Breakdown

I like some sets and want to combine them, so I buy a whole bunch of them and then cause I'm stupid, and I never get around to it. I have: 14 X 40154 Pen pot house 4 X 60050 train station 2 X 7937 train station 2 X 6394 gas station car wash 2 X 6395 Raceway 4 X 6396 Airport 2 X 6392 Airport 3 X 6386 Police 2 X 6398 Police The only thing that I've managed to do is take two sets of 7745 and 60051 and make uber-long trains.

So . . . with nothing on the schedule for Saturday evening, I decided to hit up a few lego store for the inspirations. Pick-a-brick wall often make me aspire to build cool stuff. Anyhow, I'm picking the bricks and this Asian man approaches. Says: "You look like an expert, how does this work?" So I'm telling him about how you fill one of the two different sized buckets with parts and pay. And then he starts asking questions, like how do you know what you want, then finally realizes that I'm 37 and buying for myself, there's not a son or kid involved, etc. He's kinda blown away.. He's got a 5-7 year old with him in tow apparently his birthday is coming up, and he wants to take him to the Lego Discoverland or whatever it's called. I told him about buying junk, getting the polybag and the coupon and where the Discoverland thingy is in Toronto. He's 47 had lego as a child and is completely unfamiliar with the idea of never letting lego go, he starts asking what I do with the lego, organize, build, etc. My stuff, instruction stuff, etc And he tells me of the battle, his son gets the set, assembles the set, set collects dust (I fight this with myself lots). He wants his son to just free build, and some ideas how to get him to be more creative, etc. I give him some ideas and break out the cellphone and show some pics of my MOC's and lego in general, he has his son look. He starts asking what I do for a career now, etc. The biggest thing that lego has taught me is budgeting of resources, and how you only have so much lego, to make your dreams come true. Life is like this too. Then . . . this kinda shocked me. He turns to his son and says: "I want you to be like him" and points at me. When I checked out, I emptied my polybag into my shopping bag and gave them the remains with the coupon. It was . . . . cool. People are honest with their kids, I was kind of expecting more of a "it's neat how he still like lego but kinda creepy" reaction. I'm a confident speaker, and have good pressence, but didn't expect that to garner that kind of reaction. Shook the dudes' hand twice.

Set # 60097 has always been a curiousity to me but dat price tag tho??? Was @ Fairview Lego store and . . . $183.99 down from $229.99, so I couldn't resist.

The lady at the courier place, shook the box, looked at me and said "try 'n make sure that your kids don't just play with this stuff everywhere in the house, you'll thank me when you step on some pieces." It does recommend from ages 6-12 on the box?? Shrugs?? This also happened, some horrible fat guy started yelling at me for bringing lego:

I don't really have a single friend who's into lego as an adult. My parents were very rigid around me when I was a child. Specifically my mother, she would tell us things or bend reality to her liking, which I guess is good for children in a way. I grew up as "Ricky" and when we moved at age 5 she told me about how all Rickies become Richards as they age. As a result of the move, no one called me Ricky any more aside from family members which greatly annoyed me since it was my "little boy name." As an adult she still employs the same non-sense, After she's asked me the same stupid question 3 times just rephrasing it to try and solicit a different answer out of me, I usually hang up the phone on her. I'm 37 now, and I think that I've discovered the meaning of life, and what I'm supposed to do to make things worthwhile. I don't care what others think. I care about what makes me happy. Most of my happiness is found in those I interact with. There doesn't have to be boundries and rules. There has to be rules within our society, but not within the confinds of your mind, etc. When I was 27, I bought my dream car from my teen years for $2900. When I was around 28-30 I started to play serious ball hockey, I'm a goalie and have a style that is . . . . . worth paying to see in my opinion. When I was 20 I started playing ice hockey - it was my dream as a child, but my parents took that away from me because they were cheap as a child. When I was 37 I acquired my first Lego monorail. When I was 29 I bought my first house, in addition to having a decent sized garage for the cars, I have raspberries, pears, strawberries and blueberries (amongst other things) growing there. When I was 22 I started buying up 12V lego trains that I had only seen on the backs of the 4.5V train sets that we had here. When I was 35 I started really getting back into lego, and buying up all sorts of old sets. When I was around 24 I started buying some of the Transformers that I wanted as a child. When I was 33 I wanted to be a long distance runner despite having a body built to lift weights, in 2015 I ran 10K race in under 1 hour. The point . . . . or my point is you're never too old for anything as long as you really want to do it. I have a high level of confidence, I'm proud of my lego. I'm proud of my accomplishments. If you're quiet and reserved, people will be happy to see that you're up to something.

Usually not brave enough to build in colours like this. Looks amazing!

Not from my experience. Though I usually get PAB and small sets. They usually ship as they become available when ordering on-line.

