08 January 2015

The Rubik's Cube

My second favorite holiday is New Year's Eve. I love making gyoza (Japanese pot-stickers), drinking Martinellis, and staying up late flipping between Ryan Seacrest and Carson Daly (with a few minutes spent with Anderson Cooper, natch). My genius sister bought on-sale Christmas crackers (the kind you pull, not the kind you eat) to cap off our celebrations. Eight crackers=eight lame jokes, eight silly plastic toys, and eight PAPER HATS.

He was excited to wear a hat, though he later traded for a red one.

Special OJ for a special night.


Mmm. Gyoza and Martinellis.


We were all amazed that Dad wore the hat without complaint.


 Genius sister is a genius.

She might not look it, but I bet Amelia was secretly thrilled to have her own paper hat.


Earlier that week, Sam discovered a Rubik's cube in a closet. I showed him how to play with it, and he wanted to solve it right then and there. I had to tell him that I had no idea how to get all the sides the right colors. He was disappointed, and started to lose interest. But because it was six thirty in the morning and I didn't want him to go wake anyone else up, I told him we could try to find out how on the computer. 
So we did. We used the official solving guide and we solved the crap out of that Rubik's cube. Which has been a lifelong dream of mine. Thanks to my son, I finally sat down and did it.
I made a New Year's resolution this year. Two, actually. I'm going to query another novel in the hopes of finding an agent, and I'm going to learn how to solve a Rubik's cube FROM MEMORY.