Jigsaw Puzzle

Potpourri

Jigsaw Puzzles – We are still doing the jigsaw puzzle thing and enjoying it, mostly. This last puzzle looked like it could have been a nightmare judging by the cover if it was one of those with all the same shaped pieces, but it had a bunch of really weird shaped pieces. This did help a lot in spite of numerous times the piece that did go in a spot looked nothing like they’d fit when you picked them up to try them. When we finished this puzzle there was one piece missing. While we would usually shrug, circle the spot where the missing piece was on the box cover photo and re donate it, this time we opted to stop spreading disappointment and chucked it in the recycle bin.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel – We are three quarters of the way through with Season 4 with only two more episodes to go on this coming Friday (its really Thursday ’cause time zones, but whatever.) While we are enjoying it, we are not nearly enjoying it as much as the previous seasons. So it was with not a lot of excitement that I learned they’ll be doing a Season 5. I’ll probably watch it, because, what the heck and I still read Beatle Baily in the comics and it hasn’t been funny for decades.

Jack Reacher – Back a month ago after I had watched the Amazon’s Jack Reacher TV series I mentioned that they had introduced a character from the book that really wasn’t in the first book that this series was based on. It is a U.S. Army Master Sergeant from the 110th MP Special Investigations Unit that Reacher was in charge of. Her name is Frances Neagley, but through out the series whenever Reacher says her name it sounds like he is saying Nealy. I wondered if they changed the name of the character for TV, but they didn’t, on the IMDB page it is listed as Neagly.

Miata – The below listed Miata miles comes from yesterday and because it was only 6 days from the last time it was driven, it started right up on the first try. This means that somewhere between 6 and 11 days is the point where the battery voltage drops below the point where the car will start.

7.3 mile round trip to the dentist.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 11

 

Justice League of America

One of our recent cheap thrift store jigsaw puzzle finds was this one of the Justice League of America. Growing up, like most kids of my generation, comic books were a big drain on whatever small allowance I was allotted. This puzzle though, really showed how little I know about the DC Comic Universe. I am familiar with the big three front and center here as well as the Green Lantern on the left, but have no idea who the woman is on the left. And in the top background I know Aquaman, the Fantastic Four, the Flash, but anyone of those in the second row, no clue. Who are these folks?

Okay, I went to Wikipedia so you wouldn’t have to. The woman on the left in the front row is Black Canary. In the middle row, from left to right are Red Arrow, Hawkwoman, Red Tornado, not sure who this one is and the last is probably Vixen.

Jigsaw Puzzle Madness

As I mentioned the other day, we have been doing a lot of jigsaw puzzles here during pandemic quarantine/avoidance and smoky summer days.

We have probably bought a couple of dozen brand new. We visit our local independent bookstore once a month on haircut day and Donna usually buys one, while I buy an actual book. We have also bought a few at Fred Meyer when we catch them on sale.

But most of the puzzles come from thrift stores, Goodwill sells them for $1.99 or $2.99 and one place in town has all of their puzzles priced at ninety-nine cents, otherwise we probably couldn’t afford our habit.

And what a habit it is too, for the last 10 months there has always been a jigsaw puzzle going on what used to be our dining room table. I have been posting photos of every puzzle we complete on Instagram and early on I was just using the hashtags #jigsaw and #jigsawpuzzle, but after completely a bunch of them I started to add #jigsawpuzzleanonymous, a play on Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous, to them because it was looking like we were addicted.

As it turns out, so far, I am the only one using that hashtag, so when I want to know how many puzzles we have done so far all I have to do is look at the #jigsawpuzzleanonymous page and count the posts. There is one post with three small puzzles in it and for one panoramic puzzle of Portland, Oregon I created a triptych with 3 posts so the counts works out perfect. Right now we sit at 93 puzzles in 275 days or about one every 3 days.

Yesterday I had someone like a photo of a puzzle from a few days ago and I went to see his page, to see how he connected with me, and he posts time-lapse photos of his puzzle building. Five hundred piece puzzles in three hours…yikes, but it is fun to watch: For some reason, none of the puzzle builds are available on his YouTube anymore…

Jigsaw Puzzle Madness

It all started back in early December when we were at a local bookstore and Donna bought a jigsaw puzzle. We thought it might be a nice way to while away the hours during the cold winter days. If you follow my Instagram, you have noticed that it has become an addiction. I will usually post a photo of the completed puzzle or sometimes the work in progress. For the heck of it, I just went back and counted the puzzles we have done since December and came up with 55!

