i need to be where facebook is not

being in severe pain changes you. it makes you feel outside of yourself, not normal, crabby. it feels like you'll never be yourself again and through the fog of the pain, you can only dimly remember the outline of that self anyway. it makes you hard to be around, petulant, demanding and even more impatient than usual. in short, you are a bear cat. and you can hardly even stand yourself. i suspect it's even worse when it's nerve pain, as it's relentless and unforgiving and just. doesn't. let. up.

it makes me even more disgusted by the endless array of crap on facebook than i usually am...

~ um, i think that art does not mean what you think it means.

~ yes, we get it, you're not getting any. maybe you shouldn't have left your husband?

~ trouble in paradise? that's the fourth or fifth male chauvinistic anti-woman joke you've posted in the past week or so. are you also not getting any?

~ enough with the humble bragging...you are just. so. #blessed.

~ i seriously doubt that you will ever win that "dream" holiday to malaga, but share away for the tenth time.

~ and i hope, for your sake, that you also don't win the rabbit fur trimmed boots with matching studded skinny jeans that that clothing store is giving away.

~ this year's simplified red starbucks cups represent a design trend towards minimalism, not the work of the devil.

~ are you a little obsessed with cats or what? (see, i even annoy myself.)

~ shouldn't you have had to actually ATTEND that university to get that excited about their football team?

~ that ben carson guy is batshit crazy with his pyramids as giant grain elevators theory (among others...)

~ aphorisms rule the day, there are no deep thoughts.

~ all of those local "news" items are marketing for local businesses - don't pretend to be journalists when you're marketeers.

~ i don't know what's worse? poodles or labradoodles? ugh.

it's clear to me that i need to be where facebook is not until this pain subsides...

enough

i know i complain a lot, but sometimes groups of women can be awesome to one another. there's no energy like the positive energy that a group of women can create when they want to. when someone needs support or a shoulder to lean on or just an ear, we can be there for one another. we don't need to have all the answers, sometimes what it takes is just to listen. to be there. to allow someone to be heard. to offer support and a hug. or even just to fill the air with the positive vibes that only creativity can create. sometimes that's enough.

et småligt land

these days, there are many refugees on the move throughout europe. leaving their war-torn homes in syria and iraq, coming ashore in barely seaworthy boats on greek islands, getting on trains or trucks, or failing that, walking their way up through europe. they're trying to get to germany and sweden, which are the main european countries standing up and taking responsibility, opening their doors, their stadiums and hearts. meanwhile, the minority, xenophobic and apparently tone deaf danish government took out ads in newspapers in the middle east, discouraging people from coming to denmark. this means that the hundreds of people who need to cross denmark to get to sweden are being stopped at the borders these days. yesterday, several hundred of them walked along the motorway and it had to be closed at one point for their safety. some danes form "welcome" committees on the overpasses, spitting down on the refugees and screaming obscenities in broken english. these are shameful, dark times.

last night, instead of standing up and taking any responsibility, the danish prime minister, lars løkke rasmussen, apparently went to a wine tasting. the police, overwhelmed with people at the borders, have elected to stop trying to register those who don't wish to seek asylum in denmark and just let them go on through to sweden. yesterday, they were stopping them, but the numbers are too large for that now and taking people off trains and buses to forcibly register them was only creating chaos and large crowds of people walking on the motorways.

for all of my complaints, i do love living in denmark and i love many things about it, including the welfare state which allows people to get back on their feet when they're down. but this makes me (and a whole lot of danes) sad and embarrassed and ashamed. and it's the direct result of years and years of heightened xenophobic rhetoric. and now the whole world is watching and it's not a pretty sight.

wednesday witterings

i have wasted 24 hours of energy and sacrificed a good night's sleep over the most ridiculous casual vacancy-esque local control-freak, power-hungry, senseless game-playing situation that should never have been a situation. but i always think of these things as fodder for an eventual novel. or at least a memoir. i do wonder when i'm going to get around to writing that? and somehow, just like that, my brain cleared of it sometime this afternoon. possibly because we are having glorious autumn weather - sunny days, just the right temperature, no wind. i am so affected by the weather, both good and bad. and by a new set of possibilities opening up. dare i say there is excitement and hope stirring in the days ahead? and a trip to copenhagen.

