Puzzle Mania!

Rectangular, round, big, small, three-dimensional, or on the computer, puzzles are awesome. I mean, who doesn’t like puzzles? I, for one, love them. My family and I have accumulated over 75 puzzles over the years. Whether they are Mickey Mouse ones, or a huge one that doesn’t even fit on our dining room table, we have them.

My favorite puzzle would definitely have to be one of our Coca-Cola puzzles. I have done it so many times that I don’t look at the picture and it takes me around 30 minutes to do. I may have a new favorite though! It has some of the smallest puzzle pieces I’ve ever seen. Walmart is the place to get it. There are three different ones and the container says World’s Smallest 1000 piece puzzle and might I say it is pretty small for 1000 pieces!

Yes, I favor the Coke puzzle, but my all-time favorite puzzles to put together would be the 3-D kind. I have seven of them. The ones I have are the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Camelot, the Bavarian Castle, the White House, the Capitol, and the Taj Mahal. I have also put together the Empire State Building, but that one is my cousin’s. If you have never seen a 3-D puzzle and wonder how you would get puzzles pieces to stand like that, well, I’ll tell you! All of the pieces for 3-D puzzles are foam, so they stand just fine.

There is this site online that I am absolutely addicted to. It’s called Conceptis Puzzles. It is more of logic puzzles than anything. They have Pic-A-Pix, Link-A-Pix, Fill-A-Pix, Sym-A-Pix, Maze-A-Pix, and Dot-A-Pix. My favorites would definitely be Pic-A-Pix and Sym-A-Pix. People at school have asked me how I do the pixel puzzles (Pic-A-Pix) and I don’t know why, but I just can’t explain! Another site I like going to is jigzone.com. It is just a bunch of online puzzles. It passes the time!

What I’m trying to get through to you is that there are all sorts of puzzles that could fit anyone’s interests. If you don’t do puzzles, or have never done one, you should try it out!

LEGOS.

One thing I truly believe is you are never too old for Legos! Legos are definitely a classic. You can make anything out of Legos, big, small, or in between. If anyone was wondering, there is a reason I decided to write about Legos on this fine day. That reason would be, my brother and I are building a Lego Taj Mahal right now.

This past weekend my family and I made a trip up to Minneapolis, the Mall of America to be more specific. As some of you may know, the Mall of America has a pretty sweet Lego store. After riding some of the roller coasters and other rides my friend, Katie, and I decided to go check it out. If any of you have been there you know that about one third of the store is all Star Wars. Coming from an extremely nerdy family, who already has two Lego Star Wars things, I started looking at the Star Wars items.

The one thing that caught my eye was the Death Star. That thing looked awesome! One problem, it costs 400 dollars. I decided it would be a better idea to look at some other things. Right around the corner I found some architectural things. Lego Taj Mahal, oh yes, this is it! I inspected the box, 300 dollars, almost two feet wide base, and 5922 pieces.

My brother and I convinced my parents to let us get it. We have been working on it for the past 4 days and it still seems like we have a very long way to go. 5922 is a lot more Legos than you would think. We should be getting it done soon, so we will have to put up our 3D puzzle of the Taj Mahal to compare! I have a feeling the Lego one is going to be better.

More on College

Iowa State here I come! It’s official, I, Katy Cooley, will be at ISU next fall! After going through the gruesome application process, getting the email, and finishing admission, I will be on my way to Ames next August. Since Iowa State has been my one and only choice, it wasn’t too difficult to decide whether to accept or not!

When I went up to Ames on Monday for Senior Visitation Day just for engineering I really learned a lot. The kinds of information that will help me decide what I want to do in college. I am pretty well set on chemical engineering now, but there are so many other things to do. Some things I’ve been thinking about are clubs at ISU, internships, and I would really like to study abroad.

I would love to study abroad in Switzerland, going back there would be amazing! Since I have ideas of where I want to go, I started exploring ISU’s website. What I found changed my mind. I will be going to Switzerland with my family at some point, so why not Australia! Australia would be so much fun, so I am definitely looking into the programs I could get into there once I head off to college!

COLLEGE

Senior year is finally here, now I really have to start thinking about what I want to do afterwards. When looking at colleges, where do you start? Do I want a smaller school, a private school, a community college, or a university? The choices are endless!

I have wanted to go to Iowa State for a very long time, but is it what I need? I wouldn’t want to pay the money for a university like that unless I was pretty sure of what I wanted to do with my life. So I started thinking about what majors would suit me well. Let’s see, I’m good at math and science so what about engineering?

After deciding that I would like to major in some sort of engineering I started looking into the engineering program at ISU. They have so much to offer so I decided to go on a college visit. The visit is coming up soon, so I will be able to find out if its really what I want and I’ll just go from there!