May Days

Overall not a terribly exciting month, but in the lab I went through the setup and operation for all our primary unit operations and outside of the lab I got to see friends at the end of the month.

Monday, May 1: Just another day of work to start the month.

Tuesday, May 2: Finished a jigsaw puzzle of butterflies and worked the late shift at work, putting in 10 hours straight to complete my first filtration process from start to finish.

Wednesday, May 3: Worked on the next 1000 pages of A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones), A Storm of Swords (book 3).

Thursday, May 4: The penguins celebrated Star Wars Day on Instagram with a partially constructed Millennium Falcon; I was voluntold to be my department’s 6S representative and attended the first meeting.

Friday, May 5: Celebrated Cinco de Mayo with burritos and tres leches cake on free lunch Friday at work.

Saturday, May 6: Went to see an outdoor art exhibit in a park, then hiked around a state Fish and Wildlife property, and later listened to the second half of the Revolution’s 2-0 victory over Toronto.

Sunday, May 7: Tried pickleball for the first time at the neighborhood park and didn’t completely suck?

Hiking through a hole

Monday, May 8: Found a bee on the driveway after my daily walk and the phlox continued to bloom.

Tuesday, May 9: Caught the last fifteen minutes of the Revolution’s unsurprising exit from the US Open Cup in their second game of the tournament.

Wednesday, May 10: Completed a jigsaw puzzle featuring dogs.

Thursday, May 11: Received a new-to-us toy in the lab (i.e. a refurbished machine was delivered and installed).

Friday, May 12: Organized the lab in the name of 6S and watched Jeopardy! Masters.

Saturday, May 13: Worked on the LEGO Millennium Falcon, went hiking, took the tomatoes outside for their first field trip, and watched the Revolution fall on the road to Miami (featuring a Dave Romney deflection goal for Miami, an offside ruling on a would-be goal for Noel Buck, a Carles Gil revenge goal minutes later, and a late Miami red card that New England couldn’t capitalize on).

Sunday, May 14: Bagels for lunch and pickleball in the afternoon.

Lily of the valley

Monday, May 15: Halfway through the month.

Tuesday, May 16: Spent the morning testing solutions for endotoxins.

Wednesday, May 17: Got to bring leftover fried rice to work for lunch.

Thursday, May 18: Packed and qualified a chromatography column on my own.

Friday, May 19: Had weird fusion ramen for lunch that nobody liked.

Saturday, May 20: Made sushi for lunch, then baked pecan rolls and triple chip peanut butter cookies (peanut butter chips, white chocolate chips, and chocolate chips).

Sunday, May 21: Afternoon at the pickleball courts and laundry at night.

Fern-filled forest

Monday, May 22: Another week, another Monday.

Tuesday, May 23: Went out for dinner with my group before a coworker left.

Wednesday, May 24: Started another jigsaw puzzle, this one with lots of patterned kites on it.

Thursday, May 25: Project meeting, group meeting, and column packing.

Friday, May 26: Talked about shelves for an hour at the 6S meeting.

Saturday, May 27: Put the tomatoes into the raised bed, planted green beans, tried Trader Joe’s strawberry rhubarb soda (tasty), and listened to the Revolution’s 3-3 draw with Chicago (yet another bizarre night where they went down two goals, came back with two goals, and got the final equalizer through Jozy Altidore, of all people, accidentally).

Sunday, May 28: Dim sum in Boston with Cornell friends + family.

Flags on the Boston Common for Memorial Day

Monday, May 29: Used my Memorial Day weekend commuter rail ticket to go back into Boston to visit the Common and Public Garden, Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market, the Harborfront, Rose Kennedy Greenway, and Chinatown.

Tuesday, May 30: Back at work after the long weekend, we prepared for a full run through one of our purification protocols.

Wednesday, May 31: Midweek soccer produced another 3-3 draw for the Revolution, who were saved (again) by Carles Gil, who scored a brace.

Falling to Pieces [puzzle time trials]

I was lurking on Reddit when I came across a post from the subreddit Hobby Drama, which details all the petty details of drama in any niche hobby you can imagine. One week in their “hobby scuffles” post where people are allowed to talk about almost anything, someone posted about watching an entire 40-minute video about the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship. Of course I had to see what that was about. At the competition, competitors are given puzzles of various sizes that they have to solve in under a set time. For a 500-piece puzzle, they were allotted 90 minutes, which is a short enough time that I could easily try it out for myself, because I was curious to see how feasible it was for someone who’s pretty fast (I think) compared to a casual puzzler, but nowhere near world champion speeds.

For my first attempt, I assembled a 500-piece puzzle of a giant girl jump roping on a bridge with a city in the background, by Ravensburger. This was not a great choice for a speed solve because of the muted and limited color palette and minimal distinctive features, but it was what we found at the library. At the 90 minute mark, I had completed most of the girl, the sky, and the water and bridge at the bottom. In the end, it took me just over two hours to finish the puzzle, half an hour longer than the competition time limit.

Giant jump rope girl (left: at the 90 minute mark, right: finished puzzle)

A few weeks later, I tried again with another Ravensburger puzzle, this one of a European-looking cobblestone street with a café, other shops and apartments, and people strolling along enjoying the day. This puzzle was a better candidate, with a greater variety of colors, but it still had large areas with a single texture/color (e.g. the street and building facades), which again, isn’t ideal for speed solving. However, I did manage to complete the puzzle in under 90 minutes, with a time of 1:28:32, showing that it is indeed possible for a fast-ish hobby puzzler to finish a 500-piece puzzle within an hour and a half.

European street

To make sure it wasn’t a fluke, I borrowed a very Lisa-Frank-esque puzzle of dolphins in a slightly psychedelic sea from the library. It was manufactured by Cra-Z-Art, maker of subpar crayons but okay jigsaw puzzles. The fit of the puzzle pieces wasn’t as nice as Ravensburger, but was definitely still well within acceptable limits. I was concerned about the amount of blue, but was able to finish the puzzle in less than 90 minutes (in 1:28:49).

Psychedelic sea dolphins

Just for fun at this point, I did one last Ravensburger 500-piece puzzle of lockers containing assorted sports equipment. I thought it would be a straightforward solve because each locker was a different color, but it ended up being trickier that I anticipated and still took me an hour and 28 minutes flat. Since I seem to be stuck around the 1:28 mark, I’ll probably try a few more puzzles to see if I can get any faster without really trying vs. using more optimization techniques (fully sorting pieces, doing the edges sooner, etc.), though it does take some of the fun out of it.

Sports lockers