Damage Report: Toronto 2007

Sorry for the lack of posts but, I was out of town on my annual trip to Toronto. I don't have much to say about the trip itself but my friends know me too well and have already asked if I accumulated any goodies.
My first stab at this post organized everything by day but I've decided to sit down and completely re-edit the thing because I felt it ...just sucked the way it was. So I broke down the list into topics.

Missing comics: to be blunt, my ulterior motive for visiting family is to also scour stores for missing items from my collections. I managed to find G.I.Joe Special Missions "Manhatten." Elsewhere I grabbed 4 issues of Warhammer40k "Damnation Crusade." Sadly I'm still missing one issue (hopefully I can still find it locally for cheap). I also stumbled on a collected edition of Tony Takezaki's "Space Pinchy" which serves as my guilty pleasure for the month.

UFS cards: If there's one thing where my brother influences me, it's my gaming habits. He has a funny way of looking at value-for-money. He's willing to spend a little to save (I tend to disagree with this philosophy). But in total, I spent over $100 in cards and related supplies these last 14 days. We found a crazy good deal on cards if we bought in bulk. So my final tally was actually 2 booster boxes (24 packs each). And I also picked up some fancy card sleeves (just under $10 for 100 sleeves). I've been home 4 days and I still haven't opened all the packs yet so I haven't really taken the time to tweak my decks or build any new ones. On a side note, I also found a small store that was selling individual character cards for a dollar apiece, luckily, I haven't opened any packs yet to find doubles of stuff I bought separately.

Gokin: I bought CM's Patlabor Ingram die-cast metal figure. I think I overpaid by just a bit, but it's all subjective because I didn't have to pay for shipping and handling. I'm happy but for a minor Quality Control issue on the paint (one of the prominent stencils seemed to be mis-applied). Bummer.
You know, for the months where I skimped and saved, this shopping trip was a on the light side for robot toys and kits.

Gashapons: When will I ever learn not to waste my time and money on non-gokin mecha toys? I picked up a couple of Front Mission trading figures. These are blind-boxed little PVC-plastic robot toys ... the operative word here is "cheap." On one of them both hands broke at their wrist joints. One side I could 'repair by drilling it out and plugging in the optional hand. I guess I'll just super-glue the other back into place. On the brighter side, I also found an entire set of Evangelion SD people. They're funny and cute... I'm thinking I'll let them live in my cubicle.

Lastly, I finally have my own set of Settlers of Catan. It's a strategy board game where players compete (or work with alliances) to expand their populations on the "Catan Island." I already got a lot of mileage from it during my time in Toronto.