What's the skinny?

Come Friday we will reach the end of the first part of the latest weight loss competition with Katie's family. The Couples competition was between me and Katie, Katie's parents, and Katie's sister Karen and her husband Randy. It's been 3 months of staring woefully at foods sure to sabotage weekly weigh-ins, morning (mourning?) exercises, and shrinking waistlines.

We haven't updated the blog during the competition at all, and I'm sorry. We also never did before and after photos. Again, sorry.

Katie started at 144, and is hovering around 133 right now. I started at 184 and am right at 164.

Right now it looks like Katie are on track to win as a couple, and then we'll enter the second phase of the competition: keeping it off for 6 months. If we keep the weight off for 6 months (or lose more!) there's a prize incentive from Katie's parents. This, for me, will be the hardest part, because after the last competition I gained back about 30 of the 40 pounds I'd lost, which shows an embarrassing lack of self-control on my part. I jokingly blame Katie, because early in her pregnancy she couldn't eat, and I would finish all her food for her, but really I should have just kept to the program and restrained myself.

BrickCon: Battlestar Galactica Display

I've been so swamped lately it's not even funny. Most nights I get home from working on projects at school and Katie and Carter are already asleep. That's not a fun lifestyle. So my free time for stuff like blog posts is nil lately. I'm finally squeezing in some time this morning to finally post about the big Battlestar Galactica display we did at BrickCon in Seattle.

Besides lack of time, the other reason I haven't posted about it until now is because I've been trying to figure out how to post about it to this family audience, unlike, say at my BSG-themed Lego blog, Chief's Deck. I know the people seeing that blog are generally BSG and Lego fans, so it's easy to write to them without feeling like I'm a complete nerd.

So please bear with me, and we'll get through this post:

First off, the entire photo set. What you're seeing is the result of a collaborative effort by builders who provided time, parts, and models for the display.


It all started when our friend Andrew built a model of a starfighter, the Colonial Viper from the SciFi channel hit Battlestar Galactica, a reimagined version of a show you may have seen back in the late 70s. Now in it's 4th and final season, the show has many fans in the Lego community groups we interact with.


I copied Andrew's model because I loved it so much, and later thought up the idea to do a group display at BrickCon. My job would be to build the hangar from the show, and people would bring their own customized Viper to put into the hangar. The idea was a success, and soon many Lego Vipers started showing up online, even from people who weren't going to be at BrickCon.


Builders also began constructing other ships from the show, as well as extra hangar sections, expanding the scope and variety of the display. One friend even decided to build a to-scale 12-foot-long version of a ship called Colonial Movers, which has big cargo containers on the sides, and in one episode housed Vipers for a sneak attack. The Movers can be seen above.


Katie wanted to do a mosaic again, and we settled on a design of the ship Galactica itself. The finished mosaic measures 45 inches long by 15 inches tall, and turned out wonderful.

More photos:









The result of all the hard work put into the display? We ended up winning for the "Best in Space" award, winning top prize out of the entire science fiction-themed section at the show. I've never won an award before at any of the events I've attended, so I was super thrilled and proud of everyone.



We're already trying to figure out what we can do for next year. If we can go, that is...

BrickCon - Day 3

Day 3 was by far the busiest and best day of the whole con. Before the con, Ryan began a group called ChiefLug (he'll explain more in another post) and the members worked together on creating a Battlestar Galactica display. Well, we decided that we would dress up BSG style. Here are some pictures from our awesome day:

Our BSG attire. For those of you who have not been fortunate enough to see the show, Ryan looks just like one of the main characters, Chief. Chief's wife is Cally, so I decided to try and pull off her look by cutting bangs and dying my hair. I was pretty nervous about the bangs, but I really like them.


The real Chief and Cally. Chief now has short hair, so we brought our clippers with us and I cut Ryan's hair Friday night.


The Blind Build competition. In Blind Build you're not allowed to see the parts you're working with, so everything has to be done by feel. I wasn't going to do it, but they had empty spaces so I thought I'd give it a shot. I think I came in 7th out of 20.


The Blind Build Champion! Ryan finished several minutes before anyone else and only had 13 errors, which isn't very many considering you can't see the different colors.


