After spending 10 years commuting into downtown DC on public transportation, I retired early in 2022. After three months it was obvious it was premature so I then returned to work as a contractor for a medical museum a bit closer to home. Three months into the new job my wife began treatment for serious health issues and six months after that my father passed away. Just as Life™ seemed to be settling down from all that, the drastic reduction in the federal workforce starting in 2025 made both of our jobs untenable. So, early in 2025 we began looking for a less expensive location where we could afford to permanently retire.
In May 2025, we purchased a house in the state of Delaware and started renovations. We left the DC area and moved into the new house at the beginning of November. We’re now putting down roots in our new community. Needless to say, it’s been quite an adjustment—so far a happy one. Life ™ seems to be back on track.
I’m hoping to make contact with local historical gamers. Turns out this town has a fairly large FLGS. Though, I did chuckle when the employee I was chatting with assumed that when I said I was interested in historical games he thought I meant early Games Workshop. Anything other than GW simply wasn’t on the radar (or on the shelves!).
However, after posting a ‘seeking gamers’ post on the Lead Adventure Forum, I made contact with Rob D. who is a member of the Harford Area Weekly Kriegsspielers, or HAWKS. We’ve gotten together for two games now and I’m looking forward to more.
Turns out, I’d already had contact with HAWKS. In downsizing for the move I had purged much of my accumulated gaming material by donating it to the club as they do a fair amount of youth recruitment. Honestly, though, I hadn’t even thought about the club when we chose move here. I didn’t really know where it was located. Turns out, Rob lives about 20 miles away and the club meets about 40 miles away. So I’m hoping I’ve found a compatible group of gamers.
So the question remains, what have I accomplished hobby-wise in the past four years?
Figures.
Well, I have done some figure painting—look for upcoming posts—including Athena and Polyphemus to go with the Trojan War figures and, of course, I’ve continued to collected and paint 1/600 scale American Civil War models. I’ve added quite a few resin printed Civil War ships.
Simulator Models.
I continued experimenting with FlightGear and was moderately successful at developing sailing ships for the simulator. While I never achieved very accurate physics for the ships I am proud of what I accomplished and how much I was able to implement in sail control and performance. In fact, I even built a ship’s wheel controller to allow me to control the virtual vessels.
It’s been a few years since I’ve worked on this project. Just last week I installed the most recent version of FlightGear and discovered that some of the functionality has changed and my ship models don’t work as they used to. Whether I dive back into this project to fix things is yet to be determined.
Model Ships.
Most of my hobby time was spent building model ships. I started out with a 1/72nd scale wood kit of a Viking ship but quickly progressed to more intricate card models.
I really enjoyed these builds and I’ve acquired a number of other kits. I’m not quite sure where I’ll find the space to continue building these, though.
The Future?
Well, I think I'll be back gaming again. And that means concentrating more on figure painting rather than physical or virtual model making. And probably more frequent blogging. Still, I think I've got plenty of fall-back options!
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