1544 Mood Music.

Sorry about Friday. My sleep schedule is so fucked up I’ve been falling asleep at 5 or 6 pm and just barely managed to get up long enough to post the comic since I didn’t have it loaded. I always adapt to the schedule of whoever I live with so since it’s just dad and I right now I’m involuntarily shifting to his schedule. It’s fine but it makes me want to go to bed right after dinner, which isn’t good. Also, I like to offset my sleep in case of storms. Usuallu I’m awake when everyone else is asleep so if the weather goes bad I wake everybody up. A tornado has passed within miles of the house, and there’s no warning system apart from an automated calling system you can easily sleep through. It’s good to have one person awake through the night, especially in tornado season.
I didn’t have anything particularly interesting to say anyway since all I’ve been doing is trying to get my work done. I’m going to have to get an extension on my anthology submission, I think. I doubt it will be a problem, but I hate to do it on principle. I just can’t produce as fast as I used to. I’m doing better than when I was sick, but I’m still not as healthy as I once was. I am getting to where I can tolerate heat for a bit longer now, so if I’m in a store, or whatever, I don’t have to retreat to the car immediately. I can’t drive my truck in the daylight though. With no AC I can only go as far as the post office, and that’s pushing it. The summer is going to be brutal if it stays hot after dark. I’ll be stuck here for months again. I start to lose my perspective on things if I’m alone in the house for really long stretches of time. If I can go to the store it kind of makes it seem like there’s more out there to look forward to.
The other day I woke up at midnight and went to town on a whim. Nothing is open but Walmart, but it’s something to do. They had most of their lego on sale. The big T Rex set from Jurassic World was market down to $17, but they were all gone. I was super bummed because that’s a huge discount. I think it’s $70 normally. I thought about getting one of the minecraft sets I didn’t have, but they were only marked down by $10 if the app was correct. It may have been more but that store is terrible at marking things clearly and their scanners are almost all broken. I was just going to leave but I happened to look one isle down at the shitty ghostbusters stuff and there was that T Rex set stuck in a pile of FNAF toys. So I got it.
I’ve never had a Lego dinosaur. I’ve always wanted a triceratops, but that one isn’t in the Jurassic World sets this time. I wasn’t into Lego when they made one before. I was kind of hoping they’d make another wave with that mold again, but I’m not sure there will be one. In any event, the Tyrannosaur is really neat. The scale is perfect for it to menace minifigures. The set is a little cage that can ride on the back of a transport vehicle and when you stick the dino in it it kind of looks like he’s driving. Which made me want to put a little hat on him and make it a detective show. It doesn’t look furious as the toy as much as the box art tries to make it seem. It has kind of a peculiar focused look that almost reads as happy to my eyes. It seriously looks like it’s enjoying riding on the truck rather than being captured and confined. Sort of like a really big dangerous puppy. Maybe that’s just some sort of weird optimism I’m projecting.
At any rate it’s a really fun build. There’s a lot of room to upgrade aspects of the transport too. It’s not bogged down with a lot of filler bricks, probably to keep the original cost down because of the huge dinosaur figure. It looks complete though. It’s also weirdly solid for a lego vehicle. For as few parts as it’s made of that’s pretty surprising.
The licensed sets are always a little too expensive at their base prices. The Jurassic World ones in particular struck me as having a poor brick to cost ratio. I’m not sure why that is. Maybe the license was more for that property? I’m not sure if that’s a problem with Universal or I’m imagining it. It might just be because the dinosaurs are specialized figures and Lego tends to prioritize them a little too highly. I mean I would never have bought the set at it’s regular price. At $50 dollar off though… It’s fucking great.
I always keep an eye on the sets as it gets close to the end of a wave. Ninjago is winding down and the sets in the stores now might be the last ones ever produced. Chima is all but retired. I haven’t seen anything but clearance on those in a long time, and now that stuff is gone. I know a new city line is set to move in soon so maybe the shelves are being cleared. I was hoping there’d be some new Scooby sets, but it looks like the ones they made might be all there is. It’s a real shame because no set except the big mansion comes with Velma. That’s really the biggest flaw in that line. No regular kid can get the whole gang. There should have been at least two smaller sets with two of the humans, Scooby, and a bad guy. Maybe they’ll make some more. It seems like they should have already though.
Anyway, I’ll be keeping my eyes on the JW sets now. It would be cool to get a couple of the other dinosaurs as they clean out the shelf space.