The True Nuttiness

Something big is coming.

Mary, my late wife, visited me in a dream last night.

Yeah, Valentine’s Day, cool, thanks for that babe.

I’m a weird dreamer. I will slip deep into a dream state as soon as I close my eyes. I will often shake out of that state just as quickly. This can result in hyper realistic dreams that span more time than the few seconds I’m unconcious.

That’s how Mary chose to visit me. In the dream, I was leaving our tattoo studio and walking down the hall to our jiu-jitsu neighbors at Elevated Studios. She was there, coming out of another doorway to follow me. I didn’t stop, but my eyes were locked on her face. It was different. She has a twin sister, so I thought maybe it wasn’t Mary, but it was. It was different because she had aged. It’s been six years since she passed and it looked like she had been living those years somewhere else.

She wore a grey dress, an old Halloween costume. She smiled at me. She was peaceful and comforting in my confusion. I opened the door to the jiu-jitsu studio to let her in first, but we froze there for a moment, staring at each other.

Then I awoke.

There’s been a tension hanging in me recently. There’s a weight that I can’t properly articulate.

Mary reassured me. She was there at our new venture to let me know that I was safe and in the right place.

I believe deeply in signs and Mary hasn’t visited me this vividly in a long time. There were other small things too, it was an odd day.

This podcast episode fit right in to my intuition that a new chapter in my narrative is close. Jonathan Pageau and Seraphim Hamilton discuss divination from the Old Testament to Artificial Intelligence. The path I desire most is to align my attention as closely with God’s will as I am able.

Mary showed up to let me know she will be with me through every obstacle God offers me to master.

“I Hope You Win”

I took this message from Tucker Carlson personally. I’m not through his conversation with Theo Von, but I was inspired by this positivity to return to blogging.

I listen to a lot of podcasts and I’m trying to read more. I’m going to work to share the resources I value. The effort to silence dissident voices (even those as vanilla as Carlson) is a threat to individual thought and I hope to combat it with some “radical” conversations.

Fun-A-Day 2023

Catching up on all our builds!

Boin Island
Fat Usopp

This year, my sons and I committed to creating a Lego One Piece build every day for the month of October.

Chew Chases Usopp
Arlong Park

This was our most collaborative year participating in Delaware Fun-A-Day.

My eldest son (Westen, 14) and I don’t know much about my younger son’s (Isaac, 12) favorite manga. Isaac was our guide in choosing subjects, finding referencing pictures, and providing narrative context. It was encouraging to see him take on the role of project manager while also putting together a couple of our most impressive Lego scultpures.

His first build was The Red Force, captained by Shanks, mentor of the main protagonist, Monkey D. Luffy.

The Red Force

Westen’s specialty is minifigures and scenes. One Piece has many wild ships and islands, but the characters bring the world to life.

Vinsmoke Judge Battles Sanji
Crocodile
Luffy Battles Kaido
Monkey D. Luffy
Drum Castle
Shanks
Charlotte Katakuri
Pandaman
The Execution of Gol D. Roger
Red Leg Zeff
Pearl, Don Krieg, and Gin

I thought a “raft” would be a simple build, but Blackbeard’s Raft grew into one the month’s largest.

Blackbeard’s Raft

Capone Bege captains Nostra Castello, an amphibious castle.

Capone Bege and Capone Pez
Nostra Castello
Roronoa Zoro
Zoro Clashes with Dracule Mihawk
Aokiji Battles Akainu

The Big Top was a fun challenge from the color scheme to the main tent and clownish insignia.

Westen completed the build with an almost-to-scale Captain Buggy.

Buggy
The Big Top

Westen’s imagination shined on his dynamic depiction of a One Piece game feature.

Brooke’s Soul Guitar Attack

Isaac’s re-creation of Torino Kingdom is one of my favorites. His waterfall effect is exceptional.

Torino Kingdom
The Hitsugibune
White Beard
Blackbeard vs. Ace
Roronoa Zoro

The following builds were from my own imagination. When I was stuck on a One Piece build, I would clear my head with another nautical build.

The orange hydrofoil came out of a challenge to use Lego separators and a single color. I had to bend the rule for a couple bushings.

These two grumpuses are not going to be happy at the Delaware Fun-A-Day Opening!

The Canary Camel was also born out of a challenge to only use the classic Lego yellow.

I made this island oasis when I was intimidated by the more complicated One Piece designs.

Hitsugibune

Dracule Mihawk carries an absurdly large sword and captains one of the smallest ships found in the world of Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece.

The Hitsugibune is coffin shaped and adorned with green-flamed candles. This was the last detail I added and was an extra joy as we own just two green flame elements. I’ve never seen much use for them, but they are perfect in this build.

The mast is a scaled-up version of the hilt of Mihawk’s sword. That sword may also appear in our Delaware Fun-A-Day exhibit.

Arlong Park

This is getting more fun.

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This is Arlong Park, an amusement park commandeered by Arlong, a pirate fish-man.

One of our Lego Unschool Club visitors helped me find the right shark head for the peak of the pagoda. There should be shark heads on the ground level guard houses, but I scaled them down to grey pyramids, each with a single, sharp tooth.

The Red Force

The Red Force is the ship headed by Shanks, Luffy D. Monkey’s pirate mentor.

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Isaac modified a boat hull design he found online to create his version of The Red Force.

He drew on a couple tiles to create some of Shanks’ flag, but I love how he used the red tiles to recreate the red stripe.

The figurehead gave him some difficulty, but we were able to solve the issues together and build a pretty cool dragon.