My Morning Circuit

Last night Claire and myself joined seven other friends to watch Marvel's The Avengers. More on that in a later post. After the movie, we all went for food in one of my favorite restaurants, Café Gloucester, right near the theater we attended. We got home shortly after midnight and played a few rounds of Mass Effect multiplayer, bringing me up to an astonishing N7 rating of 1,001, before tumbling into bed, exhausted, at 3am.

Then waking again at 5am.

And again at 8am.

And just getting up at 9:15am.

At this point I was a little grumpy and grouchy from lack of sleep, but several factors quickly conspired to cheer me up. Firstly, it was beautiful outside, sunny, bright blue skies, with a gentle breeze. Secondly, it was Free Comic Book Day, and my local friendly comic and gaming store opens at 11am on a Saturday. And thirdly, Vancouver's first LEGO Store had opened yesterday in the Oakridge Mall on Cambie and 49th, about 20 blocks north of the comic store.

I decided that today would be a great day for an early morning walk. So I had some oatmeal and a cup of tea, kissed my wife, rousing her from her slumber just long enough to let her know of my plans for the morning, and struck out on my adventure.

I left our place and headed along 70th to the comic store, arriving just after they opened. They were virtually empty, so I grabbed a few of the comics on offer that interested me, namely Mouse Guard and Atomic Robo, stuffed them into my bag and walked north along Cambie.

I don't know what I was expecting given that it was the opening weekend of a LEGO Store, but it wasn't what I found. There was a three hour queue to get into the store! It's heartwarming to see that LEGO is still so popular, but not so much that I wanted to join the queue. Instead, I resolved to return on Monday when all the children will be in school.

I did find the event area where Eric, a master LEGO builder was building an eight foot tall LEGO R2-D2 with the help of the public. It's coming along nicely. The public follow plans on various tables to build, basically, giant LEGO blocks, which then get left in some containers until Eric uses them to continue building the toughest li'l droid in the galaxy! I stopped by and made a block or two to add to the cause.

After resting up a little in one of the seating areas and flicking through the comics from my bag, I headed back out of the mall, taking 49th avenue as far as Granville Street, and then following that back to 71st and home.

One thing's for sure: I'll sleep well tonight.