Santa? you say. But it’s AUGUST!? Well, see…. When we got back from my sister’s yesterday, Kasul headed into the bedroom to dig deep into the closet and pulled out a box. “You might think this isn’t the right time for this,” he said, handing me the box. Not the right time? I thought, as I opened it to see an Advent calendar. “Oh, an Advent calendar?” Kasul panicked and yanked the box from my hands. “Wrong box!” Well, that’s my Christmas ruined. He went back to the closet and brought back the a different box. “You’re sure this is the right box?” Kasul smiled. “Pretty sure.” Right on top was a Hello Kitty tamagotchi, brought back from England. It’s a lot smaller than regular tamagotchi, and it is more egg-shaped than the usual sort, such that the small screen is recessed so deeply into the egg shell that it’s actually impossible for me to see it. I did hit some random buttons, and whenever it beeps, I hit some random buttons until it stops. The little critter isn’t Hello Kitty; she pops out to feed or play music for the critter when you hit buttons. So no, the critter doesn’t become Hello Kitty, star of stage and screen. But the critter is apparently her foster child or something. Interesting note: I just learned that, canonically, Hello Kitty is from London, so having a HK egg from Old Blighty itself seems appropriate. I messed up setting the time so it thinks morning is evening and night is day. I believe my critter may be turning into a vampire. The nicely bound manual of retro game collecting is really amazing. It’s weird that they include prices in it; something makes me think they’re probably out of date (since the book was published in… 2008), but I guess you can get an idea for the relative rarity of retro games. This one includes Vectrex games. I think they just have the official games; they don’t do a lot of the homebrew games. That’s one of the things I’m really looking forward to with the Vectrex Mini; easy loading of the homebrew games. They have a Battlezone clone that I am very much looking forward to. Last and certainly not least was the core of a Malifaux crew, the Explorer Society Apex keyword, led by Lord Cooper. I’d gotten the title box for this crew from prize support for a Malifaux tournament last year sometime. I’d mentioned to Kasul that I was looking for a more “shooty” team after some bad experiences with other ranged crews. Lord Cooper is a monster. He hunted everything that could be hunted on Earth, so he moved through the Breach to Malifaux to try his luck there. There he found his preferred prey — people. People who have been changed by the magics of Malifaux, or people just too poor and desperate to get out of range of his gun. An earlier accident left him wounded, near-fatally. Malifaux’s tech and magic rebuilt him different. Somewhat less human, somewhat more of a monster. But now he’s my monster. Kasul mentioned the timing wasn’t right because I’ve been putting together my M&SU crew, led by Toni Ironsides. But I dunno. I might just have to work on Apex first. The one issue is that since I don’t currently have any Explorer Society crews, I don’t have the Explorer Society versatiles, which will limit what I can build to some extent. Anyway, had a great time visiting with my sisters, cousins and others of my extended family yesterday, and opening the gifts when we got home 🙂 Hope you’re having a wonderful day as well.