rising from the ashes

i'm not a fan of brené brown (pretentious git, i could not stand this ted talk by her), but this post about her work on brain pickings did speak to me.  it makes me realize that it's time to release the notion of idealized perfection and acknowledge that it's been really hard for the past year. my dream job being taken away for reasons that feel false and disingenuous has left me wounded in ways from which it feels like i might never recover. to have found something that felt so perfect and so much like home and have it taken away hurts so much. i wonder if i'll find a job that feels so right ever again? will all other jobs pale in comparison? and the thought that i might not ever be as happy in my work again is truly frightening and leaves me paralyzed. at times, it just seems like too much and i want to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head and just sleep until the world is different. or at least until my view on it changes.

but brown's work is about rising from the ashes of defeat, not about sleeping it off. it's about the guts and resilience it takes. she says, "the process of regaining our emotional footing in the midst of struggle is where our courage is tested and our values are forged." the grit it takes to do this is often lauded in today's world, as we rush headlong towards happy endings, but brown says that discounts the pain and the hard work of rising again after a defeat. "embracing failure without acknowledging the real hurt and fear that it can cause, or the complex journey that underlies rising strong, is gold-plating grit. to strip failure of its real emotional consequences is to scrub the concepts of grit and resilience of the very qualities that make them both so important — toughness, doggedness, and perseverance."

the truth is, i feel that some part of my identity was stripped from me along with my dream job and it feels like purposeful cruelty. and while i have been fighting the notion that i am my work for a good many years now, the truth is that it's inescapable in our culture. so i am left wondering who i am and what's next. and i'm feeling like any grit i once had that would help me through such an experience is gone for good.

but perhaps each time i acknowledge the hurt and pick a bit more at the wound, it will get a little bit better and i will find a way to rise once again from a failure not really my own. and perhaps that's the problem. this happened to me due to the cold, unfeeling reality of corporate decision-making and despite how very personal it feels, it actually wasn't when it comes down to it. and that makes it hard to know what to learn from it - should i become less trusting? be a cold, unfeeling spectre? do i give less of myself the next time? should i not fall in love with a job i love? do i stop being my real self in order to protect that self the next time around? it's all still very bewildering. i wonder when it will get any easier...

magical thinking

magical thinking. that illogical connection of disparate events in the mind. i think it's hard not to do it sometimes, both with good and bad things. the sparkle unicorn fairy waved her wand and the sun burst through the clouds at last. i stuffed her in my dark pocket and it clouded up and began to rain. a lump of adorable plastic does not have the power to make the sun come and go. i know that rationally, but sometimes you can't help but look for connections.

i wrote on facebook a week or so ago that i had a longing for people to just spontaneously drop by. right after, two different friends did so. there was arguably an actual cause and effect relationship there since they had read my post on facebook. but since then a couple of random folks have also dropped by. a charmingly toothless man, wearing an old-fashioned helmet and driving an ancient moped (words you never thought you'd see strung together) stopped by to see if we still had a saw for sale that was listed on our craig's list equivalent. i had a surprisingly delightful and funny conversation with him that gave me happy energy for several hours afterwards.

then, last evening, as i wandered the garden in the golden hour sunlight that the unicorn sparkle fairy had called forth, another stranger parked in front of the house and came up to me. he asked if he might try fishing in our lake one day. we chatted a bit and i agreed that he could. now, he and a friend just came and knocked on the door to say they were going to give it a try (despite the steady drizzle caused by the unicorn sparkle fairy still being in my coat pocket). i don't know his name and i'm probably not going to invite him over for dinner, but these are exactly the kind of random human encounters that i have been missing. have they come to me because i put it out there in the world that i wanted them? or would they have happened anyway?

who really knows? magical thinking.

