Welcome to the Fantasy Factory

When I announced to my lovely wife that I wanted to start a blog, I was greeted with a moment of silence, followed by the statement above. I told her it would be a way to reconnect and keep in touch with family and friends. I mentioned that writing about myself and my interests and experiences would be an excellent way to overcome the “writers block” that I always seems to get while doing my college work. Finally, and almost lamely, I mentioned that a lot of my co-workers had one. Needless to say, that reasoning scored extremely low on the WAF scale.

Now, those of you that know my wife know she is a sweet and gentle soul. You also know that I’m a pretty big kid at heart. And if you didn’t know these things, now you do. Needless to say, these two attitudes conflict with each other at times. More than once has she had to put up with a crazy scheme of mine. In her mind, I’m sure that this was one of those. Anyway, I cast around for something to to inspire me, and then it hit me. “I’ll blog about my Big-E Refit”, I told her.

Now, I’m a sci-fi geek in general, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Star Trek. My grandpa and I used to watch the reruns every Saturday night on Channel 50 in Detroit, and if you came into the living room making noise during the show, you were in BIG trouble. I’m just able to remember them, but I recall those times as good ones. Anyway, a couple of years ago, a company called Polar Lights released a model of the Enterprise as it looked in the first couple of movies. BTW, this was supposedly the same ship from the TV series, updated and refurbished, hence the term refit. The model clocked in at almost 3 feet long, and was extremely detailed. I was sorely tempted, but it would have taken months to properly build and paint the thing. In the end I chickened out, Polar Lights went under, and the remaining kits became highly sought-after and expensive items on eBay.

I was looking for a hobby to fill in the blanks during the long, cold Michigan winters, and started to look at building a model of a F-16, the airframe I worked on in the USAF. While slumming at the local hobby store, I ran across a Polar Lights Enterprise Refit, still in the shrink rap…and at the original selling price. I paused, blinked, and ran for the register with the thing in my hands. I was gonna do this, and I was going to go completely type A in building it. Reality is still setting in over my decision; it’s not just a big task, it’s gonna be HUGE! But through the magic of the Internet, we’ll build it together.

RMW