books

I finished the Lions of Lucerne by Brad Thor today. I realized I never updated the "what I'm reading" do-ma-hickie for that one. O0ps. It was a good read, I'm going to have to start reading more of his stuff. I picked up one of his books on tape for the drive to BrickFair and thought it was pretty good, then spotted Lions at Ed McKay.

LEGO update

So, building a football stadium was cost prohibitive. That little project has been abandoned. I have substantially downsized the farmhouse from BrickFair (and there is no more interior). I'm also working on a couple of other new houses and a train project.

Here's the new, one baseplate farmhouse:

When I finished building the house I picked it up and noticed a problem:

Now I'm happy to say the roof stays put, unless you hold it upside down.

what's up

Wow - it's been a long time since my last post. I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, had an awesome birthday weekend, and watched a lot of football. I thought the book was good, but I'm not sure that it lived up to all the hype. Becky tells me the second book is better. We'll see.

I started a fairly large scale LEGO project, a mini-scale football stadium. It's a long way from done and I want to get it done before I start another project, so LEGO boxes have started to pile up a little bit in the basement. Sort of like books on the "to be read shelf."

What I've been working on lately

Posting some pix of the stuff I've been working on lately. Mostly town stuff...

My first train MOC

With box car

My rebuilt ambulance

Looks a little like a camper, huh?

A little white car. It looks a little like a Golf GTI, although that wasn't my intention.

Interesting fact: this is the first Lego car I've build that has a back seat.

Twitter

I'm on twitter now! Yay me! I'm still boycotting facebook though.

New uploads on Flickr

DSC_0015, originally uploaded by jchanes927.

I uploaded some pix from our picnic at my mom and dad's the other week. This one was one of my favorites.

In other news, I did finish The Desert Spear a week or two ago. I've been too lazy (and busy LEGOing) to start a new book

My Modular Street is Complete

I finished the Green Grocer the other night to complete my street of modular LEGO sets. I have to confess that I don't really like these sets that much. They are too detailed and the builds are tedious. These will be getting a major makeover in the near future.

Also, I figured out how to post pictures from my flickr. YAY!

Mini-cation

Got back from a beach trip with some friends over the weekend and finished up the Fire Brigade tonight. See it here. There's a lot of stuff on the Flickr stream that I have been building lately.

Apparently Flickr won't let you hot link an image any more. (/lame)

Next on the list is the Green Grocer. Then I'm thinking about rebuilding some of my old school official technic sets.

Brick Fair

So, Brick Fair 2010 is in the bag. I'm sure lots of fun was had by all. I know I had a good time. All my pictures are uploaded to Flickr, but I'm going to highlight some of my favorites here:

Yay for half off sets at the LEGO store!

The Tower Bridge - I heard this was the first time it was assembled outside Billund.

Awesome tractor that was built by a guy from Fayetteville.

My awesome (sarcasm) combo build model.

My farm set up.

Y-M-C-A at Dan's drag strip.

Jamie Berard's original cool creator car with working lights.

Matt's railway sign.

Arthur Gugick's Jimi Hendrix mosaic made of printed 1x2 tiles.

Not sure who did these awesome M1A1's.

My next LEGO house will have a curved staircase like this.

PennLUG's dock with a container ship.

I believe this is one of Cale's trains. And it might be the best LEGO train... ever. It's mini-fig scale and will go around a curve. You just can't build anything near the curve of the track.

Dan's NXT band - I've got a video somewhere.

Gugick's Flat Iron Building.

14' tall cranes and a sweet windmill - they came from SC.

This was my MOC's neighbor - very cool.

My other neighbor - I was green with jealously at all the monorail awesome-ness.

Because of this MOC I know a new architecture term - Googie!

Back from Brick Fair

Yikes - there were like 19,000 people there! I'm culling pictures for Flickr now and some day I will post my thoughts about the 2010 Brick Fair.