I painted these three over Christmas vacation. After drybrush-highlighting the larger spider on the woman's belt I decided there was no chance I'd be able to drybrush the smaller ones without making a mess so I left them silver. The little guys are minions from Mechs vs. Minions. The woman is from a pack of figures for general use in games. I wasn't paying attention to my time carefully, but between 2 sessions I probably spent 5-6 hours on the set.
My birthday started out fairly mundane. Get up, eat breakfast, head into my closet to work. I didn't, however, have to make lunches for the girls--it being the first day of summer break.
Breaking for lunch I did my usual Ring Fit exercising. The previous day I completed the story mode for the 3rd time, "Master Mode." At the end of the 3rd completion you get the special clothing that makes you gold and gives you Ring's head.
With Ring Fit I've completed over 102 hours of exercising. That time is actual time exerting your muscles and doesn't include warm up or cool down stretching. In that time I've burned somewhere around 26,000 calories and ran the equivalent of ~156 miles.
After the 3rd time through, the game doesn't have any built-in continuation. So I'll have to figure out something to do to keep me engaged and still exercising. I've thought about wiping my save data and starting over....but I worked so hard to get here!
Once I was done with work I opened presents!
Dinner was at the First Street Ale House and then back home to start playing "TLoZ:TotK" for a bit while letting dinner settle. And then it was time for The Cake.
After cake I completed the first scenario in the "Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game" while waiting to take Heather to swim class.
On our trip to Quebec last year I bought a few French books at a bookstore. "La Planète des Singes" (The Planet of the Apes) was the shortest one (only 190 pages) and I started reading it sometime in November I think. I usually only read it while sitting at gymnastics or swim class. Since it was notable mental effort to read it worked well to focus on it in small doses. Instead of reading a few pages a minute I was reading a few minutes per page.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could understand probably 50-75% of the material. Enough that I followed the story line all the way through and could provide a high-level synopsis, but I definitely missed details and nuance. And I also learned several words by context. Some were pretty obvious: "gorille," "chimpanzé," "orang-outan." But others were less so, like "chaloupe," meaning "shuttle/skiff" which took them from their spaceship to the planet's surface.
Probably the most satisfying moment was near the beginning of the story when I determined the characters were discussing the time-dilation effects of general relativity. I figure I must be doing okay with my progress if I can identify general relativity being discussed in French.
A year and half later and I've finally finished painting the second character from Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion. I only been working on it slowly doing a little here and there while painting other things. I didn't keep track of the time, but it was probably 12-15 hours overall.
I painted this pair a couple weekends ago. I'm working on going faster while still getting results I like. I spent a little over 3 hours on this pair.
