A Year in the life of a puzzler (2023)

I want to wish everyone a very happy holiday season.  The year is once again coming to an end and even though we have been busy, I'm finally finding the time to write up my favorite post of the year.  I missed the puzzle advent tree because of the move, I missed the 12 puzzles of Christmas because nothing had arrived in time for me to post it.  But now I have the time and peace of mind to write up our year.

January saw us still in the states.  We started out with a cruise and ended the month with the beginnings of our final hurrah before moving to Italy.  We visited the folks over at Creative Crafthouse and really had a wonderful tour of the facilities.  I got to visit LegoLand Florida and Disney one last time before we left.  

In February we began our USA Roadtrip.  We had a wonderful trip planned out and got to visit with most of the people on our list and a few who weren't.  We started off by flying into Denver to visit with George Bell, Rocky Chiaro, and Wayne Daniel. I rented a car and we enjoyed a wonderful trip across the Western part of the US.  

Our next stop was in California where we visited with Harry Nelson.  Sadly our trip to see Wally Lee was canceled because of health problems, but we added a visit with Ray Stanton, Derick Schneider, Dave Litwin, and George's son Joe.  We stayed in our favorite boutique hotel and spent our anniversary in the Roxanne Cafe.  Life is good.

We headed further south to visit with Stan Issacs who very kindly donated a great number of puzzles and books to the now named World Puzzle Center.  We spent a day with Nick Baxter and his wife and had a nice puzzling dinner with a number of other puzzlers in the area.  I remember Joe Becker was there along with a few others. We also stopped in and saw Donald Knuth for a day.  Wei Hwa had a small gathering of friends over for some games the next day.

Marti of course was a wonderful hostess.  She very kindly donated the RGee collection to the Center.  She invited over a number of older puzzlers who we were thrilled to see. Our trip then took us south to Texas where we stayed with Tanner for a week.  He too had a wonderful gathering of friends for us to visit with. Heading north, we stopped in to see Rob and Mark, then carried on to some of our friends from the world cruise we went on.

Three days with family was followed up by a puzzle party in Ohio and a few days staying with Tom Lensch.  We spent a few snowy days in New York with Hyam Hirsch before heading further east to visit  Tracy Clemons where we finally picked up the Mega Mansion.  I am pleased to announce that it arrived in Panicale unscathed and is now waiting in the castle to be unpacked. 

From there we headed further east to visit With Rob and Brett.  Then it was a night with Saul and Paulette followed by another puzzle party at Eureka.  I finally made it to the puzzle shop of my dreams!

In the final days of our trip we visited with Brian Menold, Bill Ritchie, and, we stopped by the Chapman house to pick up a large number of puzzles that I had ordered.  I just love the rustic beauty of some of them.  And who doesn't love dragons! From there we headed to Atlanta where Mat had a gathering of friends from the area.  I got to visit an amazing Lego seller and we had a wonderful end of the trip. 

Upon our return to Florida, we spent the next afternoon with Art before heading out to say our final goodbyes to Bill and Scarlet. We packed up the last of our home and boarded ship on the 9th of April for the final leg of the journey to our new life.  

I'd like to say it has all gone swimmingly, but that would be not quite true and might curse us in the future.  When we arrived in Italy, we managed to get our permesso and residencia in record time.  

We've had guests from all over arrive to see the castle and the few puzzles we had purchased since being here.  We've made 2 trips to the midlands, traveled to Israel for IPP, and even attended DCD this year.  

The highlight of the year though has been the arrival of our household goods and puzzles!  To date, we have had 5 semis come in with one more to come on the 2nd of January.  Ironically, that one was the first to arrive in Europe.  All of the wooden  puzzles that have been placed in the castle and are waiting to be unpacked.  The library is partially done, simply because it is the easiest of the boxes to unpack. 

When we started this journey we were so naive. We thought we would arrive, turn in our paperwork, have everything done in a month or two and then get our things.  Almost 1 year to the day the first container was packed up and sent we got it.  The paperwork took longer than expected.  We've run into not being able to install shelving as we had planned to do.  I think though that our solution of using antique cabinets is a much better solution.  And before you get excited and make ridiculous comments about the cost of these, I've become very good at scouring the local used markets for pieces that will fit in the castle at a low cost.  

My Italian is coming along nicely.  Every day I learn more and am better able to communicate with others who don't know me.  The people here are wonderful in trying to understand me.  George, he's George. They all love him just because he is such a lovable person.  Sadly, he's not very good at communicating yet.  I've gone back to school to learn how to drive again.  We purchased our third vehicle now.  The first one died on us in Germany, the Tesla still hasn't got tags (not everything has worked to our advantage yet), and since I'll be a "new driver" I had to get a small engine vehicle for the first three years.

The door between the dead cat room, hotel, and castle has yet to be opened, but they will begin work at the first of the year. Our kitchen appliances and materials have been picked out and hopefully, they will be able to order them soon so we can get moving on the rebuild.  I've been waiting over a year to move into the hotel.  It is cleaned and the work can begin as soon as we can get men in there.  Antonio and Elena have done an amazing job of fixing it up, but now we are at the whim of the contractors. 

Katherine has come over for the holidays and we've had an amazing visit.  On the 28th, we got the keys for the annex.  If you know of anyone who wants to rent a three bedroom, two bath house in Panicale, let me know. I've got one available.  We purchased it only for the garages, but will make the house work for us in one way or another.  Worst case, we use it to store more puzzles.  The garage has the Tesla inside along with a few crates that need unpacking yet.  Things move slowly here, but they do move.  

All in all it's been a very good year. Do I still have twinges about leaving Boca?  Of course, but now Panicale is home and as long as George and I are together, we can do anything.  Life is good for this puzzler. 

Happy New Year to one and all. May 2024 be even better for you than 2023 was.