100 happy days :: day 26

it was hard to narrow down today's happinesses, but finding this little guy on a desk i was using today rather sums it up. he's one of my favorite guys in animals suits and his presence made me smile today. but so did today's pleasant afternoon hours spent getting my hair cut and colored and eating cake. and this evening's gathering of creative souls. maybe we should all dress up in animal suits and smile a whole lot more. things are looking up. i think this happiness project is working.

we've come a long way, baby

yes, that is one of wonder woman's fabulous boots on the couch beside her.
it snapped off my wonder woman christmas ornament and it has a kind of morbid hold on me.
so i included it in my photo. and this wonder woman comes in this set with her invisible jet. 

i'm reading jill lepore's the secret history of wonder woman. there's a whole lot more to wonder woman than just a comic book heroine (as if that wouldn't be enough). and although my love of her comes from the 70s television series starring lynda carter, i just love her even more now that i know she finds her roots in the whole suffrage movement and the attendant fight for birth control and general women's rights that women waged at around that same time.

here in denmark, this year is the 100th anniversary of women gaining the vote (that was why we had our wonder woman salon a couple of weeks ago), so that's part of why the topic has surfaced on my radar. and it's funny how once it's on your radar, you keep coming across things that are related to it. like these horrendous anti-suffrage posters that circulated 100 years ago. i don't think i'd fully appreciated how far we women had come and how much those early feminists did for us so that we have the rights and norms that we, quite frankly, take for granted today.

the jill lepore book is one of those where i find myself staying up late to read it and simultaneously feeling eager to turn to the next page to drink in the story (and this is actual history) and wanting to slow down and not come to the end of the book too quickly.

the inventor of wonder woman was a very strange man named william moulton marston. he was a harvard educated psychologist and the original inventor of the lie detector test (hence wonder woman's truth lasso) and generally a rather weird and possibly perverted guy. he lived in a very strange relationship with his wife and his mistress and their four children under one roof. because he was a polemic figure, he had a hard time keeping a job and his wife was the main breadwinner of the family, with the mistress playing nanny to all four children, despite only 2 of them being hers. and yet he was also quite a compelling figure - charismatic in a way and quite a prolific ideas man. and he believed that women were powerful forces to be reckoned with, so he couldn't have been all bad.

wonder woman came to life just as the US was entering WWII and thus there were many themes with a patriotic tinge to them. once she was allowed to join the justice league, things got a little less feminist for her, as another writer took over from marston and relegated her to secretary status, while the other justice league members went off to fight. not to make excuses, but that reflected the times as well, the men went off to war and the women stayed at home to handle the everyday duties.

it's also pretty fascinating, the insight into the early days of comic books and how they arose both out of the film and pulp fiction industries. all of the creative artists and storytellers and maverick publishers that did battle with censorship make you wish you had lived in a more dynamic time.

i'm only a little more than halfway through the book, so i'll wind down for now. i'm sure i'll be back with more thoughts on it once i'm finished. but suffice it to say, wonder woman is even more awesome than i ever knew.

in the same boat

still trying to absorb what happened last evening in copenhagen and like with the charlie hebdo events a few weeks ago, i find it too easy that the supposed perpetrator is killed before making him explain. now we will assign whatever meaning we wish to it - fear, terror, suspicion - and it will only continue in the long run. us against them will solidify rather than dissolving.

i have this notion that instead of being afraid, we need to hold more events where we discuss free speech, we need to have so many of them that no disgruntled, disenfranchised person with skewed ideas can possibly attack them all. we need to overwhelm them with the freedom of our speech.

happy anniversary to us!

husband actually looked much happier than this minifig 16 years ago when we walked over to bronshøj kirke hand in hand and got married. then we had a bit of champagne with his fancy uniform-clad colleagues and headed off to london for a weekend mini honeymoon. i think the minifig husband is a bit sad because today he also turned 50 and that's a bit of a tough one. not that i would know. yet.

we gave husband a pair of waders for his birthday. it's what he wanted. he also wanted burgers for dinner. homemade ones. with plenty of guacamole and bacon. and port. that man loves port. we'll have a big party to celebrate this milestone in the summer when the weather is good. garden parties are always the best.

a case of friday arbness

my head is full of all sorts of random things, so in the interest of clearing it out so i can get on with some important work on a big project, i thought i'd share them with all of you...

~ there was a little dog with an underbite that was always in front of our main street grocery store when i was a kid. i hated that dog. he was terrifying. i think he belonged to one of the checkout ladies. to this day, when we want to indicate displeasure around here, we stick out our bottom teeth and do the "mean dog" face.

