Red Plastic-brick Day
I had sort of a rough day at work on Friday, and, after having spent so much of the last several weeks busting my ass to get the latest work project rolling, and getting used to my new job situation in general, and all of those other dull work frustrations, the bad day just sort of knocked the wind out of me, putting me in a generally anti-human-interaction mood all weekend.
I did go out this morning to meet a friend for lunch (and to dawdle around the Virgin Megastore afterward for a while — a whole other story unto itself, in that I figured it would be the one place in town that would have the several obscure CDs I've been looking for lately, as long as I ultimately didn't mind paying the $18.99 or whatever for them. Alas, Virgin had none of them, and I was pretty indignant that I couldn't even resort to a giant trendy overpriced has-everything-if-you-can-afford-it record store and find anything I wanted. I'd even browsed around Bill's Records the other day, and besides getting anal-raped on some Massive Attack singles, didn't find what I wanted there, either). Other than that, though, I pretty much have stayed in and listened to music and watched lots of movies, and flirted with the edge of an encroaching mild depression just long enough to enjoy the antisocial nature of being depressed. It'll go away soon.
Anyway, back to my original point, yesterday, after having stayed up late on Friday reminiscing with Lee on AIM about Lego and Micronauts and Capsela and other 80s toy stuff, I found myself suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to dig out the giant bin of Expert Lego I'd smuggled back from the parents' house last Christmas, and to have a Lego weekend like I used to as a kid (I can remember on so many occasions running home from school on a Friday, immediately covering the floor of my room with Lego pieces, and watching whatever bad movies and cartoons and things were showing on TV all weekend, while determinedly architecting the master building project I had conceived at some point at school, having counted the minutes until I could go home and get to work).
I knew exactly what I wanted to build, too. Somewhere over the course of time, I'd lost the instructions for my very favorite Lego set, a giant car with a working 3 speed transmission, four cylinder engine, rear wheel differential, and so on. It usually took me a whole Saturday to build the thing, so it made for a great time-filling project, but being a model from instructions, didn't have the inherent frustration of trying to engineer something from scratch (I've that found somewhere along the course of growing up, I've lost some of that creativity, anyway). I had given up all hope of ever seeing the car in one piece again until a discovery about a year ago of this site, which contains instruction manual scans for nearly every Lego set ever released (including my beloved car, as you'll find if you click the link). So, Saturday afternoon, I pulled the bin of Lego out, found the right instructions, and started to print them out, only to find that after about 3 pages my printer had run out of ink.
To make a long story short, after an ink field trip early this afternoon, I finished printing the guidebook, poured out a formidable mound of bright yellow, blue, and red blocks all over the living room floor, and started working. Sure, maybe I was regressing, but it felt so good.
The icing on the cake, though, was when I turned on the television for some background entertainment to discover that the movie Wargames had just started playing on a cable channel. It was too perfect. I immediately went into my childlike Lego trance and lost myself in it.
In related news, while digging around in Mt. Plastic for the single remaining flat black rotating piece to finish the steering assembly for the car, I happened across a little piece of black plastic that didn't belong. Right away I recognized it as a road connector for a skyscraper building set I also had as a kid. Not long afterward I also found a plastic piece from an erector set, and a fragment of one of the wheels of my old childhood bed (shattered because I used to pretend I was Superman by leaping off the dresser, sailing through the air with arms outstretched, and landing on the bed — sort of a bedroom bellyflop — it's a wonder I never knocked out any teeth on the headboard or went crashing through the floor into the living room). Those little bits of plastic brought such a smile to my face thinking how easily each of the memories came back. What's more, I suddenly started remembering other little treasures that had wound up in the Lego bucket over the years, growing up (it was always an inevitable destination for any odd-shaped bit of anything the parents couldn't identify) — marbles, game pieces, spare batteries, pieces of Zoids and Micronauts, He-Man swords, various bits that had fallen off model plastic airplanes and ships. Lego archaeology, I named such finds, imagining myself on a dig somewhere, unearthing the only remaining Capsela connector from a misunderstood lost civilization.
