A few days after Christmas and all through the house

Okay, now that the fuel pump and fuse have been replaced, as a shadetree mechanic, with my dad, and now that the family gathering is done with, I have the time to post again.

Just over a month ago, this Christmas appeared to be heading towards bleakness, with a side of despair. While I was just recently hired as a substitute teacher, I won't be paid for another month, but it won't be for a second month still before I actually have a real paycheck. Following a full year of being unemployed, with only my selling off parts of my hobby collection as a means to have spending money, I really had zero hope to have any kind of Christmas for my sons.

Over several months of scrimping on anything I absolutely did not need, as well as cutting back on things that I really do need, I was able to set aside a paltry amount of money for a "family" gift. I  belong to several yahoo groups, but to one, I posted a request for information as to where I could obtain some rules an miniatures on sale, under the amount of money I had.

Well, several individuals responded by not telling me about any sales, instead they shipped my sons and I miniatures, paper terrain, and rules. I was, and still am, overwhelmed by such generosity, especially as I have never really been on the receiving end of it. We received enough quantities of items to allow us to have a selection of "good guys" and enough "bad guys" to not have to recycle them every other turn. And the terrain provided will enable me to make a 4x4 table out of scrap plywood that my father has. All of this was totally unexpected and unsolicited, but so very greatly appreciated just the same. My sons' Christmas went from bleh to fantastic almost overnight.

I have pledged to pay forward this generosity as soon as I possibly can, so perhaps another father in similar circumstances may find a bright lining to an otherwise dreary holiday season.
                                                
Now, with my sons and I having a full three weeks together this year, we're working on building our miniatures, terrain, painting, and playing board or card games as often as we can. The result is that I needed to create two new blogs to keep track of our adventures together. Zed Dawn will regale the reader in our post-apocalyptic adventures, complete with zombies, using All Things Zombie: Final Fade Out. Mare Bellicus contains the history of six antagonistic naval empires set in the period 1898-1910. Both blogs are new works in progress (no posts as yet), but I hope to have them all sorted by next weekend (I'm only working on them when my sons are in bed). I will post here on behalf of both blogs, with terrain and miniatures updates, but battle reports (well, most of them) will be posted to those blogs.

I am hoping that by tomorrow night, I will be able to upload a number of pics I took of my sons working on their ATZ characters and our naval fleets.