No Cheat Codes

1000 piece panda puzzle

I have come full circle in the puzzle arena. When I first realized that some of the newer jigsaw puzzles have "cheat codes" printed on the reverse side of the pieces, I vowed never to use them. I knew that it would take all the fun out of struggling to find pieces, declaring that some must be missing, announcing that the puzzle is defective, moaning that nothing goes anywhere, and finally finishing triumphantly. But then one time I used the codes... just a little bit. The next time I used them more, and finally I said eff it, flipped all the pieces over, sorted them by code, and did the puzzle fast. I did that a couple more times, even though the end result left me feeling a bit unsatisfied. Yet once I began to cheat, I couldn't stop myself. It was an addiction, a sickness, a mindless compulsion. I was proud that I could complete a 1000 piece puzzle, by myself, in two nights. Yes, yes, it was a hollow victory, but a victory nonetheless.

Then came the panda puzzle: 1000 pieces of black bamboo stalks over a multi-colored background and a panda face. It looked really hard, something I might have avoided in the olden days, but I could just use the codes, right? Wrong! The panda puzzle doesn't have codes. The reverse side of the pieces are totally blank. I couldn't back down. Man vs puzzle! Or woman as the case may be. I put the edges together and sorted some of the colors, though that was really hard, wah. I found one of his eyeballs, put a bit of his face together, and managed to connect some other mini blobs here and there. My friend Lisa came over to help on Saturday, but we mostly snacked and chatted. It's now on the third night of the panda puzzle, and I am very dismayed at my lack of progress.

Otherwise, I had a lovely Mother's Day. I drove up to Los Angeles see my daughter and grands. Sharon and I exchanged similar gifts: we bought each other yummy scented candles! I played games and colored with the kiddos, which was really nice, as I hadn't seen them for a while. The drive home sucked though, as my GPS indicated there was something happening that was lengthening the trip time, but it didn't say what or offer an alternative. Since the freeway looked clear, I kept going but stayed in the rightmost lane in case I wanted to exit quickly. In Huntington Beach, traffic suddenly stopped, and now the GPS said there were multiple crashes ahead. Multiple! I got off on Beach Blvd, at which point the trip time dropped by 10 minutes. Hello! Why didn't you tell me to get off? I had to use my brain, which was so annoying. 

I began reading Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid when I couldn't sleep last week, and it's pretty good so far (one of those alternate timeline type gimmicks). I generally like and sometimes love TJR's writing, so I will probably continue on with this, even though the main character hasn't impressed me much after 50 pages. On Goodreads, this book is tagged as a romance novel.

The other day, I began a "romantasy" novel on my Kindle titled Dire Bound by Sable Sorenson. It's for my online book club, as I would almost never choose a book like this on my own. I really don't enjoy the genre at all, nor do I enjoy graphic descriptions of violence and sex (what they now call "spice"). I guess there are exceptions for a well written story with interesting characters, but this doesn't seem to be one of those, so I think I will toss it in the DNF pile. Life is too short to slog on through books I am not enjoying!

Stephen King, on the other hand, has intrigued me with The Gunslinger, which is the first novel in his Dark Tower series, though it's very dark and violent. I picked up the rest of the series from the library yesterday. I'm not sure if I will read all the books though ~ book two (The Drawing of the Three) needs to be better than The Gunslinger for me to continue on to the third. It's a big time commitment as most of the novels in the series are ridiculously long. He's coming out with a new book in October (Other Worlds Than These) that's part of a different series, but he says we should read it because it "puts a cap on the Talisman novels and serves as the final Dark Tower book." Does this mean that I will have to read The Talisman and its sequel Black House? I suppose it does. Sigh…

That's a lot of reading! Anyone want to bet on which I will finish first: panda puzzle, TJR novel, or the second Dark Tower book?