Generation 1 and Generation 1 reboot Transformers. Pontiac Grand Prix's and hockey memorbilia, mainly Junior hockey.

For whatever reason when someone says Mancave here it means like your basement where you escape from the wife & kids. Fortunately for me (or unfortunately for me, there's no wife & kids). My mancave has locations all over the house. Location #1 is a bedroom entirely filled with Transformers and Transformers posters G1 only. Location #2 is an office with Kitchener Rangers (hockey) stuff everywhere, including official coloured paint. Location #3 is the basement main room which is home to my Xbox Kinect arena, fooseball and air hockey tables. Location #4 is the spare bedroom in the basement that is all filled with Lego floor to ceiling in some locations. Man cave rules: Coasters are a must. Potpurri is baned. Old skool stuff is pretty much a necessity. I'm beginning to think that this might be why my niece & nephew think of the house as some sort of theme park.

http://shop.lego.com/en-CA/LEGO-SERIOUS-PLAY-Window-Exploration-Bag-2000409?fromListing=listing I'm lost as to why on earth this set is even worth $20 never mind: $484.99, can someone please explain??? Do narcotics come in the bag as well??

According to brickset I own 182 sets, 107 of which are unique, for a total of: 35,677 pcs, between Bricklink, pick-a-brick online, random e-bay auctions and pick-a-brick wall I know that my brick total is well in excess of 100,000 pcs. My sets are primarily in the 63XX series, 77XX series (trains) and 78XX series (trains) 6372 X 1 6375 X 1 6378 X 1 6380 X 2 6381 X 1 6382 X 1 6386 X 3 6389 X 2 6391 X 1 6392 X 2 6394 X 2 6395 X 2 6396 X 4 6397 X 2 6398 X 1 6399 X 1 I like my old school town stuffs.

The birthday party was this past Sunday afternoon. I didn't wrap, the barn, so my niece had a little confusion as to whether I had brought the barn to show off to her or it was actually her's. Once she was convinced that the barn was her's for good, she really got excited!! I had acquired two brushes, blue and yellow for the horses. It's amazing with kids what goes through their heads versus yours. She insisted that the brushes ONLY be used for the girl's hair. Not at all for the horses! At first she was swapping hair, tops and heads around on the three female minifigs, and then when she was finally satisfied with their appearances, she started rearranging some of the horse structures, and making a dog house for the little lego dog. This is the very first MOC that I've made to give away. It has me re-thinking my nephew's birthday gift a little. He's at the age where he's more structured and every set that he's received is assembled as per instructions with only the smallest mods. The one thing that I did with both the niece and nephew about 6 month's back was build a pizza oven out of lego. My niece helped sprinkle magic ingredients on the oven, and while they weren't looking and the pizza was cooking I snuck in a couple of lego pizzas, so that when we checked on the oven later there would be some pizza.

Let me start by stating that I never thought in a million years, that building a barn would be a priority of mine. To me its one of the wonders of the Pick-a-brick wall. You get a bunch of horses when you've never had any and then eventually the guilt eats away at you until there's the fine line between sanity and insanity starts to get blurred and suddenly you need to build a farm, or get a job at Taco Bell in an in vain attempt to rescue your sanity. So . . . my first farm project after a 30-year hiatus will be a birthday gift for my one & only niece who's turning 5, I'd imagine that she'll play with it a while, and then finally it will be destroyed. I tried my best to take pictures at every stage of the build of the actual barn portion so that it could be rebuilt if damaged or if regret ever set if after it was taken apart. I can say that there's a very good chance that this will NOT be my only farm project ever. I've enjoyed this lots. I realize that there's a use of what would politically correctly be called "religious iconagraphy" within the MOC. I was thinking of hiding it, but people have built churches. I'd rather that aspect not be discussed, and apologize in advance if anyone is offended. I understand that the barn is probably not overly accurate with windows on the front side (they may have their glass swapped out for bi-fold white glass-less windows that would divide the windows into quarters that was the original intent. I'm curious on opinions on the stairs leave them where they are or move one stud to the left - opinions would be greatly valued. As much as I hate the new green baseplates. I used them for two reasons. I'm selfish and don't want to give away my old classic dark green ones, and my niece if she gets other sets will have these match at minimum. The last picture is dedicated to my Uncle Norris and Aunt Verna. They had a wonderful farm and a huge barn back in the day. One day they removed the massive roof so that they could better access things on the inside and enhance the playabilty of the barn as well. A jumbo jet happened to be flying overhead and I guess the pilot was so distracted by the barn with the intact roof immediately next to it; intact but removed, he crashed the plane into the farm. The crew of 22 and all 387 passengers perished. Fortunately my aunt and uncle weren't hurt in the crash, and most of their animals on the farm were far away from the barn. The crash did have devastating effects on them. One of their brown chocolate milk cows was so spooked by the crash that it always made sour chocolate milk after the incident. I put this here because only you can prevent removing the roof to your barn and shocking a pilot who's flying above it so much that he crashes a plane into the barn.

