Legomania

It's raining in Baltimore.

It's a song by the Counting Crows, but it was also the fate of the day last Saturday. It was gross and humid outside, definitely a day I wanted to spend inside. I tend to go stir crazy if I'm indoors for too long though, so something stimulating was necessary. After brainstorming numerous ideas - watching a movie (boring), watching my boyfriend Paul program a computer for 5 hours (incredibly boring) - I finally struck gold. Remember the tiny multi-colored bricks you played with as a kid? The ones that fit together perfectly? You could build anything, a house, a car, a helicoptor...the only limit was your imagination (that's a cliche if I ever saw one). Yes, it's Legos, the perfect solution to any rainy day.

I used to always ask for Lego sets for Christmas. It was the perfect activity for an only child like me - it would entertain me for hours, days upon end.

We jumped in my car and zipped off to Target, heading straight for the kids section. Two 21 year olds closely inspecting every type of Lego set offered must have been quite a sight. After much debate, we decided on the City themed 963 piece Police Station. Dead God, it was beautiful. It had everything - a watch tower with spotlights, an interrogation room with a lie detector, a K9 mobile with a plastic dog inside and even a jail cells with toilets! The amount of detail was almost unbelievable.

So maybe it wasn't our most practical purchase (these things aren't cheap!), but we bought it. Later that day, we go to work. With the help of two of our friends, we pieced together the set in just a few hours. The set came with instruction manuals, complete with step-by-step directions for how to build each part. We had a great time, hunting for the pieces we needed while enjoying a beer as well (sure didn't do that when we were kids).

You'd think the Police Station would have quenched our Lego thirst. But no - less than a week later, Paul bought a Lego Mindstorms set off of Craigslist for a price too good to pass up. I don't know much about these, but apparently you can build robots with giant claws and make them do things. The box emphasized the robot was for ages 10 and older, but Paul assured me that the majority of users were computer geeks our age or older. Who knew?