My summer course began on the first day of summer, and while not even half way through it’s draining me like it always does.
I wake up, spend all morning preparing, teach for 2.5 hours, do an hour or more (in yesterdays case, four) of office hours, then come home and fight hard to not snooze on the couch watching classic Star Trek. That’s my day, every day.
But I love it, as I always do.
That said I’m looking forward to this long weekend, so I can maybe sleep in a little, not shave every day and light hundreds of fireworks.
And no, I’m not exaggerating on that last number 😉
In a couple of days I’m heading off for my first European trip of the summer. Here’s the approximate route:
At a rough estimate, before I get home, I will have taken 8 train trips, 4 flights and 1 ferry crossing. There will be a lot of travel to fit so many destinations in such a short trip but I know it’ll be worth it.
I’ll spend the first half of the trip (Ireland and the UK) with Florence, and the second half (in France) with Sue and her daughter. As usual, I’m planning on casting myself in the ‘wise and seasoned but still ruggedly handsome ex-pat Australian supertasting world traveler‘ role. This will hopefully serve me well in France, where I know none of the local tongue! 😉
Of course I’ll be blogging as usual. Several of you have expressed particular interest in this trip, so I’ll strive to make the posts entertaining.
A few weeks back I went to a local convention and bought this:
I’m sure I don’t have to explain why, but in case you’re having a senior moment…
This, my friends, is a Zoid. Specifically from the series called ‘Robo Strux’, which were the US Zoid rereleases from 1985. Zoids are robot animals (often dinosaurs or predatory cats) and I’ve always liked their design. As a child we were too poor for me to ever own one, but I’ve been remedying that in recent years! I was agog to see such an old one for sale at my local con, and my agog-level doubled when I discovered it was unmade. A quick ebay search told me his price (at which I first baulked) was low, so I snapped it up. I was a very happy man that day.
Unquestionably the value of this product was mostly due to the fact it was still unmade and almost complete (only the sticker sheet was missing). Were I a fanatical collector, I would have put it somewhere safe and been happy in the knowledge I owned it. But I bought it to make it, and this past weekend I did. Here’s what was inside the box:
And this was between the pages of the manual:
So it was purchased in NYC back in March 1987, almost certainly for $9.99. That’s about $21.50 in todays money. Which is much less than I paid 🙂
The basic construction of the kits is remarkably similar to today’s models. There were several runners, molded in 5 different colours. It was snap together, and very easy to assemble with only cutters and a file (to remove the flash). However since the model is motorized and the legs need to move, some pieces were loose against each other and held on by interesting rubber caps:
Even after 30 years, the rubber was still perfectly pliable.
As a kit designed for children, there weren’t nearly as many pieces as one of the ‘High Grade Master Model’ kits I’ve been buying recently, but there were still enough to make it interesting and fun. The design was very clever, especially of the legs. Here he is the first time he was able to stand up:
Assembly took me about an hour, and was great fun. I wish the dude at the con had had more of these buggers for sale!
And here he is finished:
Oooh! Dangerous and mighty he looks, but Gordox (or more correctly Gordos) is apparently a specialized command unit more useful for his long-range sensor and communications than his offensive abilities.
