Now I'm thinking of the episode where Bobby discovers the joys of charcoal.
Oh, I'm also happy because I bought a dress on clearance for this weekend that is totally early 60sish. I'm going to assume they were inspired by Mad Men's popularity, but it's awesome.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
Its been one hell of a week
awesome old lady is awesome
HOMER, Alaska (AP) — Since the Kirk Kristiansen family of Denmark first manufactured LEGO toys in 1949, about 440 billion LEGO elements have been made.
Although it might seem like Esther Hill of Homer has about half the LEGOs in the world, that's exaggerating things a bit. She hasn't added up all the bricks, tires, roof tiles, trees, minifigures, flowers and other pieces in her collection, and couldn't tell you how much she has. She hasn't calculated what she's spent, either. In the 33 years Hill has collected LEGOs, piece by piece, it adds up.
"I can't tell you how much money I've sunk in this," Hill said. "I know it's several thousand dollars."
At her East End Road home she shares with her second husband, retired veterinarian Arlen Hill, LEGO sets take up almost every horizontal surface.
As one boy said when he first saw her collection, "I thought I had a lot of LEGOs."
Kid, you're not even close.
On one shelf, Hill has built a street of Victorian-style buildings. There's a fire hall, a hotel and a store with apartments. LEGO figurines ride trucks, walk the streets and eat in a restaurant. The buildings even have furniture, like a ping-pong table in the fire hall.
In a front room, Hill displays sets she's built. There's a vintage gas station — a reproduction of a 1958 set. On another shelf a little electric motor turns a LEGO Ferris wheel. Like a subdivision street with model homes, Hill has made a collection of cottages. One has a deck and carport, including a driveway. Another house has an outside patio. Cheery plastic trees and flowers decorate the green LEGO lawns. On a gloomy rainy day, the bright blue, green, red and yellow bricks brighten up the room.
Dominating Hill's collection is her own little LEGO land, an entire town that fills up a 64-square-foot table. A LEGO railroad track runs around the city, with a LEGO train and LEGO conductors.
Hill can rattle off facts about LEGOs — how the earlier minifigures didn't have faces and how modern ones even have elaborate hairdos. Built on thin bases, the town has streets, curbs and sidewalks. Minimen and miniwomen roam the streets, drive trucks and cars, stand ready to fight fires, bust bad guys and heal broken bones.
Last month as she showed off her collection, a tower of boxes stood beside the temporary city. With family visiting, Hill had to stow her city away to make room at the table.
Hill was born in 1933 in Brodus, Mont. She moved to Homer in 1976 with her late husband, Don French from Oregon. "We just wanted to go somewhere we had freedom," she said.
She learned about LEGO shortly after moving to Homer, when she saw friend Beryl Myhill's grandson playing with the plastic building blocks. Her husband got her a LEGO set for Christmas, a motorcycle and police car. One set led to another. Pretty soon she was buying and building intricate sets like a carousel that turns. She saves up and buys kits from the LEGO collection or prowls garage sales. One time she bought a garbage bag full of LEGO pieces for $50.
It might seem odd for a senior citizen to collect and build LEGO sets. Her 26 great-grandchildren and other children she knows in town give her a good reason, though.
"That's why I do it," Hill said. "For my friends who have kids and grandkids."
LEGO is just a year older than Hill and got its start in Denmark in 1932 when founder Ole Kirk Kristiansen began the company. LEGO — always spelled in capital letters, the company insists — gets its name from the Danish words "leg" and "godt," meaning "play well." In Latin, the name also means "I put together."
The iconic plastic LEGO block came about in 1958, and the system of interlocking pieces allows endless play. One mathematician estimated six eight-stud bricks could be assembled in 915 million combinations. LEGO evolved from building sets with bricks, roofs and windows to sets with themes, such as pirates, Medieval kingdoms, Star Wars and Harry Potter.
After Hill's first husband died, she met Arlen Hill, also widowed. They eventually married. "This house just got awful big when it was empty," Esther Hill said.
