Oh, and the rest of us are sad at the result of the football. I think Spain deserved the win, but it would have been nice for me to see Germany get it. Spain was just too good for the poor Germans.
First thing to do was queue up and get the tickets. Liam was already yelling at the trains and telling us that he could see Gordon. (from thomas the tank engine)
We took a little stroll around the station and yard area so Liam could see the other trains and cars that were there. Liam did keep insisting that the big engine pulling the train we would ride was Gordon, despite the fact that it was a Diesel (Gordon is a steam locomotive.)
After the little walk around, we went ahead and got on board our train. Liam was extra proud to have a ticket all his own.
The boys were a little rowdy and not sitting still for a lot of the ride, but they were having a good time. Liam took a moment to give Grandma a big kiss.
Since this train is just a restored tourist attraction, it does not go anywhere. There is not even a circular track to ride on, you just chug along up a hill for a while, then the train reverses and heads back the same way.
I think that is fitting, I can really tell people that my sister lives pretty close to the middle of nowhere now.
Although the package says this is for kids 4+, Liam had no trouble learning how to use it. I think he is still not totally sure about it, but he knows that when he presses the button, people go "in there" and he can look at them.
This one is called "view from the couch" and you can see it sort of captures myself and half of Claudia eating lunch.
This is more typical of his style, some would call it an attempt at macro photography, I just think it is up close and out of focus. I have named this one "portrait of a toy bucket"
Another study in the extreme close up. This one is "animal puzzle"
Here is "Laundry Time"
Here is "Mummy's Blurry Foot"
I helped on this one. Not my most flattering image, but not horrible either for a toy camera.
It is certainly better than the unassisted portraits, like "Headless Daddy #20"
I brought all of the components and my screwdriver into the spare room, where I would have more than enough space to build the bench. The room opens directly onto the patio where this creation would live, making it an ideal location for the project.
The next phase in the operation was to attach the legs of the table, but it was not a job for my pal the screwdriver... the table had come with this interesting little Allen key tool. Rather than feeling pressure from the Allen Manufacturing Corportation of Hartford, I decided to call this tool Steve.
despite my great sadness at the loss of my screwdriving companion, I persevered and my new friend Steve worked out quite well as we attached all the legs.
In fact, things went so well with the legs, we proceeded to attach the table top as well.
The table was almost done, it just lacked stability, any lateral pressure would wobble the whole thing.... if only there were some way to stabilize it. Then I saw there were two more pieces of wood left over. But they had no hex bolts... At once I realized that my old friend screwdriver would need to be called into action once again.
Of course good old screwdriver got the job done and I brought the bench out to the patio to see how it looked. Next step will be painting/staining the wood as it is unprotected at the moment.
I should have known, the project began with screwdriver and it will end with screwdriver... ahhh screwdriver, you are truly a king among tools.
Then I noticed the shirt in white, smack in the middle of the whole display... this piece of comic genius...
I almost fell down laughing. I have never seen such a piece of classless, tasteless humour in my life. It was so perfectly horrible that it was right off the scale of my "so bad it is good" thought process. I am not sure that I will ever see another shirt that can surpass this one as worst idea ever.
We were in this store looking for just such a knock off, a cheapo version of the Crocs shoes. Giant Tiger had some for about $5 CDN, as opposed to the $35 the official ones cost. Anyway, while Claudia browsed the shoes, I had a wander around the store looking at the stuff, and I came accross this "hilarious" product.
It is a garden gnome with a motion sensor inside. When a person activates this motion sensor, the gnome makes a farting noise quite loudly. I was very pleased to see that Giant Tiger had managed to get "The Original Farting Gnome" and not some cheap knock off.
Monster Manual II - just as good as the first! This one contained a lot of the monsters that had been added to the game over the years via modules and articles in Dragon Mag. I think I may have even spent more time looking through this book as the art was of a somewhat higher calibur than the first volume.
When D&D second edition came out, I thought they had a great idea to publish the Monster Manuals in giant binders, then as expansion came, you could just add pages to the book in the appropriate place. In practice though I never really liked it, the book was too huge, and the binder became quite warped. I think I prefer the hard bound volumes and don't mind flipping from book to book.
The 1980s of course brought NINJAs to pop culture and D&D had to of course find a way to integrate them into the game. A complete "Oriental" setting was developed, which of course only really seemed to deal with 80% japan and a little China thrown in. I do firmly believe that after the Samurai and Ninja chapters, no one used this book for anything. I mean, who wants to be a Sohei or Kensei? NINJA ME UP!
The warrior priest (cleric) was always a pretty key role in D&D, the character that healed everyone and did some other non-wizard related magic. There was an earlier book called "Deities and Demigods" that introduced various pantheon's of gods for your fantasy worlds, but that was replaced in the 2nd edition by this book. It was fun to look through, but in practice, I don't think you could ever really integrate real world historical mythologies into a game setting... I like it better when the world is completely alien and fantastic a la Tolkien, rather than having a bunch of knights and wizards in mumbo-jumbo land suddenly deciding to serve Quetzalcoatl.
Tome of magic... more new ideas for spells and items in the D&D world. I don't think I ever used it much as I never really played magical characters. I just liked reading the manuals by the time it was published.
Finally, the Ravenloft campaign setting. This was a supplement intended to create a sort of gothic horror world for adventuring in. Lots of vampires and werewolves and the like. This was also created as a response to the sudden popularity of vampires created by authors such as Ann Rice. I thought it was neat and the art was pretty fine in this one, but I think it was never used by me or our group.
OK, this third one has covered all the old games I dug up from their laundry room tomb. It was great to see them all again and I hope I can enjoy myself reading though them all one day. Chances of playing any of these again in my life seem rather slim, but who knows... maybe when we all retire I will meet up in the old folks home with some graph paper and a bag of dice ready to go.
The store front has changed a lot since then, it used to just have the sign and not much of a display, now there is a huge picture window that has some timely awesome construction built in it. This time is pretty amazing looking display for the new Indiana Jones film. You can see some photos of this display here.
A beloved remnant of the old days is the stained glass dragon window at the top of the stairs. It used to be that downstairs was comic books, and upstairs was games and miniatures.
These days, games are still upstairs, but there are far less of them. I think the glory days of RPGs are long past. In fact I think my local games store in Boeblingen has a way better selection of games than Silver Snail does now. Perhaps I will do a future post on my local gaming stores. I know of four in the general area.
Something really great SS has always been good is Japanese imports. Lots of giant robot model kits and other oddities. I finally found a hat that would allow me to answer the age old question, "what would I look like if I was some sort of human/cartoon fox hybrid?" I tried to look deadly serious.
Well, that is the nostalgia trip for this session. I think I will do some some future posts on the games/comic stores I have in my area these days. It is maybe interesting for the few ex-gamers reading this...