~ discussing ideas is probably my favorite thing to do in the whole world. it helps me think things through and get lots more clarity on the ideas. sometimes, i have so many, they jumble up in my head until i write about them or discuss them with others. i'm super lucky to have a variety of people that i can call on when i need to think things through. husband being the main one of them, but there are others. and they know who they are.

~ i got such a chuckle out of reading this tongue-in-cheek review of the new super heroes set with wonder woman and her invisible jet. in the comments you'll see that some of the other readers weren't quite so charmed. to them i say, relax and don't take things so seriously.

~ speaking of LEGO, this new blog is shaping up to have some intelligent views on our favorite plastic brick. ok, so there are only two posts so far, but both were well-argued and obviously carefully researched.

~ i'm so enjoying my kerosene fragrance sample tin. it's fun trying a new scent every day! i'm wearing copper skies today which, despite its lush description of amber and tobacco, is definitely not me. it starts off with a dusty, powdery toilet paper kind of vibe and deepens into the kind of sickly sweet scent of a chennai slum. i will allow that it probably smells great on someone else with very different chemistry than me. and less memories of sickly sweet chennai slums. kind of amazing how scent can call up memories quite unbidden.

~ our friends at #stuckinplastic reported on some troubling take down notices received by some legographers on red bubble this week. i wonder what the implications of this are on the enormous community of people out there taking photos of minifigs? once we buy them, can't we play with them however we wish?

~ i realized today (yes, i'm a bit slow) that facebook bores the shit out of me.

~ we had this amazing frost all day today (see above photo of of the unicorn sparkle fairy - hey, i made a MOC!). :-) it's the kind of frost that comes from a freezing fog. and it's the first time this winter of ours has had any beauty in it whatsoever. it was a welcome change.

~ it's the child's birthday on sunday. and she's off on a one-day ski trip to sweden at midnight tonight, but will be home to have cake on sunday. i can't believe she's nearly 14.

i think that will about do it, so i shall wish you all an awesome weekend. remember to stop and photograph the frost, will you? and always carry a minifig in your pocket.

mythical sightings in the garden

it had been far too long since i had a proper leisurely wander in the garden with my real camera in hand. far too many shots of late have been snapped with my iPhone. but on this lazy leisurely sunday, where i've declared that i shall not leave my pajamas (you can put a coat over them and tuck them into your boots for a garden wander), i spent a good hour out in the cold, fresh, still, frosty world. my trusty photographic assistant molly the cat was there (turns out she's not that much help).

i managed to catch glimpses of a few mythical characters out there...a unicorn, a wizard and a popsicle-toting yeti. you never know what you'll see when you go out into nature and have a look.

i forgot how good such activities are for my soul. and speaking of things that are good for the soul, i'm going to be taking an online course - who am i now? with the wonderful kylie bellard during the first two weeks of january. if you'd like to join me, that would be awesome.

in need of gratitude

things have been a bit rocky of late...i feel i've once again fallen victim to caring too much. but at the same time, i wouldn't be authentically me if i didn't wholeheartedly drink the kool-aid and give myself over completely. holding back is a rocky road of a different kind, so i don't regret falling in love a little too hard. but perhaps the honeymoon is over and we're settling into a place where it just requires more work, like any relationship that's worth it. 

if this were facebook, that would be vaguebooking.

but so be it.

i have a need to make a little list of things for which i am grateful:

~ colleagues who support me, make me laugh, listen to me, confide in me, laugh at my jokes, include me, ask whether i have a kitten for them (and then proceed to fall head over heels in love with said kitten), eat cake with me, and did i mention make me laugh?

~ my openness and tendency to trust people. it can bite me in the ass sometimes, but overall, i'd much rather be open and trusting than not. even if it means i trust too much and tell too much sometimes. so be it. i wouldn't be myself without that tendency.

~ cats. i know we have a few too many, but every single one of them offers me comfort in their own unique way. and we have a lot of space, so there's room for everyone. and i feed them well and provide them with all the services they expect. and they give me so much in return. the comfort i'm seeking and yes, even laughter, with all of their adorable playfulness.