The Build in a Bag competition. In this competition it's a race to see who can build the set the fastest without taking anything out of the bag.


Ryan did a great job and finished 3rd.


The Speed Build competition. The winner of this competition is the person who assembles the set the fastest, including putting all of the stickers on. It looked like Ryan had the lead for a while, but he ended up being a very close 2nd.


The Master Build competition. This competition was for everyone that participated in the Speed Build competition. They were instructed to disassemble the set they had just been working on and then they were told they had one hour to build something within the theme "animal". The set they were working with was a helicopter, so this required a lot of creativity.


Ryan's winning masterpiece, chosen by Lego designers out of 20 participants. I asked him how he came up with the hummingbird and he said that's what he saw when he looked at the parts. I guess my brain just doesn't work the same as his!


So pretty!


Another night at TS McHughs.


Fun times with friends.

BrickCon - Day 2

Day 2 was busier, but still pretty laid back because it was mostly another set up day. We were able to go and do some sightseeing (we'll post those pictures later) and spend time with friends. Here are some pictures from our day:

The first ever BothCon. Ryan and a few friends run a site called From Bricks to Bothans (fbtb.net), so they decided to get everyone together to have a pizza party.


We went to dinner with a group of friends to a place called Thai Heaven. I had never had Thai food before and Ryan had only had it like once (at a prior con), so we decided to go and probably just share a meal to keep our spending down. Well, the owner came over to our big group and told us he had a great deal for us...he was giving us an appetizer and several different entrees that we would share family style for $13/person. Everyone else joined in, so we figured we would too. The food was great and we had four or five different dishes, but then he came back out and asked if anyone wanted ice cream and our friend said we all did. We thought the ice cream was covered under the $13/person, but when the bill came it showed that the ice cream was an additional $3/person. We would definitely eat there again, but now we know not to say yes to the ice cream. Poor Ryan ate all of it and it was coconut. What a trooper!


Thai Heaven


Awesome new castle set announced during Opening Ceremonies.


The designers from Lego product teams felt bad that women weren't well represented in the Lego community, so they decided to have a beauty pagent to recognize the women builders that were there and show off some of the female minifigs, including upcoming minifigs. I was able to be one of the contestants and I happened to be given the UGLIEST one. Well, they had the audience cheer for the prettiest and thanks to our awesome friends who cheered for me I won!


Isn't she beautiful? Everyone got to keep their minifigs, which is really cool because this one hasn't been released yet. We don't even know what set it will be in.


Ryan with Gordon Freeman from the game "Half Life". Our friend's brother works for the game company Valve, so we were able to go to his office and check out the new zombie game they're working on, "Left 4 Dead".

BrickCon - Day 1

Our first day of BrickCon was so much better than last year because we got there a day earlier and didn't spend anywhere near as much time setting up. Most of the day was spent hanging out and having fun with friends.

Pretty sunrise for our 7am departure.


So excited for the trip!


Friends


Meet and Greet at TS McHughs...it was packed


Ryan and Mark

We had such a long day, but it was a blast! It was great to see people we hadn't seen in a while and I was able to meet some new people. I was going to post some pictures of the set up, but I figure it's better to see everything when it's complete.

Chunky Monkey

At Carter's well-baby check last month the doctor wanted me to bring him back in a month for a weight check because he wasn't gaining much weight. Last month he weighed 14 lbs. and didn't make it onto the "percentile chart". This morning he weighed in at 15 lbs. 15 oz., so he gained an ounce shy of two pounds in just one month! We kept saying he was getting bigger, but we've been wrong before. He's now in the 5th percentile for weight and 10th percentile for height (26 1/4 inches).

We're Back!

Ryan and I flew to Seattle early Thursday morning to attend BrickCon (a convention held there every year for Lego fans)and got home around 6:30 last night. We had such a great time and we have TONS of pictures that we'll be uploading this week for everyone to see. Ryan did really well at this convention, winning three awesome awards and I became a beauty queen.
Carter didn't get to make the trip with us, so he got to stay with Grandma and Grandpa Bradley for a few days. It sounds like he had a lot of fun the whole time except Sunday when he decided to be cranky and not take any naps. We had a lot of fun, but we're definitely glad to be back with our little guy!
Stay tuned for all the pictures!