Bolt of Blue

Where do I begin?

For months now, I’ve been helping my husband and two friends build an epic LEGO recreation of the The Last March of the Ents from The Lord of the Rings movie. We unleashed the photos online on September 28, and then displayed it for a public exhibit that very weekend in Seattle at BrickCon. BrickCon was an insanely fun and exhausting time hanging with new and old friends. The drive up to Seattle and back was long… but surprisingly nice to just spend time with my husband and little Baxter, who came along for the trip. And our creation won Best in Show. Really amazed!

It’s been a smashing success and one of the most fun creative projects I’ve ever been a small part of. I hoped people would like it after all the hard work put into it, but never expected the reception to be as enthusiastic as it’s been. We’ve been interviewed for a podcast, made CNN and a ton of blogs, and we’re getting close to a million views on the photos.

We got the crazy idea after watching a marathon screening of the trilogy at the Egyptian Theatre earlier this year. One thing I will always love about Los Angeles is that there so many amazing revival movie theatres. Any night of any week, you can pop into theatres all over town to check out classic, cult, weird, obscure, popular, indie or new movies…

The idea was just to build one Ent. This snowballed. Quickly. It’s been a real labor of love though and came together so seamlessly. We’re pretty proud. And it’ll be on display again at a local event in Pasadena called Designer Con.

What else have I’ve been doing since my last ages ago post? Took a week long road trip exploring the California coast as well as attended several events celebrating the opening of the new Dinosaur Hall at the Natural History Museum. Still going to shows including Fiona Apple, Jon Brion, and the members of Nickelcreek put on one of the best I’ve ever been to in my entire life! Oh, and in between all the LEGO madness, I still managed to see Duran Duran at Nokia Theatre. It always comes back to Duran Duran in the end…

Been a very busy October so far. BrickCon started things off. Seriously fun time hanging out with old friends, making new ones, and seeing some incredible LEGO creations in person.

I built an elephant. Mr. Elephant, as I call him, which won Best Small Art Sculpture. I was so surprised. Right before I won, Remi won for his much more impressive and cool creation of Dueling Robosaurs for Best Large Art Sculpture

After perfect weather in Seattle, we headed up to Vancouver for a week in Canada. Which included 2 magical days in the Sunshine Coast. The perfect weather continued. Will post photos soon but they can never do such a magical and gorgeous place justice.

Once we returned, there was work, concerts (more on those later), birthdays, get together’s, life… almost no end in sight. Would we really want it any other way? Not entirely sure but life is swimming along pretty good right now.

Yes. Still around. Alive and happy too.

Busy with the usual: work, family, LEGO, movies, OK Go.

To start off, my Zelda mosaic won the best large mosaic award at the recent Bricks by the Bay LEGO convention.

Fun weekend surrounded by friends and bricks. Plus it was a chance to share this whole LEGO world with the nephews. Totally worth the boring drive up the 5. Thankfully, took the lovely drive down the 101. Even with rain, it was so beautiful. Green hills, valleys, the coast… you believe the happy cows commercials.

Fun con. Looking forward to BrickCon even more now.

Start of this month was full of Discworld goodness.

Start of October will be full of Lego goodness.

In between: amazing Flogging Molly show at the Greek, work, work, work, catching up on TV shows (Dexter, I’m not digging this Lila chick) or getting into new ones (thanks Flash Forward for giving me goosebumps), and lots of building, building, building.

Happy Thanksgiving Canada!

Unlike those up north or who are in government jobs, I’ve got work today.

Every year, I want to celebrate an early Thanksgiving with Remi but every year we get sidetracked. Maybe next time.

Our weekend in Seattle for NWBrickCon was inspiring, overwhelming, fun, exhausting, and we’re definitely going again next year… the creations on display were incredible, the contests fun, and the overall vibe of the con was awesome. Plus the 25% off Lego purchases at the local Lego store almost made our heads explode.

Tonight, Remi can finally start building the Falcon (he’s had it sitting in a box on the floor for almost 2 weeks now but for a number of reasons could not start until now) and I’ve got a little tower to build.

Photos from the weekend forthcoming.

