New! LEGO Fan Event Calendar

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Well, it’s been a few days since I have had the chance to post here, but my thoughts have been on it since Monday when I last had the chance to write.

This morning I woke early to a clear ice blue sky and decided it is the perfect day to add a new feature to this website. You can find the results of my efforts on the “Fan Events” in the black bar above. :-)

Please know that this will be a work in progress and I am adding events in no particular order. My intent is to feature mainly fan run events from all over the world and I encourage you to help me with this effort. If you know of an event not yet entered to the calendar, please post a reply on the event page and I will get it entered promptly.

Wish me luck! It has been a desire of mine for a long time to have a comprehensive list of events all in one place and I appreciate any suggestions. :-)

Be My Heroica…Play With Me!

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Oh, it’s Monday…and I find myself not quite ready to start my week. Yesterday was supposed to be a killer homework day that would see me accomplish a ton of things…but instead, the Universe conspired to host a catastrophic windstorm and knock my power out all day. Boo to THAT!

The worst bit about the power outage wasn’t the unproductive studies though; the worst was that I couldn’t call my kids as I do religiously, at least once a week.

I’m already the “worst Mom ever,” as I have chosen to follow my passion and have left them behind in Ontario while I study, so this blow was much harder than the gale-force storm outside. As a result, while I was falling asleep last night, I was thinking of them and our wonderful Christmas together here in Victoria. (I was fortunate to have them here for 20 days and it was the first time I had seen them in over seven months!!) This morning I’ve decided to share with you our experiences playing Heroica over the holidays.

LEGO’s Heroica games http://heroica.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx were high on my wish-list long before Christmas, and I was fortunate enough to pick up copies of all four -3857 Draida Bay, 3858 Waldurk Forest, 3859 Caverns of Nathuz, and 3860 Castle Fortaan- in November while travelling.  Shortly after New Years Taylor, Quinn and I sat down together and played the game and I have to tell you –it ROCKED!

I was worried that we would be overwhelmed by trying to play all four in one big conjoined mass the first time out, but it wasn’t a problem as you basically play through each game in series, so the learning curve was not at all steep. The only areas we had problems with were in rule interpretation, as my son Quinn (above) was the “master of training” and for him this is not a natural fit. Do you think his older too-cool-for-LEGO-anymore sister was going to let him dictate how to play? Uh-Uh…she was the self-appointed rule breaker, and spent a lot of energy trying to mess with him and make him lose his cool. Quinn was a trooper though, and even when the competition got truly heated and Taylor had pushed him to his limit -he didn’t flip his lid. He was as keen as I was to see the epic game to its end.

That is the power LEGO has over my 12-year-old son.

What Freedom Means to Me

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When I asked for a divorce more than two years ago, I did not have the financial means to actually leave the family home and strike out on my own. That meant spending the better part of those years cohabitating with my ex and my kids while trying to find a way to make my freedom possible. Neither were easy tasks! Frank and I tried very hard to keep things amicable between us (and thankfully succeeded), but the economics of my situation made moving out unattainable until seven months ago when I decided to go back to University and train for a career I could really get excited about.

The best part about my choice is that school is so far away from my home of the last 23 years. Knowing that I would live on the other side of the country for a year meant two things. One, I would only see my kids once or twice in that length of time –which truly sucks. And two, moving away meant living alone –truly alone—for the first time in my life.

So what is a self respecting AFOL (adult fan of LEGO) to bring with her when she moves thousands of miles away from her sizable LEGO collection? I knew I wanted some bricks with me…even while knowing that I would be so busy that finding time to build would be unlikely at best. But, deciding which ones was not an easy task! After much deliberation I chose to bring my mosaic parts, my MINDSTORMs parts, my entire selection of transparent elements, and a few boxes of sets I had not yet built.

Just to make it clear, the size of my collection is substantial and this decision meant having my movers bring well over one thousand pounds of bricks to Victoria, which is less than one quarter of my LEGO collection.

But just look what having those bricks here means…I am living alone now AND I have a kick-ass LEGO room to build in! :-)

For me freedom means a place to build with my LEGO.

The Saga Begins…

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It’s now been ten months since I first planned this blog, and over the last six, I haven’t been at all sure it would ever happen. Luckily, fate, in the form of Professor Gilbert Wilkes, has intervened and I have finally begun. Whether I would have done so if this were not an integral part of my course grade is a question I cannot answer.
I suppose I should begin by introducing myself. I am Jenn Wagner, age 43, mother of two, currently divorcing, and avid LEGO fan who drives a lime green VW Beetle decorated like the one pictured above. Oh, and I am also a newly minted University student.
One of the reasons I have taken so long to start this blog is that I have no idea what to write about (Did you notice that statement is in the present tense? I still do not know). To write on what I am passionate about is a challenge because there are already so many LEGO-centric bloggers on the web, and I cannot think that anything I have to say on the subject is worthy of being read.
I have had the incredible fortune to be included in some intriguing LEGO projects in amazing locations over the years, so I could write about those…but that seems so self congratulatory that I balk at doing so. I don’t engage with the LEGO community or the company in order to blabber on to anyone who will listen about how lucky I have been, so that is definitely not the right fit.
And yet I am instructed to write a blog…and am graded on its success in gathering an audience…*sigh*
Okay, I think I will do this. I am going to ignore you (my readers –if any), and proceed with a blog that is more a diary than anything else. The changes and upheavals in my life have left me with more than enough material to spill out here, and this way I can share what is important to me at the moment, without too much stress given to what my subject is.
I will try to share pictures, and give you an idea of where I am with my hobby as I struggle through figuring out my future. Like many others, I am in transition and integrating my hobby into what I want my life to be is always a challenge.
I will show you my life as it is now, as best as I can. If you choose to read on –you are very welcome!