*FACEPALM* My car was experiencing some electrical issues, so I went out to have a look. The Aux post is broken off completely, to be honest, I have no idea how it got home on Friday.

The meet was a 3800/W-body meet. My car at the front of the line has a 3100 V6, I have a different coloured car the same as the others in the pic, with the 3800. I also have a 1992 Grand Prix GTP that has the 3.4 Dual Twin Cam (DOHC). I'd guestimate that GM only made 20,000 - 25,000 of those engines which by any standards is incredibly low over the years of 1991-1996. I've read up that supposedly they were originally designed for 300HP to the wheels, but the transmission guys came back and said that @ 7500 RPM with that much power, they'd trash every single automatic transmission that GM produced. They're exciting to drive, but unfortunately have a timing belt, and very little room to work with the alternator mounted on the bottom of the engine. This meet that I was at in June featured about 50 5.3L small block V8's in the form of Monte Carlo SS' and Grand Prix GXP's.

So . . . . I just visited a couple of the lego pick-a-brick walls this weekend and this caught my eye. They had both of these models on display, so I used my "filler bricks" and got a couple of cup fulls and this is what I ended up with. The outside layer is "Pick-a-Ball" and the inside layer is "Pick-a-Ball Jr." The first location I was at was completely out of purple 4 X 1 plates, the second wasn't as it wasn't displaying these models. Pick-A-Ball only needs: 120 purple (or any colour) 4 X 1 plates. 120 green 1X2 + 1X2 green hinges 30 2 X 1 modified double clip green plates. 30 2 X 1 modified bar clip green plates. It's incredibly simple and fun to build. Pic doesn't do it justice. Pick-A-Ball Jr. is inside of my PIck-A-Ball and is essentially the same, but is an 8-sided ball of 3 X 3's instead of a 12 sided ball of 5 X 5's. Can't take the credit for this one, but I regress . . . it's an excellent use of otherwise annoying bricks from the Pick-A-Model section of these walls.

They are headlights for the stupid truck. Except for a few stores that don't care to update anything, most have them as a Pick-A-Model.

I'd believe this, but they keep on putting pictures of people swallowing swords in their issues. I guess breaking the law would be seen as different, like celebrating most bank robberies, etc.

My warehouse manager told me that they were LED's but one was burnt out on each. I told him that I was pretty sure that they were some kind of sensor once I saw the pic. Thanks, looks as if I have some reading up to do. What an odd estate auction!!

My understanding is that you will earn points on the entire purchase regardless of how many VIP points you use.

I have no idea. They keep on telling me stuff about not wanting to encourage people parking in fire lanes, etc. They aren't very helpful.

Back in June we tried to set a world record for: MOST RED PONTIAC GRAND PRIX's PARKED IN FIRE ZONE So . . . .fast forward to today and I've contacted Guinness to try and see if we can get into their record book and I've talked to like six people from there, and they all seem to be hell-bent on giving me parking advice. I didn't ask for that. I want to know if we have a world record!! Hopefully when you pick up your edition of the 2017 World Records my car is in it!!

What are these. They are both connected to an old-school 9V battery tender. I got this pic from my US warehouse manager so it could take a while to answer any further questions.

At around 3 years old my nephew learned how to operate my 12V train system by watching me and just going to the controls and doing it. I would caution that there is a bad side to allowing a three year old to play with remote control lego and that's that you do want them to build stuff instead of yearning to be distracted by flashing lights and motors. Sometimes the best way to play is to let them sit down with you and watch you (join you) building.

I really don't like buying Lego from non-lego people. I've accumulated some monorail tracks (about two loops worth). But I only have part of one Lego monorail. That all changes today, I haven't had any luck in getting the stupid red monorail (6399). I took a gamble on a buy-it-now: http://www.ebay.com/itm/LEGO-6991-MONORAIL-AIRPORT-SHUTTLE-6399-TRAIN-MINIFIGS-9-VOLT-MOTOR-PARTS-LOT-/381352712116?hash=item58ca6497b4 Looks like near complete 6399 train with very, very little track and a stairwell. Then . . . . . 6991 again the train, mostly complete (the train portion) and then no baseplates, but lots of junk for the actual set, and what appears to be parts for 7945 (Fire Station) and some other junk. To be 100% honest if you're gonna get any tiny amount of tracks for monorail might as well be straights. In my opinion at least. Perhaps it's my lack of knowledge, looks like a random 9V technic motor in there, what on earth is the 2 X 4 blue brick that's with the 9V components??