The interior base of the space shuttle is the most colorful LEGO thing I’ve done yet, if you count various shades of gray (as opposed to Grey) as colors. It’s a shame that it will disappear from sight by the time I’m finished, assuming I finish.

My biggest obstacle now appears to be my piano playing. Huh? Well, you see, my piano teacher privately censures me if I don’t keep my fingernails sufficiently trimmed, as if that will overcome a lack of talent. Hers are down to the knuckle.

What does this have to do with my construction projects? With each set, LEGO provides you with their version of the Swiss Army knife, a tool that helps you detach different kinds of bricks from each other. It’s a marvelous tool (of course) that is of great help, but, unfortunately, doesn’t solve every problem.

I have, on more than one occasion, managed to misread instructions and mistakenly fit pieces together in ways that suggest a crime against nature and go far beyond the classic dilemma of fitting a square peg into a round hole.

Because this kind of error is unforeseen, if not actually impossible, the LEGO people didn’t bother to give their tool a function capable of extracting pieces in this condition from one another. That’s where fingernails come in handy. Without them, I’m afraid, there is a lot of blood and blasphemy.