We have bought eight or nine new puzzles for ourselves, but most of the puzzles have come from scouring the three Klamath Falls thrift stores where we can get a used jigsaw puzzle for a dollar or three. If we didn’t shop frugally I don’t think there would be anyway to afford our puzzle habit.

You take your chances with used puzzles because sometimes they are missing a piece or two. This has happed maybe 25% of the time, so we just shrug it off as the cost of business, but this last spate of puzzles has changed our minds. It all started innocently enough when we bought 4 puzzles at one place and started doing them. The first one we started was a smaller 500 piece puzzle of a display of colorful magic markers. When we finished the puzzle it turned out to be missing one of its pieces.

While sorting pieces to find the border of the colorful marker puzzle, we found four pieces that didn’t belong at all, they looked like they came from a puzzle with hot air balloons as the theme. Well, as it turns out, one of the four puzzles we bought at the same time was a 1000 piece puzzle of hot air balloons. Maybe that is where those extra pieces go and if we are very lucky, the missing colorful marker piece might be in the hot air balloon box.

Hmmm, now what. Before starting either of the 2 puzzles we still had left from that store, we went back there to look for a hot air balloon puzzle. Sure enough, there was a 500 piece one, so we picked it up. There were also two more different 500 piece puzzles from the same company and series, chocolate candy and a street scene, so we bought them too, just in case. And here is where it gets really interesting.

We, of course, did the hot air balloon puzzle first. Those 4 extra pieces fit right in like they belonged, because they did. But the puzzle was missing three different pieces. And, as a “bonus”, there were four different dark brown pieces that didn’t belong at all. We thought we knew just where they would go too.
 
 

So we did the “Life is a Box Chocolates” puzzle next. Sure enough, those four extra pieces in the hot air balloon box belonged right here. As Forrest Gump’s mom said, you ‘never know what you were going to get’, but if you are following this, you can guess what we got, two more missing pieces and, surprise, one that didn’t belong.
 
 
So we started the last of our trio of puzzles hoping that this extra extra piece might go into our street scene one. While also hoping to possibly find any of the other missing pieces from the previous 2 puzzles and maybe even the one from the puzzle that started it all, Colorful Makers. Yippee, that last extra piece did go into this puzzle, but unfortunately, there was a totally different piece missing.

As usual though, it did have two extra pieces that didn’t belong in the puzzle, or anything else we have here right now…

Fred Meyer Fuel Points

These used to be called Kroger Fuel Points when we were back in ol’ SC, but the Kroger brand stores are called Fred Meyer out here. The difference is that they are a grocery stores plus a department store under one roof. Because they are part of the Kroger family, they offer the same fuel points deal – spend a buck and get a point, each hundred of points equals a dime off a gallon of gas at their pumps.

Back in Aiken we churned through points at the pump and zeroed out all we earned each month in that month. Fortunately the points are good in the month earned and are good until the end of the next month, which is where we are now using the points because of the pandemic and all we don’t drive enough to go through our monthly points in that month. Right now we are not even filling the tank of either car either. We go in the final days of the next month and put on average a half of a tank in one or the other car. Usually the Mini.

Today we ran to the store to get one item missed on our weekly shopping trip, parchment paper for those keeping track, and after we checked out we noticed that we were about 30 points shy of the next 100 point level, so we needed to spend a little over $30 at Freddy’s over the next couple of days.

If you have been following me on Instagram, or checking the IG widget on the right of the page, you will know that we have been running through jigsaw puzzles at a prodigious rate. One, to be killing time safely because of COVID and two, the fact that it is winter out and we have not adjusted to cold weather outdoor activities yet1. We have bought a few puzzles new, but have mostly been scouring the local thrift stores for bargains.

We had entered Fred Meyer at the opposite end that we usually do because it was the one closest to the gas pumps, we were using up December’s Fuel points to put a little over a half a tank of premium in the Mini. So instead of walking out the exit Donna made a beeline to the toy department so see about buying three 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzles to add to our stash of bargain puzzles awaiting solving. As it turned out the were Buy One, 1/2 Off The Second, so we ended up with 4 for the price of one.

And we ended up leaving the store with a full eight hundred four fuel points that we need to use before February 28th.