Happy Star Wars Day

For those Lego fans - this is the Grand Carousel 10196. Not ours, unfortunately. A friend from work made this and allowed me to use it here!

Now that's a better fish tank

There's a bit of "fish tank" culture here at my work. i.e. There are lots of offices and labs in the building that have tanks. It's wonderful to see! And I guess it's easier to look after them in a building of scientific research since there are taps and sinks and ph measuring tools and lots of very smart and dedicated people.

I got my first fish tank a long time ago. Let's see, I've been here ten years, so I probably got my tank 9½ years ago! It held guppies then. Caught from a tank upstairs. Probably very inbred.

When I went on maternity leave to have Elora I put the tank away. Sent the fish to another happy home upstairs and packed the tank in a box. I came back to work to find out that my office was being taken over by an instrument (a multi-million dollar very large magnet, to be exact) so I didn't set up my tank again, deciding to wait until I was properly set up in my new space.

So I moved office in Sept '08. And finally, at the start of this year, I got around to setting up my tank. We visited our friend's fish farm in late January and I came away with 5 goldfish. Only once I'd caught them (how cool to fish for your own gold fish!) did we work out where the tropical fish were kept but I was happy to keep my guys.

Over three weeks I lost three of the 5 fish. Can you believe it? They had lice! I've had enough of lice with my kids, and then to see them on my fish was extremely icky.

But now the population (of two) has stabilised and the goldfish are fat and happy.

Today I installed the final touch. Some bits of Lego, of course. Needed some trickery to keep them down (did you know Lego floats? I didn't!) but in the end I think it looks great!

The Lego Taj Mahal: Part 3

It's been a while since I've touched my poor neglected Lego. I had it out in the kitchen/dining area for a while. Box on its end, the piece on top of it... Asking for trouble, really. One day Atti and Elora were playing near it and I popped out of the room. Came back and there was Lego all over the floor.

"What happened, Atti?"
"It fell all by itself."
"Oh really? How did it fall?"
"It just did it by itself... Oh. Yeah. Doggy did it."
"So you threw Doggy and he knocked the Lego down?"
"No. It just fell. By itself. With Doggy."
"Uh-huh. Right."

I also noticed that parts of it were haphazardly put back together. Somebody knew they'd done wrong and tried to fix it... and then left it when he realised he didn't know how. Hmm. That boy!!

Anyway, Dan was out last night and the lounge room was in a semi-tidy state so after the kids went to bed I pulled out the box and repaired the damage. And then started building.


TripleJ TV came on so I watched that. Then Doctor Who. And I built some more. It was a good episode. I don't normally watch that show. In fact I don't think I've seen a single episode with David Tennant in it. But I watched it last night. It had daleks AND cybermen in it!


And I ended up going to bed much later than I should have, considering I was up at a quarter past five that morning.

Later in the week I want to build the first two corner pieces. I'll keep you posted.

The Lego Taj Mahal: Part 2

More steps done on the weekend...


Atticus awoke from his nap earlier than planned on Saturday afternoon and helped me build the little arches. I was impressed with his dexterity. I didn't think he could attach those little "headlight" pieces but he managed! Got bored after five of them, though.


I sat down and roughly counted the number of steps. Not including repeats. About 330. One step a night = almost a year! Hopefully it will get faster as I get the pieces sorted out. But then some nights I don't touch it at all.

I'll get there in the end.

The Lego Taj Mahal: Part 1

As some of you may know, my husband is a wee bit of a fan of a particular plastic construction toy. He has a room dedicated to the stuff. This picture I've roughly put together to try and capture the essence of it. Most people are completely gobsmacked when they see it.


Every now and then there's a set that I quite like but since I have my other money-eating hobby (craft) I usually resist. Until I saw this set: the Taj Mahal. It's been out for a while and is quite expensive. But I thought it was just lovely. Dan didn't think it was particularly good value, and it wasn't Star Wars or Castle or Space Pirate related, so he didn't buy it.

Then one of the large department stores decided to have a big sale starting last Thursday, including this set for 20% off and I couldn't resist. A friend was buying one and had a card that enabled him to get another 10% off. Woohoo! It would be mine! (Actually, he probably wished I was there when he bought them - the boxes are large and weigh just under 6.5kg... plus he bought some other stuff that day... and caught the train back to work with them!)

So here it is. Here I am with it. My very own Lego.


And last night I decided I would build it. Until I realised that there are almost 6,000 pieces and apparently it takes 9-12 hours to complete. Okay, so I won't get it done in one night... but I could at least get a start.

I opened the box. Three trays of bags of pieces. One book of instructions in each tray.
"Nice," I thought. "I can just use one tray at a time."
I opened the first page of the first book.
I looked at the pieces required for the first step.
Uh oh.


The trays are nice. BUT the bags are NOT in any order. There are multiples of some bags, which is a little better, but they are not sorted into order of building! I will have to open two bags just to do the first step! This is not how I remember big Lego sets being packaged. I remember Dan building a set with bags with big numbers on them to indicate the order to use them! But no! This is going to be a lot more time consuming than I thought it would be.


So, a-sorting I will go. Ziplock bags are my friend.
I'll keep you updated with my progress.