I'm not dead yet :)

Just a tad busy. Well, a lot really. Real life intervened a bit with the end of my contract and a last minute extension for another 3 months, so you can imagine the hobby had a little less attention.

But what have I been up to? Well, several things:

• Been reading up on Freeplay '88 that arrived last week, picked out Scenario 2 - Opening engagement as my starter scenario due to the forces involved. I'll need a Sovemenny, the Evertsen, HMS Illustrious, 4 Harriers and a merchant vessel  in the 2600-5500 range. It also mentions a AEW helo near Illustrious.I have everything here and ready to be painted except Illustrious, cause all I have is the HMS Ark Royal when that name was carried by the Audacious class carrier. Must learn to read next time, so need to order one for that. Good thing Navwar service is really quick. Scenario is a weird one, the Sovs deploy either the Sovremmeny OR the cargoship, and NATO is assuming it is a Sovremenny so has to attack. How fast is up to NATO. If I'm to cautious the Sov can sink us, if I'm not cautious enough I might blow a neutral merchant out of the water. Oh, and since the Evertsen is so close to the Sov it might get bombed by the harrier flight instead. And did I mention the thick fog? Should be fun and a nice learing curve for me.
• I've been working on a scenic item that has just passed the 3 meter length mark. That part is now fully finished, just awaiting another delivery of bases so I can finish off the remaining 50-100 cm's and expose it to the public.
• Since I'll be moving in with my gf in the near future I've got time to plan out my new workspace and make it as optimal to my needs as I can. I picked up 2 paint racks with room for 100 vallejo bottles each, so I can actually see my paint instead of keeping it all spread over several boxes. 
• In preparation for that I'm going over all of my Vallejo, cleaning the heads, adding beads and a few drops of acryllic thinner to improve or restore the flow of the paint.
• I've been allocated a certain amount of space in the house by my dearest (bless her) which will involve me thinking long and hard about what I want to bring over. And I'm still thinking :)
• I discussed my gaming budget and future for my projects with Piers, and the end result was rather surprising..... I'm going to try out a 100 euro budget for July and August, and a 0 euro budget after that. That doesn't mean I won't spend any money but that if I want to purchase something I have to make sure I sell stuff to fund those purchases. Still means I need to keep tabs of what I do though, as after calculating a bit I found out I've been living on a 250 a month budget for the last 2 years (not counting what I sold in that period) which was a bit of a Yikes! moment.
• I made a bit of progress with my stock count and cleaning and basing all of the vehicles I've purchased in the last 2 years.(that I want to keep). Looks like I have enough in stock to keep me going for years.

Pretty busy. Much to do. Oh, and the next planned purchase: About 50 of these guys (meaning 50 headswops....aargh)