Busy Saturday.

I took a van full of students up to Moeraki and Shag point today. The weather was really windy and all the Yellow Eyed penguins seemed to be hanging out onshore. I have never seen such a contingent (about 5) so I guess the numbers are picking up a bit. I still think they are endangered though. After Shag Point we headed off to the Moeraki boulders for a quick look. Unfortunately the tide was in so most of the good boulders were under water. After that we headed off to Lockies fish and chip shop for fish and chips (which we ate at the beach.  I got back at about 2 and spent a good part of the afternoon stripping wallpaper off Josie's bedroom walls. It is a messy and time consuming job. At present Josie's room looks like a bomb site and she wants to sleep in the lounge because of the unsightliness of it. On a more exciting not I have finished basing my light infantry. This means that the job (for this batch anyway) is officially half complete. Now comes the time consuming 'touch up' phase and the eventual ground painting,grassing and magnetic basing.

A battalion of Imperial Guard at the front from Zvezda (Russia) and Hat Industrie (US) work well.

Zvezda French Voltiguers looking cool. I might do three more boxes both in 3 figure formations to represent column formation and then larger based "free form" to represent skirmishing

Still nothing to blog about...

As title suggests....

Nothing to blog about...

Unfortunately as the busy year ramps up I find that all I have to blog about is work and that makes for pretty boring blogging. I have job interviews today and three new students sitting and doing placement tests. The weather is absolutely beautiful outside and I wish I was at the beach. Life at home is pretty normal with the kids enjoying the last week of the Chrissie Hols. Josie and Mari stripped the wallpaper in Josie's room yesterday in preparation for Josie's room makeover.  I am getting ready to base the first 150 of my light infantry and will order about 200 more pretty soon. It looks like my "year long project" could be finished in as little as 3 months.

At its conclusion I aim to have about 50 battalions of French Infantry equaling about 900 foot figures and about 150? Cavalry. That should be more than enough to do battle with my finished Russian army of about the same size. I have the rule book for the board game called "Shako" but have never seen it played and don't know the rules. I doubt I will actually ever war-game with my toy soldiers. For me the enjoyment lies in painting them - putting them in boxes and storing them away forever. Strange eh?

Call of Duty 2

Yay! I made it to General and now I can start going for prestige!! Unfortunately my nephew told me that if you go for prestige you lose all of your weapons and perks and you basically start off again armed only with default weapons. Although this is terrible news I am fully resolved to give it a go. I am continuing on with my project to paint my light infantry and I am getting back into my viola practice as well.  I promised Mari that this year I would go for a grading on my viola so I will spend a portion of every evening (not much though!) doing viola practice. I plan to do a grading at the end of the year so I do have a little bit of time up my sleeve to prepare. Hopefully it wont get in the way of the important things in my life like Black Ops and painting my light infantry.

A busy start to the year.

Over the past couple of years we have always started the year with a very healthy level of enrollments.  This year is no exception. In fact this year might be our best year yet.  We might even need to look at hiring another couple of teachers if current trends continue.  It all seems a little strange since the $NZ is rampant verses the major currencies so surely more of the established English language markets must be more economically favourable for the prospective student. As it stands now, we have a diverse range of students all paying pretty high fees for our school so perhaps NZ's competitive advantage on price is still sustainable even with a high dollar. It seems that the longer we operate the more people know about us in the community. Already we have the reputation as being the school which "gets you past the exams" so that goodwill is worth a great deal.  The only thing we need to do is build on this at the same time as reaching out further afield.

The end of bachelorhood.

Today Mari and the girls will come back from holiday. Just for a week I have had the running of the house and it has been wonderful. I have managed to give the rooms a clean and organise things the way I want them to be done. Unfortunately I will soon be back to ear destroying violin and piano practice and  children and wife who don't know how to tidy up after themselves. I think I should work towards a two story house. The top for me and the bottom for Mari and the kids... heaven.

Modern Warfare 2

For anyone who reads this blog who is familiar with MW2 here are some of my thoughts....

I am on level 64 of MW2 and I can't unlock any of the prestige badges.  I can't figure out what I am doing wrong but I have unlocked a big pile of the achievements.

I hope to get at least half the prestiges accomplished before I move on to Black Ops after my birthday. Before that my aim is to unlock double barrel shotgun akimbo and become a hater "tuber". Usually I have an ACR with perks of Scavenger-Commando-Lightweight Pro.  I  think I will change to Bling Pro (with grenade launcher) Lightweight and that one less killstreak perk. Usually I sit an the middle of the scoreboard because I am a camper who uses claymores. If I have a grenade launcher at least I will be motivated to move around the map a little more. If I get really good ....a Barret with a Thumper???