AFOL living in Minnesota

Tkatt

Hi. I go by tkatt here on Brickset. I've been a Lego fan for 30+ years. I've been planning to build a Lego city for all that time. Things have always gotten in the way though. First my parents wouldn't let me take over a room in our house, then I was a teenager, and then I lived in small apartments. When I finally moved to a house of my own with an extra room, I became a father and lost that extra room. Five years later and my obsession has grown strong. Both of my kids stopped eating Lego and now we collect as much as possible. Once my youngest gets past her destructive phase I hope to finally put my Lego city together. In the meatime I've been building the sets that I've been storing in the closet for the past few decades, some for the kids, some for a display shelf.
I think Brickset is great and I decided to start using the forums when I realized what a wealth of information was available here.

thenos

Welcome! I'm also from MN. The forums are truly great here too. Now stay away from my clearance. ;)

meyerc13

I'm a neighbor to you two living over here in Wisconsin. Tkatt - I can relate to everything you've said, I could have written most of that myself. My daughter is now five and I can finally rebuild faster than she destroys sets, which is making LEGO more enjoyable to me (although I still have a big tub full pieces of sets from one of her rampages when she was three that I need to piece back together).

If either of you live in or near the Twin Cities, there are several active AFOL groups such as TwinLUG that you might want to check out. I've heard good things about them, and I've visited the Brickmania Toyworks where they meet (and if you haven't checked *that* out, you need to visit during their next open house!).

Tkatt

Meyerc13, I actually live within walking distance to Brickmania, so we go to almost every open house. It's inspiring and awesome, but is also humbling. The guys who run it have the talent (and time and bricks) to build some really great stuff.

Thenos, I totally saw that clearance first.

BeardedCastleGuy

TwinLUG usually meets the 3rd Sunday of the month in the Brickmania space 1:30 to 4pm. Our website and the public list get announcements either way either the confirmation of the date or notice of any changes. That's TwinLUG.com or our yahoo group. We are oriented as an AFOL group but if you have any questions you can PM me here or ask over on the yahoo group if you wish.

The LEGO Imagination Center at the Mall of America is doing another July event this year and this weekend aka July 12-14th with a build event, the map build and MOC's from some local builders, I believe that Sunday runs until 5 or 6ish but you can call the store to be sure.

I agree that the TwinLUG folks are great folks but am admittedly quite biased :)

Oh, I was here first, that clearance is mine!
(/me prepares flick-fire missiles to defend the clearance!)

fourstud

I live in MN too!

brettsabby

Hey, from Minneapolis,Mn. Welcome. Growing up I never had Lego, but started collecting about 3 years ago and now I no longer have a dinning room, it's the Lego room. I may have to build an addition to get the dinning room back.

DarthWalle

Hi, I just signed up for the Brickset forum. I live in the Twin Cities too but don't know much about the Lego community here as I am new to the concept and also relatively new to town. I had the same dream as you Tkatt and I am finally getting close to being done with my Lego town. It is 3.25 base plates deep and I think 13 baseplates wide and I've got a train going around it. Funny thing is my son always wants to take some of the minifigs (especially Superheroes) down and play with them on the floor! He loves Legos too. Anyway, nice to meet you. If any of you can let me know about Lego activities or groups in the Twin Cities, that would be great. I literally learned what "LUG" stood for just two days ago....