After the class, I had a three-hour break before returning to Cloud Cap for my friend Ken’s awesome birthday game night.

Chris has a go at Perfection.

First, I had my nerves rattled while playing a few rounds of Perfection, which is that game from the eighties where you fit a bunch of little plastic shapes into the appropriate spot on the board, and after a minute or so the whole board pops up and all the pieces go flying. Startled me every time!

Next up was a game called Timeline: Inventions, which is right up my alley because it’s about inventions! The object is to place a card with an invention on it (e.g. Sign Language, blue jeans, the compass) on a timeline, relative to the other cards that have already been played. The more items on the timeline, the harder it gets. How come I didn’t invent that game?

Then we split into two groups and I played a card-based game called Kittens in a Blender. The premise is pretty gruesome, but it has some mechanics I really liked. Each player has a bunch of kittens they’re trying to save by putting them in the Box, and everyone tries to get the other players’ kittens into the Blender before throwing down a Blend card. I was the first person to blend any kittens, and it was surprisingly traumatic. If it sounds weird, it’s because it is.

For the next round, the whole group came together to play The Resistance. Four players including me were secretly chosen to be spies and our task was to sabotage the missions. I liked this game a lot because it’s basically just trying to psych people out. I don’t have a great poker face, but we won anyway!

To close out the night, I played a lively game of Pick-up Sticks.

Thanks to James and Kirsten of Cloud Cap for hosting the Rubik’s class, and to Ken and Erin for hosting the game night. It was such a good day!

The warning was useful, because it did sound like broken glass.

Inside I found a Clearly Puzzled 3D Green Apple Puzzle from the Great American Puzzle Factory.

The end result is supposed to look this delicious.

Of course I immediately got to work. The pieces are reminiscent of green apple Jolly Ranchers, don’t you think?

I spent the last hour working on it, but didn’t get too far. I’ll probably be working on it for the next few days. I hope no one was expecting me to go to work or anything.

Thanks, Hilary and Len! What a nice surprise.

I see chocolate, butterscotch, and strawberry syrup.

Most of you know that my family has a 12-year long tradition of having two or three theme parties a year. At the end of each one, we draw the next theme out of a box. We usually have about 30 theme ideas in the box.

We recently added four new themes. We had trouble naming them (even though we’re usually so punny), so if you can think of better names, please let me know in a comment.

Here are our new theme ideas:

• Chef Showcase: Each person bakes a dish from their favorite chef. Bonus points for costumes or impressions.
• The Art of Food: Everyone brings food that looks like a famous piece of art. I wish I could do something awesome like reproduce Michelangelo’s David in cheese, but I’ll probably end up taking the easy way out and doing a Jackson Pollock piece with chocolate syrup.
• Game On: Bring a board game and a dish that goes with it, like Apples to Apples and an apple pie. (Remember when my friend Maddie had some great ideas along those lines?)
• Vaudeville: This was my mom’s suggestion and at first most of us were a little resistant, but now I think we’re all pretty psyched about learning to be ventriloquists. I might play the spoons!

You can tell we’re going for high-concept themes, rather than cultural or geography-based themes. This is because our favorite parties have been those that lent themselves to an interesting activity, like our Murder Mystery or our tableaux vivants from our Moulin Rouge party.

The possibilities are endless!

During this particular time, I had an idea that I believed would help me deal with the transition, without being quite so “in my head.” In fact, it would give me an excuse to connect with others. I decided to ask certain people in my life, mostly older family members and friends of family, to send me their best piece of advice. I asked them, “What is the most valuable piece of advice you ever received, or what do you wish you had known when you were 24?”

Soon after, I received an influx of good advice. Emails and letters, quotes and poems, anecdotes and jokes, I got it all! It’s amazing what wisdom you can find within the life experience of the people around you. I liked being in the position of collecting and curating this wisdom, deciding which pieces were going to be most relevant to me, which pieces resonated the most.

I’m not going to share the advice I received here (because it was meant specifically for me!), but I do want to recommend this as a useful practice if you’re feeling contemplative, indecisive, or overwhelmed. When you ask people a question like this, it affords them an opportunity to reflect on their own lives, so, in a way, you’re giving them a small gift as well.

As a wise friend reminded me recently, we are social beings, dependent on one another in so many ways. We might as well get out of our own heads every once in awhile, and take some good advice from others.

What do you think? Would you try something like this? Is there anything holding you back?

From PeteFecteau.com

Everybody’s Invited!: What’s the story behind the Dream Big project?

