Busy Busy

Dec. 20th, 2025 02:03 am
kalloway: multicolored christmas lights (Xmas Lights 26 Unspun)
[personal profile] kalloway
The month has certainly gotten away from me- what do you mean Christmas is in a few days?

Thank you to everyone who has sent cards! I have, embarrassingly, completely lost track of things. ^^;; But I have also sent a lot of things... and would feel good about the state of my gifting overall except I have one amazon order from the beginning of the month that hasn't budged!. I suspect next year I will either need to pester people for wishlists at the beginning of November or see if we can skip the 'zon altogether. (Also a few packages out in the void but that's starting to clear up and that's certainly the weather affecting things at this point.)

I have one more day of work left this year, and then nearly two weeks off. I suppose the main thing I need to do is clean/sort/organize. Yet again, not having any clue what I own threatened to bite me in the ass. (Saved! ...by my laziness. I hadn't actually bought the thing I thought I needed but already had.) So, 2026 will be the year of the whole-place inventory and likely clean-out. Maybe I can just start doing a monthly giveaway post?

Finished up RG Exia and put him in the Mangar. Next is a 30MM Horse, which is part of the D&D party that I ordered at Thanksgiving: RG Justice, HG Calibarn, SD Dynames, 30MF Priest, and 30MM Horse. I didn't order a D&D party on purpose! Just... once everyone was in my cart I was just 'lol, this sure is an assortment, or more like a D&D party...'

Neighbor D's memorial service is also today. It's fairly late in the day, so I'm just going to drop by briefly, but I also wouldn't miss it.

(no subject)

Dec. 18th, 2025 11:23 am
thawrecka: (Default)
[personal profile] thawrecka
On the weekend I went to a showing of the 4k restoration of Picnic at Hanging Rock, oddly suitable given I was halfway through the book at the time. Which I have now also finished, and enjoyed, though it's very weird and of its time.

The homoeroticism is off the charts; not just all the school girls being in love with Miranda, but also whatever was going on with Mike and Albert. I honestly had not remembered much about those characters in the movie, so seeing the level of homoeroticism there, and then discovering it's even more intense in the book was a surprise! There's stuff in the book I'm glad isn't in the movie - the fate of the Lumleys and all the stuffing about with Irma and Michael would have been a bit too soap operatic for the dreamy, vaguely horror-toned vibe Peter Weir was going for. And I do like the tighter focus allowing the vibe of 'the real horror is the school', though there is some nice atmospheric prose in the book.

I went with a friend to see the movie and we both laughed at the judgmental koala around Hanging Rock, lmao.

Though seeing some of the things non-Australians have written about this novel and movie has me like, sigh, can people try not to be weird and xenophobic about Australia?? It's not scary or strange for the southern hemisphere to have opposite seasons to the northern hemisphere, and you don't have to go on about how ~exotic~ and ~bizarre~ you find Australian things.

Also, The Mangar.

Dec. 14th, 2025 01:07 am
kalloway: (Xmas Ornaments 6 Golden)
[personal profile] kalloway
Taking a brief break from building RG Exia to catch up on other things and eat... And I was randomly reminded of a community that I saw advertised the other day. No check-ins, except for needing to fill out a form for every single post. No exclusions except for this stuff that actually excludes a lot of people (and is overly vague)... All these formats allowed, except actually works have to be transformative. (I suspect the mods literally don't know what they're saying there?) Anyway, the initial hook was a good one and perhaps I'll steal it as it's certainly not nailed down.

RG Exia is an interesting build so far. Unlike any kit I have built, ever, the starting point is the legs. But this is also my first RG so perhaps it's a line-specific thing?

I realized earlier that I haven't heard my upstairs neighbor in at least a few days. I can't remember the last time I saw his car, either, so I guess he's headed somewhere warmer for the season. He always used to, and then stopped at one point, and now I can't remember what he's done for the last few years. ^^;;

Combination hangar and manger, the Mangar is a silver manger with colorful LED lights and model Acerby decorating a little Christmas tree while model 00 Gundam attempts to untangle some garland.


I'm working on The Mangar again this year. I've finally got it (mostly) de-mossed and painted, and mounted the first set of little LED lights I found. There is a ways to go, but that's fine.

(no subject)

Dec. 13th, 2025 08:35 am
kalloway: (Xmas Lights 23 Wood)
[personal profile] kalloway
What an incredibly busy week! The year end slide is absolutely in full force. But I have gotten things ordered, gotten things sent, etc.

