More Presents

[crystalcazzie]

My birthday celebrations continue as my presents from Sonja arrived today.  I'd emailed her right after we moved so she was able to send the parcel to my new address and I didn't have to wait for it to be redirected:

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A couple of these are from her trip to Spain, so it's funny that I'll be going to Spain myself in a few days!  I'm not sure I'll have much of a chance to pick up potential presents while I'm there though.  Too much jigsawing to do!  Not that I think I'm going to get past the first round in any of the categories.  I did another practice puzzle today and started off so well I thought I might actually get a sub-50 time but then slowed down massively and ended up with 1:09:04.  So that was a bit disheartening.  Especially because not too long ago a time like that might have been good enough to qualify, but the standard has increased massively in the last couple of years and I don't think it will get me anywhere close this time.  Also, someone has said that the group A is brutal and, of course, that's the one I'm in!  It's scary enough being first and even more so this year since there's a new rule about choosing your puzzle, which has never happened in the individual rounds before, and people aren't quite sure how it's going to work.  I'm indecisive enough at the best of times, I don't need this extra pressure!   

When I signed up my goal was to at least qualify for the second round.  I'm now accepting that's unlikely to happen, so my new goal is to finish the puzzle in the time limit.  That should be doable as long as they don't give us something horrible like the peacock puzzle!   

I also have the pairs and teams categories to compete in, so it's not like I'm going all the way to Spain just to complete one jigsaw puzzle.  And who knows, maybe we'll qualify in one of those groups?  A girl can dream, right?