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

Affie - I've been trying to find you a nice online calendar with the twelve days of Christmas marked on it. Couldn't. They had one on the wall at my church in Canada, but no-one seems to have committed one to cyberspace.

Yay it's snowing at Christmas time!!
Those who live in cold places that get a lot of snow will find this meaningless, but to me who rarely gets snow and usualy never at Christmas, it is a big deal. It is an even bigger deal as worked Christmas and Boxing day, so this is my Christmas morning, so it is snowing on My Christmas Day, LOL!!!
.
....I have started to open my pressies, got 2 Xmas DVDs so far, love things like that...
Don't know whether to watch the nearly 50 hours of TV programmes I have recorded or carry on watching "It's A Very Merry Christmas Muppet Christmas Movie" on TV...laters people, got to put Turkey in oven soon!

[Hati(post-dentist)]

(Oh, and I also sold the house today, 1,5 months for moving out.)

Hati. Best of luck with the dentist.

I had a fun day yesterday. The great-nephews are both totally insane and kept the place hopping. The food was good, the drink was plentiful, and the conversation was interesting. What more could you ask? And it ws 65ºF! How freaky is that! Snow in London and springtime temperatures here.

It's very warm here too. 47 degrees F and raining. Much of our snow is gone. I'm going back to work today, and I'm bringing my Christmas chocolate with me to share with my coworkers. I'm not having it around the house, tempting me to eat it all.

*shuffles in in terrycloth robe and felt mukluks* Good morning, everyone! No snow here, just our famous Bonito valley Winds®. Not a flake of snow -- the Apache Ski Resort is having an extremely bad season.

My dinner went well -- it's so EASY to put together a banquet when you don't have to peel potatoes or assemble your own stuffing. I was especially glad not to have to face those tasks because my ankle has been giving me a lot of pain.

Today feels like a good day to wrap up inside a blanket with a good book.

Hi Lil, and all.
Just finished my Christmas lunch and found out Advocate is indeed an alchoholic drink, hic.
...snow has gone, but enjoyed the walk out in those massive floaty snowflakes you only usually see in films...just been listening to Chrismas music and catching up on Christmas programmes.
I know this feels strange, but it really DOES feel like Christmas day today....a combination of a couple of days off, snow and good food perhaps?
(didn't feel like Christmas for last 2 days though)

i play this online version of mancala whenever i'm a bit bored:

http://www.rocketsnail.com/mancala/game.htm

i still don't understand how to play it though

I used to know how to play mancala. We have it in one of our gifts though so I will be relearning.

I read the rules and played it several times, and I still don't understand it either. There is clearly a counting strategy involved, which surprised me when it suddenly rained snails into my jar. A few dozen more games and all should become clear. Not.

Mancala struck me as terribly complicated at first. Then I rotated the board by 90 degrees and it became clear.

I assume that there's a natural counting strategy, but I've not figured it out yet. Give me time. I grew up on Zork.

It's pretty simple. Just take all the pebbles from one of the six cups on your side, then drop them in subsequent cups in a counterclockwise fashion, including your Mancala (big oblongish cup from which pebbles can't be removed), but not your opponents. The player with the most pebbles in their Manacala when one player entirely clears their side of pebbles is the winner.

Once you get the hang of that, just memorize a few simple rules:
-If the last pebble that you place in a cup is within your own Mancala, then you get to play again.
-If the last cup that you place a pebble in is on your side and is empty, then you may claim all of the pebbles in your opponent's cup directly opposite, as well as the capturing pebble.
-When one opponent clears their side of pebbles, the game ends. The remaining pebbles in the opponents cups are taken by the opponent.

I know it *looks* complicated when written down, but I got the hand of it after two or three games. We've even developed a few interesting strategies (for instance, seeing how many pebbles you can keep isolated on your side in an attempt to force the other player to go out so that you can claim a gigantic number of pebbles.

> The leg thing has resolved itself but I won't go into details

Thank you, Amy!

> Mind you, he usually cooks with an elderly plain steel thing once owned by his grandma that must never be left wet or used on onions, more or less shaped like a ninja banana)

I know the kind - it's ancient, sharp, and paper-thin. Those kinds of knives have to be bought from garage sales or the flea market. Same with cast iron frying pans... It's amazing how the old things are often the best. Now if I can just get that hot-oil popper away from my mom...

> For instance, my company gives us holliday bonuses for working Christmas, but as it was on a weekend this year today is the official holiday and Friday was a "Floating" holiday.

