40 for 40: March

March has been a productive month for some of my goals! However, the weight goals are hard to quantify:

Weight

Target weight loss: 40lbs. Weight lost so far: probably quite a bit, but I can’t be sure.

When Lent comes around each year, I give up chocolate and all sweets, Coke and all fizzy drinks, and all takeaways. This year, I’ve done the same thing, and due to my weight loss goals, also took the opportunity to start a regular exercise routine, involving walking around the area and using the outdoor gym in the park near my house. It started out well, with me apparently losing 3lbs in the first week, and 4lbs in the next. Then, last Wednesday, I got on my scales and discovered that I’d apparently gained 6lbs.

And, well. No, I hadn’t.

I can’t remember where I discovered this, but I have no problem believing it: You would need to eat over 2.5* your recommended calorie intake in a day before you would even gain 1lb. Is that possible? Sure. Have I done it? In the past, yes. But for me to have done this six times in the space of a single week and not even realised – that’s far beyond an anomaly; something’s gone wrong. So, I bought some new, better-quality scales, and found that I weighed 244lbs – 8lbs less than I thought I’d weighed the previous week.

Obviously, that’s great - but it makes counting the weight I wanted to lose a bit of a faff, since as the old scales were likely taking inaccurate readings all along, I don’t know where I started from. I’ve lost weight though, there’s no doubt about that. So, new goal – My target weight it 15 stone, by which time I will have lost around 40lbs and will certainly be in a fitter state than I was before.

Board Games

This month: 0. Total so far: 14

I didn’t play any this month. Our friends and family that we normally play with were tied up in all sorts of things, and while we did get involved in some of it, none of it involved board games.

Gigs

This month: 2. Total so far: 5

I did a gig with Sam Draisey and the Revolt at Katie Fitzgeralds on the first weekend in March. I love playing with The Revolt, it’s a nice easy gig and we’ve all been friends for a long time. We showcased one of Sam’s new songs (link to the video) which went well, and we were kindly-received by Rebel and the Banned, the other band on that night and our fans – there was a strong solidarity with the political nature of our music! I also did the assisted living centre again, which is always good.

Video Games

This month: 2. Total so far: 6

I managed two video games this month:

Alien Breed: Chapter One on the Xbox 360 was a game I bought last year in the run up to the Xbox Live servers being shut down for the 360, on recommendation by Metal Jesus. It was a fun overhead shooter, and it’s nice to see the familiar contours of the Unreal engine, but it’s not the sort of experience that stays with you.

Kid Dracula: This was part of the Castlevania collection for the Switch, and is an odd entry in the series – it plays more like Mega Man than anything else. I’d come back to it after a couple of years; having reached the seventh stage almost without trying, I ran into a huge difficulty spike with some pretty fiddly boss battles. I’ll freely admit to using some Youtube videos to find out how to do some of it, as I didn’t want to get bogged down, and quite frankly it would have taken me the rest of the year to divine exactly what attack patterns would work on which boss. A nice enough game while it lasted, but I doubt I’ll come back to it.

Models Painted

This month: 2. Total so far: 12

I finally finished the Votann army I’ve been working on! My good friend Sam gave me these a while ago, and I’d just got around to painting them after blasting out Tyranids last year. I painted them in the colour scheme of the Ymir Conglomerate, because I liked the name (it reminds me of one of my favourite books, the Wierdstone of Brisingamen,) and apparently they like to give all their soldiers the best equipment so with little else to go on, I built the models with what I thought were the best weapons and all the upgrades. Here are some pictures, to show that I’ve done them – one of the Hearthkin squads and the two characters at the front are the ones I’ve painted this year.

40 for 40: February

 February was an interesting month, for reasons beyond the goals that I’ve set for myself. On those, I made some steps forward with the models, kept it steady with the games, and sadly fell on my weight loss goals:

Weight

Target weight loss: 40lbs. Net total weight lost so far: 0lbs.

Ugh, dropped the ball a bit here. There’s no excuse for it really, I basically eat too much, and – last week particularly – didn’t move around enough. But that doesn’t mean I’ve ruined it forever. It’s lent next month, so maybe I can pick things up a bit then.

Board games

This month: 3. Total played so far: 14.

I slowed down a bit this month, but I still played the following games: (there were a few more, but some of them I’ve played before in the year)

·        Fairy Tale Inn: a nice game involving stacking various fairy tale characters in a “Connect-4” style grid to maximise the profits you get from them. Me and Kirsty break it out every now and then, as it doesn’t stay long enough to wear out its welcome and the different characters mean that the experience is slightly different each time.

·        Enchanted Forest: I’ve had a lot of mileage out of this one over the years. This involves rolling dice to move your character around the board, trying to remember which treasures are where, and winning the treasure cards on the castle at the end by correctly guessing them. The random movement means a lot depends on luck, but it’s a solid enough experience – if a little frustrating for younger children who may not have developed their long-form memory skills yet!

·        No Thanks: A fiendishly simple card game where you aim to achieve the lowest score by taking as few cards as possible, putting a limited number of chips on the cards you don’t want. While it doesn’t have the range of activity some of my other games offer, “How do I win this?” becomes a very different question when the answer is tied up in one of two things you can do from the very beginning – which nonetheless potentially influence a much larger number of outcomes.

Gigs

This month: 1. Total played so far: 3

Just the assisted living centre this month, as between work and family commitments, there wasn’t much room for open mics. I also haven’t rehearsed an open mic set in a while, so I may need to get back on that in the coming weeks. I have at least one more gig lined up for March, though – I’m playing bass for Sam Draisey and the Revolt on Saturday 1^st at Katie Fitzgeralds in Stourbridge.

Video Games

This month: 2. Total beaten so far: 4

I managed to beat another couple of games:

·        Super Mario World: This was amongst the first console games I remember playing, and I enjoyed it enough to come back to it every now and then. I remember being absolutely fascinated by it when my age was in single digits, and every so often I feel that small tingle of wonder as I explore the overworld map – but I’ve done this one before, and by the time I got to the end of it, I was ready for it to be over.

·        Big Rumble Boxing: Creed Champions. Another fighting game! This one is an arcade boxing game based on the Rocky / Creed saga. I bought this game on holiday a few years ago, and if I’d bought it for anything other than the Nintendo Switch I’d have been disappointed, but for a pick-up-and-play game, it’s fine. I beat the game with all 20 boxers, and while the lack of additional content means I’m unlikely to return to it, it was a nice experience while it lasted.

Models

Models painted so far: 10

I finished painting the Votann Hearthkin I was talking about last month, and made a start on the two character models that come in the boxed set – the Einhyr Champion, and Uthar the Destined. I’m about two thirds of the way through, with some highlighting and work on the base to do now, at which point I’ll move on to some different models.