Puzzling Progress...

As this is my first post of 2007...Happy New Year everyone!! Yeah, I have a few new year's resolutions just like everyone else. I'm not planning on sharing any of them except for the one about posting blog entries more often. So, you may say I'm a bit late as it's already the 8th, but I think if I was to post every 8th day this year I would achieve my resolution successfully. But...I am going to make a valiant attempt to over-achieve.

Anyway, that is not the progress I want to tell you about. I want to tell you, and show you "puzzle progress". Behold...the current state of completion of our 2000 piece puzzle of the NYC skyline, pre-911.

We started the puzzle on the 1st and worked on it together on and off the 1st and 2nd. It is a lot of work just to get started, what with turning over all the pieces and segregating the border pieces, and then putting the border together, and then finally getting to the job of doing the inside. Is that how you make a puzzle? Well, it's how I have always done it, but I must say that TBF comes from the school of "just start putting pieces together as fast as you can whether all the pieces are turned over or whether or not you've found the border and put it together". Needless to say, his method and mine sometimes clash as I start resenting the fun he is having putting the pieces together while I'm still TURNING THEM OVER DAMMIT!!! Ok, sorry for that mini-rave out. Back to the progress bit...

So when I went back to work on the 3rd I was wondering if TBF would work on the puzzle on his own. In answer to my thoughts, when I came home that night from the office I asked him if he had worked on it and he sheepishly admitted to "doing a little", which turned out to look pretty substantial. After I whined and said it wasn't fair, he left it alone for the rest of the week. He wanted to work on it together in the evening, but I found the glare off the shiny surface to be difficult to work on - natural light is the choice of most serious puzzlers (of my caliber). So, we left it until this past Saturday and then only did a little as we had a fairly busy day.

Ah Sunday - day of rest and "puzzling"! This was the day of major progress, but this type of achievement doesn't come with some downsides. As TBF and I tend to both be very competitve people, I sensed we were competing for who could place the most pieces. And, I found TBF was at times actually "trash talking" at me!!!! After spending what seemed like hours working upside down on the monotonous sky while TBF motored along right side up on the interesting bridge and buildings, I said I wanted to work right side up on that part too. So, we were both working the same side of the table when I exploded, said I was done for the day and accused him of "hogging" the space and the puzzle because he was sitting in the chair working in the middle of the puzzle while I was going from side to side around him. He called me back in and said he would work upside down for a while on the other side of the table because after all - it's a "piece of cake". After a few minutes, I noticed he was back on my side of the puzzle and complaining it was harder working upside down!!! The nerve!! Oh well, we found a way to peacefully co-exist on the same side of the table and when we had filled in all the non-sky parts we called it a day - a day of progress.

This weekend - we tackle the sky!!!
Ciao