Return of the Menagerie

(With Apologies to George Lucas and Lucasfilms)

Well, it's been a while, but in the words of Sam Gamgee - "I'm back"

So where have I been I hear you all ask? Ok, you're not asking but I'll tell you anyway. Afraid to say I got a bad case of Blog burnout. It's all GordonY's fault for getting me started on blogging in  the first place, I was initally pretty sceptical about the whole thing, convinced that no one would be interested in my witterings but as the hits started to come on the page and the followers started to grow, I soon started to change my tune.

From initial sceptic I became obsessed blogger - I would spend the day planning what my next post would say, agonising over what would be of interest to the blog public out there, spending ages trying to take a half decent photograph on my iphone (I still haven't invested in a decent camera yet) and at the same time trying to keep up to date with what was happening with all the blogs I was following. I soon found there weren't enough hours in the day to keep the blog going the way I wanted to and it started to become a chore rather than the enjoyable experience it had been in the first few months of blogging.

So I stopped.

Completely.

Hauled the blog off the web page (although I did have the gumption to at least save the previous posts) and turned my back on the whole thing.

I needed a break. Quite a long one as it turned out.

So instead, I went and saw a bit of this

Had a sail on this

No it's not the Costa Concordia and while I'm absolutely horrified at what has happened to the Concordia and I have nothing but heartfelt sympathy for those who were on the ship on the night of it's sinking, it wouldn't stop me going on a cruise ship again - it was brilliant.

And I did a bit of this

(I'm not actually in that picture, I was standing off to the right of the photo)

And I've been playing a lot of this

Actually, I must be the only golfer in the world who has actually got worse since I started playing regularly again, rather than better.......

But in addition to not blogging, I had also, more worryingly, lost interest in wargaming. I was getting totally scunnered at the amount of new, shiny that was being released, shiny that I just simply didn't have the budget to purchase (probably because it was all spent on a cruise ship holiday), or where I was able to buy something, I didn't have the time to paint it (because I was too busy blogging). So I stopped gaming too. I haven't been to a club meeting for over 7 months, didn't go to my local wargames shows in Forfar or Kirriemuir and stopped visiting wargaming web pages.

Fortunately, I did start getting interested in gaming again, sold some stuff on eBay that I had never played with or was unlikely to play and bought some new shiny. Started listening to the podcasts again and got the gaming bug back. Phew!

Still not rushing back to a club meeting but I have been playing a few games of Saga with my mate Alan and the paint brushes are back out. As Warhammer Historical had their half price sale, my bro agreed to buy me the Waterloo and Kampfgruppe Normandy rule books if I painted up his bloodbowl teams for him.

So the Humans are done, and I've started on his Orc Team so hoping to have them finished over the next week or so.

But in order not to get scunnered only painting Blood Bowl figures, I've also painted up the first of these

Santa brought me the new Star Fleet rules by Moongoose Publishing with the Federation and Klingon Squadron boxes. So once I can get a few of these beauties painted up hopefully the games room will be filled with the cry "There's Klingons on the Starboard Side!".