Getting to know you.......Greatest event in your life

[SJB]

Hmm... greatest moment...

okay, I screwed up the paintjob on a Rat Ogre that was part of a Golden Demon entry back in 1999. Doesn\'t sound like much does it?

Well, stripping the figure to start again delaminated the greenstuff I\'d slapped on it and it came out a total mess and pretty much a lost cause. Still doesn\'t sound like much.

This was the Friday before GD and the Rat Ogre was the last piece of a Mordheim gang. I\'d already made the base and there was a gap in the centre for a Rat Ogre. I needed a new one. My local GW were out of stock. Even with Special Delivery, mail order couldn\'t get me one. I was stuck. Still doesn\'t sound like much...

After a couple of hours of frantic thought I looked at what I did have: A roll of greenstuff. Now, I\'d always wanted to sculpt figures but I was useless at it and every attempt had ended in utter disaster. However, my need outweighed my ability and so, over the next 24 hours I taught myself to sculpt and sculpted a Rat Ogre. And it was pretty good. Then painted it in a mad frenzy. And then went to GD and my gang didn\'t win anything (it was in the Open).

This was, however a momentous day in my life. In sculpting the Rat Ogre the whole process suddenly made sense and I started to wonder if maybe I could sculpt figures. So I switched to sculpting 28mm humans and a few months later got a job at Wargames Foundry as a trainee. And from there freelancing for GW and then others... and then my own company.

That Rat Ogre gave me my career and the major thrust of the next ten years of my life. Scares me to death thinking what would have happened if I\'d got the original paintjob right. Might never have figured it out...

And the other (negatively) greatest event was coming down with the blasted illness that kicked me in three years ago. Some kind of migraine related issue that literally brought me to my knees and had me trying to put my life back together from ground zero. That was, and still is, pretty monumental...

 

[Sand Rat]

Depends on how you define greatest event in your life, but I would have to say seeing the elephant on the night of 29 June 2009.

Having a 120 mm rocket go off 80 feet from your bed makes one reorganize your priorities.

 

[slah]

@ Shawn and Scott: Thanks - it always helps (for purely selfish reasons, but what the hell ).

I have to admit that I cried like a little girl when we got the diagnosis (allthough my wife allready suspected it before), but today - 2 years later - it really just is a part of every day life in a way which I never would have thought possible before we realized we have a child with a lifethreatening/shortening diagnosis.

But then again who can be miserable with someone like this running around

...yup - she likes pink!

 

[daddyo]

it\'s good, really to be able to read these things and know we\'re not the only ones struggling. perhaps the struggle drives our muse out of her sleep and makes us paint and sculpt.
lizcam, thanks for the opening.
pegazus: i lived in denver 6 years, i remember that blue sky (when it wasn\'t smoggy).
chrome: i understand the painful back, and maybe begging for death. four herniated discs do that. the feeling is indescribable. do your excercises, man!
steelcult- hell of a way to wake up and see your elephant. my c-130 got shot at and hit in el salvador. great fun.
slah: she\'s a cutie, it\'s a blessing for you to know her and us to meet her.

my parents divorced when i was 15. screwed me up big time. thanks dad. you\'re supposed to have an affiar with a prettier woman that cooks better than your wife. stupid.

the results: state farm insurance headquarters is in columbia missouri. they have this beautiful fountain, shoots water some 60 feet in the air. there _was_ a laundry detergent called \'salvo\' on the market years ago- a big tablet, one per load. they fly just like baseballs. did you know that a fountain pump cannot pump soap suds? neither did i. i ended up in the air force, gonna see the world. they sent my ass to utah.

the squadron i was assigned to was a test and development unit. great fun, building stuff and blowing it up. we worked on stuff so classified that sometimes we had to provide our own security.

guarding a certain piece of equipment, i had to shoot and kill a man who failed to stop on the third \"halt.\" ruined the rest of his entire forever. it sent me to the lockdown ward in the hospital for three weeks, even though it was ruled a good shoot.

many more mis-adventures ensued.

i married a good girl, our 25th anniversary is the end of this month. i asked her dad for her hand, he was pleased i did that. then he got pissed that we eloped that night. he got over it.

we have a son, he\'s 20 now, plays d&d with his old man on occasions. i work at a naval shipyard, repairing the electronic equipment that gets busted before the navy takes over the boat.

i\'m happy to be a minor member of this community, and am trying to learn something every day. i might even accidentally get some pics posted one day. who knows?

 

[Gearhead]

Wow, folks\'re really opening up here!

One of the most pivotal moments of my life was almost getting kicked out of college. Actually, I did get kicked out, but I appealed and was readmitted before the summer started, so it never really took effect. It forced me to take a real hard look at myself (first time I\'d done so since middle school,) and deal with all the crap that\'d been festering for so long, and screwing up the ways I was approaching everything (divorces can really be devastating, can\'t they? Thanks a heap.) It allowed me to shed an awful lot of baggage, deal with the past, and enter a different field of study that I took to like a bear to a log full of gummy worms and, while still not 100% perfect, my life took off like a Saturn-IV the very next quarter.

Now I\'m in a Ph.D. program in a field that I love, I\'m surrounded by brilliant people, married to a wonderful girl who foolishly kept up a long-distance relationship with me for 5 years (even though I took an unannounced break for 6 months to have a disastrous fling with this one girl from high school that I\'d not gotten over...this was before the Pivotal Moment), and I\'ve got great career prospects when I graduate that\'ll allow me to do almost anything I want, make a positive difference in other peoples\' lives, and make a decent living doing it.

But dammit, all I want is to be left alone and develop my painting!