Get Wet With Ice
Um, no. A couple of weeks ago I was challenged to undergo the ice bucket challenge (it feels like at least one of those challenges is redundant). Since I ignore most things on the internet and Facebook I had to look it up first. That was confusing – it looked a lot like you either gave money to charity or had a bucket of ice water thrown over you. Or, you could do both. I’m not very good at doing what I’m told to do and in the spirit of resisting peer pressure (gotta learn someday) my usual response to a challenge is to walk away. Plus I couldn’t be arsed to get wet… that’s what showers, swimming and drinking are for.
So I figured I’d just build it instead…
This seemed like an excellent opportunity to play with flowers and make a small and pretty garden scene! I’m quite pleased by the layering of foliage, trying to offset the plants is surprisingly tricky to do without adding lots of jumper plates. Once I’d got the garden idea it was very satisfying to add cookies and buckets in – things I’ve had little use for, but have adored hoarding them in boxes.
I’d made my usual mistake of making a nice irregular base and then having to fit everything on. Instead of adding to the base I just made things more compact. I’m still not sure about the picnic table – I really wanted to get proper crossbars and benches on it but it was becoming enormous so I rebuilt it about six times before settling. It’s still chunkier than I really want, but as yet I haven’t found a way to strip out the extra bricks… But it looks nice.
Separating minifig parts recently paid off – I dug out a classic ’80s body for the ice dunkee, with Zod’s face. The red eyes of rage are how I imagine I’d feel in his boots. All the other bits are I think from Lego build your own minifigure acquisitions, except for the photographer’s body which is out of the Thanksgiving/Xmas Seasonal polybag from last year.
Hurray for the challenge. It took me most of a day… and I gave money to charity, though not to ALS. There are lots of important and underfunded charities and work out there who also need our donations. I imagine most people feel inclined to give money to something they feel some kinship or personal relationship with. I don’t like the impression of pressure being applied through these challenges – no one should feel bad if they don’t want to give money to charity – it’s not an obligation. So I’m not challenging anyone else – ya wanna do stuff, do stuff.
Full album on Flickr.
