In the beginning

My LEGO career peaked at the age of 12. One version of the Sears Tower and I hung up my bricks. I fell in love with reading and video games and a Disney cartoon line-up that features Ducktales and TaleSpin. I'm not proud of the years that followed. I donned too many Benetton sweatshirts and had glasses that Harry Caray wouldn't have worn. But we're not here to talk about the past.

We're here to talk about right now and my chance to come out of the Dark Ages- that time in any person's life that LEGO has disappeared for whatever reason. For my 30th birthday, my in-laws bought me the first new LEGO set I've had in 18 years and I couldn't have been more excited. Over the course of the next 12 months, I'm going to reconnect with my love of building with LEGO and attempt to meet some of the people that make up the Adult Fan of LEGO community. I want to know the secrets of building and what is considering cheating.

It is an interesting thing to try and explain that you will be playing with LEGO bricks for your job. I have discovered that men want to be me and women...well, women range from being mildly entertained to quickly disinterested. My wife seems fine with this result. I worry that men may soon lose interest as well, as I'm eager to share the terminology and facts that I amassing with alarming rapidity.

To paraphrase Dolph Lundgren in "I Come in Peace,"- I go in pieces, LEGO pieces.