Rest in peace

  With a heavy heart we had to put our beloved cat Baby, short for Baby Tiger down today.

   I knew something was wrong beyond the thyroid issue. We took him in Thursday and got blood work but everything was fine. But then he came home, took a massive poop and then started to blow up over the following week, eating less and less each day.
   I called the doctor today thinking he was constipated or something. It turns out he had 2 massive tumors and a lot of fluid that had crushed 1 lung and was slowly crushing his heart. There was nothing we could do. It was time. The doctor offered to give him antibiotics and pain killers but he gave him less than a week and said he was in pain. As much as we wanted to hang onto him another day longer just to have him, we had to make the tough call.

Nosy!

Baby wanting to be fed. Every 2 hours, day or night. (Yes this happened in front of my computer while writing too!)

   Dad and I are still struggling with the grief. That was dad's buddy, the other old man in the house. They stuck together even though they'd argue. (which was funny to watch. I'll miss it.)

   He was mischievous, loved dogs more than catnip, and loved to cuddle. Most of these pictures are 1-2 years old, he faded a lot in the past year. In the past week he refused to leave dad's room more than 1-2 times a day. I had to pick him up and put him in the litterbox and coax him to go. I had to carry him out to feed him or bring food to him. He got into wanting to drink from a cup in dad's bathroom sink.

I like to remember him like this.

I know Loki and Red will miss him. Loki hasn't let me out of his sight since we got home.

Anytime dad was going somewhere he had to get into the suitcases and bags.

Loki and Baby have been buddies since Loki came home as a kitten. Loki hissed his head off at Baby. Baby wrapped the little guy (at the time) in a headlock and then bathed him until he calmed down.

Lil Red had been something of a trial for the old man. But occasionally he did get the energy up to romp and play with her in 2015-2016.

 

He was such a loveable brat sometimes. He led and the other 2 followed.

I'm not sure I'll miss the 2 hour feedings, but I will miss him cuddling with me terribly. We all do.

 

12/1999 -2/24/2018

Love you seat thief buddy.

Delays...

Okay, sitrep:
I finished the rough draft of TTT last Friday and sent it out to 4 Betas. I'm getting some input but it is slow. I am hoping to get it to the next line by this week. So, getting The Turning Tide out this month is a no. Sorry for getting your hopes up.

What sucks is next month is going to be insane with stuff coming out. (Thor, The Last Jedi, Agents of Shield, David Weber, etc) I'm a small fish with a lot of other big fish all schooling at the same time. Ugh. I'm either going to get eaten or ignored. Oh well, I'll deal with it as it comes.

Anyway, here is the cover. I just sent it to the Betas in a Beta Blast:

I did a scene from the book as usual. I left the explosions as stock since playing with the colors would have made them blend into the lettering.

 

-I am currently bouncing between various things, including updating my notes and adding scenes to Liberty or Death and Scout. I usually take a week off between writing manuscripts but since I'm behind I'm going to try to get into writing Scout sometime this weekend. It has morphed into a full novel from the short novella I'd expected. (yipe?)

 

-I think Wayne's ramping up to update the wiki. He got me to make and render an image of Admiral De Gaulte. I'm thinking about making more characters today. I have a rather long list which keeps getting added to for some reason. lol

 

-The writing schedule has changed. The current plan is to write Scout next. Shelby 2 Shiver Me Timbers has been pushed back to 2019 after Liberty or Death. (which has the Convoy chapter 35 scene in it and has been moved up to this year) I still don't know if I should start the Ragnarok series or finish the Founding series off.

 

-In printing news, I updated my Da Vinci Pro's hot end after the old head clogged up bad. The V6 head works well now that I've got the bugs out. I also added a way to print vendor filament to the 1.0 and it works too, though the filament is cheap. (and I bought 15kg of it!) 

   I was recently talked into trying to print a full size BB-8 for a friend for a birthday gift. (what can I say, I'm a sucker for a single lady who wheedles things out of me with batting eyes, giggles, and gives me a challenging grin)  

  Geesh! I found out the hard way that I could only print one up to 75% in size. She was okay with that. After a full day of printing I gave up. It would have taken 12 days to print the entire beast, (with both printers running 18 hours a day) then a ton of sanding, priming, sanding, filling, painting, gluing, etc. Some of the parts warped and the fit was bad too so I would have been forced to print do overs. I thought it'd run me $20 in filament... boy was I wrong! I re-ran the numbers and came up with $70 in filament. I pointed out that the same static thing (same size) is $45 on Amazon with sound fx and lights to her. Needless to say, it is coming in tomorrow. (yes the lazy man won) 

  I did print her a Porg earlier though, (it's a surprise) so I guess that's some commiseration. That is still in need of finish work, plus the other SW droid I printed for me is on the work bench in pieces. (I'm annoyed that I bought the wrong RC car for it and I found the blasted droid 2x bigger on Amazon for $65!) I'm waiting for the temperature to get above 50 degrees to glue, sand, patch, prime, sand again, and paint it. Pictures coming eventually.

