September 17, 2005

Attendees

  • Scott Sanburn
  • Stefan Garcia
  • Victoria Garcia
  • Amy Hughes
  • Chad Smith

Galleries

Stefan Garcia

Report

Mom and I arrived at around 11, and we sat and talked with Scott for around an hour or so until David arrived. David set about reconstructing his mill (which I later stepped on). Chad and Amy arrived shortly thereafter. As usual, most of us brought MOC's to share. Victoria, my mom, had her first MOC's to share, 3 "famous couples" semi-vignettes: Maid Marianne and Robin Hood, Juliet and Romeo, and Scarlett and Rett. Scott showed off his new digital camera, bought with credit card points after his last one finally bit the dust, as well as the box to a Blacktron set he won on Ebay. David had the aforementioned paper mill "proof-of-concept," as well as some fascinating books on Kalamazoo architecture from the turn of the century. Chad brought his work in progress spaceship, a sand blue and black beauty in the making. Finally, I had some "maxi-vigs" for a Space project I'm working on, a demo of BrickSpace, the Computer Games issue with a brief article on BrickSpace, an issue of Model Railroader with hopefully some ideas for all for future layouts, and the "gold" 50th anniversary bricks and the new spring cleaning tub.

Club business was discussed as always. This provided plenty to chew, as we're entering the busy portion of the year. There's 4 events coming up shortly. First is MRHS, a one day show with an always fun (note sarcasm) 7 AM setup. Luckily, we have roadies for this one, as Victoria (Mom) calls them. That is September 25. Next after that is the SJVRR show. Setup is at 6 AM Sunday, October 17, and this is "down McKinley" near a lodge named after some type of animal, which may or may not have a cloven hoof. After that is GATS Fort Wayne, our biggest show of the year. That will have a new layout from last year, and should be a blast. GATS FW is October 28 and 29. Since setup and teardown seems to often bog us down, and leave us all cranky and tired, Tony and Scott have been giving some serious thought to how to make things easier. They've come up with a wood covered, fixed module approach, similar to what Steve Ringe of MichLUG used to have. This should make things much easier, though it does mean purchasing more plywood for use. There are some new shows this year that are still up in the air, Science Central, and Cantigny. Details forthcoming as they approach. Amy also mentioned PenguiCon, which with it's roster of Linux geeks, seems an ideal spot for Lego geeks.

Scott is also looking at making an order of shirts now that we have an official logo, Amy's Chessie Kitten design. Mom wants to make a brick mosaic similar to what GFLTC had at NMRA. The club may also look into badges or single bricks from The Brick Engraver. Amy brought up the issue of ballasting, which is always controversial. She noted that IndyLUG had a single plate layer of grey underneath the track, which added a great amount of visual appeal, for not too much extra effort. While the color change may make this more expensive than necessary, it would still be unquestionable less tedious and expensive than the "Mosaic method," and would add much to the display. There was also talk of a new downtown standard, though nothing conclusive was decided. We ended with some rampant speculating of where an ideal spot for a MidWest BrickCon would be, as this region seems to be lacking in such an activity, despite a rather large number of Afol's from the Twin Cities to Cincinnati, up to Toronto and down to Indianapolis. Possible sites mentioned were the Kalamazoo fairgrounds or Radisson, Chicago, or South Bend.

After that, the meeting officially ended, and we sat down to chatter about brick, and watch the First Official Michiana-LUG movie - Tim Burton's rendition of Batman.