*SIGH....

Sometimes I wonder why I am the way I am. I wonder why these things from the past have such an impact on me. Is it possible the new stuff out today is just as good but I'm not giving it a chance? Am I so stubborn that I immediately dismiss anything new as "garbage" and rant about how cool the 80's were. Probably...honestly I should accept these days are gone, but I know I never will, lol.

Having young children has opened my mind a bit. Some of my best childhood memories I have are of my Dad actively taking an interest in things that were popular at the time, Atari being the main one. Waking up late at night to see him still playing or snapping a pic of a high score to get a patch, him and his friends passing the controller around at parties and asking me if I would like to play with them. Atari being an actual topic of discussion and not just something he pretended to like because I was a kid was really cool, lol. I think of this and realize it's important to actively take part in things that are popular now with my kids, even if deep down I still think my era was better, I don't want to cheat their era with my stubbornness

I have learned you can recapture a little of that "magic" if you want to. I have found it with many things available now that are new and fresh that I generally would have immediately dismissed. Sure, it's not exactly the same but nothing ever is, if you fear change you will never experience anything new. Sometimes things can even capture both era's of time....I know me and the kids are having an absolute blast with Super Mario maker on the Wii U!

Anyways, enough of my rant, here is a GI JOE sign I made!

This one was quite a few pieces, around 10 total I believe. We had some red, white and blue left over from a Fire Station we made at work so I tried to think of something "All American" I could make out of it...well, it doesn't get any better than GI JOE right? It is a bit larger than most of the signs I make (over 2 feet long) but my machine does not handle small pieces well so I had to make it bigger to capture the detail of the logo. I stuck them all together with a piece of Brown anodized on the back, I really would have prefered a gloss black but I had none available at the time. Now that it is done though I rather like the brown anodized look

I was never too crazy about GI JOE back in the day. My Mom was one of those WAMM people (Women against Military Madness) but she wasn't a freak about it or anything and still let me play with Joe's and watch the cartoons, she just didn't really buy any of them for me or show any interest in them so most of mine came from garage sales or friends/etc.. I always thought it was kind of lame nobody ever got hurt or killed in the show, not that I was some sick child that wanted to see that, it just made it too unbelievable and being the extremely rational kid I was that would bug me, lol. It was okay for Transformers since that was more of a fantasy science fiction world, but GI Joe was war and well the truth about war is people get killed...meh, probably because I really had no restrictions on action movies so Rambo and Schwarzenegger ruined the light hearted side of it for me but anyways, I do have fond memories of the show, toys and era but not quite enough to obsessively hunt down the figures and hoard them like Atari games!