~ husband. he talks me down from the ledges. he makes me laugh. sometimes from the very first words out of his mouth in the morning. this morning, they were musings on the human foot and what it would be like if we didn't have them. he's not normal, but that's perfect for me. and i'm grateful for him every single day. he never stops planning the next project and striving for something new. he gets me.

~ having a pretty fornuftig teenager in the house. fornuftig means sensible, but somehow has an extra dimension in danish, so i'm mixing the two languages. i can do that after all these years in denmark. and you all should be accustomed to it by now. and that kid, despite all of the many things she wants, is pretty awesome. and that awesomeness was just in her when she arrived. i don't think i had much to do with it at all.

~ awesome projects to work on. i'm learning every day and there is at least one moment every day (even amidst the rocky times), where i am just super happy to have the privilege to do what i do, to meet the people i meet, to work with the projects and people i get to work with.

~ the all-too-fleeting zen feeling, where i know that this too shall pass and it will all be ok, even if it wasn't what i imagined. and whatever happens, it will be a learning experience that contains a lesson meant for me. whether that lesson is to trust or to roll with the punches doesn't much matter, as it is my lesson to learn, either way. life is a matter of practicing. and i need to practice letting go of expectations and being open to what's next. it's gotten me this far. so it will surely take me to the next level. 

~ impending travels to seattle and new york city (for the first time ever) and also connecticut, where i've also never been. it is good to have plane tickets and hotel reservations and all kinds of meetings with a whole bunch of awesome people planned.

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the hipster disney princesses are way better than the real ones.

* * *

john malkovich as...everyone.

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speaking of which...mr. bean makes an appearance in historical paintings.

the monday wizard

some (mon)days, you just need a wizard to work a little magic and make it not monday anymore. it appears to have worked, so let's see how it goes...

what would homer do?

i came home to an email from the school principal today. i've written previously about the shocking lack of communication skills displayed in these emails and today's was no exception. if i were working on a ph.d. in rhetoric, these mails would be absolutely fascinating. as it is, i'm a parent of a child who is in a class with what is essentially (and unfortunately) a really bad, weak teacher, so the mail is more worrying than fascinating.

for some time now (school started in what, august, so approximately 9 months) this teacher has had trouble controlling the classroom. she hasn't been able to gain the respect of the students at all and they are often noisy and restless during her lessons (which are danish and history). oddly, this class seems to respect their other teachers, but that's curiously not mentioned in the mail from the principal.

today, this poor teacher apparently had enough and gave up and left the classroom in tears after saying to the class that they could just go home and laugh about her with their parents. when i heard that, i was definitely not laughing, as it seems to me to be a very sad and revealing statement from a frustrated teacher who feels desperately unsupported in her work. the kids reported that she went to the principal's office and had a good cry.

in the meantime, the principal came down to the class and sat them down and had a talk with them about, as near as i can tell from her email, soccer and drippy faucets. because vague metaphors really speak to the 7th grade mind.

the email assures us that she has turned off the drippiest of the faucets and that all will be just hunky dory going forward because the students have understood the gravity of...erm...leaky faucets. whether the school understands that they have a problem and need to give extra support to a teacher that's clearly floundering in her work is less clear. and whether they further understand that respect between students and teachers is something that must be earned or commanded through force of personality, is also unclear. actually, i'm being sarcastic; it's pretty clear that they don't understand that at all.

they also don't seem to have made the connection that this class, which is largely composed of the same students as it was last year, over at the elementary school, was not a problem then and isn't a problem for other teachers at the middle school. and that therefore, it stands to reason that maybe the teacher is the problem.

i don't want to kick someone when they're down, but a teacher who has struggled with what is arguably an easygoing group of young people for nine months without success clearly has a problem. when she begins airing the dirty laundry of personal problems at home in class, including that her son is hearing voices, and that she's struggling with health issues after a lung transplant, it is quite possibly the equivalent of waving a big red flag. young teenagers have enough troubles of their own dealing with puberty and all of the changes wrought by that, without having the unexplained symptoms of their teacher's child brought into the mix. what are they supposed to do with such information? how are they supposed to react? will it make them worry? will they wonder what it means? why on earth would you as the teacher tell that to your 13-year-old students? how can she not see how wildly inappropriate that is? why is the filter switched off (just to bring in a metaphor, ala the principal)? and why is the school not effectively supporting a teacher that's so clearly in need of some serious support?

