Why I Oughta...

I'm not exactly sure WHY I started to try to learn how to solve - after all these years - a Rubik's Cube, but over the past three-plus weeks, I've been working on scrambling and solving whenever I'm sitting on the couch and have a little time to waste.  Thanks to YouTube - and the fact that you can slow videos down playback speed-wise - I have gotten pretty good at solving a lot of the cube by memory.  I still don't have the last few steps memorized, but I'm continuing to work on it. The video that I used was this one that features WIRED's Robbie Gonzalez showing the steps he learned.   What solves and algorithms do I have down? Bottom white face.  Done. Bottom two rows.  Done. Yellow top face.  Done. What algorithms don't I have committed to memory (just yet)? Setting the corners.  Sometimes this just happens naturally, so I skip it.   And doing the final solve.

On Monday, I posted a photo of the new puzzle project (1000 piece wild bird puzzle) from Kodak and talked about how it was the fourth puzzle that I had taken on during Wintertime COVID.  This puzzle had been sitting on the table for a few days, so the progress shot here below isn't the result of two days.  It is more like seven days or so.  I started assembling the border and began to sort the color pieces into piles.  Here's where it stands now:  Like every puzzle project in our screened porch that came before this one, it always feels like it gets off to a slow start.  

 Ten or so days ago, I posted a photo of the completed Disney Parks pin trading puzzle (750 pieces) and mentioned that the next one up was a Kodak puzzle featuring some wild birds like the ones we see in our backyard.  Today, that bird puzzle is up.  I was given this as a Christmas gift from the Babe and we just got started on it.   This one has some birds we see all the time including the Northern Cardinal, the Blue Jay and the American Goldfinch and some less common ones like the Scarlet Tanager that I spotted up in Wisconsin and the Indigo Bunting that we saw at Waterfall Glen .  This is the fourth Winter puzzle project we've taken on.  And the second 1000 piece one - the first being a Harry Potter book cover 1000 piece puzzle that I worked on right around Christmas . 

 Just two days ago, I posted my latest progress photo of this 750 piece Disney Parks collectible pin jigsaw puzzle that I had - to that point - been working on for two weeks.  Today, I can say that I've completed my third Winter COVID puzzle.  See below for the full reveal: First was a 300 piece Christmas puzzle.   I didn't take any photos of it, unfortunately. Second was a 1000 piece Harry Potter book cover puzzle that I did over break. And third, is this Disney Parks pin puzzle.   This one is pretty disorienting.  It was hard to train my eyes to review the back of the box for the actual image because with so much going on, it was VERY natural for my eyes to just kind of wander around.   Up next is the Kodak one that you see at the top of the photo.  Yeah...Kodak.  Weird, right?  They went from cameras and film to, umm, puzzles?  Must be a licensing deal.  Well, that was a gift and is of backyard birds at a fe...

 A few weeks back, I posted a photo to mark the beginning of my second Winter Break COVID puzzle - this 750 piece puzzle featuring Disney pins that you can trade in/around the parks.  Well, I hit it hard out of the gate - while I was still had some time away from work.  But, then, reality hit and my days were filled with Microsoft Teams calls.  As with my previous COVID puzzles (a smaller, 300-piece Christmas one and a 1000-piece Harry Potter-themed one ) that I successfully completed, I set this Disney Pins puzzle up in the screened porch where there is a lot of light and plenty of company.  After starting strong, this puzzle seemed to just kind of sit idle.  Couple work stuff with the kids using my puzzle table to do their Christmas Lego sets and this one got shelved for a bit.   But, this past weekend, I picked up where I left off, reset a few of the pieces that had come up and got busy.  Here's where I ended the weekend:  Pretty cl...

 What happens when you do a couple of puzzles and your family notices?  And it is right before Christmas?  Well...that means you get MORE PUZZLES.  MOARPUZZLES.  This one, though, (as the kids say...) slaps .  <insert how do you do fellow kids meme> But...seriously....I am going to REALLY insert it here below. Why? Because, I read somewhere that if you start saying things that your kids have started to say, they'll start to think it is very UNCOOL.  So, I'm getting ahead of things with my kids and the phrase 'this one slaps'.   Well...back to the puzzle.  This scratches me right where I itch:  it is a Disney Parks pins puzzle.  Imagine laying down hundreds of Disney Parks pins and taking a photo of them.  That's EXACTLY what this 750 piece puzzle is.  See below for my photo of the box: You can find it on Amazon (non-affiliate link here, people), but go to your local toy store and ask them.  It is 18" tall....

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...