Retiring from Modeling...

William:

Sorry to hear that circumstances have led to your leaving the model scene.

I hope that you will still post here on RMS? You were always ready to assist other modelers and to lend a bit of reason to those threads that managed to get out of hand.

You'll be missed, pardner! Good luck!

Rick Fluke Arlee, MT

please don't leave rms.

Time catches up with us all, I'm finding.

At 47 myself, I'm rearranging my own priorities due to my Crohn's disease...starting with dropping out of my band, and most likely never being able to fly again (but that's not for certain...yet). At least I can still build models...

All the best of fortune to you and your wife.

That's a real shame; at 50 I myself am at the point where my eyes are having trouble with seeing the little details, and a case of phlebitis in my right arm has taken away a lot of my dexterity in my right hand, and building models was one of the great joys of my life since I was around 6. God bless both you and your wife.

Pat

me being 48 and needing reading glasses to read mags and instructions I do see the light at the end of the modelling tunnel....will probably keep the big kits with the bigger parts and unload the small things someday.... maybe I'll stop too and learn how to play all these friggin guitars...

good luck in retirement. but it may draw you back someday. you'll smell paint, the scent of burning styrene... will always be with you.

Craig

snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net wrote:

The strange visions the Testors liquid cement brings on; I once wrote a posting about that. in regards to the Ertl re-release of the AMT multiple space rocket set:

" XXX wrote >It's been a while since I looked in the boxes, but do you get a bonus CSM >*and* LM. or just a bonus LM? From memory it is just a bonus LM which makes >sense in that with a Saturn V *and* a Saturn IB in the kit you need two >CSMs, and it is probably cheaper to just give away an unneeded LM than it is >to set up extra CSM-only moulds...

For some reason that I never did figure out, the kit included one or more of both the CSM and LM- what makes this strange is that they were molded on a separate "tree" from the rest of the rockets; as AMT sold them as a separate kit unto themselves. (Whoop-tee-doo for the young space enthusiast who's parents gave him this tiny gift rather than the Almost God-like Revell Saturn V; or wonderful Apollo/Lem kit with upper S-IV B stage and escape tower in 1/48th scale... I say that we track down the address of every Commie-Loving Pinko Parent who thought that they COULDN'T afford a DECENT Apollo model for little Timmy; and have Buzz beat them to within an inch of their Miserable Red Lives- so it may have meant taking a second job....would you prefer Timmy to be a ROCKET SCIENTIST...or some DOPE SMOKING, ANTI-MOON HIPPY because YOU couldn't spring for the few extra dollars that the child needed for a REAL model of an Apollo?! My parents bought me THE GOOD ONES, and as Monogram Models assured us on the side of their model kit boxes: "A Boy's Future Begins With Model Building....".... ABSOLUTELY FUKIN' RIGHT, MONOGRAM! I remember those days... frantically gluing and painting those wonderful models in our tiny unventilated kitchen dinette, woozy as hell from the fumes of the Testor's paint and plastic model cement, and thinking: "THIS IS HOW MY FUTURE BEGINS- I DON'T NEED DRUGS!"...and from the ceiling, Wernher von Braun would reach down to congratulate me on my civic patriotism, and place his winged, purple-clawed hand into my translucent twelve-fingered one.....excuse me....I seem to be drifting a bit.) I have no good explanation for why the the extra ones are in the kit- they showed up in their separate kit form by the dozens once at our local Surplus Center Store, being sold for 50 cents each- maybe ERTL had so many left around the warehouse that they stuck them into the kits just to get rid of them, and add a little extra heft to the box.

Pat"

I dont want to give a health lesson or act like I'm any kind of expert on the subject but I think diet, physical conditioning and protectoing your eyes from the sun play a big role in eyesight as well. I'm 37 and fortunate enough to have had good vision without corrective lenses all my life. Although I'm finding I have to squint while painting and such at my work bench these days. I try to exercise when I can ... take vitamins ... and eat plenty of spinach and fish. Beta-carotene and lycopene found in vegetables, and omega 3 fatty acids found in fish have been found to reduce the risk of cancer, protect against heart disease, improve the function of the immune system, reduce age-related macular degeneration and the development of cataracts. The rods and cones of the retina in the eyes are very rich in DHA, one of the fatty acids found in fish oils. Hence, a deficiency in dietary fish oils will reduce the photoreceptor activity of retinal cells, and thus reduce visual acuity. On the other hand, supplementation with fish oils (or flaxseed oil) could lead to visual improvement with enhanced color perception. Oh yeah ... and I always wear sunglasses on sunny days ... while driving or working when I can. It's the UV rays that cause damage to your eyes. That's why it's important to wear shades that block UV rays.

