Grady's 4th birthday cake.

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Originally uploaded by Trevor Van Aalst

My wife made this castle out of rice krispies/marsmallow, um, treats.....Grady nearly wet his pants when he saw this, he was so excited. Such a lucky kid to have a mom that will do this for you.
The RK was actually a pretty cool medium to build a castle out of, it kind of looks a lot like stone and the colouring she put in it came out really nice. Probably a lot better than airbrushing it.

Apple MacIntosh

Mac's are P.C.'s! Personal computer? Get it? Oooooh, you mean a P.C. is'nt just anything that isn't a Mac? Wow, those advertisers really fooled some of you.

Mmm, LEGO castle has taken a turn this year. What you see here is a preliminary image of set #7946, the large flagship set for the castle range in 2010. Usually, when prelims are leaked from The LEGO Group, fans and collectors have a negative reaction to them. Often there is no justification for these negative comments as the pictures are often small, blurry and half covered by the TLG watermark. Not to mention that a preliminary design often contains certain elements that are 'stand-ins' and will not be found in the final design. The minifigures are sometimes not the final design either and sometimes use pieces found in other themes or even a liberal use of stickers to convey what the final design will look like. Stickering of figs never fails to spark huge arguments regarding whether or not TLG is (OMFG) going to start using stickers on all their figs and will ultimately go out of business because of it.

The images have been online for a couple of days now and only a few fan sites are comfortable discussing what they're seeing but insofar, the 2010 castle line up is getting pretty not bad reviews. Surprisingly.

My opinion is: I'm excited. There is less of a fantasy element to the theme, not that I don't like fantasy, I just prefer a more realistic element. The new line up harkens back to a day of my childhood where I used to play with my Star Wars action figures, Transformers and my LEGO castle sets.

Funnest....?

To this I will just say a sharp....NO!

Oh boy, sometimes I really do hate the Internet

Yet more Facebook tomfoolery. My nephew and his biological mother having just another conversation on his Facebook 'wall'. Understand that this kid has always been a bit of a doofus and that's a kid thing, it can be grown out of. We've had suspicions before, but more and more each day, we receive confirmation of what a Zero this kid chooses to become.

That's right, I said it. Zero, and yes, it's his choice.

Boneless chicken wings.........

.......seriously? Boneless chicken wings? Boneless chicken wings. Um...aren't these just, uh, pre-dipped chicken nuggets?

STOP TRYING TO TRICK ME!!!!!

The tower of the East

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Originally uploaded by Old Republic

Found in the centre of a lonely lake in a forgotten forest, Wanda and Willamena live out their existance. Their home was raised from the mud at the bottom of the lake and has stood for hundreds of years, the two occupants rarely needing to leave home. You see, Wanda and Willamena are sisters, witches and controllers of the environment that we all live in. Neither virtuous nor wicked, they have been known to be malicious at times. Should a traveller happen upon the Tower of the East it is no easy task to meet the sisters for, not only is the tower in the middle of the lake, there is no door...to speak of. To enter the Tower of the East, one must be invited and will find themselves transported inside....magically.

Wanda and Willamena have another sister. She left the tower many hundreds of years ago and has become quite well known to mankind. You may have heard of her: She now goes by the name, "Mother Nature".

Yup, I blogged myself. It's my blog so I'll do what I want. This was a castle build for a challenge I put forward to the members of classic-castle.com forums.

url=http://www.classic-castle.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17789]topic

HA! Too funny today...

Ha!! Too funny, today...

Here I am standing in line behind this little old lady at the convenience store to get my daily dose of 'face rockets'. I, of course, allowed myself my personal space of an 'elbows distance'. What does this unobservant lady do? She backs up for no good reason. She took two steps backward. Not to look at something, not to give the man in line ahead of her room, no reason at all. *Bump*


Sigh

Wii Sword battle

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Originally uploaded by Old Republic

So...what kind of parent teaches their three year old to beat the hell out of other people with a stick? Me, I guess. Ain't video games fun?

"Stands-too-close-on-line" guy.

