First hockey game

I took A for his first hockey game last weekend. It was great! I did it partly because I like hockey and I want him to experience that good feeling when your team scores. And I did it partly because sometimes we need some time just me and him together.

In January I wrote this about being the sibbling to a disabled brother or sister. We caring parents tend to see very much to the disabled kid (naturally) and not so much to the not disabled (too bad).

So every once in a while I try to focus on just A alone.

My (soon to be OUR) team did their job, an easy 4-0 victory and A tried to sing a long in a few of the hard core audience songs. He did good in one in particular: Hey Hey Douglas Murray!

Yeah, we ripe the benefits of that ongoing NHL-lock out and my team has both Douglas Murray and Gabriel Landeskog in the squad right now.

You can read more about the most succesfull team in Swedish hockey here - (and find out why we are in trouble right know).

I heard A talk to his friends at the daycare center the day after. He was clearly very proud. Told the kids about the penalty box...

Resisted a Diecast Disney Pixar Car - on payday

Yes. This is one for the books. I went to the store that sells flowers and Disney/Mattel Pixar Diecast Cars. I was loaded with my montly sallary. Rich as a... poor media worker in Sweden...
I looked at all the cars. Glanced att the flowers. Stared intensively at the cars for several minutes.

Then.

I walked away.

That felt weird. In a good way. But also a bit strange. Or healthy?

BTW: you can read more about that special flower-store if you click here and then scroll down a bit.

Moving Disney Pixar Diecast Cars? - Heck Yeah!

Why I am Al McWhiggin

No. This is not the time when I reveal my true identity. I´m still under cover. But I can tell you as much as this: I AM Al McWhiggin. And that´s not funny.

The "real" Al McWhiggin is a character in Toy Story 2. He looks like this:

According to Wikipedia he´s partially inspired by Wayne Knight (Newman in Seinfeld) who also does the voice of Al McWhiggin.
He is lazy, he collects toys and he... is not a very nice man at all. (He steals Woody, and he want´s to sell him to a Japanese toy museum.)
Pixar have made quite an effort to make him abominable:

I can´t help thinking that this is the way Pixar thinks and want other to think about us collectors of childrens toys. Even though they clearly make toys that just collectors care about (Golden McQueen, the special edition-cars like John Lassetire with surfing board etc.)

The message is plain and simple: Toys are for kids and should be played with.

But... Look what happens then:

These are two of A´s cars. Just look at those marks! I know that they´re made when A was having fun with his toys. But... It doesn´t feel good inside of me when I see this...

I often see the wording "Never been played with" in description texts to different cars out on eBay.
This is a profoundly sad thing to say about a toy.

I know that.

But... well, I wouldn´t buy an opened item without that text.

To prove I´m right:

I might be sick in several ways. But I´m right. Right?

Lightning up the dark Swedish fall

We´ve been this before, but for all you new readers... well, someone could be new, right? So for all the newcomers: I collect kids toys, Mattels Disney Pixar Diecast cars in the size 1:55. I have two sons, but they don´t know about this. I hide the cars in our garage.

Yes. This is the insanity off this blog. I buy kids toys. And hide them from my own kids.

In two big cabinettes (document lockers):

 The first one is full. Looks like this:

The second cabinette is not so crowded but it´s getting there...
So I had to do something about the display. In a room with limited space you have to use the height somehow.

Have you ever heard about a swedish furniture company named IKEA? They sell this small piece of desktop organiser now:

 

If you take out all the drawers it will look something like this: (Note that this is the one with 12 drawers, but it´s so new that I couldn´t find any pics of it on the web)

Then I bought some small LED-light ramps (also on the same furniture company. No. I´m not paid for writing this. We swedes just go often to this place.) 

So now I got lights for my race cars from Cars 2:

And this is how the second cabinette looks right now. More of that Christmas feeling I wrote about last time!

The Lemons look sour in the right bottom corner. I have to do something about them to...

Feeling bad when feeling good

This weekend A (he´s getting five this december, so big already!) played with a friend both saturday and sunday. V, on the other hand, did not.
He´s only three and a half years old, and when A was in the same age he barely played with the kids on our street a few times, so it´s too early for V. But...

Well, let me put it this way.  While A was away playing with friends, me and V were doing this:

Yeapp! Cleaning the shower with dish brushes. Cleaning our buts off!

It was my wife that just made a simple observation. A is playing with two friends this weekend. V is never playing with friends.

A sad bad true state of the matter.

He do play with the kids at the daycare center. But he has no friends of his own. Hopefully that´ll change in the future.

And yet again. We had quite fun cleaning together. He laughed a lot and we got soaked with water and bubbles before we were done. So working with dad was great this time.

But I hope he will find me more boring soon.

Not too soon, though.

The holidays is getting closer! Mater Saves Xmas!

There´s one more nutty thing about me. Yes. There´s more too this mental state than just chasing kids toys and hiding them for your own kids - I´m also a christmas addict.

But I realise now, having most of my readers in the US, that this is just something I share with lots of you out there. In Sweden we celebrate X-mas properly - with joy, lights, (too many) presents and food, lots of good food. But I guess that you Americans (in general) do the same and to the same degree.

