The Robot In My Living Room: A Follow-Up

There was an overwhelming response to my post Friday where I wrote about the surprise waiting for me when I walked into my house last Thursday night in the form of David sitting on the floor surrounded by tools, building a life-sized robot. Turns out, people think a robot in the living room is pretty cool, if that robot happens to be R2-D2.

Well, there is a bit more to the story.

All week last week small packages were arriving at the house addressed to David. This is not too terribly unusual, and I did with them what I usually do when the packages are addressed to him. I stack them up by the door, and forget that they exist.

It was a little strange that, when I left for work on Thursday, the packages were still sitting in the foyer, unopened, but ok, I thought.

Well.

Turns out that most of the robot's parts were delivered to David's downtown office, and it was there that he did the bulk of the assembly. Thursday afternoon when he left the office he brought R2 along. As he was loading his new friend into the car, it seems a bit of a crowd gathered to take pictures and ask all sorts of questions about why in the world a normal looking guy would be toting an extremely realistic model of one of Star Wars' most beloved characters on a very regular Thursday afternoon. Wanting to give them a bit of a story, David told them that he had been contracted to build the R2 for the new J.J. Abrams directed Star Wars movie expected sometime in 2015.

As you can imagine, the crowd went wild.

By late Thursday night, the robot was built, but there were a couple things missing.

Cue the packages stacked by the door.

One by one David opened them. And every time he removed the contents of one of the packages, he shouted with glee, and ran with it into the kitchen where I was making dinner to show it to me, and tell me what it was for.

A remote control to turn the head.

A circuit board for flashing lights.

A second circuit board and remote control for sound.

Wheels for movement.

So when all is said and done, I will have a flashing, rolling, beeping R2 flying around my house, just like the movies.

And he's pretty cute really. But my only question is, can I teach him to do laundry?

Oh, and also, there is talk of adding a fully functional C-3PO to our family when R2 is finally done. No need to take your kids to the theater to see Star Wars, guys. Just bring them on over to Casa Merel. We'll provide the entertainment.