The Dark Bandera

The end of this post is going to be a bit of a downer, so I’ll lead with something that is not: the first item that I officially unboxed, after BreyerFest:

A beautiful, Chestnut variation of the Bandera that I found in the NPOD on Sunday! He really stood out from all the other Banderas there – most of them tended to be a more middle-of-the-road patinated copper – and after circling the sales floor a couple times, I realized I couldn’t leave him behind.

I was planning on getting a Bandera anyway. I was hoping for something from either end of the spectrum – something dark and Chestnutty, or bright like a newly-minted penny. Nothing locally was really doing it for me, until I found Mister Tall, Dark and Chestnut!

He has a couple of minor goobers, but I’ll get around to fixing them eventually.

I also figured getting him was a safer bet than taking a chance at getting a Gloss Saffron. I actually liked the Gloss Saffrons more than the Gloss Indus; for some reason, most of Breyer’s recent Duns don’t do a thing for me until/unless they are glossed, and the Saffron was no different.

But my luck with getting extra special or glossy things at BreyerFest hasn’t been all that great lately, so the Dark Bandera it was….

Now for the slightly bummer part of the post.

I had a major system crash – of myself! – on Tuesday, and I’m still recovering. Basically I came home from work, made a few phone calls that didn’t end well (yep, the Kaalee is gone, gone forever), and then all of a sudden the physical, mental, and emotional baggage of the past couple of weeks fell on top of me.

I had to lay down on the couch and basically didn’t – couldn’t – move for a couple of hours. I’m functional now, but still a bit shaky and trying to take it easy, occasionally medicating myself with homemade brownies.

I think what pushed me over the edge was that I was trying to cheer myself up reading online articles about the value of finishing in second place, and happened to stumble upon this article:

http://ideas.time.com/2012/07/09/why-we-should-emulate-those-who-finish-second-not-first/

In an article published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, Jerker Denrell of the University of Oxford and Chengwei Liu of the University of Warwick reported on experiments that modeled the results of a game played in many rounds. Over time, the most skilled players came to inhabit a second tier of reliable competence. Those who succeeded spectacularly — who took their places in the first tier — were often not the most skilled, but rather were those who got some lucky breaks early on or took big risks that happened to pay off.

Yeah, that’s exactly what I did not need to read: research that actually confirms that second place finishers tend to be more skilled, but less lucky.

This isn’t so bad if you look at it from a business perspective: in the long run, being a consistent high performer is probably better than being a flash-in-the-pan success. You’re still getting some compensation for your effort, as well, though it might take a little longer to accrue.

Being a second-tier placer in winner-take-all competitions like BreyerFest contests, however, offers no such comforts or delayed compensation. Either you get the pony, or you don’t get the pony.

Nevertheless, I had recovered enough by yesterday to dig something out of the body box. Let’s see what comes of a Ponies body I rescued from the flea market recently….

Something in either the Unicorn or Carousel family, I think?