All in all, the car is built (oddly it seemed to take far less time to build this time, though perhaps I just have more patience), and it's sitting on my coffee table. I've grinned every time I walk past it tonight, almost like having rediscovered a childhood friend.
I did go out this morning to meet a friend for lunch (and to dawdle around the Virgin Megastore afterward for a while — a whole other story unto itself, in that I figured it would be the one place in town that would have the several obscure CDs I've been looking for lately, as long as I ultimately didn't mind paying the $18.99 or whatever for them. Alas, Virgin had none of them, and I was pretty indignant that I couldn't even resort to a giant trendy overpriced has-everything-if-you-can-afford-it record store and find anything I wanted. I'd even browsed around Bill's Records the other day, and besides getting anal-raped on some Massive Attack singles, didn't find what I wanted there, either). Other than that, though, I pretty much have stayed in and listened to music and watched lots of movies, and flirted with the edge of an encroaching mild depression just long enough to enjoy the antisocial nature of being depressed. It'll go away soon.
Anyway, back to my original point, yesterday, after having stayed up late on Friday reminiscing with Lee on AIM about Lego and Micronauts and Capsela and other 80s toy stuff, I found myself suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to dig out the giant bin of Expert Lego I'd smuggled back from the parents' house last Christmas, and to have a Lego weekend like I used to as a kid (I can remember on so many occasions running home from school on a Friday, immediately covering the floor of my room with Lego pieces, and watching whatever bad movies and cartoons and things were showing on TV all weekend, while determinedly architecting the master building project I had conceived at some point at school, having counted the minutes until I could go home and get to work).
I knew exactly what I wanted to build, too. Somewhere over the course of time, I'd lost the instructions for my very favorite Lego set, a giant car with a working 3 speed transmission, four cylinder engine, rear wheel differential, and so on. It usually took me a whole Saturday to build the thing, so it made for a great time-filling project, but being a model from instructions, didn't have the inherent frustration of trying to engineer something from scratch (I've that found somewhere along the course of growing up, I've lost some of that creativity, anyway). I had given up all hope of ever seeing the car in one piece again until a discovery about a year ago of this site, which contains instruction manual scans for nearly every Lego set ever released (including my beloved car, as you'll find if you click the link). So, Saturday afternoon, I pulled the bin of Lego out, found the right instructions, and started to print them out, only to find that after about 3 pages my printer had run out of ink.
To make a long story short, after an ink field trip early this afternoon, I finished printing the guidebook, poured out a formidable mound of bright yellow, blue, and red blocks all over the living room floor, and started working. Sure, maybe I was regressing, but it felt so good.
The icing on the cake, though, was when I turned on the television for some background entertainment to discover that the movie Wargames had just started playing on a cable channel. It was too perfect. I immediately went into my childlike Lego trance and lost myself in it.
In related news, while digging around in Mt. Plastic for the single remaining flat black rotating piece to finish the steering assembly for the car, I happened across a little piece of black plastic that didn't belong. Right away I recognized it as a road connector for a skyscraper building set I also had as a kid. Not long afterward I also found a plastic piece from an erector set, and a fragment of one of the wheels of my old childhood bed (shattered because I used to pretend I was Superman by leaping off the dresser, sailing through the air with arms outstretched, and landing on the bed — sort of a bedroom bellyflop — it's a wonder I never knocked out any teeth on the headboard or went crashing through the floor into the living room). Those little bits of plastic brought such a smile to my face thinking how easily each of the memories came back. What's more, I suddenly started remembering other little treasures that had wound up in the Lego bucket over the years, growing up (it was always an inevitable destination for any odd-shaped bit of anything the parents couldn't identify) — marbles, game pieces, spare batteries, pieces of Zoids and Micronauts, He-Man swords, various bits that had fallen off model plastic airplanes and ships. Lego archaeology, I named such finds, imagining myself on a dig somewhere, unearthing the only remaining Capsela connector from a misunderstood lost civilization.
All in all, the car is built (oddly it seemed to take far less time to build this time, though perhaps I just have more patience), and it's sitting on my coffee table. I've grinned every time I walk past it tonight, almost like having rediscovered a childhood friend.