a tip: do the border first

Well, Christmas break is almost over. Right now I’m sitting at my brother’s apartment, playing Yahtzee, blogging and waiting to eat some barbeque ALL AT THE SAME TIME. That is what I call multitasking, though my fellow Yahtzee players probably wish I was a little more focused on the game.

After lunch I will drive back to Atlanta. When I go, I will leave one major Christmas activity unfinished, and that is the holiday puzzle. Many Christmases, my family works a puzzle after we’re finished opening up presents. Then my dad shellacs all of the puzzles and frames them, and they form the majority of his law office decoration. Some of the puzzles that I can think of off the top of my head include a Presidents puzzle, a First Ladies puzzle, a Civil War puzzle, a Kennedy puzzle, a Lincoln puzzle and a United States puzzle.

Though Dad got a North Carolina puzzle and a Founding Fathers puzzle last Christmas, we took a bye year and didn’t do a puzzle. Which means I was only itching all the more to get a puzzle going this year. My dad got this puzzle from my mom on Christmas morning:

It’s a puzzle called “Grand Ol’ Gang” and it shows Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, T. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and Bush I and II playing poker with Abraham Lincoln. When Dad viewed the puzzle, he made humorous observations, such as Nixon was likely cheating and the reason George W. Bush didn’t have cards in his hand was that he didn’t understand how the game was played. Yet despite these witty remarks, Dad remains a Republican through-and-through. So this was a pretty good puzzle for him.

We have said this about many puzzles, but this puzzle is especially difficult. The pieces are very oddly shaped, but more specifically, many of the pieces are very dark. The clothes are dark, and most of the background is dark. The more I worked this puzzle, the creepier I found this darkness. The background looks fairly apocalyptic, moreso than the picture above may let on…and 8 of the men who might know how to fix it are in a bunker playing poker? It seems extremely inappropriate. To be fair, there is a companion puzzle to this one, featuring Democrats, and I will have to go back to check to see if the Democrats are similarly playing the fiddle as Rome burns. Methaphorically of course.

I probably only need another 90 minutes with that puzzle to finish it, but I’m leaving right after the barbeque. So today’s Picture of the Day is the puzzle in progress, with my main helper man William and little Tiki Monster looking on.

Between the time that I wrote the entry and the time I posted it, I played some Yahtzee. William was slightly offended at the description of "main helper man" and I'd like to amend my comments to point out that he spent several hours working on the puzzle by himself, during which time he put together at least two presidents. Sorry William. But even though Tiki is not here to defend herself, I don't think she'd find any fault with her description.