Creature visitation

Last week I was lucky enough to be in California and visit fellow robot builder Brian Clark.  Brian was building his B9 robot about the same time I was building mine.  His sense of humor is great and his home was very interesting.   In addition to having a life size Robby, Brian bought the Creature from me a few years ago.  When I sold him the creature I warned him that in the next few years I might be stopping by to check on the creature's welfare.  And I was glad to see that the creature looked happy and was adapting well to the laid back California life style.


All in all it was an interesting trip on the west coast.   My first day back I got the bus stop robots back together again and back out on the porch.  R2 was also worked on somewhat and hopefully will be rolling around again soon.  While driving on the outskirts of San Francisco I passed a place that had some giant steel giraffes out front.  More abstract than the one I'm building but still pretty cool.  Made me want to get back and get mine finished.  Hopefully that project should soon be getting back on track.

Bye bye Creature

We decided to put our 7 foot sea creature up for adoption the other day and in no time we found a new loving family for the little guy. Our robot room is only so big and since the creature wasn't a robot he was the logical choice first one of who should find a new home. I'll be able to squeeze a robot into his place and use some of the $$ towards paying some bills .... translation - make the wife happy.

The creature will be right at home in his new digs. They promised to take him for a ride in their new Delorean and he will have a B9 and Robby to play cards with as well as a cool animatronic life size chimp. Of course we expect to retain full visitation rights next time we get out to California. Oh and I just received an email from the new parents who wrote " We promise that we won't let him go too California either. No blond highlights for sure or tie-dye."

Too bad I never got around to taking him to the Everglades to surprise a few tourists.

Robot party

We expected Bender to mix things up around here a little but were unprepared for what we found when we woke up Saturday morning. I thought I heard some singing in the night and once there was a loud crash but it was one of those times where I thought I was dreaming and just went back to sleep.

So when we get up, we discovered that it got kind of wild around here last night. All the robots were pretty tanked and the creature had a cigar in his mouth. The funniest thing was the Jawa and the B9 singing together. I think they did it more to tick off Bender because he kept telling them to shutup. I have to say though, I never saw the Jawa in a better mood.

I guess some good came of it because the B9 taught Bender and the Jawa how to play Chess. The creature didn't want to learn but had fun heckling them from the sidelines. Other than the ashes on the floor and a couple of spilled beers, nothing else was damaged. The crash I heard was the B9 falling down when he got in a chugging contest with Bender. One of his side vents came out so I'm going to have to repair him later. He kept murmuring something about his circuits being foggy.

The only robot that didn't get in trouble was R2D2. He still doesn't trust Bender and isn't influenced by him at all. Thank God there's a little piece of sanity around this house !!!!

Now to clean this mess up.....

Mystery solved !

Mark Thompson from the B9 robot builders club just so happened to have a picture of the creature in his filing cabinet !!! The picture shows the creature in a Camel cigarette ad with a pretty girl on the beach. Mark Thompson's website

I guess that explains the sand in the creatures's shoes. Also the lower whisker she's tugging on in the picture is now missing. She must have pulled a little too hard : )

Warning ! Warning ! Danger Will Robinson

We survived the zero degree temperatures in Michigan and are glad to be back in Florida.

Today the Robot's new friend showed up on our doorstep. His true origin and name are still unknown but he's reputed to have had a monster part from a tv show or movie in the 60's. It was rumored he was on 2 Lost in space episodes but that's probably just a rumor. If you have a clue who he is please let me know. He's shy and hasn't said anything since he arrived. I told my wife to not start with the "Big Ugly Monster" comments because I won't be responsible for his response.

There probably won't be much robot building this weekend because we're going to Orlando to the MEGACON gathering to scout a venue for a possible B9/Robot builders convention in early 2007.

Ducking skillets

The comment Brian made on the last entry - getting a 60's creature costume "would be worth ducking skillets for a week" was pretty funny. I didn't duck skillets but .... it didn't go as well as I hoped. She called it a "big ugly monster" and was not at all happy with our new family member.
Hmmmm ....
All that I can say is she didn't want a kitten long ago and I converted her to become a cat lover so I can see my work is cut out for me once again. Big ugly monster indeed !!!

I'm taking a few days off from robot building and heading into the frozen wastelands of Michigan today. Haven't seen snow in 11 years so it ought to be interesting.

Creature confessions

OK .... Time to fess up. After all this is confessions of a B9 builder right?

Well I'll admit I've gone completely over the edge this time. And I still haven't got around to letting my wife in on the 'great deal' I got on EBAY last night. After all, aggrevating the wife on Valentines Day is not the key to marital bliss.

I found this large vintage rubber monster costume on EBAY that was rumored to be on one of the "Lost in Space" episodes. Granted, I doubt it was actually on "Lost in Space" but it may have been. Regardless, it's an alien monster that I fell in love with. He's not an ugly mean looking monster but rather a friendly looking alien monster that makes you smile. Not that any of that will matter when she finds out. Plus he's almost 8 foot tall !!! I still need to come up with my standard flimsy answers to all her questions once the topic surfaces ... "where are you going to put it", "what are you going to do with it", "why?", "are you crazy?". The problem is I will agree with her. She's absolutely right ..... but ... as Dave Barry puts it "there's a fine line between "hobby" and mental illness.

This costume needs a complete restoration and I'm pretty sure I can restore it like new. I've been honing my rubber molding techniques and will use that knowledge to replace scales that have fallen off. I also have a lot of liquid spray rubber I bought by accident. So once I find the time, this will be an awesome project. Or at the very least, we could take a quick trip down to the everglades to freak out some tourists : )

He will look great next to the B9 robot or even standing guard and greeting visitors by our front door vestibule. Doesn't it look like he could be in a "Lost in Space" episode? A friendly alien of course.

The newest member of our family.