My most recent is a complete Death Star w/ box as I have mentioned in another thread.

Well, yesterday my wife and I celebrated our second anniversary. We went into the garage to get the car and go eat...I find, a vintage Death Star playset.

I about flipped my lid. I opened it up, and lo and behold, I find the dionoga and rope for the set. She said it was complete.

I bet my wife is better than anyone elses. I had said a while back that I had always wanted one as a kid. She got on the 'net and searched and ended up at The Earth. I haven't checked, but I'm guessing she got a pretty good price on it as Joe is usually really competitive with his prices.

Anyway, I now have to find a place to put it and display it prominently in my SW room.

I can't get the picture to work here so click on through for the picture. The cat was not included in the gift. He was what I tied my wife's engagement ring around when I asked her to marry me...he was her birthday present that year.

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-4/701369/deathstar.JPG

I'm big into fitness and weightlifting, so I'd like to offer a bit of advice.

For your workouts, start with some sort of cardio training in the morning.  If you are bad out of shape, just do 20 minutes and work up to 30.  This is the optimal time for MOST people to do cardio.  Do this on an empty stomach.  This will allow your body to utilize stored body fat as energy.  When you are finished, drink a protein shake for breakfast.  Do that within an hour of your workout because that is when your metabolism should be at it's highest.  Also, breakfast generally should be your biggest meal of the day.

Next, have a cup of yogurt or fruit for a midmorning snack.  When you start working out, your body needs more fuel to keep going.   I know that sounds weird, but frequent meals keep your metabolism up, thus increasing the amount of body fat you are burning.

Have a light lunch of chicken or something high in protein.  You can always through in a salad for variety.  High protein is the key.  Protein helps your body grow muscle.  In return, carbohydrates store as fat if not used.  Muscle tends to allow your body to burn more fat that carbohydrates.

Midafternoon, grab another snack, maybe a piece of fruit.

Should you feel the need, you could do a weight workout at this point.  Even if you are not trying to build muscle, toning the muscle you do have can help burn off excess body fat.  This doesn't have to be anything long and elaborate.  Simply work something like your upper body one day and your lower body the next.  Then take a one day break and do it again.

For supper, you can have a moderate sized meal, but be sure to keep it low in carbs.  Later in the day, your metabolism slows down and therefore so does it's ability to burn body fat.

If you are still hungry when you go to bed, feel free to down another protein shake.  This protein helps repair the muscle you destroyed when you were working out for that day.  The more protein you take in, the less sore your muscles also will be.

I know this is a lot of info.  Don't get discouraged if your weight doesn't drop as fast as you want.  You will plateau as you mentioned, but keep a positive attitude and you will work through it.  Also, loosing up to 8 pounds a week can be unhealthy for some.  Generally, loosing 2-3 pounds a week is a good goal.  Be sure not to measure your body weight everyday.  Your weight can fluctuate up to 5-10 pounds a day. 

If you have questions, feel free to shoot me a PM and I'll be happy to help you out.

My newest custom is on the way. I've said this before, but I'll go ahead and say it again...some of you guys and gals may have seen my custom gunship and snowspeeder over at RS.  If you haven't and want to, you can run a search over there under custom gunship and snowspeeder.  I go by the same name over there.
Now, I've got a new one in the works.  Hopefully I'll get it together before the end of summer and I've got to start teaching again.

http://www.villagephotos.com/pubbrowse.asp?folder_id=885450

Click on the above link and you'll get 5 pictures so far. Click on each picture and you'll be able to get a description of what I've done so far and will be doing later.

Last year, I got several pretty good deals on figures.

I picked up on eBay an EV9D9 and Barada w/ weapon for $30.  I don't remember if the auction was mislisted or something, but I just got lucky.

I managed to win Amanaman in two auctions in the same night, each I won for $40.  I ended up trading one for an A wing pilot.

I also picked up an ESB 41 back Bespin Han in probably C7 shape for $30.

I also got a number of deals on several Ep I figures near the end of the year.

Crazy stuff.  I was on the way out to the lake on Saturday and talked to one of my little brothers.  He said he was headed for Palm Springs that afternoon.

Yesterday when we finished tubing, he left me an IM on my phone telling me he "was in an earthquake, and it was awesome."  Of course, being from Texas, I guess anything other than a tornado is cool.

He was out later that afternoon playing golf.

Glad though this one was not terribly damaging and I hope it's not the precursor to a terrible one.

I'm finally getting ready to begin work on another custom ship.  Some of you may have seen my Special Ops gunship and sandspeeder over at RS last year.

I'm working on some sort of TIE/X wing ugly fighter.  I've got the wings for a TIE interceptor, have torn apart and W wing and have most of the parts, and have the rotating part of a B wing.  I've got a couple of outlines drawn up but would love to see some more pics if anyboyd has some TIE/W uglies.  I'll be visiting FFURG again, but would love up close photos so I can get an idea on how somebody may have attached the TIE wings to the body of another ship.