because of said concern rather than concentrating on the road. It's one thing not seeing something in perfect focus, but at least I'd notice it at all!

Well, here goes...

My first foray into the blogging phenomenon and, much like my acceptance of modern technology from mobile phones to the latest computer games, about 10 years later than everyone else. Still, better late than never, as some say (but then, some people say a lot of things). Some might ask why I'm blogging under a psuedonym (I love that prefix; "psuedo"...it just works with everything: psuedonym, psuedodragon, psuedosausage..or should that be pseudopsausage? Anyway, I digress), instead of my real name of 'Jay'. Others might ask why I'm using a new username instead of the more familiar 'JellyPooga'. None of these people are going to get an answer. Hah! Oh, ok then, it's because I like Jolly Puggles better for online shenanigans...JellyPooga has served me well over the years, but when someone nicknamed it affectionately to 'Jolly Puggles' over on the GitP forums, it just kind of stuck with me and I've been using it since. If you want to go further back into the source of my username you have to go all the way back to when I first signed up to an IM client, so I won't bore you with that tale.

Anyway, now that I'm tip-tap-typing away at my brand new blog what, exactly, am I going to blog about? Some people, I've heard tell, blog about mundane and banal everyday occurences that they think are interesting but few others do. Others have an agenda, whether it be music, film, their work, holidays or whatever. Me? I have no idea. I'm sure something will occur to me as time goes by, but for now, let's just assume that this will be an online journal of my thoughts...not, perhaps, the most original idea, but it's all I've got to go with at the moment. Well. That's not quite true. I'd like to use this to write fiction. I'm no novellist, nor have I ever really written a short story that has reached a wider audience than my english teacher at school. I'm no 'teller either; I'd like to be, but I'll leave that to my sister and my niece. They're better at the whole interfacing with real people than I am. But anyway, I'll leave that for another time. For now, I'll stick with writing whatever comes into my head and hope it makes some kind of sense at the end of it all.

Hmm...let's see now...I think I'll start with something I've come intimately familiar with over the past few weeks and it's becoming increasingly harder to break: laziness. I wanted to apply to join the fire service in York a couple of weeks ago and knew that I needed to get off my arse and get exercising again. Two weeks later, I've been for one run of only a mile and that's about it. I'm also getting up later than I should be, spending far too much time behind my laptop screen and not nearly enough time doing the things I should; applying for jobs, tending the animals, weeding the garden, etc. I'd like to attribute it to largely cutting out caffeine from my diet, but I know it's just me being a lazy bum. The problem is that I don't know how to break this downward spiral.

The last time I was in this sort of situation, I ended moving to London from deepest darkest Wales. It worked for a while, but it didn't last long. The next move was back to Wales and that all went pear-shaped and now I'm back where I started, except it's worse because I'm doing one of the things I said I'd never do; I moved back in with the folks. Sure, it's a convenience; no rent, no bills, but for some time now I've been feeling like a bit of a leech. I had my reasons and it seemed like a good idea at the time, but it hasn't really been working out. I don't hitnk I'm cut out for the self-employed arena. My concern, however, is that if I do the drastic and move somewhere completely different, then there's the distinct possibilty that I'll tire of that place and want to move on again in six months time. It wouldn't be so much of a problem; after all it's not like I'm settling down with anyone nor do I have the money to buy a house, but the fact is is that it'd be nice to actually have some kind of security instead of the desire to continuously move on.

Perhaps that's my problem; I want to move, perhaps continuously, but I don't have the means, or perhaps I'm too scared, to do so. I'm not sure if I'd be capable of survivng on my own, but I doubt even more that I'd find someone to come with me. I don't know if it's because I think differently to other people, but I simply have no desire to settle down, get a job and live the rest of my life like that. I never have. Is it just me being impractical, or should I follow my heart instead of my head? I've always relied on things just falling into place, but it's nigh time I started making decisions of my own rather than letting fate lead me where it will.