 

That's it for now!

Sitrep

Sitrep:
  Okay, so, oops, I forgot to update the blog. I am killing time tonight before giving Baby his meds before bed and I remembered I'd promised the Colonel and others to prove I'm still alive here. Here I am! Better late than never??

   Now that I got that out of the way, I'll get into the update. I have been struggling with The Turning Tide. This is the first book that required not 1 but 3 rewrites. EVER. I apparently completely forgot the ending of TGS. That's also never happened. Gotten 1-2 details wrong yes. but not that bad.

I hate getting old.

 

   The Betas, especially Wayne have been good about calling me out about my mistakes without rubbing my nose into the age thing too much. (probably because some are older than I am!) But the mistakes and inevitable frustration over them have slowed the pace down. (that, my shoulder injury, and chronic sinus problems that crop up around this time giving me sinus headaches and migraines)
  Anyway, I had thought I'd be done by now. Instead I am on the cusp of the first climax. (the second is finished) Hopefully I'll have it finished by this week and into the hands of the Betas. From there on to Rea and then GoodLife and then you the reader.

   In other news, I finished a couple of minor print projects after having to rebuild my Da Vinci Pro hot end with an E6. I turned them over to their intended recipients at my sister's 40th Birthday Party. (Hey, if she had to push me over that hill a couple of years ago I'm going to retaliate and drag her butt kicking and screaming over it!)
  The party was fun. Tiring, but fun. It was a pity not more people showed up but those that did were definitely boisterous. (this from a guy who has social anxiety disorder.) We all had a grand time. :)

Grr.. upon checking my phone I have found some of the images didn't get saved. I don't know why, I distinctly remember taking the pictures! So, I don't have the pictures of the Genji bust from Overwatch, or the Legend of Zelda stuff I did for Ashley, or the Kylo Ren minifig. the flower thing I did for my sister's birthday, or some of the others. GRR.
My phone sucks. The camera sucks. I admit I have a bad habit of trying to take pictures with it in low light.
Okay, 3 things that did come out:

I got this guy from MyMinifactory for my youngest nephew who is a Red Panda fan. He loved it.

2 of my older nephew's friends are avid Star Wars fans like I am. They are interested in cosplay and I decided to make them their favorite lightsabers. I have since overheard a request for Tenel Ka's rancor one. GRR.
Oh, they wanted them unfinished so they could add lights and detail each themselves.

I also did this for the Kylo Ren fanatic. (he even has the hair!) I had to fill in the seam and repaint it since the body warped during printing.

I tried the acetone vapor on the cockpit hatch and wingtips. It came out okay but they lost detail so I decided not to try it with the bigger parts. (besides, they wouldn't fit in the rice cooker!)

   And finally, 1 some of you Halo fans will recognize. I bought a ton of white ABS that was on sale and wanted to try it out on something. (okay, only 15 kilograms) This is the result. I found out that it warps and bubbles though, so I just acetone treated the skull. I then dirtied it up with some brown acrylic. I think it came out pretty cool, as did my friend and his son. (who went bananas I'm told. :))

  Speaking of all that ABS, a friend at the party saw everything I did and asked if I could make a BB-8 for her girlfriend's birthday. I said okay if it was a static one and small. I tried to talk her into just buying one but she wanted a hand made one.
  Then last night she texted me about making a full scale version. (yipe!) I downloaded the files and no, not going to happen, sorry. Crazy I am, but I'm not that crazy! (I think. Maybe. I hope not. Okay, I'm not sure?) Besides, my printer isn't big enough. (The print volume for each is 200mm cubed and some of the parts are 300mm and up!)
And no, that's not um, okay, let's not go there, shall we??
So, yeah, sorry Giggles. I'll make a smaller one and make it up to you with someone else I just did.

   Oh, back to the books, I've been talking with Wayne about the graphic novel (and looking into buying hardware/software or hiring an artist to do it with me) as well as looking into a cross section book of ships and tech. I doubt either of them will happen this year, my schedule is pretty full and I'm already behind. You will note one of the stories in the comic was mentioned at the end of TGS and in TTT. Eventually I'll get around to filling that void. Sorry.

Anyway, I'm rambling so that's it for now.