bricktopia saturday

I'm so very glad that I decided to book tickets for Bricktopia on Thursday, otherwise today would have worked out quite differently.

It was good to be able to sleep in a little this morning, but I had to drag myself out of bed eventually and get ready. And I managed to make it downstairs just as Ma as about to get out of the car, so that worked out nicely.

When we got to the supermarket we did the Bakers Delight thing as usual... so I can safely say if you like orange and you like chocolate, go and try their Choc Orange scones before they disappear... they're so nice... like a Jaffa, but in baked goods form.

This week was a decidedly lean week as far as shopping was concerned. Mostly because I still had a bunch of stuff left over from last week... but I do plan on using up a bunch of stuff to make a giant pot of vegetable soup tomorrow and I got a bunch more stuff to add to it too.

Other than that we took a bit of a wander around Target where I was equally annoyed and disappointed to see the range of dress shirts they have available... essentially they're all in tones of blue with the occasional bit of purple. Boring!

And then we came back here for the usual ritual unpacking before we headed into the city to kill some time before we were due at Bricktopia.

On the way downstairs I realised that my neighbours on the ground floor have moved out... and later in the afternoon I noticed that they apartment next to them appears to be in the process of packing up their stuff. So that'll be two new neighbours shortly... hopefully they'll be good ones.

When we got into the city we didn't really have much of a destination in mind, so we ended up just wandering up and down the Mall.

We did head down to Target to see if they had any of the furry bear onesies (they're totally not monkeys, I don't know why I ever thought they were monkeys)... they had them, but not in the right size. And Ma tried on a few things, none of which were any good.

Then we headed down to Torrents Parade Ground to join the ever increasing line for the 11:30 intake. They'd arranged it like the Sydney Brick Show where people have predetermined times to arrive... although unlike what I remember from the Sydney show, this was every hour, whereas I'm sure that was every half hour, which might have been a better idea.

Anyway, fortunately we weren't even close to being at the back of the line... if actually snaked from one side of the Parade Grounds to the other and I think it was about the start curling back on itself again when they opened the doors.

I think the fact that we went at 11:30 instead of at the first available session didn't especially help things... when we were in Sydney we were amongst the first ones through the doors (more or less), whereas by the time we got our butts into Bricktopia it was pretty much packed.

Because it was a Lego show, I obviously had to wear my Classic Space logo tee shirt... and it clearly was the right place to wear it. I've never had so many people comment on it. Granted 95% of them were guys in their late 40's or early 50's, but it was fun nonetheless.

The crowd was a bit wearing though... partly I think because a number of the displays had little signs saying "find this thing and that thing and the other thing"... so people were just standing in front of the displays instead of moving around freely.

Overall it was much less impressive than the Sydney show... don't get me wrong, there were some nice pieces, but there was also a lot of stuff that was just straight Lego sets, albeit dressed up a little. There wasn't anywhere as much interesting and large scale stuff either.

I remember these sets... I don't know that I ever had them, but the living room set especially, with the snowman on teevee, sparks a memory somewhere in the back of my brain. Maybe somebody I knew had it, maybe I had a catalogue with it in, I'm not sure... but I definitely remember the set.

Anyway, we spent about 45 minutes all up looking at all of the displays, or at least all of the ones that were interesting (the big cut-in-half cruise ship from the Sydney show was also there, but I'd already photographed the living daylights out of that, so I never even got close to it), and Ma bought a couple of keyrings from one of the vendor stalls... a Batgirl minifig for her and a plain gold minifig for me (to put away for Christmas, since my current minifig keyring is still doing okay).

And then we called it a wrap... I'll definitely be interested to go again if it becomes a yearly thing (and given the fact that they sold out completely for both days at some point today, I'd say that that is fairly likely), and hopefully it improves over time (which is also likely).

Once we were done Ma suggested that we take a detour off to Haighs... yes, I know, that makes like the third week in a row... but it was her suggestion.

It turned out to be a good one, because not only did they have what must be the last of the broken Easter eggs (well some of it was egg, but quite a lot of it was Easter fish) in the "seconds and irregulars" bins, but they also had some Peppermint Truffle Bars and Marshmallow Kokettes. Yummy.

Since we both had more than enough points on our Cinebuzz cards, we figured we could head off to the movies. But first we needed to stop off back here at my place since I've never been able to actually book tickets using Cinebuzz points using the iPhone app. Turns out that I couldn't book them properly online at all.

If you'll allow me a brief rant... this is directed solidly at whoever is responsible for both the Event Cinemas website and iPhone app... WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!

All I wanted to do was book two tickets, using accrued points from two separate Cinebuzz accounts so that the tickets were free. I know this is physically possible because I've done it on more than one occasion. And it's been easy. But this time around it was impossible... it's always been impossible on the app, not to mention confusing, but this was ridiculous. So fix your shit!

Thankfully because Ma has a Seniors card those tickets can be bought in person at the cinema (so why the fuck you can't do that with the normal cards I have no idea... that's another thing that's ridiculous), so I bought my ticket online and then bought the other one when we got to the cinema.

It all worked out in the end, but it was still an unnecessary annoyance. And doubly so when I complained to the girl serving me at the cinema and she could not have been less interested.

That was about it for the day really... we saw the movie (more on that later) and called it a day.

And just for the record, it's the middle of May and I'm sitting here in shorts and a teeshirt... it's positively balmy, which is just ridiculous for this time of year.

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