Happy Holidays!

Yes, it's happy holidays Chez Entropy, as you can probably tell from the festively decorated Quicksilver in our living room. It's hard to see, but I even made a little Santa hat for the backglass lady... since she isn't wearing a stitch of clothing, the hat should keep her warm as temperatures plummet.

This year the holidays consisted of me and pinball not quite seeing eye to eye. There was the usual amount of panicking and throwing things around, then my brother-in-law from Indiana came to visit with 12 hours notice, then I got sick, then I had to compress all of my vacation chores into about 4 days, and then it was January 2nd and I had three days before I went back to work. About all I'd done so far was more basement cleaning, which hasn't yielded a usable work area yet (though having to beat a path through our basement for a new washing machine did help a lot). It's getting there just not fast, and at this point I'm kind of at an impasse. When I go down to clean I wander back and forth trying to figure out what to do next and after 45 minutes of puttering I give up. I'm going to make an attempt at building playfield storage and I hope that will break the stalemate.

So today was the self-declared pinball day. At first I was going to give a little love to the pinball operators of Montgomery County by touring all of the known games on location (except for the Creature in Montgomery Mall that is inside a theater which requires admission). Then I cut the NASCAR at Chuck E. Cheese because I didn't feel like being treated like a pedophile when I went in. Then I cut out the Funhouse at Beltway Chevron because it was too far south. But finally I got some action. I played Pirates at Dream Wizards and did OK even though the auto plunger wasn't working. I stopped by Max's Kosher Cafe which is walking distance from where I used to live in Wheaton but they closed at 2 today, probably because of that darned Sabbath. The I went up to Sole d'Italia and played Family Guy, revelling in the fact that the sound was turned up and the restaurant was empty, so I could actually hear all of the game's sound effects. Since two pins was a pretty pathetic showing, I fired up Paragon and Black Knight here at home and played a few forgettable games.

Another location story: A few weeks ago my group at work went out bowling, and there was a NASCAR there. The game was filthy, but you couldn't tell because the gameroom was not well lit and the GI was out.

For Christmas, my wife decided she was going to surprise me with a pin-related gift and got me cabinet stencils for Eight Ball Deluxe and Black Knight from a guy who seems to be the stencil-kit king on eBay. It was a nice gift, something I need, but also in line with her agenda to make the games look nicer. As usual she got me another big gift so I felt like she spent too much on me. It's also a huge time suck, and the cabinets on those games don't look that bad... the game that really needs it is Quicksilver, which has a bunch of dings and strapping tape damage. But since it's my lowest production game (only 1,200) that's not going to happen. I could also use one for Lotta Fun, since it's been painted over, but I've resigned myself to making that one myself. So at some point when I do a huge overhaul of the games I've got the stencils for those two machines ready to go.

And while 2009 may not be the year I get around to stenciling, it will be the year I get off'n my butt and fix up those games. It's resolved and everything, along with a couple of other project that have been waiting in the wings. So if my next couple of posts don't show some real movement in that regard, feel free to kick my ass. Hard. With, like, boots and everything.