Note: Another blog entry, started in February 2019, but never published. I've now done a wee bit of editing and have added "the rest of the story" as Paul Harvey might have said.
I remember back to my childhood that one of the most enjoyable things I might receive for Christmas or birthday was a set of Lego bits. I know that at some point I received a general set with no specific creation in mind. I also remember receiving the kit that would make a jet airplane and a double-decker bus.
My main problem with Lego is that I'm not uber creative. If you give me a kit with instructions, I can make a heck of jet or double-decker bus... but just give me a box of Lego, and I'm lost.
Of course, then I grew up and had nieces and nephews, and God alone knows where my Lego are. I'm pretty sure that the dog ate a few and I know a bunch probably went down the heat register.
Anyway, a couple of years ago, there was a campaign to get Lego to do some Doctor Who stuff. Around the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, I found (on Amazon, of course, the best store in the World!) a set of the (then) 11 Doctors. The weren't Lego brand, but they were sort of a British Lego-like brand. Their feet would fit onto a Lego and that was good enough for me.
BUT, then the campaign was successful AND there arrived a 12TH Doctor, so I decided I had to get the set that came out, right? One of the attorneys I worked with just happened to give me an Amazon gift card that year for Christmas, and I decided it was a sign and ordered the kit.
When it arrived, I was busy, and my Who collection was very dusty, and I knew I'd need to clean them, so I just put the box in my closet. After that, every time my eyes landed on the box I was reminded that I needed to put it together, but...you know I didn't.
A couple of years later, Thing 2 texted me to ask if I'd found the 12th and/or 13th Doctors for our sets (I had got both Things a set for their birthday about the same time I got mine). I forgot that my kit had a #12 in it and proceeded to surf Amazon to find and buy one of each. The next morning, when my eyes landed on the kit, instead of feeling "arrgghhh! I need to put that together," I felt "Oh no! I forgot that I already had #12 - maybe I can cancel that order!" Since I know you are very worried about it, I'll put you at ease and say that I was able to cancel the order for the duplicate #12.
You will remember that we cut the cable cord last summer and are now Slingers. Sling has all sorts of generic on-demand stuff we can watch and one afternoon, I was killing time waiting for Mom to do something so we could resume watching whatever it was we were watching, when my eyes landed on a documentary called "A Lego Brickumentary" It was very interesting and educational. AND basically made me rethink my whole life wondering why I haven't moved to Denmark to go to work for Lego! But I highly recommend watching it, if you come across it somewhere.
So obviously watching this Brickumentary sparked in me a desire to build my Doctor Who kit.
The first step was the people. I have these three new shadowbox things that double as shelves for the cats when they go to leap up onto the bookshelf/cabinet things that book-end the couch. When they went up, I hadn't really decided what would go into them, so we just shoved some stuff in for the interim. But my thoughts had been that, once I cleaned the years' of dust bunnies caking my Doctor Who Lego-like people, they could go in there.
So I dusted off my Doctors Who and the Weeping Angels, the Ood, the Silence, the Dalek, and the two Cybermen, and put them in order, leaving a spot for #12, you will recall that he was in the kit.
The next evening, I worked on putting the two Dalek's together and it took almost as long to put them together as it did to put the TARDIS together. It didn't help that I accidentally used some of the Dalek pieces when putting together the TARDIS and I had to undo it to get them back. You wouldn't have thought that these two (there were two) small little Daleks would require so many pieces and time, but, they were exhausting.
Anyway, a couple of years ago, there was a campaign to get Lego to do some Doctor Who stuff. Around the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, I found (on Amazon, of course, the best store in the World!) a set of the (then) 11 Doctors. The weren't Lego brand, but they were sort of a British Lego-like brand. Their feet would fit onto a Lego and that was good enough for me.
BUT, then the campaign was successful AND there arrived a 12TH Doctor, so I decided I had to get the set that came out, right? One of the attorneys I worked with just happened to give me an Amazon gift card that year for Christmas, and I decided it was a sign and ordered the kit.
