Otherworld Miniatures

I ordered a bunch of miniatures from Otherworld Miniatures in the United Kingdom. I had been interested in their stuff for a while but failed to order before the whole BREXIT thing took effect. So I figured this would be a good experiment to see how "ordering from the UK" works for folks in Europe now. Here are the basic facts for my order:

• May 25, 2021: Order filed and Paypal authorized for £54.50 GBP.
• June 8, 2021: Email confirming order is complete.
• June 17, 2021: Package arrives at my house around noon.

I am not complaining about anything here, the order wasn't urgent and no particular delivery date had been promised as far as I know. I do, however, want to point out that a June 1, 2021 email I had sent was completely ignored, so that wasn't great.

Here we go with the entirely predictable "unboxing" photos you've all been waiting for! First the outside...

The package itself. Air mail? Fancy!

Post-BREXIT necessities.

Now the inside...

Hmm... I guess I expected more?

I like the note. Good people.

No bottom padding. Sad.

Finally, the contents...

But everything seems to be okay.

Everything seems to have arrived in good condition, despite my misgivings about the lack of all-around padding. Now the hard stuff begins: I am terrible at assembling miniatures. I mean I am even worse at painting them, but I usually only buy "one piece" miniatures because I know about my distinct lack of skills. Oh well, wish me luck! Now where's that glue...?

Third Grade Memory

I just made a forum post elsewhere and realized that I should push this "third grade memory" of mine out here as well. Don't worry about the context.

In like third grade, in the winter, after school, before heading home, we'd go over to the church. Lots of low, curved walls with snow on top there. We'd sketch buttons and screens and stuff into the top of those walls and we'd play out some Star Trek re-run from the night before. Someone was Kirk and someone was Scotty and so on. We decided on the fly what we could and could not do and what would happen. We did this for about thirty minutes to an hour, then went home for lunch and homework and comics and stuff. When we played next, a day or two later, we'd keep some of the decisions we made before, others we redid, new episodes added new information, etc. Nobody wrote any of that down despite us having a grand old time for weeks of school.

Plenty here that sort of dates this of course. Kids these days don't seem to get out of school around lunchtime anymore, instead they are forced to do "pedagogically sound" stuff that others thought up for them in the afternoon. And if that wasn't sad enough, if one of them would actually complain about not liking those "well-designed exercises" they'd get some kids-level psychoanalysis next week. Oh well, I guess it's progress?