Anyhow. This is the last diecast in my collection:

The model is not from any of the films, therefore it´s a "Expanded Universe"-diecast  and it´s called Whee-Hoo Winter Mater. It´s from a book called Mater Saves Christmas. In the same "series" you´ll find my season favourite Santa:

Last year I put him close to the gingerbread house we (I) always construct some weeks beafore christmas. This year I´m going to collect some more christmas-cars. It will be like the Christmas chréche (nativity scene?) - only with beautiful cars instead of old wise guys and naked kids with supernatural powers.

Can´t wait!

Bothering big brother

Lately, V has bothered his brother more and more. A has toys, Lego and Bakugan that he likes. And until just now V hasn´t taken any interest in them.
But something has changed in the last couple of days and now A has to hide his things or put them real high up on shelves, or else V takes them, put them into his mouth or try to play with them (in a clumsy but rather cute way.)

This, of course, makes the boys more noisier. And we have to mediate in the small fights. Tricky sometimes, but not worse than most parents have to deal with, I guess.

Last day when I picked the boys up from nursery school the staff told me one good thing about this, though.

- V has begun to make clear. He "speaks up".

They told me that when a younger kid had taken V´s spade in the sandbox, V usually let him/her do that and starts play with tomething else. But not this time. He had made the sign for Stop - and then simply taken then spade back.

That´s the spirit V - and V is for victory!

New levels of insanity

Here´s the level of insanity my collection has taken. From the Cars 2-series I now have 24 out of the 42 in the main line single series. And with Zen Master Pitty, Uncle Topolino, Tomber, Giuseppe Motorosi and the tow Ultimate Chase Cars - it´s a total of 30 cars.

Zen Master Pitty

Tomber

Giuseppe Motorosi

Uncle Topolino

If this is not insane enough for you - let me show you the cars from the first film (some 100+ cars):

If that´s not insane enough for you - let me remind you that I got two (2) Flash...

Professor Z - new crook in the garage

My latest purchase is a real scoundrel:

Professor Z. Z is short for Zündapp and the car is based on the Zündapp Janus made by the german motorcycle company in the years 1957 and 1958.

The model is really a micro car. With only 14 horsepowers it made 80 km/h (50mph) - quite good huh? Anyone dare to ride?

In the movie Cars 2 The Professor is one of the big shots among the Lemons. He leads the Lemons and takes orders only from the mysterious unknown boss.

Bad guys have bad licens plates. 58 refers to the last year Zündapp manufactured the car. According to wikipedia only 6902 were made.

It´s a lovely diecast, you already know that I´m very pleased with all the Lemons - this is maybe the jewel of the crown.

World Grand Prix Race Cars - part II

After a looong nights sleep I´m back! (Or, the nights don´t seem long enough nowadays. V and A wake up 5:30 in the mornings.)

We´ve been through the first five race cars of the World Grand Prix in Cars 2, here are the others (with the more and more anoying exception of Rip Clutchgoneski):

Number 7 is a great car - Shu Todoroki:

The car is based on a Le Motor Prototype, used in the American and European Le Man Series. Shu is from Japan and the car model is a Dome S102, a Japaneese sports car. I like it a lot, the Le Mans Racers are a type of race cars that deserves more attention, they are excellent on endurance events.


Number 8 is a Brazilian Race Car - and after watching Senna - that´s just great. Carla Veloso:

First of all - If you haven´t seen the documentary Senna yet - do that now. And return to this blog in 106 minutes. Ok. Done. Good.
Carla Veloso is also a Le Motor Prototype and the only female race car. That´s not good Pixar. You ought to have more than one female racer in a film like this.
I love the Pixar films a lot but they are not very good in portraying boys and girls in equal ways. In cars, almost all the cool cars are boy/men cars. They got all the action, the girls are spectators applauding the boys. With a few good exceptions: Sally in the first movie and Holly Shiftwell and Carla Veloso in the second. But surely you could do better Pixar!

There´s two countries with more than one car in the World Grand Prix, its USA and Great Britain. Number 9 is Nigel Gearsley:

Nigel is an exact copy of a Aston Martin DBR9, a British Le Mans race car. The name is from a famous British steem locomotive engineer, Nigel Gresley. While Raoul CaRoule and Lewis Hamilton has clear inspiration for the real cars they´re resembling, Nigel is an exact copy. There´s only one more car that is made in the same way:

Number 24 - the American classic - Jeff Gorvette:

The car is a Corvette C6.R - an American endurance racer, competing in the American and European Le Mans series. Jeff Gorvette is the car that is replaced by other specific cars in different countries. In the swedish film the scene in the beginning where Lewis, Jeff and Lightning McQueen talks is changed so that Flash and Lewis and Lightning are chit-chating. In germany it´s Max Schnell, in Brazil its Carla Veloso and so on.

Scince I don´t have number #10 Rip Clutchgoneski, the next car is a rather familiar one - #95 Lightning McQueen:

The number 95 is a reference to 1995 when Pixar first released a long format movie - Toy Story. The car is a mix of different stock cars and some Le Mans racers and I love the new wing and the new paintjob. You could see that this car is a whole different kind of car from the rookie that we saw in the first film (now he´s a celebrity, with four Piston Cup victories).

Here´s the McQueen from Cars, not a very solid looking back wing...

So my favourites are Fransesco, Lewis and Max - but all the others are great and it´s so much better than in the first film where we only had three types of cars (but with beautiful different paint jobs).

This is a World Grand Prix, and it shows in the vareity of models in the contest. Bravo Pixar!