Wow.  What a crazy summer.  First, my wife and son head out of town to run a Science summer camp and take my camera, so I couldn't take any photos of the miniatures I've been painting.  Then, there was the out-of-town wedding for an in-law I didn't know (that was actually a pretty good time, come to think of it).  Then there was Texicon 2014 (my first game convention - more on that later).  Then, my son was invited to the Johnson Space Center in Houston as part of his participation in the NASA High School Aerospace Scholars program (that necessitated a trip to Houston for the closing ceremony).  Somewhere in all of that, I managed to finish painting another group of Zombies and a dragon (the largest miniature I've ever painted).

The NASA trip and Texicon were definitely the high points.

Not much to say about the NASA trip other than if you live in Texas and have a High School Junior interested in Engineering or working at NASA, look into it.

I've never been to a game convention before Texicon as I usually find out about them after the fact.  What a hoot!  I played games I probably never would have, met people I would never have met, and had the opportunity to sit knee-to-knee with a professional miniatures painter for over an hour getting pointers on how to improve my miniatures, specifically how to paint eyes and lips to give my miniatures more character. She made it look so simple...I guess we'll see.

I had the opportunity to play a couple of games based on Two Hour Wargames' Adverntures in the Lost Lands, Larger than Life and Colonial Adventures.  The first game had four of us searching the jungles of Nobelonga for a rare flower.  Never found the flower, but we did run into King Kong, some native Shamen and their monstrous constructs, and a whole lot of ticked off natives.

The second game was based on Larger than Life.  Set in 1920s central Africa, the four of us controlled different groups of characters.  I played a despicable Boer slaver.  We were all looking for a lost temple to loot.  For some reason, Tarzan and his wingman (wing lion?) took a dislike of me and harassed me mercilessly throughout the game.  Giant spiders, Ape men, crocodiles and shamen threatened us all the way to the temple.  We never did get to loot the temple as all of us died (Curse you, Tarzan!) except for the female Belgian double agent, who was taken by a giant ape and subsequently rescued by Tarzan.

I played a good game of Empire Builder (think Railroad Tycoon on the table top) and had an unbelievable time playing Twilight Creation's Zombies! with author Chris Philbrook, whom I met during the convention.  I've nearly finished Book One of his Adrian's Undead Diary series and will probably jump right into Book 2.  I'll have to order the follow on books this weekend.  If you like Zombies and The Walking Dead, you'd probably like Chris' books.

The most important "event" of the convention was my son getting out of his comfort zone and jumping into playing games with people he'd just met.  I may have created a monster as he spent over 7 hours at the local game store last weekend during their open gaming hours and just reminded me that we missed a War Machine event tonight.  <sigh>

So, I've got my camera back and if all goes well I'll try to post some photos of my latest round of miniatures this weekend.