BrickFair was fun, but not as much last year.
First off, I offered to be a Theme Leader. I stepped in at the last minute after the previous volunteer broke an important moving part just before the convention. I had no clue what I was doing, but the duties where easy enough to understand. Take one section of the show, help exhibitors arrange their displays, set-up, take-down.
Unfortunately, the sign-ups in my area were such that I had 12′ of display for 20′ of table. Between Friday night and Saturday at 11 am, I had to fill 8′ of blindingly blank white tablecloth by force of will. Naturally, I couldn’t finish the final set-up until I had the displays taken care of. By the time the public was admitted, I was exhausted.
For an equivalent equine experience, imagine you have offered to fence judge for the first time. You understand the rules in theory, but have never had a live-fire drill. You are assigned a single vertical in the middle of the field. Simplicity itself. Then, the neighboring farmer lets cows out in the adjacent field. Suddenly, you have stops, falls, run-aways, flag-waving, and so on. In short, your fence turns in a hairball.
Plus, a comic artist and frequent convention goer had these words of wisdom by which that I failed to live, “Now I know that I get to pick one thing to skimp on: food or sleep. But I can’t skip both or I get a visit from the plague monkey.”
Finally, it was my second BrickFair. Last year had the element of novelty. This year had the element of, ‘Oh, another BrickFair. How nice.’ On the other hand, and the point I wish to make, is that my reaction to the second saddleseat show two weeks ago was, ‘Oh! Another horse show!! Whoopeeee.’
The message is and continues to be that I really, really want to do the horses. When I was a teen, I moved away from LEGO building when I started riding regularly. I suspect that if I am ever getting three horses fit for Preliminary – or one horse fit for Novice – the LEGO habit will suffer once again. Nothing gets in the way of the horses.
At this point, anyone who has read more than one post on this blog is saying, “Duh. We knew this days/weeks/months/years ago.” What can I say. Things that are obvious from the outside are less so from the inside.
More LEGO posts.
Virtual Brush Box 
Nicely put
exactly. i wasn’t healthy enough to be with the horses as much as i wanted, and was already not able to get on Chief’s back before be had an untimely fatal colic and that threw me into the worst depression of many decades. i still have his tail. sad.
a