Personal space. Even the neediest, loneliest, huggiest or clingiest of us need it, at least once in a while. Most likely while you are operating a cash machine, standing at a urinal (if you're female, using a urinal will probably garner you a bit of space from the 'normal' people) or my personal favorite, standing in line for something. Inching closer to the front of the line will not make it go faster and, will in fact, make the experience for yourself and those around even worse. "Why?", you may ask and I will answer: "Because it makes other people feel uncomfortable."

Everybody has their own standard for what they consider to be an invasion of their personal space so I will discuss mine and let you compare. My comfort zone is the tips of my fingers. If possible, I want to be able to extend my arms out to the sides and spin 360 degrees. Of course, this isn't always possible if you are, say, standing on line at the movies or another event where there are a lot of people on line with you. In such a case I'll accept the diameter my elbows would give me. However! When I'm waiting to pay at 7/11, I need to not elbow the other guy standing behind me when I get my wallet out of my back pocket.

Moron, there are only two of us here, are you trying to get to know me? Are you hoping to get my P.I.N.? Or do you just like the way my hair smells? I don't have ESP, so why can I feel you standing behind me? Why do I feel obligated to apologise to you when you get that elbow in the ribs? WHY!?!

Mob Car

Mob Car
Originally uploaded by Peter Lewandowski

I'm really loving these cars these days. There's just something about pre-1950's cars that they just translate into LEGO so well.
Mob Car by Peter Lewandowski.

1929 Ford

1929 Ford
Originally uploaded by taltosvt

Who says little LEGO cars have to look like shoeboxes? Well, I suppose if you're trying to build a late model car the shoebox look is OK but in the early days of motoring, cars and trucks were beautiful. This '29 Ford by Elroy Davis is a real beaut. I want one, so I'm going to try to emulate this. I don't think you need to be 'in the know' concerning the LEGO hobbyist to see what a neat build this is.

I hate having to hate stuff.

No amount of Internet drama is as important to me as nearly rear-ending someone one the freeway today.
It was pouring rain today, as in start looking for an Ark, pouring rain. I'm driving down the Deerfoot (our freeway that runs the span of Calgary) and the driver in front of me drives through a puddle and the roostertail causes him/her to disappear! Amazing, crazy amazing. Anyway, the 'fraidy-cat in said car slams on their brakes and that combined with the puddle slowing them down, nearly came to a dead stop. Thank goodness we were only doing 50 kmph!
I was going to complain about this driver not having their tail lights turned on but it really wouldn't have made a difference in this situation. Still when it's raining, snowing or even a bright sunny day, turn on all your running lights...dammit!

Want a cure for the road rage you feel...

....about 'the fools' who drive and use their cell phone at the same time?

Condition yourself to calling a cell phone a....tallywhacker. No joke. Imagine the next time you get cut off in traffic, just say to yourself "Man, stop messing around with your tally-whacker and just drive!". Just see how long it take for you to smile or even have a quick little giggle at the word.
"Jeez, it you weren't busy playing with your tally-whacker, you'd have noticed that the light turned green."
"Come on! Get off your tally-whacker, it'll still be there when you get home!"
"Playing with your tally-whacker makes you just as impaired while driving as a few drinks...."
"That guy should just go ahead and get his tally-whacker surgically implanted."

Oh, my goodness, the possibilities are endless. Try it, it'll work.

Ah hoochie girls, you gotta love 'em...

When will all the vain little hoochie girl learn that they don't have to take lame pictures of themselves in the bathroom mirror? You know the pictures I mean, they're all over MySpace and sites such as that. Learn to use the delay function on your digicam for crying out loud. Hoochie girls have a bad reputation for being dumb? How did that happen?

Thar She Blows!

Thar She Blows!
Originally uploaded by Sir Nadroj

I just couldn't not mention this. Oh my and apple pie. A very cartoonish looking whaler here. Built by a very talented young builder that goes by the user name Sir Nadroj(he's a minor so I don't want to mention him by name). This is chock full of details that I, and possibly nobody, has ever seen used on a LEGO ship. I'm not sure how I want to blog this, being my first MOC blog so I just urge you to go look! Pay attention because there is a lot to look at here......

Oh my gawd I hate reality tv...

