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

Happy trails, Lil.

I just deposited my federal and state checks fifteen minutes ago. How nice it is to have money for a change.

I feel your frostbite pain, Lil. Last week it was in the high 40s around here. Right now it's 5 above zero. Brrrr!

Morning all. 22 Celsius and calm here in Godzone.

More desperate news from the Queeen's State Banquet. Dear leader Helen didn't wait for the Queen to be seated first. I fear Helen may be in danger of losing her head. More bad news for the Poms. (Brits) NZ won the latest one-day cricket game and therefore took the series 3-2.

So my question is how long do these cricket matches take to play?

How much time do you have?

A typical one-day game takes roughly seven hours. After one side bats for 50 overs, the players have lunch and then the other side gets to bat.

A Test match (NZ and England play three of these in a couple of weeks time) is scheduled to be played for six hours a day for five days. The players have lunch and tea breaks every two hours.

And I read that one of Lizzies receptions (at a Maori meeting hut) they were urged to big it up for her (or something like that) as she had just burried her sister and her mum wasn't well.

Marae = Maori meeting house, not hut.

Big it up????? I think, like anyone else, the Maori people in attendance would have just passed on their condolences. Perhaps they sang a wiata (mourning song).

So, do you think Helen's actions were deliberate, Looney? Surely she would have been schooled in the proper ettiquet by her advisors.

Reminds me of the time when our Prime Minister of the time, Pierre Trudeau, did a piroette behind the Queen's back. That was in the 70's, I think.

pirouette (looked it up )

Give it heaps was the phrase used in the report - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/02/26/whrh26.xml&sSheet=/portal/2002/02/26/por_right.html
I read.

W-h-y i-s h-2-g-2 s-o s-l-o-w a-g-a-i-n-?

Slow? Oh great - the best way to get rid of a problem is to tell everyone about it - that will inevitably lead to everyone asking 'what problem?'...

I was quite happy to notice that all the children's TV shows are back again, now that the Olympic Games are over...

...I watched... hmmm... 'Brain Office' (rough translation from Swedish) and learnt that chicken are more closely related to dinosaurs(according to most scientists) than lizzards, how to make raspberry jellies (candy, and the description of how to make gelatin was a bit )...

...and then owls - fascinating! You know how they always seem to be staring straight at you - obviously their eye balls are barred in by a ring-formed bone, so that they have to turn their heads if they want to look in any other direction than straight ahead - unlike human eyes, who can move in their sockets up and down and left and right...

...and then I also learnt that one ear is positioned lower down than the other ear on an owl - that makes them able to determine the direction of a tiny sound (like fieldmice) in a millisecond...

I watched the BBC popular science prog Horizon last week. It was about the faked dino bird skeleton that National Geographic got hold of. Turns out that the fake was made up from two unknown dinosaurs which are helping the dino-bird link.

Off to do a short stint at the post office, then back home to get a fire going in the hearth...

No matter what your politics, breach of etiquette is not an adequate response. Well, I ~would~ say that.

[Affy]

[Amy]

The lintel and door jamb are back in place, for the time being, hopefully the garage door will be back up tomorrow. It will at least give the appearance of being secure.

Got to download an English/French dictionary that a) works and b) doesn't crash my Palm. Looks like it will have to be the rather expensive Collins one, but at least it should work.

Thanks for all the support . Off to bed now to read a whodunnit set in the 14thC.

Give it heaps, in the context used by the Maori MC, was a call for people attending to make a special effort to ensure the Queen had a pleasant time at the marae.

Helen, a republican who thinks it is absurd that our head of state lives 12,000 miles away, obviously decided not to give it heaps

The Queen has now moved on to Australia where she will be welcomed by that countries Governor-General, a man under pressure to resign because he turned a blind to cases of sex abuse by priests in his former job as a presbyterian archbishop.

Some of you may be interested to learn I survived Day One at the gym