Category Archives: PLAY

PLAY

stikfa theater v1

groovy

Last night’s Stikfa antics with Elise and Andy spawned an idea in Chad’s head requiring a trip to the hobby store late this afternoon.

Returned and did some paperwork and took a nap.

I awoke to the sounds of microconstruction. This is what you get when you leave one bottle of Elmer’s Glue, a box of popsicle sticks and one crafty virgo, (Kevin), to their own devices.

The latest “what to do instead of watch TV” activity? – Stikfa Theater!

Now accepting movie recommendations…. but not blogging.

OBSESS, PLAY

sum assembly required

toiz!

The last 48 hours I’ve been a busy monkey reinstalling software and dragging gigs of project files across the network onto the replacement PowerBook.

With the roof antics and some insight from some financial snapshots Loanscapes provided, we’re now holding off on refinancing until I can fix some annoyances that have come up as a result of the last sluggish business year. Meanwhile, txredneck, found blog.pop and we’ve been iChat bonding over years spent in the Jr. Masons and he’s been dispensing some valuable biz-operations consulting. (he’s a consultant by day – a redneck by blog).

The box arrived from Kid Robot which I assumed contained the little bears we ordered for our nieces and nephews. Kevin snagged the box, glared at me and ran to the back of the house. “hu?” – I tend to be nebulous about this kind of stuff, and quickly forgot about the suspicious behavior.

Later that evening I heard, “Oh fuck it” – and he emerged with something behind his back… “I was going to save this for our anniversary but you’ve been grumpy with everything going on you need a pick me up.”

He revealed what he was holding. A Stikfa! (Quite possibly the coolest damn line of toys I’ve ever seen). I made my requisite squeaky excited noises and we got to the task of assembling the figures. I question whether these things were ever intended for children – assembling them alone is an exercise in tedious patience. (the parts, over 50 of them, come on their molded trees that you have to snap out and put together).

I spent the entire evening taking photos and constructing little stories about my new toys. (See Figure A: “Stupid shit you do when you don’t watch television”).

If I had a blog I’d probably post some of my results, (and apologize for the inconsistent tonal-range and color balance between cells).

What’s worse? A thrity-two year old man who plays with toys….

Or… A thirty-two year old man who plays with toys, blogs about it and then denys it?

LIVE, PLAY

figure action

playmoiconsâ„¢

About two years ago while unboxing Christmas poop we found a small hand made kresch my mother gave me. That was it though.. no nativity figures…. just the structure. We got the wild hair to construct a nativity scene entirely from Star Wars action figures but the silly idea,… like so many… got shelved and never implemented.

The other night we headed out to do some Christmas shopping for family and stopped into the Toys-R-Us searching for a toy camera for the nephew in PA.

We didn’t find one… But we we did wind up spending more time in the damn toy store than any other stop that night.

I was mid-drool over the Stikfas, when Chad and Kevin turned the corner with a wide-eyed expression on their faces and giggling their asses off…. They found a Playmobil nativity set… Suddenly our tight budget and original directive to ONLY BUY THINGS FOR OTHER PEOPLE vanished. This was way too odd to pass up.

We rushed home and set it up…

The instruction booklet was so simple,… so beautiful…. so graphic… it was difficult to use and it wound up taking forever to assemble the cast of characters.

My inner weirdo is satisfied that we found something so kitsch.

My inner residual catholic is satisfied that we have a nativity set on display.

My inner film-fag had fun setting them up with dramatic lighting.

My inner smartass will deny blogging about this.

LIVE, PLAY

trippin with robi

pig sprinkles

Up and out to the office early today.

Lunch with mom at The Broadway Oyster Club, a little cajun joint in St. Louis’ equivalent to the French Quarter in New Orleans. Red beans and rice with grilled sausage. mmmmmmmmm. *did I take my cholesterol meds today?

Back to the office where a grumpy mojobear was trying to work on a software project but kept getting distracted by phone calls and random pop ins from needy friends.

Something’s not right. I first thought I was empathetically picking up on Kevin’s mood as I’m apt to do. (I’m a textbook Scorpio). But by the end of the day it seemed more than a contagious funk.

By 7pm I had the chills and my head felt like it was in a pressure cooker. It seems the weather snap has smacked me with a cold.

It’s now some ungodly hour and I’ve got that “speedy funky high” you get when you take over-the-counter cold medication. I’m groggy – but can’t sleep.

Thought I’d make myself a salad but got distracted with Baco-Bit’s new packaging design. Damn you chrisglass for creating this dialogue about the rampant, lame-ass, new re-branding efforts of companies.

But why stop at the package? I say rename those tasty little nitrate-filled-flecks!

I must be hallucinating from the Robitussin because I could swear I’m blogging.