I really like modeling. Given how much money and time I spend on this hobby, that’s rather like saying the Pacific Ocean is moist in places. But I have discovered what I sodding hate about modeling. This aspect of modeling is most often referred to as The Carpet Monster.

Yeah. I get that. Even though my shop has no carpet, I get that. The worst thing I can hear during a build is, while holding (I thought) a tiny little part with tweezers I hear “tick.” And suddenly I’m not holding ANYthing. One of these days I’m going to total how much time I spend crawling around the floor with a flashlight looking for the end result of that “tick.” (“A lot” isn’t a number.)

Okay. So that’s just part of modeling. I get that, too. But here’s what I do not get. Do not get. After spending an hour moving EVERYTHING in the shop that’s movable, why can’t I find the sodding part?! Well, I’ve come up with a theory.

My shop (and yours, too, I’ll bet) (but I won’t bet much…I’m parsimonious) has an Interdimensional portal somewhere near the workbench. Here’s why I think that…

Okay. TINY part. “Tick” and it’s flashlight-time. At my age (72 as I write this), getting up from the floor doesn’t happen quickly or gracefully. In fact, once I’m Down There, one of my considerations is, “Do I really have to get up?” Well, yes. I do. If I don’t the cat will try to bury me. (And she does not deal well with frustration, so y’know.) Right. “Tick” and me and the flashlight get to spend some quality time on the floor together. Sometimes I even find what it is I just dropped.

Then there are those other times.

Right. Small part and no matter how many times I vacuum or sweep there’s a ton of crud on the floor. (If you know of a commercial application for cat hair, drop me a line…we could be stupid-rich!) The good news is that whatever crud is down there, it doesn’t look like the part I just dropped. That said…

I dropped a polyethylene pipette a few days ago. This pipette is NEVER out of my shop (because why would it be?). It’s about 6” (about 15.1cm) long and doesn’t look at all like floor-crud. Easy to spot, yeah? Uhm…NO. I could not find it. There was no reason I could not find it. It fell from the bench, hit the floor (I heard it and had a rough idea where it landed), and TEN SECONDS LATER I could not find it. I looked everywhere it could be. Then I looked everywhere it could not be. Result? Well, good thing I have more pipettes. Yesterday I was in the bathroom scraping the wool off my teeth (both of them AND the store-bought teeth) and when I bent over to rinse the resultant sewage out of my mouth, there…sitting on top of the sink, a sink that is at least 20’ (or just under 9.5m) away from the shop. And the pipette was sitting on the bathroom sink. No, even Michael Jordan couldn’t get it to bounce that far. So how did it end up someplace that (and this is an inanimate object) I didn’t put it?

My shop has an Interdimensional Portal right under the edge of the workbench. It’s the only theory I can cobble together that fits the facts. I dropped it in the shop and a week later it reappears in THE FREAKING BATHROOM.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. When I was doing the P-51 build I snapped the grip off the joystick. Flashlight time. No part found. Fine. I scratchbuilt one. Over the four and a half years that the P-51 kit sat on the shelf waiting for me to figure out how to fix what I’d royally screwed up that caused that kit to be shelved, I vacuumed the shop. It’s part of my ritual after I finish a build. Clean the bench and shop, airbrush into the ultrasonic cleaner, and sharpen EVERYTHING with a steel edge. I am thorough on those rare occasions I actually clean something. Shelves rolled out of the shop, everything on the workbench removed and that vacuumed, and in short (yeah…too late with that notion) the shop rendered clean enough that a quick wipe-down with alcohol and it’d be ready-for-surgery sort of clean. (I’m crazy…remember?) Never found the grip.

Well, sort of “never.” While working on the M24, I dropped a part (easy to do with Bronco’s addiction to high parts count and DAMN the common sense!). Can you guess what I found sitting there in the open? Yup. The grip. FOUR AND A HALF YEARS OF VACUUMING AND SWEEPING LATER, there’s the part I lost years ago. (And remember…there’s no carpet for it go get lost in…just a bare oak floor.)

How?

It had to have fallen into the Interdimensional Portal because if it HAD been on the floor, the vacuum would have long since consigned it to a landfill. An Interdimensional Portal that leads, obviously, to another dimension that is inaccessible to anyone but a modeler…and then only for deposits, because there are MANY items that I’ve never found.

I just wish Loki and Eris would pay attention to someone else for a change… (That would almost be worth sacrificing a virgin for.)