Complete Slacker: Building Ingmar Spijkhoven's KrAZ 255B

Somebody may be saying, "Hey, where is that guy who builds the models for fun?".  I'll tell you.  I've been working on the other end of my hobbies, namely gaming.  In other words, slacking off.  But here is something that jumped out a few weeks back that is almost like building a model:

I found this on the internet, I think I typed in "Crazy", but got directed to "KrAZ", which is a form of Russian Krazy.  I have a number of these in various scales and love this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcPvHobX3D0    And this one...  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ium7Cxn3TN4

I bought the plans from MOC (My Own Creation) ((WARNING, do not start looking at Lego stuff)). We had bins of old Legos and I thought hmmmm....

So, here I am sorting through bins of old Legos...I found a lot of cool stuff like some petrified Cheerios and lots of long hair.  I sorted first by color.  I limited myself to the colors used in the model, Red, Dark Blue Gray, Light Gray and Black.  If you want to replicate this experience at home, but don't have several bins of old Legos laying about, simply do the following: 1) Take a 2,000 piece jigsaw puzzle and have several small deranged children hide half the pieces around your house.  2) Take the remaining pieces and throw them in the garbage.  3) Now go find the 1,000 puzzle peices scattered around your house. 4) Figure out which pieces are missing.  Document each one.  Contact the puzzle manufacturer for replacements. 5) Assemble.

I think this is a metaphor for something.  Guantanamo Bay?

Here's most everything sorted.  It's an insidious hobby, playing on our base compulsion to organize crap into neat piles.

The next bit of business is to order all the parts I don't have.  Each must be selected individually by shape and color.  Why on god's green earth do they make Dark Blueish Gray and Black indistinguishable?  This took about 3 hours.  OK, 4.  It is an exercise in extreme tedium, there are 8,000+ elements in 53 colors. After a while they ALL LOOK THE SAME.

While patently waiting for my parts to come in (most are from Denmark), I dug out an old kit and decided to do a practice run.  In case I forgot how to snap bricks together.  Turns out it was easier than remembering my cell number.

Took about an hour.

On Friday everything but one part (from Lego!) showed up.

First thing is to make sure I got what I ordered.  So I rechecked everything off the list.  I got 4 parts in the wrong color (dark blue, my mistake) and forgot 4 parts.  It's a rare piece, but miraculously was able to find four of all the same (but wrong color) in the bins.  Oh my god, I have lost my mind.

Here it all is.  I am sure that some day this picture will resurface when I am trying to deny one of my many highly honed character flaws.

Can't wait to build this thing.  Part two....We build.  Cheers!