Puzzle

A couple other Holidailies participants have mentioned jigsaw puzzles in recent weeks, which got me thinking. I haven't done any puzzles at home for the last few years because the last puzzle, a gigantic Neuschwanstein Castle picture, took me so long to put together that Effing Scooter peed on some of the pieces and then Molly the Deaf (and incredibly dumb) chewed up another piece. When I finally finished, with the chewed cardboard shoved into the only spot left, I had to take a picture and then throw the whole thing away.

The Good Old Days

But Molly has been eating cardboard in the afterlife for a few years now, and Effing Scooter has peed his last, plus I have a new kitchen table just waiting to have a bunch of stuff spread all over it, so I opened up a new puzzle this evening. It's a painting of Venice (I think). I prefer puzzles made from photographs, but this is what I have.

The Good New Days

So far, so good. Ripley had to "help" me for a while, but I finally convinced him to just sit on the box. I've only had to pick up one piece from the floor. I'm a little worried about what will happen when I go to bed and the poltergeists are activated, but maybe they'll leave it alone. Fingers crossed.

Anyhow, happy new year!

Home

I have made it back to Chez Nebulopathy, where the cats are so excited to see me that they're grooming each other. My car still has a dining room table and a scroll saw in it, but that's tomorrow's problem. And it will be tomorrow's problem because I need to go fetch the dogs before noon, so all the stuff in my back seat needs to be unloaded.

The drive home wasn't bad -- the grapevine was open (with some pretty snow), I ate fries and a whole lot of cookies, and Ninth House is still keeping me interested. I stopped in Kettleman (or the Kettleman exit, which is just a travel stop) to go to the Fresh Mex restaurant and the whole area was such a cluster that I ended up at Jack in the Box, which doesn't have anything vegetarian (note to self: the "ultimate cheeseburger" is not the same as the "impossible cheeseburger"), hence the fries. I guess the important lesson here is that Kettleman should be avoided at all costs during periods of heavy holiday travel.

So here I am, happy to be sleeping in my own bed tonight, and also sad that I don't have a good excuse not to go for a run tomorrow.

Tools

My mom is trying to clear out the garage, so while all the kids were home for the holidays, she told us to take any tools we wanted (ie, work it out amongst ourselves). Given the fact that most of us already have everything we really need, and some people were flying home, there was a lot of "Does anyone want this? If nobody else wants this and I can fit it in my car, maybe I'll take it." So... less hyenas circling prey, and more pandas trying to climb into a hammock.

I'd been sort of thinking about the scroll saw for a while, and nobody else wanted to take it, so now it's in my trunk. Lest you think I'm a power tool expert, you should know that the first thing that Jeff and I thought was the scroll saw turned out to be the band saw. Now you're thinking that maybe I should stay away from using dangerous things when I can't even identify them on sight, and you might be right. I'm sure there's a YouTube video that will explain everything I need to know. Let's all cross our fingers that I don't chop off anything important.

I'm also taking home the old kitchen table. I've lived in my house for seventeen years and it's time to have a kitchen table. The treadmill (only one person needed to assemble!) is currently in the dining room, but it really ought to be in the back room anyhow. I'm sure the cats will enjoy having a new place to sprawl in the dining room.

Someday it's going to look like an actual adult lives in my house. Don't hold your breath.

Tripod Mod

I'm pretty sure there's a similar, but completely different, entry from last year showing how we held the phone on the tripod the last time we took a family picture. This year it incorporated chop sticks and blue painter's tape.

The best part is that we were doing this in my brother's front yard and there were enough people around that we could have just asked someone to take the picture...

Pot Pie Day

Today was cooking and baking day (and also maybe possibly finishing up the calendar to give to my mom when the family celebrates Christmas tomorrow, but that would suggest that I procrastinate or something).

Even though everyone other than my mom decided to leave when they found out I was cooking, the autumn pot pie turned out well.

Look at that flakey crust. Just look at it.

I had a teeny tiny problem with the #!%@$* pastry crust over the top -- it rolled out in clumps that I pieced together over the top. I have no idea what went wrong. Still, I would have had to cut vents in the crust if it had rolled out smoothly, so it probably wouldn't have looked much different. In any case, it tasted just fine.

I also made a couple loaves of stollen, and mostly deciphered the handwritten notes correctly.

Not a fruitcake. It still needs to be dusted with powdered sugar.

Someday maybe I'll learn to follow directions and turn into a decent baker.

No extra butter in the middle of the loaf.

But probably not.

Pizza and Tornados

Pizza night was a success. We have a bunch of leftovers, but everyone ate, so I'd give it a thumbs up. We all decided not to use the vacuum-packed "fresh mozzarella" that had been aging in the refrigerator for some unknown amount of time -- I took one for the team and tasted it first, so if I die of some cheese-related disease, that's just the way it goes. (And really, isn't that a good life goal? To die of cheese-related disease?)

One of these days I really am going to make it out for a run. It was pouring last night, and there was even a tornado warning on my phone that I noticed twelve hours after it was sent. I'm not completely sure what we would do in case of an actual tornado. The water table is pretty high here, so nobody has a basement. And apparently I wouldn't know about it until half a day after the fact, so I guess the basement thing isn't even relevant. But I probably won't be out running in it anyhow unless I get moving one of these days.

I managed to make it a whole four hours before telling K-Poo Weak Hands that if she looks like this when she's five months pregnant she's going to be gigantic before she has the baby. That went over well. Luckily I'm more agile than she is these days. She can probably still run faster though.

Internet By Carrier Pigeon

In my nice warm bed this morning, I really did think about getting up for a run at 6am. That lasted about four seconds. Then I rolled over and went back to sleep. I guess there's always tomorrow.

Every time I go on a trip, I plan to get up at seven or so, do the last few things that need to get done in the morning, and then get on the road by nine. It never really works that way. Today I was working on the "last few things" (taking out the trash, wiping down the counters, printing out the instructions for the pet sitter) until almost 11, at which point I thought I was ready to go until I realized I hadn't packed yet. Luckily that's a five minute task when none of the cats are helping.

The drive down was... fine? Somehow I didn't get stuck in traffic going through L.A., which is unusual, but I had also switched to a new audiobook by then ("Ninth House" by Leigh Bardugo, in case anyone needs a recommendation) and it was holding my interest, so that made the miles go by faster.

Anyhow, I made it. I am in "the O.C.", as the kids used to call it. (Not when I was growing up here. And maybe nobody other than the producers of that show ever called it that. I'm not sure. I may not have been cool enough to hear it even if it was being used.) The streets are very wide and full of cars and the lawns are evenly mowed, but the internet speeds here are terrible.

Can I sleep without these guys around? I guess I'll find out.