When it arrived, I was busy, and my Who collection was very dusty, and I knew I'd need to clean them, so I just put the box in my closet. After that, every time my eyes landed on the box I was reminded that I needed to put it together, but...you know I didn't.
A couple of years later, Thing 2 texted me to ask if I'd found the 12th and/or 13th Doctors for our sets (I had got both Things a set for their birthday about the same time I got mine). I forgot that my kit had a #12 in it and proceeded to surf Amazon to find and buy one of each. The next morning, when my eyes landed on the kit, instead of feeling "arrgghhh! I need to put that together," I felt "Oh no! I forgot that I already had #12 - maybe I can cancel that order!" Since I know you are very worried about it, I'll put you at ease and say that I was able to cancel the order for the duplicate #12.
So obviously watching this Brickumentary sparked in me a desire to build my Doctor Who kit.The first step was the people. I have these three new shadowbox things that double as shelves for the cats when they go to leap up onto the bookshelf/cabinet things that book-end the couch. When they went up, I hadn't really decided what would go into them, so we just shoved some stuff in for the interim. But my thoughts had been that, once I cleaned the years' of dust bunnies caking my Doctor Who Lego-like people, they could go in there.
So I dusted off my Doctors Who and the Weeping Angels, the Ood, the Silence, the Dalek, and the two Cybermen, and put them in order, leaving a spot for #12, you will recall that he was in the kit.
The TARDIS (the blue police box) in the left corner is the Lego version whereas the one in the right corner is part of a salt and pepper set.
The Lego kit had 623 pieces in it and most of them were teensy. The instructions .. oh, the instructions! When I made my jet, the instructions was a double-sided piece of paper that folded up, accordian-style, to the size of a credit card. The instructions for this kit... a paperback book with 64 PAGES!! I decided to move in shifts. First... oh, yes... the people!... and the TARDIS. It took several hours to put the TARDIS together but by that evening my Who-themed shadowbox looked pretty darned good!
The next evening, I worked on putting the two Dalek's together and it took almost as long to put them together as it did to put the TARDIS together. It didn't help that I accidentally used some of the Dalek pieces when putting together the TARDIS and I had to undo it to get them back. You wouldn't have thought that these two (there were two) small little Daleks would require so many pieces and time, but, they were exhausting.My Aunt Marilee was telling us that she'd always wanted some Lego to play with, so this past Sunday at church, I invited her to come over to help me with the final part of the project. She wimped out after having issues putting two pieces together. She said she wanted more of the brick-like pieces. I think she was just being wimpy. Nevertheless, it took me several hours, two helpings of Velveeta/Rotel cheese dip-covered Scoops, and two episodes of Midsomer Murders, but I was finally able to finish the whole thing up.
The only problem is that I was left with extra pieces. I'm 99.9% sure I followed the directions precisely and I don't recall any of my other kits having extra bits.
For my birthday and Christmas, mom always asks me what I'd like and ... I don't know.. I don't NEED anything so it's always a hard question for me to answer. In July 2022, I had an answer. I am on Lego's email-ing list and I'd seen that they had a globe. 
It looked SUPER (parts of it even glow in the dark!!) and I wanted it bad!! But the price... So when mom asked, I had an answer.
It looked SUPER (parts of it even glow in the dark!!) and I wanted it bad!! But the price... So when mom asked, I had an answer.
In early August, after my birthday, mom went to have a week-long sleepover at Aunt Marilee's house. So each evening, after I was done working for the day, I'd deck myself out on the dining room table and work on the globe...
and binged Stranger Things on Netflix so as to catch up.
In under a week, this puppy was done and I felt very accomplished Did I mention that there were almost 2,500 pieces and the instruction book was 268 pages long?!! I hesitate to blaspheme, but I could have been overheard saying that something to the effect that God created the world in 6 days, and so did I! Of course, I did have an instruction book whereas He didn't.
Note: on the ongoing theme of naming my blog posts with song titles/lyrics - some of you may be with it enough to get that "Everything is Awesome!" is the name of the theme song to .... you guessed it.... the Lego Movie!
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