A puzzling visitor and other weekly musings

 Not much is happening in the castle.  We keep playing Eurorails and enjoying our time together.  We know when we return to Florida we will be too busy to do that. 

I have gone into the dungeon and opened all of the boxes that have a snap close lid, or that are cardboard that could be easily taped closed.   Sadly, I can't really unbox until the current owner removes all of his things.  Lord knows when that will be.  

I discovered quite a few interesting puzzles inside.  One of which George has been trying to program a solution for. It is pretty neat.  I'm sure he will solve it eventually.

I've poured over the floor plans for the castle and have discovered that we have enough room to house our entire collection and double that amount.  We even have 4 large areas to store our duplicate puzzles.  This was unexpected.  

We have prepared a short talk on the New Puzzle Palace for DCD and it will be posted here next week for all to see.  I don't want to give it away before then.  

George has been teaching our new friend Antonio how to design in CAD so he can make some gears for his clock.  The two of them are funny to watch.  Antonio has little English and George has even less Italian, but they seem to do quite well together.

I have continued to purchase puzzles, and am pleased to say that I now understand the system here.  Th postman leaves a note saying he tried to deliver (even though he didn't), the delivery people call me a few minutes before arriving at the door, and Amazon uses the post office for deliveries.  If on the off chance we are not here, the delivery people will leave the packages at the local post. Some delivery companies will try again the next day or two, and everything that is in the post office takes ages to receive.  You see, our post office is only open 3 mornings a week and everyone goes there just to chat with the girl behind the counter. It's an experience.  I'm not complaining, just working things out. 

Our last little bit of fun this past week was having Tanya come visit us.  She was at Essen toys fair and is headed to a weeks vacation with her husband so between the two, she spent 2 days with us.  We took her to Città della Pieve for lunch and a wander around the town.  It was a nice meal, and (sigh) just another medieval hilltop town.  Much larger than Panicale, but it's now hard to get over excited about places like this when you live in paradise.  Ok, I know. I'm biased.  We did see some lovely doors though.  

While there, I found the car I simply must buy.  

And then we taught here how to play Eurorails.  All in all, it was a very nice visit.

Fino alla prossima settimana, arrivaderci e continua a rompicapo.

A puzzling day in Hong Kong

Time flies when you are busy.  Forgive me for my late posts but be prepared to be bombarded with lots of drivel from Rox.

For the past few years there has been a puzzle exhibition with talks and play time held at a local high school right next to my university.  This year was no exception.  The puzzle party was held on the 2nd of May (see how late I am!)

It all started around 10 in the morning.  I missed the talks, but ran over around lunch time and dropped off a few puzzles to put on display.  I hung around and watched people play puzzles for the next 5 hours.

This week was a real treat for me.  Not only was it a weekend of puzzling with my local puzzle friends, but others were coming into town too.

When I got to the venue, I made a beeline for my dear boy Otis who flew in from Beijing for the weekend and gave him the standard Rox greeting of a hug and kiss.  Ricky was there, as well as Victor and Smaz.  Victor brought me some brass copies of the cast quartet that were made by a man in China, and before you get your nickers in a twist, I bought two copies as is my brief and handed one off to Kyoo when I saw him a few days later.

There were stalls selling puzzles, and lots of tables set up both to display some of our collection and for people to play with.

At 5 I had to run off to the airport to pick up our favorite prototyper.  After dropping his bags at his hotel, we ran to a puzzling dinner.  Sadly he had jet lag, and the party ended for us around 9:30 so I could take him back to get some sleep and adjust to the time difference.

Earlier in the week, I saw a Facebook post from Tanya who was excited about her first trip into Hong Kong.  Sadly she couldn't join us for the day or the dinner, but the following lunchtime, we all met up and had a nice little chat.  It was  too short as usual, but she had work to do, and Otis had to go pack.  I'm not sure what the other one did, but I had a family thing that night and that was that. 

The next day, I took George over to the Hanayama offices to visit with Kyoo for a while before I had to leave everyone for a conference in China.  As always, it was great to see friends, but the time was too short.  And, I looking forward to the next puzzle party in Finland....