Pete Fecteau: I came up with the concept literally in a dream. I’d been taking some hits, trying really hard to find work, and wasn’t having a great time professionally. This dream came about, and I just felt like I needed to do it. So I fought for eight or nine months to try to get anyone to pay attention to it. And no one did. I had actually set a due date for myself. And a week after the due date passed, I got a call from Rubik’s asking me for details on the project.

EI!: That’s awesome. What were the biggest challenges in putting it together?

PF: Planning it out and convincing people was a huge process. I’m a graphic designer by day. I spent about two or three weeks designing the artwork in Photoshop and Illustrator. There weren’t really grant opportunities for it, but I applied for grants all over the place. I talked with a bunch of people, including manufacturers in China. I ended up renting the Rubik’s Cubes, though, because there’s a trademark and copyright issue with knock-off cubes. So I avoided jailtime.

EI!: Nice. How many did you rent?

PF: Just over 4300 Rubik’s Cubes.

EI!: So, how did you put it together?

PF: The venue that I used was the First Park Congregational church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The church wanted it on a stage. They gave me the entire room behind the stage, so I could work for three weeks at all hours. It was hot. It was a little smelly. I’d come in for 5, 6, 7, or 8 hours and just kind of zone out.

EI!: Did you need to actually solve the cubes yourself?

PF: I’m just solving one face. It takes about 20 seconds per cube. Someone could probably do it faster than me because I’m not a very fast cuber. I came up with a process where I could very quickly look at the cube that was on the screen, and remember the colors that I need to orient the cube. I was doing about 100 cubes every 45 minutes. Then I’d go take a break, and come back and do it again.

It was really quiet. I didn’t have a lot of distractions. It was just me, the computer, and the cubes.

EI!: Since then, you’ve been doing more Rubik’s Cube-based stuff?

PF: Yeah, we set up a partnership with You Can Do the Rubik’s Cube, which is an organization that puts kits in classrooms for kids ages 9 to 15. They learn how to solve the cube, and they apply math and life skills during the process. Part of the agreement that we had was that I would develop some educational material for them. So I developed a 12-page guidebook that teaches kids how to create a mosaic. I think it’s doubled their program. We’ve gotten a ton of requests from schools. We did one for Odyssey of the Mind.

EI!: I remember Odyssey of the Mind! So, is this taking up most of your time right now?

PF: This has always been a side project. I’m planning another very large mosaic in 2013. It will be twice the size of the MLK one. It’s got a math and science theme to it. And hopefully we’ll take it on tour.

EI!: Have you considered working with other games? Like Jenga.

PF: I would love to do that. Rubik’s is probably the most complex mosaic medium. I’m actually not a huge Rubik’s Cube nerd. I’ve met some speed cubers, and I’ve seen collections and all that stuff.

EI!: Yeah, some people are crazy.

PF: Yup, and that’s great. We need them, too.

EI!: So true. What’s one piece of advice you’d give to a young, struggling artist?

PF: Don’t be afraid to explore. You might really like to do pencil drawings, but you might have a huge gift with water colors. For me, I was trying to do enamel work and graffiti-style stuff. And I just stumbled into doing Rubik’s Cube stuff.

EI!: Another lesson is to pay attention to your dreams.

PF: Yeah, and it goes beyond that. There were so many times with the Martin Luther King mosaic when I was ready to throw in the towel. I had fought so hard, and fell short so many times. But, in the end, it was like the mosaic itself just needed to be finished, and I was just a pair of hands. When you really apply yourself to a passion that you have, and if it’s genuine, I think that will always be the case. There will be times when you want to pull your hair out, but if you keep going, it will turn around.

I started a Pinterest board for Hawaiian Luau inspiration. It includes ideas for drinks:

Food:

The setting:

And even how to do your nails:

Check out the rest of the images on Pinterest. I hope you get inspired.

by Flickr user Mark Brannan

Okay, to be fair, I don’t actually hate school, but I am pretty glad that I’m done with it.

I don’t love learning in a traditional classroom environment because it feels like an arbitrary rule about the way we’re supposed to learn. This makes me feel un-free, and freedom is the feeling I want the most, as I mentioned in a recent post about travel.

As someone who has had a 9-5 job for my entire adult life, any time I’m doing something outside of that routine, whether it’s as mundane as running errands on a Tuesday afternoon, or taking three days off to go to Las Vegas, or even just being outside in the middle of the night, I feel awake. Not just in the literal sense, but in the “Oh, right, I’m a person who moves through this world, and I’m free to do whatever I want” kind of way. For me, it’s so easy to forget that I actually can exercise some control over all of the small moments that make up my day. Once I remember that, I can extrapolate and take some responsibility for the larger direction of my life as well.