Me too. First Boxing Day I've had off, ever. I really enjoyed it - ate very little, though, as we were still full from the gorge-fest Xmas day. All this food in the house! And I'll get New Year's Eve off, too - and New Year's Day will happen during the weekend, so I'll get another Monday off. Whoo-hoo! And then I get Thursday the 5th off for jury duty, and then I'll take the 6th off for my birthday, and then my birthday is the 7th. Just when everybody is exhausted from partying and eating and giving people presents, my birthday happens. All this time off makes me want to do something useful, like remodel the kitchen.

> Does anyone else get a little psycho if they don't read anything for 48 hours? Or am I just deeply peculiar?

If I can't find anything to read, I'll start reading ketchup packets (Hm! Corn syrup solids! Carrageenan gum!) or the backs of cereal boxes or anything, really, that is printed. It used to be the only way I could get to sleep. The only chances I get to read now are when I'm exercising. So I exercise every day - it's a good incentive.

Xmas presents? Got books (Lies and the Lying Liars That Tell Them, Larry Niven's Ringworld Children), some useful things, and Darth Tater!

How're the teeth, Hati? And what's up with the ankle Lil - I must have missed that.

Took us over 4 hours to drive to Nottingham and only 2 to drive back, but despite that we had a lovely day with two bizzare roadsigns:

"Welcome to the Parish of Wales" *snicker*

and

"White Post Modern Farm Centre" .... !?!?

I mean, what?

No matter where you make the caesura it makes no sense at all! What's a Post-Modern Farm? One which is breathtakingly cool and teribly ironic? Or if the place is called White Post, then what would you have in a Modern Farm Centre? Piles and piles of paper-work and subsidy forms on display?

Gngngngnghhhhhh.....

And then we went over the River Rother and spent hours working out suitable businesses for the area, the best we came up with was the River Rother Rover dealership, though I am rather fond of a society for game-birds called the River Rother Plover Lovers. And of course that led us on to the River Ribble, and the necesity to steal hardcore from local building sites so that the local paper could have a headline about the River Ribble Rubble Robber.

Sad really.

I blame my parents.

B

Obviously 'Welcome to the Parish of Wales was in Nottinghamshire rather than Wales'. Our only regret was that we didn't have time to visit the White Post Modern Farm Centre, (I imagined a lot of battery chickens, or perhaps no farming at all and a display on bankrupcy).

Another lovely day with my Favourite Aunt Electra (originally from Nottingham, but now spending her winters travelling the far east buying Fabrics to sell in her shop in Amsterdamn) and her Partner Serge (orginally Polish, who has lived in Israel, Norway and now Amsterdam). They're about to go on one of there regular two month jaunts to the Occupied terratories of Isreal where Serge's son is in the Army.

In a way I envy people like them, whose lives and loyalties aren't tied to one particular nation. And they are full of such interesting stories, for instance. In India on the 27th of November it was found to be a particular auspecious day for marriages, so half of Delhi was getting married on that day, and their was a shortage of white horses for the grooms to ride into the weddings on (as was traditon) so the white horses were having to do several weddings a day and were getting exhausted. Another problem was that the grooms had mostly never ridden a horse before, (being city types) so were riding up to the wedding looking all flash then not being able to dismount off the horse without help.

Anyway I'm burbelling.

[GDZ]

> I blame my parents.

As well you should.

Z, you've reminded me of a wedding R. played at. The bride wanted a bagpiper at their wedding to play 'Scotland the Brave' when it was time for the bride and groom to walk out of the cathedral. The bagpiper didn't know how to keep his bag fully inflated, so when the time came for him to strike up a tune, the cathedrawl (that's what we call it in Texas) was filled with this horrible Grruuuugurrrooowllllagghhhhh! as the bag inflated. It was really funny - sounded like somebody was trying to blow up a hippo.

[Affy]

Many thanks to Hypatia for her hospitality the past couple of days.

The great nephews are indeed totally insane. She should have been in the car on the trip down to Ozarkland. They were relatively subdued on the return trip.

The food and drink was wonderful. I have always said "If you want a good meal, let my sis cook it!" We had fun. Don't know when I've enjoyed the holiday as much...yes, I do. It was when we visited her in San Antonio!

We will be watching for the Webb City Band with baited breath!! I used to march with that band. (In the dark ages.) Our big parade was the Joplin Christmas Parade or the Pittsburg State Homecoming Parade, but we didn't have to raise money to go there. They were day trips.

*trying to imagine a Dark Ages marching band* Did you play krumhorn, Lady C?

I have wasted NO part of the turkey -- just extracted the last of the bones from the pot, leaving behind an elixir of turkey all ready to be converted to soup.