Soft Open

Welcome to the first post of the second version of “Battlegorilla’s LEGO Blog”!  Unfortunately, the applicable phrase is, “Third time’s a charm,” so you’ve got a little bit of a wait before I’m able to bring you the really good version of this blog. 

Seriously.  I’ve had my Grand ReOpening/Triumphant Return all planned out for months now.  And what I had planned wasn’t exactly this. 

When I returned to LEGO blogging, I was going to be using WordPress (which people keep raving about to me.)  The blog would have its own domain name.  I would be promoting it through all matter of social media. 

I was going to have MOCs built ahead of time, and posts and articles written and stockpiled before I even began. 

But some of that takes time and money.  Time I haven’t had to spend, and money I don’t know when I’ll be able to save up.  So instead witnessing the Grand Blog ReOpening of my dreams, you’re all just getting a soft open. 

Haphazard musings on a free blogging platform.  Currently being advertised at almost a word-of-mouth level.  Last minute, first draft style MOCs.  Posts written mere moments before posting.  Flying by the seat of my pants. 

The plan is (sometime after March – possibly long after March) to get the whole Grand ReOpening plan fulfilled.  But in the meantime, the blog is back, even though it’s not quite ready according to my standards. 

I think it would be the kind of thing that I’d normally just put off until everything was ready and in place, but… I must blog now.  (Now!)  I guess I’ve been bitten by the LEGO blogging bug.  (Or is that, “I stepped barefoot on the LEGO blogging brick?”  Well, whichever.) 

There are (relatively) exciting LEGO-oriented things going on in my life right now, and I must tell the internet all about them!

The Return of the Bricks

At the beginning of October, all of my LEGO stuff got packed away in boxes and storage totes.  During November, they actually left my lovely basement home to be stored in the spare room of my sister’s new house.  [There is a ‘why’, but it’s long and complicated.  Suffice to say I packed them away for an intended ‘couple of weeks’, and kept running into more and more problems with my interim projects.]

I’m spending January with my sister and her husband, and as I sit here writing this, I’ve had access to my LEGO for about ten days. 

When I first popped open the totes and dug my hands into the bricks, I realized that it had been so long that I’d forgotten how to build.  (That may be a lie.  It’s possible that I never knew how to build, and have just been faking it semi-competently this whole time.)  But after refamiliarizing myself with my chaotic jumble of parts, and building a couple of things from my stockpile of unbuild sets, I’m very nearly ready to dive into a two-month long building frenzy.  (“What happens in two months,” you ask?  Read on.) 

The Road to Bricks Cascade 2015

According to the calendar, we are now exactly two months away from Bricks Cascade 2015.  (March 12 – 15 for the full convention, 14 – 15 for just the public exhibition.) It will the fourth LEGO con I’ve attended, but the first one where I have any sort of responsibilities. 

Not only am I the Theme Coordinator for ‘Superheroes’, but I’m also organizing a collaborative build as an extension of that theme.  (More on that in my next post.) 

Time’s ticking away, and MOCs need to be built, trophies need to be built, promotion needs to be done, and all sorts of little details must be figured out. 

The Secret Project

There’s also this LEGO-oriented thing I’m involved with that may or may not happen, but which I’m VERY excited about.  If it does happen, it will probably be in August.  I’ve decided not to talk about it here in the blog until it’s more of a certainty.  Trust me, you’ll get all of the details just as soon as it’s confirmed. 

Other Semi-Secret Projects

And, of course, there are other little projects in the back of my head of the sort I’m always trying to do, but never quite get around to starting.  I’m really hoping to tackle some of these this year, but once again:  I don’t want to announce them here until I’m fairly sure that they’ll actually happen.  But the more things that actually happen, the more things I’ll have to blog about, right? 

BattleGorilla’s LEGO Blog

So here we are.  At the very beginning of the middle stage of my blog.  The first go-round was a kind of ugly and misshapen caterpillar.  Now my blog is going to be a stylish cocoon for a while.  Eventually it will emerge as a glorious butterfly.  Stick around, watch it change.  (Tell your friends.)