I’ve been watching Six Feet Under, the first three episodes last Tuesday night at Zenchick’s place as we scarfed down Chinese food and pork fried rice. Anyway, tonight (yeah, I’m having a rockin’ holiday) I’m watching the eleventh episode of the first season, The Trip, and the woman playing Ruth’s instructor in her florist class, Mary Gross, looks like an older Brenda.

Unfortunatly, I can’t find a screencap of Mary Gross’ character from the episode, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Flag by Arthur Gugick.

… except for driving to work to get my paycheck, going to the bank, then driving into Guilford to water some plants and feed some cats. But to the end of “doing nothing productive”, I just thought I’d brag that it’s nearly 12:30, and guess who is still in bed?

In the parlance of the AFOL (Adult Fans of Lego) community, SNOT is an acronym referring to a certain type of building technique which encourages creative uses of the standard Lego brick — Studs Not On Top.

In gearing up to begin construction on Zeus, I’ve been considering how to utilize SNOT. While a much bigger project, Hogwarts features absolutely zero SNOT techniques — it’s a very standard “brick over brick over brick” construction (albeit on a large and tall scale).

Wracked by a bought of insomnia tonight — at least I’m off all day so I can take a catnap if the need hits me — I wandered around my den rooting through stacks of bricks, trying to replicate a design I found off Brickshelf. In short, I wanted to use two arch pieces, reversed (so that the studs faced out on both), with tiled pieces inserted between them to give the illusion of a door or a vent. Airlock? Emergency fuel dump? Let’s wait to see how it integrates into the design before deciding. I tried using 1×1 modified bricks with studs on two or five faces to get the reversed effect, but wasn’t happy with it. Instead, I decided to try to use technic pins — inserting the pin into the bottom of a 1×1 brick I used for spacing between the arches (total of three bricks and a plate), I could reverse the lower arch and snap it into place. For the door, I used six 2×2 yellow tiles, secured from behind by a 2×4 plate. With the cavity in the arches, the door assembly fits snug.

The Finished Design:

A rear view of the technique I used:

Blurry photos. Eh. It’s the middle of the night (or close enough). I’m going to try to get back to sleep.