I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, but I’ve been distracted by pesky things like work, life, etc.
Anyway:
I ended up spending up quite a bit of the MLK holiday assembling various products. Because, after all, what else was Dr. King talking about other than putting together various consumer goods?
The first project was the result of a Christmas present from the Wannamaker grandparents, a Star Wars lego model that had (I shit you not) over 1,000 pieces, and mostly itty-bitty pieces, too. The second was an Ikea purchased kitchen island/cutting board sort of table/station.
A bit about this second project: essentially, our dishwasher (one of those deals that hooked up to the kitchen sink via a hose and such– that is, it wasn’t built-in) died. Since we’re likely to move in about a year or so, it didn’t seem to make a lot of sense to go out and buy a new dishwasher. So we decided to buy a piece of furniture that would replace the dishwasher’s duel function as a counter top, that would add shelving, and that we could take with us.
Ikea, as I am sure most of you know, is a wonderful wonderful place for a wide variety of consumer good needs. Indeed, I found it kind of bizarre that they had a couple of model home set-ups where everything (including the flooring!) were things you could buy in that store. I suspect you could point to one of these rooms, say “I’ll take one of those,” and have the whole thing loaded into a truck that you could take home.
In any event, it was loads of fun to visit the store, and we were pleased with our lunch (and you see in the picture at the top here of Will and I enjoying some Swedish meatballs) and our purchases.
I know that Will and I made several mistakes with this Star Wars walker thing– we had both extra pieces and missing pieces. But it still looks pretty cool:
By the way, this is about 18 inches or so tall.
The second piece was the more utilitarian Ikea hunk of furniture:
How to compare these pieces? Well, in many ways, the furniture was dramatically easier to put together than the lego project. I mean, the lego thing took days to finish and involved at least 100 “steps,” maybe more. On the other hand, putting together the cutting board thing involved a couple of rather physically demanding steps– well, demanding for someone like me who a) didn’t have the right tools in the first place, and b) is a whimp.
I’m sure we’ll enjoy both of these things for a while, so I guess it was an MLK weekend well-spent. Though I’m not sure what one actually does with a lego star wars walker….
Just as an aside, I wholeheartedly support your decision to spell “wimp” with the superfluous “h” – it somehow adds just the right amount of wheezy emphasis…