The Box arrived safely in beautiful Huntington Beach, but I was a bit disappointed to see the damage some of the figures have suffered. Nothing extreme, mainly paint chipping and much bending of weapons and arms. I think that second box will go far in protecting them the rest of the way. I don't think the T-34 will ever be quite the same. I really like the pirate girl and the falconer (though he had some minor chipping).
I had really wanted to paint one of the figures from the box, but when I went through the remaining figures none of them grabbed me so I was a bit bummed.
Instead, I substituted the LoTR Dwarf for Rufus the Warg Rider.
This fellow is a veteran LoTR figure (one of the first that I painted) and has bitten the dust in the name of the Evil One more times than I care to think about. So I thought maybe he was due for a long vacation, see the world a bit, you know.
My wife took him to work (Disneyland) and showed him the sights, did the tourist thing.
He seemed to like meeting Donald Duck.
We then took him down to Huntington Pier (he had never seen the Pacific Ocean before) - sadly, we are suffering from an early bout of June gloom so it wasn't all that sunny.
We had a "photo op" with one of our local dignitaries, too.
Also, when looking over the figures left to paint, I noticed that the count was off. One short, so I added an extra 25mm bandito gunfighter figure I had laying around.
I am going to mail it off to Washington tomorrow (Monday, May 8th, 2006).