Reality TV brings out the worst in the contestants personalities. Oh I certainly hope so. Nobody would really act in this manner if they didn't have to be in such close quarters with a TV camera pointed at them. Would they? Do the networks perhaps choose people that they believe would act that way? Is that good entertainment? Does our society really get off on watching people act like that? Maybe it is so we can watch these people act like donkeys and feel better about ourselves. I don't think so, I think more people EMULATE the reality contestants than make fun of the repugnant behaviour. Good riddance Survivor. Now for Big Brother: the biggest example of wasteful behaviour ever.

Why I hated 2008...part three

Well, now that we have a place to live again, no worries! At home, no worries but out on the road is a different story...

It was late April and Heather was taking the boys to a play date at a play centre in the city. She learned to watch out for other drivers while opening the car door. Crunch! Open the drivers side door and some dude tries to remove it....

Her fault, says the police because she failed to do so when it was safe. OK I can see that but this kind of thing should be a no fault/dual fault collision as far as I see things because: How fast was this guy going into this parking space that he just couldn't stop? I don't know about you but when I'm in a parking lot, I watch the other drivers to kind of know what they're up to. Especially parents with small kids because they just aren't paying the same kind of attention to what's going on around them as they are to their kids. Whatever, we learned that to replace a door on a $21,000 2007 Grand Caravan costs about $3000. The local body shop had if fixed post haste! Yay?

Next comes the big car theft........

I live in a small town so I don't always feel the need to lock my work van up, however, I do usually bring in my keys. Not this night though. Things were good until October when late one night

we get a call from the R.C.M.P. asking us where our van should be.

"Um, in the driveway?"

"Well, we have just pulled your van over for driving erratically."

"????"

Apparently this dude took my keys out of my work van and drove off with Heather's van. He didn't get very far before the police pulled him over but he got far enough to do $7000 worth of damage to it. When they stopped him, he ran and they didn't catch him. I guess the whole "....pursuing on foot...." thing only happens on television. Interestingly enough he was caught about a month later a couple of towns over stealing somebody else's truck. Lesson here, if you're going to steal, wear gloves or the police will get your fingerprints. Er, wait....I think the lesson here is to always lock your vehicle. Yeah, if someone really wants to steal it, they will whether it's locked or not but don't make it any easier for them. Thank goodness the local body shop still isn't really busy...fixed, no problem.

Now it's early December and we're sitting at a stop sign just minding our own business. It's snowing so the roads are a bit slippery but not too bad if you're driving for the conditions which Merideth was not. Who's Merideth? She's the chippy who t-boned the drivers door of the van. She was turning left at the intersection but not signaling left otherwise I would have gone. She simply took the corner too fast and slid right into us. I'm glad she was only going about 20kmph otherwise I may have shit my pants. There just isn't a feeling of helplessness like watching another motor vehicle heading straight for you and knowing there isn't anything you can do about it. BANG!!! and then there was another BANG!!!! That was Heather slamming the passenger door getting out to hang a lickin' on this bitch. Nah, not really but she did give it a good slam, enough that it was definitely louder than the collision...hehe.

How much does it cost to replace the drivers side door? Anyone?

OK, that's enough. I'm starting to get all emo here.

why I hated 2008...part 2

Now, where was I? Oh, yeah...just narrowly avoided burning the trailer down, staying at Heather's mother's place and calling the insurance company. Like I had said yesterday it was -40 or even colder for a few days and we don't have any insulation underneath the unit. It was so damn cold the furnace quit. Things freeze. A couple of days later I drove home to check on the cat and what do I find? A lake in the trailer park....oh darn.

The water inlet valve on both my washing machine and dishwasher had frozen hard enough to crack them open. Of course with those valves not doing their job to stop water from going anywhere water had been running amok for a couple of days! One or one hundred expletives later I managed to steel myself to once again climb under the trailer to turn off the main water line. Not too pleasant considering the temperature. I know, poor me...