What does all this have to do with school and learning? Well, I’ve found that intentionally setting out to learn something outside of a formal school context is incredibly liberating. And it’s a surefire way to create that “awake” feeling. That sense of agency and presence in my own life. It lets me know that I’m here.

Here are some of my favorite resources for getting your learn on:

In Real Life:

• Ignite is an event that occurs in different cities all over the world where speakers present on a wide range of topics following a defined fast-paced and engaging format. I’ve been to a few Ignite events and they’re always a blast.
• I’ve mentioned Skillshare before on this blog. It’s a “community marketplace to learn anything from anyone.”  I love Skillshare because it promotes the democratization of education.
• The Brooklyn Brainery is similar to Skillshare, and offers awesome classes (like the DNA class I took) but it’s specific to New York. Perhaps there’s something similar where you live!

On the Interwebs:

• Khan Academy is on a mission to make education accessible to everyone. With nearly 3,000 free videos covering academic subjects ranging from physics to art history to economics, it’s like having a university level education at your fingertips (kind of).
• MIT’s Open Courseware platform allows you to access world class educational resources from one of the best schools on the planet. (Lots of schools offer an open courseware platform, but MIT’s is my favorite.)
• Codecademy is an easy, fun way to learn how to program websites. It’s highly interactive so you start learning immediately, and it’s social so you can learn right along with your friends (if you find that motivating). Right now you can learn Javascript, and lessons for Ruby and Python are in the works (those are all programming languages).
• Bonus! Check out this mammoth list of 12 Dozen Places to Educate Yourself Online for Free from Marc and Angel Hack Life.

What are you favorite ways to learn new tricks?

(Post-script on checking my own privilege: There is so much implied privilege in this blog posting, I don’t even know how I could address it all. I just want to acknowledge that I know how fortunate I am to have received a good education, how lucky I am to have a steady job, and how luxurious it is to think about “freedom” in this way. Noted!)

First, Julia and I made milkshakes with a fancy milkshake maker!

Raspberry!

Chocolate!

(Thanks, Julia, for the awesome photos and milkshake support.)

Then, Marjorie, Jess, Justine and I made a gazillion gluten-free donuts!

Marjorie is pleased with the donuts.

Fancypants.

Other things I’ve been making recently include illustrated instructions for solving a Rubik’s Cube, new friends, mistakes, and a mess.

Also, my niece is coming to visit me soon, and I want to make something with her – either food or crafts. Any ideas?

Additional benefit: photos like this one.

In case I haven’t mentioned it recently, I really love to travel. Of course, there are lots of great reasons to travel, and plenty of life-changing benefits. You get first-hand experience with people and places you’d only read about before, you learn patience and flexibility, and you get a fresh perspective on your own life. Each time I’ve traveled abroad, I’ve expected to get all of that. But there have also been surprising and unexpected rewards. Here are five benefits of traveling that I wasn’t counting on:

1. You get good stories. Hands down my best stories come from my travel experiences. They make great fodder for first dates, parties, job interviews, etc. I love listening to other people’s stories, and it’s nice to have a few of my own in my back pocket.
2. You have a memory of yourself being brave that you can draw upon during stressful times. If I have to do something scary like give a presentation or drive a car (these are the things that are scary for me), it’s useful to remember that I’ve been completely lost in the Dominican Republic, I’ve been stranded in the Italian countryside, and I’ve jumped out of a plane. Whatever it is I’m facing, I’m pretty sure I’ll get through it.
3. You have a source of great gifts for friends and family. I’ve written about how I am an inconsistent gift-giver. One trick for no-fail gifting is to bring back awesome souvenirs from your travels. Now I pretty much plan to buy gifts when I travel, and don’t worry about it otherwise. Sweet!
4. The world really does feel like your oyster. I’ve found that the more I travel, the more I want to travel. I think the feeling I crave more than anything is freedom, and travel provides an endless supply of it.
5. It feels like an accomplishment. I’ll admit that traveling is difficult for me. It’s often hard for me to eat well when I’m abroad (much of the world isn’t yet gluten-free-friendly). It’s hard for me to be out of my regular routine, to not speak the local language, and to not know where I’m going. It’s really hard for me to not have alone time. But all of these things are the reason why when I come home from a travel experience, I feel like I’ve accomplished something.

What are your unexpected benefits from traveling?

p.s. My current top five destinations are:

1. Antarctica
2. India
3. Finland
4. New Zealand
5. Vietnam