Chris

That, and battle the Sea Hag. ;-)

Pat

I'll second that...I dwell in the Mojave, where sunglasses aren't an option...and even though docs will tell you that diet plays no role in Crohn's, anyone that actually has the disease will definately tell you different.

I've had 20/15 or better vision until I was 42, and a GDX of my eyes show I have a retinal neural density which is enough above average to get my doc's attention - even in a community of fighter pilots. I can see 20/20 or better with glasses now (astigmatic correction only), but I still feel like I'm handycapped in comparision to the eagle-eyes I had before.

Unfortunately for me, my eye problems are what is known as an "extra-intestinal manifestation" of my Crohn's disease. In fact, my development of Iritis (white blood cells attacking the lining of my inner eyeball) several years ago was just a pre-indicator of my intestinal disease. There's a trifecta - Crohn's or Ulcerative Colitis, Iritis, and Arthritis. I have two of the three out of the trifecta, though I'm also starting to have increasing discomfort in my joints.

All are inflammatory diseases involving having an over-active immune system and white blood cells inappropriately attacking healthy tissues of similar classes, so I have to be very careful about doing anything that will actually strengthen my immune system. I jokingly refer to it all as "anti-AIDS", but that's just my sick sense of gallows humor...I used to jump out of airplanes for fun, too...

...never order seafood in the middle of the desert...I've been poisoned that way more than once, until I caught on.

I'm an amateur paleontologist, and remember reading about a group of kids getting together with a old dinosaur hunter and asking him what the leading cause of death among paleontologists was: Snakes? Spiders? Man-eating natives? Angry tribal gods? His reply: Tuna salad, followed closely by egg salad. Other than one guy he knew who was crushed when a sauropod leg bone that he was excavating under broke free from a hillside and crushed him*, the leading cause of death was leaving Tuna or egg salad in a car on a hot day while out excavating, and eating it on your return...after the food poisoning microorganism growth was going full tilt in it.

• Which, he stated, the guy would have probably thought was great, as he might have been the only person who actually was killed by a dinosaur. Remember those horrible Pyro dinosaur kits? I could have done a better T-Rex than that with a knife and bar of soap. I actually had every single model on these two pages of their catalog:
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  ships were _tiny_, though just the right size to play naval war games with, or float in the bathtub. Their guns on the other hand were a lot of fun:
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  Pat

That's getting back there...

...he probably would have also liked my corollary rule - never go where you can't breathe, or you're not at the top of the food chain.

That one keeps me clear of safari, submarines, and space travel...

Sorry to hear that life is playing this trick on you both. Good luck and God Bless.

Bill Banaszak

You'd never, in a million years, think it was possible to fall into quicksand in North Dakota. It sure came as a mighty big surprise to me, let me tell you. Luckily, it only came up to my midsection, so I was able to walk out of it. "Jungle Jim" comics had never warned me about this threat outside of African or South American jungles. :-D

Pat

Sorry to hear of the problems. I hope you will stay enegaged via this group. I'm sure your wife appreciates the committment you are making to her.

My eyes remained good until about fifty. The major problem I have now is depth perception - failing fast. Frustrating.

Follow the posts here and help us along when we have questions.

Art

"William L. Powell" skrev i en meddelelse news: snipped-for-privacy@enews4.newsguy.com...

As others have written: You will be missed. Hope that you will not drop the group completely. You have a lot of knowledge, that we, who are not as skilled, benefit from. But first things first, and that is your wife. Take care, both you and your wife.

God bless you both.

Went hiking in a peat bog in Illinios as a Boy Scout once...jokingly asked the guide how many bodies were at the bottom of the bog underneath us. He answered "four". The guides were there to pull us out during the hike if we needed, and we needed. Yeah, I can believe it.

Don't know if Moramarth is out there listening but he told me some scary stories about peat bogs around his home area. It's not something most of us Americans think of when it comes to jolly old England.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.