Hinckley

Thanks, guys! Very much appreciated. 22 days until I go back to the States, so this will indeed be a happy birthday! My family sent cards and I'll open those tonight. I got a very special card from and EB member this weekend, that I will do a review of tonight. Thanks for the kind wishes.

No need. I've edited out the info...

Great topic, JCC! Here's my story: My ex (who is male, for those who don't know, I'm gay) went out of town to visit his family and I stayed at his apartment to watch the dog. He had told me that his place was haunted. He had seen a ghost and heard voices and heard furniture moving in his living room. I just rolled my eyes and humored him. A furniture moving ghost? Did the furniture actually move? No. Then he won't be much help when it's time to move out. Anyway, I just thought he was trying to make the place sound creepy to create atmosphere for a date when we were watching horror movies. Whatever. So I stay in this place alone for a week. It's a Chicago brownstone, or 3-flat. He lived on the third floor and the couple who owned the building lived on the second floor. They were retired and spent the Winter in Florida. This was Winter. The first floor was also theirs and including the laundry for both apartments and then there was storage in the awful and creepy basement. Random tidbit: there was a shaft in the hall closet that went all the way to the basement, for some reason. That thing used to creep me out. I used to always imagine some ghoul or creature popping up out of it when I was putting towels away... Anyway, one night I woke up in the middle of the night and jumped out of bed because the apartment was filled with smoke. I didn't smell anything, but there was clearly smoke everywhere. I had never been in a fire, so I tried to stay calm and just jumped out of bed and ran to the dining room and turned the lights on. The apartment was set up so you could see from the front to the back through all the rooms. A lot of Chicago apartments are this way. When I turned the lights on the smoke disappeared. I turned the lights back off. All clear. It was a particularly bright night, full moon, I believe, and even with the lights off you could see everything in the apartment very clearly. Well, I assumed that my eyes had watered up in my sleep and I was just seeing haze when I first woke up. I checked the apartment and went back to bed. I left the door cracked, as I always did. I've always been afraid of the dark and in this apartment, I felt most comfortable with the door cracked. Wide open or completely closed would've made things worse. Don't know why, that's just how I felt most comfortable. Well, I laid down and tried to get Nukles, the chocolate lab, (pronounced Knuckles, he just couldn't spell very well. He's a dog after all) to come lay up by me because I was a little spooked by the disappearing smoke cloud. I started calling him which usually had him come up and cuddle right away. So, I looked to see why he wasn't responding. He was laying on the bed, at the foot looking towards the door. And his head was cocked to one side. I thought "Oh don't do this." Then, I saw the hairs on his back stand on end. And then he started growling. I said "Nukles, don't. You're freakin' me out." As if he had the capacity to play a trick on me. This is the worst part, the dog has no reason to lie. He senses something, he's gonna get pissed whether I know what it is, can see it, whatever. And that's when the furniture in the living room started moving. That's what it sounded like anyway. I couldn't see into the living room from the bed and I wasn't going to go check. Just constant moving. Nobody lived above the apartment, in fact there was only a small attic and the rest of the building was empty. Didn't matter anyway, the sound was clearly coming from the other room. And the dog was so pissed off. He even barked a couple of times, but I told him to stop and he listened. But he growled the whole time. It lasted about an hour, maybe longer. I just sat there, propped up on a pillow staring at the door. A moonlit night in a Chicago apartment where tree branches are already casting shadows on the floor, and you hear noises in the other room and you're not blinking, you see things. And I saw things. Shapes moving across the dining room, shadows moving past the door. I'm sure that was just my eyes playing tricks because I was so scared and staring so hard... But, it finally stopped around 5 am. And I stayed up until the sun rose. In the morning, the furniture was all where it was before I went to sleep. Nothing out of place. Never heard anything else the other nights I stayed there...

Excellent work, Derek. But as others have mentioned, it would help you and everyone to learn to resize pics. Here is a handy tutorial.

That is an awesome song. However, "heard it on a TV show" huh? I'm getting old Iris is on one of my work mixes, I hear it at least once a week. Hey kids, your old man may listen to Led Zeppeling, well guess what? Robert Plant has a new band! Any of these words mean anything to you?? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LREVZSIcL8

Best of luck with that. Do let us know how it goes.

His assertion is correct. The members of Brothers-Brick are also members of other communities and LUGs. The Technic forum will not count as a separate community. Sorry, but Conchas is 100% correct.

What's the difference between this and the Kingdoms 2011 topic? Nothing. So I will merge them...

The only Town sets I was able to enter so far were the 2010 sets.

Last two songs: Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove by Dead Can Dance Kodachrome by Simon and Garfunkel Looks like Shambala by Three Dog Night is next.

Ah my mistake. Thought I had seen it somewhere though. Belville. Cool. Thanks, Rick.

Castle is a staple of LEGO production themes. I think they are starting over with a primary theme with Kingdoms. I think secondary and tertiary waves will bring back skelly and troll type sets, but it will probably be later in the year. It's just my opinion, but I don't think they'll cancel Kingdoms. I believe it sold very well for them this year.

They don't have patents on all their parts and they've had trouble in the courts lately with certain patents. They are doing their best to protect their remaining copyrights on specialized pieces or concepts like the minifig. And there's no international copyright law, unfortunately. So, if a government allows bootlegging, the law of Denmark can't protect LEGO there.

Our lovable Walrus Admin has a terrific new site function! Having trouble finding a review? This will (hopefully) become a thing of the past with the new Eurobricks LEGO Set Index! While it's currently incomplete (included are all Sci-Fi, Licensed, Technic and Fabuland, but only some Town and Star Wars) in a month or two it should contain at the least all recent sets making it the place to go first. Depending on how this goes it could replace all set related indexes on Eurobricks. Aside from links to reviews it also contains basic set data and links to other major LEGO sites where you can find out more about the set or even buy it! Read more about it and discuss it here!

Most of my work is still ahead of me. Sorry Town fans. My internet is down at home and I can't work on the index from work. I hope to be able to update the Town reviews next week. The programming was all Sieg though. Awesome job, Walrus-face! This is truly badass.

I believe you'll see an announcement about that soon.

I love Eeyore the suicidal donkey. My brother-in-law is on lithium so I know a thing or two about making light of things. Can you also not read the last page of this thread?

Ha ha! I moved that thread. Now nobody will see them until we reveal them. Mwhahahahahaha! I'm checking to see if the SW staff wants to use them as official emoticons in their forum... Can you read that CFC forum?

Yay! That MOC is awesome! I'll post about it in the actual thread.

Oh yeah. You made a buttload back in the day, didn't you? Post them again...in that place where you posted them before. :wink: We should look at those again. It's an amazing set of SW emoticons, right?

I've been making some surprise new emoticons. Actually, I'm making them complicated to spell to encourage people to learn how to spell, but they're new regardless! I'll work on a facepalm...

I think since everyone's asking so nicely, we will have to give the option back. Especially since it brings you all such joy. However, in the future, please try not to blame your depression on the EB graphics. Thanks... Not to make light of your condition, of course. I just have to say - you certainly pulled out all the stops.

Sorry this is so important to you. We're certainly discussing all of the angles. Thanks for your feedback.

We change with the seasons and our theme months and that only affects a couple of forums...

Off topic, I would like to see your latest MOC, but it's just a tiny picture in your sig. I wish it would link to a thread where I could see bigger pictures!