With a loving companion, family and friends, it's empty no more. And then there's the LEGO collection. Hill welcomes showing her collection to the young and young at heart.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
Spent all afternoon dealing with crappy administrative issues, all cos it seems to be some kind of holiday in India so all of our usual offshore minions who normally deal with all this crap are not in the office.
This being such a stupidly global company, I need to get a deployment ticket approved by 14 different approvers in such places as Manila in the Phillippines, Birmingham and Sheffield in UK, Tampa in Florida and Mettawa in Illinois in the States, and Curitiba or something similar in Brazil.
It's now 5:37pm on a friday, all the crappy admin tasks are finally done, the deployment ticket has paged out successfully, and I'm off for a party weekend across southern London.
OUTTA HERE FUCKERS
Originally Posted by Steely Glint
House has passed its inspection we move in 2 weeks today!
Gradulations.
It's the final countdown.
"Tampa in Florida"
What are you doing thats dealing with this place?
It's Saturday morning and its a perfect spring day!
Such is Life...
Posting from my birthday present! A new laptop- Thinkpad! It's fire engine red too, I feel sexy geeky!
Well HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Cat!
Well, my birthday isnt until next month, but the lappy was on sale and it shipped quicker than we expected. And hubby said it was okay to open!
Thank you, though
Happy early birthday pressie time Catgrrl!
I'm sure you will though.
Such is Life...
Well ... it's rather boring ... but ..."Tampa in Florida"
What are you doing thats dealing with this place?
I manage updates to the UK regional layer of a browser-based application for the bank.
Regional layers are required because different countries around the globe have differing financial regulations which need to be catered for.
Regional layers are built on top of a core layer. The core layer is managed in the states, namely by several teams across several cities in Illinois.
Once an update to a regional layer is ready for deployment, the deployment is also managed by a team (kinda linked to the core product teams) in the States, in Tampa, even though the production servers for the UK regional layer reside in the north of England.
So that's why I deal with the friendly folk in Tampa.
Last edited by Timbuk2; 09-11-2010 at 11:01 AM.
USF is dominating UF in the first half. UF coughed up half a million dollars to schedule USF as a home opener. UF has a tradition of bringing in crappier and lower ranked teams so they can showboat that first game in the swamp. This game was scheduled almost 5 years ago, before USF started ranking, and before USF beat FSU.
Watching UF getting down a notch or few, while watching my old college bring their A game, this is a most excellent game thus far.
EDIT:
What the hell happened at half timeUSF has completely collapsed
Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 09-11-2010 at 06:50 PM.
Just saw your edit, was about to advise you not to count your chickens.
I love my redneck posse!
Law enforcement missing pop culture in 3...2...1...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39088022
Visited the vaults of the city archives today and got a look of the 'Acte van Satisfactie' of february 8th, 1578 in which the city of Amsterdam declares for the Revolution.
Congratulations America
I got a fortune cookie with no fortune in it.
I enjoy blank walls.
This months cover of PC Gamer has George Washington getting his teeth punched out by Otto von Bismarck
How unfortunate!
Such is Life...
I am finally making some headway in getting my apartment arranged the way I want it! I had to call one of my ex-husbands to come help me, promptly pissing off his girlfriend!
I don't have a problem with authority....I just don't like being told what to do!Remember, the toes you step on today may be attached to the ass you have to kiss tomorrow!RIP Fluffy! 01-07-09 I'm so sorry Fluffster! People who don't like cats were probably mice in an earlier life! My mind not only wanders, sometimes it leaves completely!The nice part about living in a small town: When you don't know what you're doing, someone else always does!
Atari bullshit refugee!!
This gets better and better...
Official Police Bulletin:
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
The HDCP master key is in the wild.
HDMI DRM is dead.
Terminator 2.
Ohhhhhh snappp
I enjoy blank walls.
Twente proud after tremendous night
Well done Tuckers!
I could have had class. I could have been a contender.
I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum
Which is what I am
I aim at the stars
But sometimes I hit London
Me Birthday today.
Lady coming round with some champers, then she's taking me out to a local eatery for eats tonight.
She also has some surprise up her sleeve, told me to keep monday night free, won't tell me what it is.
buttsex?She also has some surprise up her sleeve, told me to keep monday night free, won't tell me what it is.
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