2024 in review

The best laid plans, as they say, once again... (and we'll see how 2025's plans look in the next post!)

There's a big 'ole right outside
my bedroom window, and it's
full of water!

Made it to the end of May with my sanity intact, albeit a little busier than I would have liked. Was driving back from the BattleTech English Nationals when... Son phones, to say there is water coming into the house. 

I'll spare you the full details, but suffice it to say we had to wait on Anglia Water paying for most of the downstairs carpets and the music room floor to be replaced, had to move out the grand piano for several months, and had most of our worldly goods stuffed into three fewer rooms than it was meant to go into. And we were probably among the luckiest of the 50+ houses affected - it's all sorted by the end of August. 

After a bit of thought, we decided to take a cash settlement for the damage to the kitchen (slate tiles fine, but a fair amount of water damage on the trim and side panels of the units) as a deposit on the new kitchen we've been promising ourselves since about 2005...

Mid-October, they strip the old units out. Take one look at the plaster under the kitchen window, note that the damp meter is bouncing off the end stop, and realise that we can't proceed until that's been fixed. (Nothing to do with the flood, it's just the price you pay for having an 1860's house!) Have you ever tried finding someone competent to fix damp in a 150 year old house at short notice? We were being quoted "mid November, but that's just to come and have a look. Expect January for a fix."

Huge credit to Steve from Elite Preservation who gave up a weekend in November to fix it. Next problem, finding a new install slot given everyone's booked up till Christmas. Justin (our original installer) again worked miracles with his team to get three days free in the last week before Christmas, and as off now we have working appliances and most of a kitchen.

We have however been living out of an air fryer and microwave in the laundry for two months, which it no real fun, and the dining room has been full of the stuff we took out of the kitchen in October!

I am not a fan of water this year.

In other non-hobby news, 

• our surviving parents are both surviving, although Anne's mum has advanced Alzheimer's.
• I have one really nasty contract job hanging over me (involving converting a massive suite of undocumented Excel tables to MySQL) which is making me feel guilty about getting stuck into other hobby-related intensive computer work. Hopefully I am getting this finished this week (currently finding the stupid mistakes :D).

Last year's plans:

• Finish the Dux Compendium :D (attempting to achieve headspace for that at present)
• Didn't happen :( See above
• Paint a lot more BattleTech stuff (no, more than that, the Kickstarter's arriving Q2 and, erm, well, I may have indulged in considerable retail therapy....)
• Kickstarter arrived end Q4. I did however buy three people's BattleTech collections off eBay, painted a lot of stuff, and set up a thriving sideline in selling off the ones I didn't want :D
• Run campaigns at the club
• What a Cowboy (deferred from 2023 for obvious reasons) - Q1/2
• Didn't happen :( (annoyed about that)
• BattleTech: Alpha Strike - details TBC - Q3/4
• Didn't happen largely because the KS was late.
• Run RPGs @ home. My long-running (since 2019) weekly sanity break Zoom-based 5E campaign finished in December, and I'm aiming to split my time going forward with two fortnightly ones:
• a 5E campaign set in a different corner of my world
• Running, party now 4th level
• a BattleTech RPG campaign set on - well, that's a secret for now
• Not yet,.
• Start on the Epic ACW plastic (and MDF) pile
• Again, not yet. I remind you that half our worldly possessions were cluttering up the workshop for all the summer.
• Finish the 15mm Bulge forces and buildings, consider an IABSM Bulge narrative campaign later in the year
• Ah... nope. 
• Get someone else to paint my 28mm British and French, and play some Sharp Practice 2
• Did! Thanks Dan!
• Play with the laser cutter
• Yup.
• Blog and podcast as and when.
• Surprisingly, yup...

In addition to the above:

• Started a new BattleTech-specific podcast.
• Actually had a guest on The Miller's Tale!
• Built/3D printed a lot of 6-7mm scale scenery
• Ran a number of fun show games
• Painted/Bitched on Wednesdays (which saved what's left of my sanity)