but i'm not sure what i can do about it. i could write a mail to the principal, expressing my concerns and she'd fob off a few more dissertation-worthy metaphors on me and nothing would change. i could send her a link to this blog post, but she would probably just think i'm a big meanie (really, i'm trying to work out what i think about it, and this is how i do that).

i spent some time this evening, looking at the website of a nearby private school, as that's my way of feeling that i might be able to change things. but what i really want is for this school to clean up its act. i want them to start communicating in an honest and open way and face the problem head-on. and i want them to either provide a whole lot more support to this floundering teacher or i want them to remove her and promise me that she's not going to be my child's homeroom (and danish and history) teacher next year. in other words, i want them to grab hold of the reins. we pay an awful lot of taxes and frankly, they owe us that.

i don't know what homer simpson would do in such a case. i'm not sure he'd much notice. but if he did, i think he'd be fiercely loyal to his children and go in and demand the best for them, even if he did it a bit clumsily. so maybe i should do what homer would do. my own little lisa's future might very well depend upon it.

*like how i made that photo fit the post right there in the very last second? 

arbness: on lost planes, the fear of not knowing and which bond catwoman would prefer

i sit here at the computer, frieda on my lap, lying on the red curly sheep fleece pillow that is all of the cats' favorite bed, so it seemed appropriate to use a recent photo i took of another catwoman, this one perhaps much cooler than i am as i sit here, wearing my now beloved norwegian sweater which i found in a second hand store for 50kr, a comfy pair of pants and slouchy warm socks. (how was that for a very long sentence?) catwoman is very cool, canny and fearless. 

i am still voraciously reading every article i can find about the disappearance of that malaysian airlines flight and as i write this, there is still no news. what happened to the plane and all those people? how can a plane just disappear with scarcely a trace in today's connected world? and why is it so fascinating to us? why can't we stand the uncertainty of not knowing what happened and where it is? is it the people who are lost? oddly the articles i've been reading in places like the new york times and the guardian have had little mention of the passengers. is it our own fears of flying? i honestly don't have any, despite having some kind of feeling for years and years that i will die in a plane crash. is it just the 24 hour news cycle and endless access to information, no matter where we are, that has us obsessing over the lack of an answer? why are we riveted by this story? i flew malaysian airlines once, from KL to chennai. the worst part was a long layover in KL and no access to a lounge because none of the star(ve)alliance carriers cooperated on one there. alas, my plane carried me safely to chennai, where i didn't really want to be anyway (it being one of the most uncharming places on the planet). but really, where is james bond when you need him? i'm thinking pierce brosnan is the right bond for this case. it seems like it could somehow be a media-driven thing and that seems right up the alley of the brosnan bond. daniel craig is too deep and dark and mysterious (now that i think about it, maybe he is the right bond for this mystery). i suppose in the end there will be some shallow answer worthy more of roger moore as bond than either brosnan or craig. 

and while we're on the subject of bond, i think catwoman would probably like pierce brosnan as well. wonder woman, on the other hand, i'm not sure...

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a couple of really cool articles on the cinematography of the LEGO movie...

here and here.

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rené redzepi on copenhagen in the guardian.

guess where wonder woman and i went?

a fantastic weekend in london. a bit of shopping (mostly involving me sending photos to the child to see whether she wanted various items - what did we do before iMessage?), hitting some bookstores (the wonderful foyle's and an enormous waterstones near picadilly), walking with lizzi (you may know her from many steps sideways and do go check her blog, as she wrote about our day much more pithily than i will) until our feet were nearly bleeding, some legography at big ben and parliament square, lunch, starbucks and a last-minute inability to stop myself from going into the gap (like google, apple and the new york times, they just get me). all of this and glorious sunshine, cherry blossoms in full bloom and a surprisingly delightful stay in a little radisson blu edwardian just off oxford street, not to mention a workshop and meeting some really wonderful lego enthusiasts who were generous in sharing their ideas. in all, it really couldn't have been a better weekend (except that my feet are still a bit reluctant to speak to me after i subjected them to nearly 12 hours of tromping around london in doc martens (so much for those cushiony air soles).

