LEGOs, LEGOs,Everywhere!

Got a flier from the Oak Lawn Library the other day, Chris brought it home. The NILTC (Northern Illinois Lego Train Club) was going to have a set-up for 2 days at the library. So we (Ed and I, Chris had to work) took the boys. WOW! All I can do is post the pics and give little comments about them because words can't describe how cool this was. They will be there from 1-4 on Sunday and then they move on. You can go visit them tomorrow (Sunday) or you can visit their website http://www.niltc.org/ and find out where they will be next. I hope you enjoy the pics and get a chance to see their work.



I didn't catch all their names, but these are some of the very helpful builders of this set up. In the second picture the guy making the funny face is Kevin and the guy in the hat is Adam. They all answered every question asked not matter how many times they were asked. They were all very, very kind and happy to answer questions from even the smallest future builder.

This is
the first building I saw when I walked into the room, and a closer look at the street level of the same building.

The was a truck accident! It looks like it was pretty bad, and that the entire police force was called in. I wonder if it was a bus load of prisoners. Oh, wait it looks like two delivery trucks. I see why the entire police force was called in can you? Anybody got any coffee or a nice cold glass of milk to go with all these doughnuts?

Yep, you're looking at the Ecto-1. Who ya gonna call? LOL! right in the middle of the second picture you can see the Amazing Spiderman and in the third, The Green Goblin. I didn't get a picture of Doctor Octopus, but he was there. There were some rooftop sentries and a little further down, a rooftop party.




We all knew that White Castles needed help. LOL! Do you think they have it right for the future of gas prices? Ah, here we see a productive LEGO employee..... Oh, wait, she's xeroxing her butt! Look! It's a gunfight! "He lives in a pineapple under the see, it Spongebob Squarepants", Patrick Star, Squidward Tenticles and, Mr, Eugen Krabs of the famous Krusty Krab.

Looks like there's something going on down there. AHHHH! I see zombies and skeletons! It's a haunted house! Why are these people picnicking in front of the haunted house? Do they want to be zombie food?

Right next to the haunted house was an old time toll booth. Then there was another great movie tribute.... The Palace Hotel. (C'mon..... you all know what movie that was from right?) And to keep up the tribute there's the Good Ol' Boys tour bus. (Did you figure out what movie yet?) Then there was the Millennium Falcon! Can you imagine having to build that? If you look closely there's a shout out to the Olympics as well. It looks like the Canadian Curling team against Hogwarts. I wonder if magic is allowed?

This was just about half of what we saw! I'll blog the other half tomorrow.

Museum Docent..... What????

For any of you that don't know yet, I am currently a Volunteer (or Docent as I was called the last time I was there) at the Museum of Science and Industry. I've been volunteering since November of last year. It is turning out to be a perfect outlet for all of the useless knowledge crammed into my melon, and anyone that knows me knows that that is alot!

I decided to take some pictures of the cool things that I have to pass to get to my area in the Imaging Lab and of some of the things that I use on my Science Connections cart. I pass the Race Cars Exhibit on my way to the Imaging Lab.

I pass the 1914 Ford Model T, 1929 Rolls-Royce New Phaeton, 1930 Franklin Pirate Phaeton, and the 1971 Aston Martin Lagonda Limited. All pretty amazing automobiles if you ask me.

My area of "expertise" is Microscopy, or microscopes. On the cart I have (usually) 6 20X dissection microscopes.

This is my cart from a distance and up close. Since our microscopes don't have a platform light, one of the other volunteers put together this neat set up. Most people ask how the light set up works and how the Altoids power the lights and I usually tell them "Well, they are curiously strong mints." Then I tell them to open the tin to see the battery set up.

The first thing I do is help people get the hang of finding what they are trying to look at and using the focusing knobs by asking if they can find Lincoln on the back of the penny. Yes, he's there if you know where to look.

Go ahead get a penny...... now look at the back right in the center of the Lincoln Memorial you can see him sitting there with the naked eye. Under the microscope you can see him a little more clearly. Then if they are still interested we move on to some other slides. We have bee parts, butterfly wings, dot matrix color printing, sand, differnt kinds of cloth... the list goes on. It's really pretty cool.