So much going on right now. Here are some highlights:

• I finally put up the Brilliance redesign (a Jude Law fansite)… like 5 minutes ago. I’m still working on fixing the Gallery, but it’s mostly all up. This took me way too long and was so overdue it was ridiculous. I converted the site to WordPress and put in a simple and clean design (I hope!) I’m happy with it. It’s a very different design compared to most typical actor fansites out there. But I wanted it to be different, I want it to be less busy and easy to navigate. Hopefully, I’ve succeeded. I’ve also met one rad fan who is going to contribute to the site (and already has). I’d love to meet some more like-minded Jude fans who might be interested in helping with the site.

• I went to a Duran Duran listening party held by Sony last week! Not only did I get to hear their fantastic new album, but the guys were there. I finally got my photo taken with Nick and Simon. And had some awesome conversations with Nick and Roger. I’m very tempted to figure out a way to make one of their NY shows now. Roger did tell me I should come. How I’m calm about all this and not fangirling out, I honestly have no idea. *squeeeeee* Okay… I let it out a little there.

• I’ve been bugging Remi for a while now that he should have his own website. Now he does… take a look at BugEyedMonkeys.com. I had a lot of fun designing it for him.

• Posted Day 4 photos from our road trip. Most of the photos are from our drive through Yellowstone, which was incredible and I’m so glad we didn’t go the faster route. We saw Old Faithful, bison, more deer (this time Elk), a wolf (didn’t get a photo of him though), and so many waterfalls. We made it to Edmonton very late that night… when we passed Calgary, we got stuck in the middle of a crazy lightening storm. Rain was pouring in buckets and coming down so hard we had to slow down to be safe and be able to see ahead of us… and lightening was going on all around us. I’ve never seen lightening actually hit the ground and sparks go flying into the air. But now I have and it’s pretty scary when it’s happening 20 feet from you.

• My father-in-law is flying in today for a weekend visit. It’s completely last minute. We only found out he was coming yesterday morning… and it was also a surprise to him too (we found out before he did). He really needs a break from work and Remi’s mom found a great deal on a flight. We’re looking forward to seeing him and I know he’s looking forward to using our condo’s jacuzzi.

• Next week, we head up to Seattle for NWBrickCon. So excited!

I’ve posted photos from day 3 of our road trip. That day was probably one of the best days of our whole trip. We went canoeing on gorgeous Jackson Lake, went for a fantastic hike into the foothills of the Tetons and literally ran into a black bear on the way back down, we saw butterflies, a glacier fed waterfall, and lots of adorable chipmunks, we were finally able to take a nice hot shower that evening, and had a great meal of buffalo burgers at the Jackson Lodge.

I’d go into more details but those are the highlights. Besides, it’s hard to concentrate right now because but I’m in full Duranie mode.

“Red Carpet Massacre” is due for release on November 13. Duran Duran is going to do a 2 week run on “Broadway” in NYC following the release date. No specific dates/venues have been announced. We’d been hearing rumors of this for a while and both Roger and Nick confirmed it. I was trying not to be too bitter. They did a special fan club only show in New York over the summer and now this??! I don’t understand why they are ignoring Los Angeles since they have such a supportive and huge fanbase here. So I’ve been annoyed.

But not after today. And that’s all I’m going to say for now until after Tuesday. Ahem.

Plus…

• I got to see Hot Hot Heat last night for a special free show at Cinespace and it was rad (great crowd, great energy by the band, great show!)
• We have our trip all set for NWBrickcon.
• I get to see The Hives again on November 7! It’s been too long (their new album hits October 9th).
• The spoilers for Season 5 of One Tree Hill are AWESOME (even K-Fed can’t bring them down).
• I’ve made 9 sales on half.com since I put up a bunch of stuff (9 sales in 11 days!) I’m amazed!
• Remodeling our place is going well. Who knows… maybe by the start of the year, we’ll be able to sell our place and buy a house. Gulp.

I’ve been in denial long enough. Thinking I wasn’t really part of it when I was already far too deep… that I was just supporting my husband’s hobby and going along with it.

It’s official. I’m a full fledged AFOL.

In the past week, I’ve gone to Legoland very willingly (where I have an annual pass, ahem, another big sign), toured the master builder workshop (!!), designed a very Lego themed website for Remi to show off his creations, received an order of my own bricks from Bricklink for a MOC I want to create, joined a Lego LJ community, researched traveling options to attend NWBrickCon… and it only now hit me when I almost squealed out loud when I saw this new set today.

I’m an idiot for thinking otherwise.
Continue reading