h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*comes in back door just after Babel runs out the front*
*Ook looks up from his breakfast*

Dang! Looney didn't come by till after I left, and I just missed Babel. Shoot.

Well I'll just have coffee-and-a-doughnut and read the paper till somebody else shows up to talk to. Besides you, Ook.

I wonder what's become of BluesSlider or Joanna?
Quiet mornings make me suspicious about afternoons. And this is a Thursday, which means we'll never get the hang of it.

*sits behind counter and begins to do crossword*

This is going to be a very hot day. I can see one of the horses out back up by my fence, and he already has patches of sweat on him.

Well, I'll do errands now, and be back in a while, net willing...

The IIEM is ON for your convenience.
The orangutan will gladly engage you in a game of scrabble.
A caretaker will be back in several hours if net congestion allows it.
Please relax and enjoy the weather.

*comes back in and finds place empty except for Ook playing tiddlywinks with scrabble tiles*

Well, I had two run a gauntlet of busy signals to get here and have already been disconnected once. Perhaps it's worse for everyone else. OK everybody, if I don't seem to respond to the simplest requests, please understand that the net is playing pin the tail on the donkey with my connection...

*makes self a cup of pekoe tea*

*hears a splosh and loks down to see a letter T floating in his tea*

Hm. Very clever

Hallo Cakewalker!
Ook, now stop that. Either play scrabble with the tiles or put them down. We'll get you a tiddlywink set this weekend.

So how's things Cakewalker?

(pant, pant) Just caught up with the backlog. I missed a whole thread on my day off yesterday! In spite of the slowness, etc., you all managed to post enough reading material to keep me away from work for a good long time.

Now, a majik tea would be very nice, if you're still there, Lil.

Magically enough, I am. I broke my connection and logged on again, and seem to be sailing a different waterway with far fewer logjams.

------c(*) one majik tea for Garius

What are you and your family planning to do with the weekend? It is a holiday in Canada too, isn't it?

Actually, our holiday was last weekend. I still worked on Sunday, as usual, but had Monday off ( = lots a backlog on Tues. ). We didn't do anything special - just quiet time at home (at least as quiet as a 7-year old can be ). We did get the vegetable garden planted, though.

You're home schooling her, right? How's her reading?

*comes out of coma suddenly*

Whoa. My connection was cut, sorry.
I've been wrestling w/ my computer for the past week!
so I'm a little out of touch.
If you people have forgotten, I'm the new guy that jumped into the conversation 6 days ago.

*orders another coke*
So what's going on and is there any way of stopping it?
where can I find the nearest hotel?

The Cheshire Grin Inn has just begun letting rooms! I don't know the URL, but if you look up Greebo T. Cat, she will have a link on her page to the Grin.

We always wonder what we've done wrong when a new customer shows up once but never comes back ... so it's good to see you again.

So what kind of Coke is that? New coke? Classic? Decaf? Diet? Diet Decaf?

Regular, Please.

Yes we are home schooling her. Her reading is at about a grade 7 or 8 level. I'm pretty sure she reads faster than me, and she remembers it all later. She loves the Laura Ingalls Wilder books (liitle house books). Are you familiar with them?

Regular? Regular? *rising tone* REGULAR?
Ook: Ook?

Oh alright then. ------------> with ice & straw

I don't know of Laura Wilder. I've been exploring the children's lit of Russell Hoban -- see if you can find The Sea-Thing Child. Very haunting.

Laura Wilder was a pioneer girl, who lived in various places, farther and farther west. Her father liked unsettled areas and kept moving on as civilization caught up. She wrote the books years later and they tell about her life. They are amazingly good books and I would recommend them to anyone. You also get a bit of American history along with the good stories. Recently, the publisher has come out with several more related serries (but not by Laura) that follow the lives of Laura's daughter, Laura's mother, Laura's grandmother and her great-grandmother. My daughter has read them all, more than once. There was a TV serries in the 70's or 80's based on the original books: Little House on the Prairies.

Well, I've gotta go home visit me sometime.

Interesting

Hello Lil Things are going OK. Got an appointment to see a tutor tomorrow about my latest design scheme thingy (I'm an architecture student, if I hadn't told you before) which is good as in just under a fortnight it'll get marked and I've lots still to do on it. Have also arranged to get some perspex cut to make a model. Constructive day, all in all.

Hello, C. I work with perspex models every day, almost. I work at a wind tunnel where we make models of buildings and things that Architect and Engineers are designing. They need to know the wind loads so that they can make the structure strong enough to withstand them. Maybe one day you'll design a building that gets tested here!

No, you hadn't told us you're an architecture student. I've just been reading about Koolhaus, the fellow who wants to make an island-airport-community off the coast of the Netherlands. An anti-architecture architect, by the sound of it.

Garius, 7th-grade level reading is a fearsome accomplishment for a 7-y.o. How's her computer skills?