Yesterday was a day of shoveling the 'rents out a bit, mailing packages, ordering a holiday pie, and picking up my first 3D printed request from the library. It will need some trimming (okay a lot of trimming!) before I even know if it'll work, but it's a conversion head for an HG GINN, to make it into Elijah's GINN. I did in fact tell boycritter that we needed to run to the bookie joint so I could get a little head. It was also their book sale weekend and I ended up with a couple of books, a few CDs, and a half-sized binder of clear-pages that will work great for model decal storage.

The weather was awful midweek. Just absolute snowpocalypse for a couple of days, and the worst was that it warmed up and then the temperature dropped like a rock, so everything is now frozen hell. It's supposed to warm up again next week but idk how much that'll help. I think I burned a lot of my ability to can just driving from place to place. (Also did some untoward things to my shoulders while working under the dash of an old Mustang.)

Really the only interesting thing from my week was a small brightly colored tank, lol. I did have a couple more of my Black Friday purchases finally roll in and I think I've officially crossed the space-to-store-stuff rubicon. ^^; Time to get building.

Also time to catch up on my inbox.

Travel hopes and dreams

Dec. 11th, 2025 11:08 am
thawrecka: (Amuro Ray)
[personal profile] thawrecka
I'm skipping the question about food recommendations, because I'm going through a phase of disliking almost everything I eat.

[personal profile] littlerhymes asked: "Travel plans?"

These are all contingent on me ever having money again 🤣 which given how rapidly my home is disintegrating and I don't even have money to deal with that, feels unsure.

I have so many.

  • Can you believe that I've never been to Tasmania?? It seems like everyone I know has already gone there, so this will have to be solo travel (I solo travel so often but sometimes I long for company at the airport, you know?). Might be nice for a weekend trip. Of course I have to hit up museums and the markets and have some nice food. The natural beauty would probably be lost on me, and I'm unlikely to see that unless I go with a tour group, what with not driving and all. I'm thinking winter; the historical weather says it's not noticably cooler than Melbourne, though given the closer proximity to Antarctica the winds probably feel icier, but it's not exactly the frozen tundra and I do like to wear coats.

  • I mean, obviously I have to visit Sydney again.

  • The writing conference that I was meant to go to during the pandemic was on the Gold Coast... well, that didn't happen and I'm not going to the writing conferences anyway. But I really want to go to the Gold Coast again. My dad took me and my brother there after my mum died, so to me it's always felt like a place of healing. I haven't been back since a trip with friends in my 20s, which was lovely. But also it has tons of fried food and tacky crap AND I LOVE FRIED FOOD AND TACKY CRAP!!! Theme parks! I'm not overly into beaches, but it can feel ~exotic~ to visit them on holiday.

  • I also haven't been back to Darwin since the 80s, for that matter, so I should probably visit there, too...

  • ...Yeah, I still haven't made it to Paris. I've wanted to go since I was a small child obsessed with sad French art films and ballet. It just costs so much money, though. The kind of holiday I could have for a week in Tokyo for $5k AU (still expensive!) would cost $10k AU in Paris, which is just prohibitively expensive for me right now. Maybe if I win the lottery??

    I am slowly saving up for it, though. And Europe is so far that I will probably only ever go once, so I need to make the most of it when I do.

Tanks A Lot

Dec. 10th, 2025 07:44 am
kalloway: (GSA Gai)
[personal profile] kalloway
It looks like I forgot to mention acquiring a pair of tanks from M at comic-con. (Wait no, I did, it's just buried in commentary, whoops.) They're 1/144 scale and were priced right (as in, I would have paid but didn't have to) and I finally got one built and painted with some paint markers I was trying out.

Because I am silly, and the best thing to do with German WWII tanks is be silly, here is Astray Blue Frame 2nd with a tank:

Blue white and orange model of Gundam Astray Blue Frame Second, a humanoid piloted robot, kneeling beside a matching model tank on a green cutting board.

Blue white and orange model of Gundam Astray Blue Frame Second holding the matching model tank in its hands as if she is offering it to the viewer.

The tank itself needs a bit of glue at some point to not fall apart at the tiniest of movements or drafts, along with a tiny hand-painted snake-mark, but overall it passes the two-foot test and I am pleased. (Blue Frame also needs a bit more work but I misplaced her decals and have gotten varying degrees of annoyed at her color-correction. I'll get there.)

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