Why I Oughta...

We started this 1000 piece Harry Potter puzzle on December 13th .  And by "we", I really mean "me".  The kids helped a little bit - mostly because the oldest one was desperate to get access to the project table in the screened porch where I set up.  That's become our LEGO and puzzle table.  By December 18th, I had the border mostly done and the colors sorted .  And by December 22nd, it was starting to come into focus .  Today is the 30th of December, but, I finished this back on the 23rd. Just getting around to posting it - what with the Christmas hysteria around the house.  A couple of busy, full days sitting and focused on the puzzle got it done.  You can see the complete puzzle below:  Or, really...complete in the sense that I'm done with it.  But, there were two missing pieces.  This puzzle was on loan from our friends.  They said there was one missing piece.  And now, I think we caused it to have a second missing piec...

Doesn't look like much progress, does it?  Feels like I've sat in front of this puzzle for multiple hours, but all that I have to show for it is PARTS of four scenes.  There are twenty-one (21) total scenes in the puzzle across five rows. I have one scene in four of the five rows started so far.  I'm running out of time but, I suppose that means that I'll have to focus even more on this thing in the coming days. As a reminder, I called my shot with a 'Christmas Break' project puzzle back on Sunday, December 13th .  Five days later, on Friday, December 18th, I did my first check-in that showed the border mostly done and some of the color pieces sorted into piles .  Today, it looks like this: I'm fearing that I did all of the EASY parts, so now the project might only slow down.  

Less than a week ago, I posted a photo of my new Christmas break project:  a big Harry Potter puzzle .  I posted it mostly to force myself to finish this thing.  Like all of you, I started a puzzle during the beginning of the quarantine.  But, I gave up.  This one, I'm doing out on the screened porch.  Hoping location would get me further along than the last time appears to be paying dividends so far.   The photo below shows you where I am about five days after starting.  I have most of the border done - but still looking for a few pieces to finish it out.  And I've begun to sort by color.   Putting the greens and the blues and the yellows into piles that I'm hoping will get me going. There's plenty to do and the kids don't seem to be interested in helping me, but time is on my side.  When I check out for work for a while (soon), I'll turn to this during the days.

 When we started this whole global pandemic thing back in Spring, puzzles had a moment.  Everybody was bound to their own home and it seemed liked everyone was doing puzzles.  Here's what Google Trends has in terms of data to show the surge in interest in puzzles this Spring : We tried to do one back then, but failed.  Just never got out of the starting block.  I think it had to do with the location of the puzzle.  We had it set up in our dining room - which is like a ghost town.  But, in recent weeks, I put up our little card table out on the screened porch and put a 300 piece family-friendly Christmas puzzle on it.  Guess what?  Seven or eight days after I started it, we finished it.  Because, it was in a room where we all were hanging out.   So, today is Sunday the 13th of December.  I'm working the rest of this week and a little bit next week.  But, then we'll have some time together as a family.  And, beca...

Here's the tally from last night's visitors in Downers Grove:  32 kids we know.  20 kids we don't know.  15 adults with costumes.   3 kids no costume.  And 3 Adults no costume.    That would be a total of 73 with a pretty big asterisk. Last year, we had 24 total.  All kids we knew .  And that was a pretty sad number. I think it is safe to say that these numbers are in dispute.  For sure, the numbers in the red circles below, I think we can just simply throw out.  It was snowing like crazy and we don't live in Elmhurst any longer so there were no Adults and no babies out there like there have been in some years. So, let's throw out those numbers.  Minus 21.  Takes our 73 down to 52.   That seems plausible.  We did the whole 'bowl on the front porch' thing when we were out, so there's no counting those kids.  But, like we do every year, Nat has a little party at our house after tric...