i know i've been a bit absent here in the past week. i was fighting off a cold and that left me zapped for energy.  plus i've been reading a good book (popco by scarlett thomas) and watching a few too many episodes of fringe. but i can feel that i'm missing my daily writing! blogging is, after all, cheaper than therapy and nothing else quite does the trick for keeping me sane like sending all those thoughts which tumble around in my head out my fingers right here in this blogger compose space. so i hope to be back on form this week. for all of our sakes.

oh, and catwoman had to come along too and see the london eye. she nearly blew off into the thames, but i grabbed her in time. that would have been a tragedy.

* * *

and speaking of tragedy, 

i can't get enough of the story of the lost malaysian airlines plane.

what do you think happened?

will they be found safe and sound?

and where are they?

isn't it a job for james bond at this point?

or maybe for catwoman.

don't make me get out the kragle

it's not only here on the blog that i've got lego on the brain. of course, much of my brain is taken up by learning about my new job. but it's also entered my sleeping hours in the form of dreams. or rather nightmares. nightmares of failed meeting room bookings and running around in panic, trying to find a space to meet. nightmares of running into old frenemies in the personnel shop (a place i haven't even been yet and where they wouldn't be allowed to be since they don't work there). why is it that you can't delete people from your unconscious mind the way you can from your facebook or linked-in?

i mentioned the other day that i had a tale to tell about minifigures. there is a bowl of minifigure parts near my desk and in looking through it, i realized that it really, really bothers me when they are put together differently than they are meant to be. there is, in that bowl, a head that isn't chicken man's real head with the chicken man costume head on it paired with a baseball torso and legs that don't belong. and in all honesty, it makes my hands sweat just thinking about it. i have a few minifigs from the lego movie on my desk as well and to demonstrate to my colleagues how it makes me hyperventilate, i switched the hair on wildstyle and president business. but i had to quickly put it back (tho' strangely president business' squarey hair made western wildstyle look a bit like queen elizabeth I) because it was making me a little bit ill.

but then i stumbled across this article via twitter and i realized that i'm not alone in my ocd (if you've seen the lego movie, you know it's a theme there too). the whole movie centers on the kragle, which is a tube of crazy glue. and while i don't really want to go that far, i have realized that i am a lego builder who wants to build and display, not build and play. i think you should build it and leave it as it is, not making any adjustments or messing with it and definitely not taking it apart again.

but today, i had a homework assignment for a morning meeting tomorrow. we were all given a small set and asked to build it. we will have breakfast together and go around the table and tell about our building experience. my set is a creator 3-in-1. which means that it comes with the parts to build three different things. but in order to do that, you have to take apart the thing you built and rebuild it into another of the things - in my case, a helicopter, plane or boat. i like the plane best and built it first. but then i realized that i was supposed to take it apart and try one of the others. so i made sabin do it while i left the room. and then i came back and built the boat.

i was going to leave it intact for a proper photo tomorrow morning (you can see i took this one after the light went), but i just had to take it apart and rebuild the plane, it's my favorite of the three in this set. and it was a big step that i was able to disassemble the boat myself. these are small builds and good practice for me, who didn't grow up with lego (i had a pony). i also realized that i never really helped sabin build that much of it either, so i've not had much practice. i don't think i'll ever really become a person who makes amazing things up out of my head, but i will overcome my inability to take it apart and mix and match (and if i can't, there must be meds for that). and i am in awe of those who can build their own creations.

it was a big step that i took the girl scientist's head (series 11) and used it for my mini me for my photo series. and i haven't even put her back yet. i put the girl scientist back on my minifigure shelf with the wrong head on. and my hands are hardly sweating at all when i think about it. (note to self: repeat 100x in hopes that it will become true.)

a little fairy tale

this evening, our heroine, the forest maiden,

with more than a little help from the warrior princess

and a little bit of help from the guy with the tomahawk,

found out the troglodyte's secrets.

even tho' he had tried to oh-so-cleverly disguise them.

and now the forest maiden (changed out of her forest garb) can kick back and relax and wait for the news of the new iPhones tomorrow.

or is it later today?