A Picture of my son from College & Some New Gaming Loot

I received this copy of the formal class of 2017 picture from Carnegie Mellon in a recent alumni email.  The mascot for CMU is a Scottish Terrier and I thought it was a pretty neat formation - I hope James B over at Exiles blog gets a kick out of the picture as he's a Scottish Terrier fan.  Sean is in the front leg, extreme right of the second row.

The big news we have from his ongoing orientation week is that Sean has been moved up a few levels in Physics by the department chair who is actively swaying him from engineering to physics with a very creative tag line "Engineers are hired to fix problems that are know, Physicists are hired to find those problems first"  Very catchy, but I'm not sure how many jobs exist for physicists outside of academia and the government.  Oh well, at least he's very excited about school.

On the war gaming front a few odds and ends arrived as I begin to stock up for the fall/winter painting season.  First up I just received 2 box sets of Windsor Newton Series 7 paint brushes. Each set has 4 brushes sized 0 through 3.  Dick Blick was having a sale (through Amazon).  If you haven't tried a Windsor Newton brush I really recommend you give them a shot.  While they are expensive, I've found my painting has improved dramatically with them AND, if cared for, they last much longer than other less expensive brushes.  All of the ACW stuff I painted was done with just 2 Windsor Newtons and those brushes are still serviceable as almost 9 months of use.  The guys over at the WWPD blog did a review of the Windsor Newton Series 7 which can provide more information - here's the link.

I also received my copy of the new ACW rules and cards from Sam Mustafa, "Longstreet".  My initial impression after a quick read last night is very favorable.  I'm looking forward to putting a game on in the next few weeks to try the rules out.  The game looks to have a very nice balance of simplicity and command friction (via the cards).

As for the gaming room, progress has been made toward final approval by executive management (AKA my wife).  I think I'm beginning to see her master plan with this project.  It seems that a recurring response to granting an approval for some aspect of the project goes like this.  "That's wonderful dear, but if you're going to repaint the game room, you might as well repaint our dining room and replace the old dining table chairs that you've been promising to do for years..."  This game room project may require me to redo the entire house!