The reclamation company had to bring out some giant air dryers to pull all the moisture out of the drywall and subfloor. No easy task considering the outside temperature. We had to pull up nearly all the laminate floor and move all our furniture so the dryers could do their thing. Can't live in those conditions so ten days later, we're still living at Gramma's house. Eight months earlier, Heather agonized over picking out the colour of the floor. It had to be the right colour and fit into our budget. When it came time to replace it, we told the insurance company where to get it and how much it cost: Totem building supplies and it was about $1200. Cheap and we liked it, win win, but no....the insurance company sent somebody from a highend flooring shop to take measurements to replace our $1200 floor with a $5000 floor. A lot of people would be happy with getting another floor, a 'better, nicer floor' but this was going to require them bringing in a storage container and emptying our house into it. This was not acceptable as we'd already been out of the place for 20 something days and it was going to keep us out for another two+ weeks with the hassle of packing up and then unpacking again. Needless to say we found this unacceptable for a couple of reasons: one, our insurance didn't need to spend that kind of money and two, we just wanted to get back home with as little hassle as possible (we were starting to feel pretty drained by now). So one curt call to insurance and we got the proper floor and they were going to get it installed within a week!

Yeah. About that dishwasher and washing machine....those had about $300 (nearly $800 with labour!) worth of replacement parts and off they would go. Well, $300 at most people's cost but I'm an appliance guy so I can get my parts at cost+, so more like $150 for the parts. No place in town had the parts. These are pretty new machines so that's not unusual so it was going to be 2-3 weeks before the parts even came in so insurance just bought us new machines. See? Saving the money on the floor got us laundry and dish washing earlier, the floor earlier and us into the house earlier.

Yay!!! Nearly six weeks later we get to go home. It's all over. Right? Nope, there's more to come.........the minivan trilogy and why I'm still an idiot.

Why I hated 2008...

No, I'm not kidding we hated 2008. Even though it was the first year since 2005 our family went surgery free. Yeah two of the four were c-sections, but that' really nothing to sniff at either. Maybe a little background here would be prudent.

My name is Trevor and I'm married to a wonderful woman named Heather. We have two boys, Grady and Hayden, aged three and one. We used to live in Calgary Alberta in a wee tiny two bedroom apartment. With the four of us and Dad's LEGO collection, there just wasn't any room for the five of us there anymore. Time to move. Being people in our mid thirties, we decided that it would be better to buy than rent. The summer of 2007 was the middle of a giant housing boom in Alberta and houses, new and older, were selling for three times what they were actually worth. Certainly more than what a thirty year mortgage was worth so we bought a mobile home. Yep, a 'trailer' as some people would call it. It's got a nice big year, almost 1200 square feet of living space and best of all, we'll have it paid off in about six years. Three bedrooms, two full baths, a large kitchen, big living room and our own laundry.

Unfortunately, there isn't a basement to help insulate it during the cold winter months. At least a house with no basement has a concrete foundation to sit on with at least the ground for insulation, we just have a void protected by a vinyl skirting about a millimetre thick. That said, things freeze. At the end of last January we had a cold spell where it was -40 (that's -40 to my American friends) and the water pipes froze. Thus starts the story of why I'm an idiot....

Frozen pipes? No problem, I'll just go rent a portable propane heater. You may know the type I mean, it's like a little jet engine. Hook it up to the propane and light 'er up. I ran that sucker all day, getting more and more annoyed that it just didn't seem to be working the way I thought it should. Maybe the propane bottle isn't as full as I thought it was so let's go fill it up. Great. Good idea. Now I get home and think to myself: "this thing hasn't worked yet today, I should just put the whole thing underneath...maybe the heat isn't going where it needs to." Yeah, that's what I do. Put the heater right under the trailer, open the valve and give it a spark.......FWOOOOOOOOOSH!!!! Thinking back on it, I was probably lucky to get out from under there before the burning underbelly and insulation of my trailer got me. I don't have a panic reflex so no problem...shut the valve off, pull the heater out and go get the wife and kids out without her panicking. So one 911 call and three hours of sitting in the minivan answering all the "what happened?" questions from the neighbors, we decided to head into the mother-in-law's place to have a sleep.

What an idiot. I can also tell you that not only did I even once use our barbeque this summer, if I even get a whiff of somebody using their woodburning fireplace my stomach drops just a little.
That's the end of part one cuz there's quite a bit more, like how we got a brand spanking new laminate floor throughout our home.......

Why I hate the internet...

...Well, not really. I love the internet. As my first post to my brand spanking new blog, I'd like to welcome you all to the world wide web. So, welcome.

Should I introduce myself? Nah, most people who are reading this know me or at least know me enough to know the don't need to know me. Rambling? Shit. That's why I hate the internet.

More to come, some random and some not so random.