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

*Attempts to ask Ampton whether he'd mind wearing one of his infinite improbability watches (as part of a testing exercise) while on vacation. Doesn't know whether he can get Ampton's attention before the bot walks out the door...*

*sigh*
Another day at the ACLU. I wish I could share Amy's sentiments that there were no unscroupulous people in government, just people like me, but if that were true, I'd just sit there doing nothing all day. Instead I get call after call and letter after letter about people who are being harrassed, discriminated against, and generally having their liberties abridged by government on a daily basis. Apparently people "just like you and me" aren't in government, because people like us know better than to get into that sort of thing...

As for personal stories... isn't that why this thread exists? Everything else (political commentary, for instance ) seems to be by product.

Don't have anything to add of a personal nature for now though...

Courtesy, I have a friend who needs to sell her place, not sure what it is, but it's in a nice neighborhood. I'll pass on the realty info when I get it...what the hell, it could be perfect!

MR - Great, just email the info to me when you can.

Thanks!!!!!!

Courtesy

And They will know whether you drink Coke or Pepsi.

http://www.autoidcenter.org/aboutthecenter.asp

Then with the GPS, They will know where you drink Coke or Pepsi, and if you should throw your can out of the car window, They will know that too.

Actually, when I mentioned the "they" before, I didn't mean the standard men in smoky back rooms conspiring to control the world. No, all politics are local, and I meant the quotidian “them” whose ulterior motives include getting rich quick and stomping on anyone who gets in their way, or pushing through their little pet peeve into legislation, and other little bits of selfishness. Even the ones who mean well but think why not take advantage of a situation if it’s ultimately for a good purpose and no one (they think) will get hurt? Yes there is too much information for anyone to pay attention to all of it, so then it gets filtered and the criterion for filtering will be determined by people who are NOT thinking of the good of the whole. There’s a lot of pettiness in local politics. If a GPS becomes mandatory, it’s only a matter of time before someone in a position of authority succumbs to the temptation of tracking things that should never be tracked.

[BC cleaning the house and actually beginning to make progress]

My Indian cookbook doesn't have chai masala. I've learned that dals are beans and that other than the rice, I probably don't have any of the ingredients to make these recipes. Take pakoras - vegetable fritters. Sounds good, but every recipe calls for chickpea flour. Not something we use much in these parts. And where am I supposed to get fresh curry leaves? Or chapati flour? Or dozens of other ingredients that I've never even heard of? Looks lke I won't be trying out Indian food at home. Even the desserts have strange ingredients.

often, you can get these ingredients at a whole/ health foods store.

Recently a friend of mine and I came to the conclusion that it is a Universal Law that "there is *always* a Chinese [restaurant/take away] near the [railway] Station". This seems to be true in Europe (even 150km below the Arctic Circle), but GTB tells me it isn't so true in the USA.

What to salonistas think?

B

It is when a friend's sister comes over to visit her that I realise how much we take for granted. The sister lives in Palm Springs and loves going to our local supermarket (even though there are invariably empty shelves and freezers as they are having a staffing crisis) because the choice of international food items is pretty good. There are even own brand bottles of kaffir lime leaves and garam masala.

If GPS could follow me personally then I hope I earn Brownie points for my daily trot down the garden to the new compost bin. I feel slightly less guilty about throwing away a couple of tablespoons of mashed potato when I know that it will all go back into the garden.

Oh and Eatsmice, thanks for the update. It is hard to believe David is not far off 2 years old! Poor little Elspeth, she must have been miserable and I hope you are all feeling better now that she is recovering.

Interesting about the railway station/Chinese restaurant connection Ben - come to think of it, in my home town there was an entire Chinese restaurant in the same building as the station

In Sweden, odd ingredients and spices can usually be found in shops owned by immigrants - I even managed to find suitable music casettes for practising Oriental dancing in one of those!

[Amy] - geek note: Jim has fixed it so that long URLs don't expand the walls of the thread so we no longer have to worry about it.

Hypatia, bunches are ponytails, but on either side of the head (two ponytails I mean). I would like to point out that mine were not on the top of the head, but at the nape. Or rather on either side of the nape. What're they in American?

I'm not sure how esoteric you _really_ have to get with curry, but then that's probably because my parents brought me up on the English b*****dised version. Still, I was trying to work out where to buy some ingredients for Chinese food a while back, so I asked the people at the Chinese restaurant where they got theirs. So praps you could do the same?

Which is fine until you realise they're using catering (bucket) size versions of everything

The nearest train station to me is in Kansas City - 150 miles - and I don't know if they have a Chinese restaurant nearby or not. The bus station in Joplin has a greasy spoon.

Sol, we call two pony tails on either side dog ears. A braid is a pigtail.

We have a natural food store called Fox Farms. It has some oriental stuff, so I'll look there for Indian ingredients. If I can't find them, then I'll go to this big oriental marketplace in Wichita the next time I visit my sis. That's where I pick up Chinese seasonings. I've been browsing through this cookbook, and many of the recipes sound wonderful.

I did a quick google for SPICES ON-LINE, and there are a large number of places you can get ingredients mail order, so it might be worth trying it that way. It won't help with fresh ingredients, I guess, like ginger root and coriander leaves, but it would be a start.

I am having a moderately successful day. I have booked myself into the doc, sorted the things I have to Deal With into neat piles, and cleaned and tidied the living room. The last was uninentional, I could not find my keys, and since all small objects in the flat come to rest under the sofas, (I found 10 lighters and 12 pens under them the other day), I checked there, here and everywhere. They weren't under the sofas, or the oak chests, or the freezer, or the fridge, but they *were* under the piles of paper on the table. At least I have now vacuumed under the sofas though.

I have been brewing a poem for a week or so, and here it is:
http://uk.geocities.com/bethcargill/toofar.html#justlooking I am not sure whether it is sweetly romantic or actually rather sinister. What do you think?

B

Atta, used for making chapatis, is wholemeal flour. Thanks Hypatia and MR for the shopping links!

I was so tired last night -- I went to bed at 8:30 and slept for 10 hours, waking at sunrise to a gentle rain shower and a full rainbow across the western sky.

Tom DeLay doesn't need to do anything more than he's done of late to attract ~my~ ire. Using the "homeland security" apparatus to track political opponents, i.e., Democrats, who were trying to get round his attempted gerrymandering of the state of Texas -- well, that's all he needs to do. And immediate shredding of documents related to the whole adventure. And total lack of shame regarding the whole thing.

I call the hair thing we're talking about pigtails. And I'm wearing them right now. With color-coordinated elastics, no less.

Sometimes, I feel whimsical.

Today is going to be a very long day. Somehow, the room-mother at my daughter's school guilted me into helping with the end of the year first grade picnic, and apparently I am doing the sack race...for three hours. No, I don't think so. I will do what I can to help set up and then I am coming home. Sorry, but if it isn't on my calendar (where every single thing I have to do goes immediately) than I really didn't "volunteer" and frankly, I resent the fact that they told my daughter I did. Not to mention, if I had volunteered, don't you think I would have put my name on a list? The volunteer sheet I got came to "my daughter's mom."

MR, is it possible that your daughter volunteered you? Even if that is so, it's no excuse for assuming it was okay with you.

[MTG]