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

*mutters over a crumpled Swedish newspaper*

So the hazel flowered before New Year for the fourth time in the 21st century? Of course, that was in the very south of Sweden - I only started taking my allergy pills in the middle of February, 'just' 1½ month earlier than usual... *mutters some more*

And if the warm winters continue (which seems very probable) we might be looking forward to an all-year-around pollen season! *blows nose noisily and reminds herself to stock up on nose spray as well*

And a self proclaimed allergy expert said there were no scientific evidence that certain breeds of cats/dogs/horses were more 'allergy-friendly' but that it was a completely subjective experience - you *want* to be able to have a poodle so you *decide* not to have an alllergic reaction to it.

Bah!

I guess he's of the school that claims that all allergies are just psychosomatic and in your head. I'd like one of those idiots try to explain the results of that test where they punch tiny holes all over your back that are filled with a drop of different allergenes.

When I was a kid I was horse crazy - I read all the horse magasines and books I could get my hands on and bugged my mother continously for several years to allow me to take riding lessons.

So how come I turned out to be extremely allergic to horses?

Balderdash!

I'd say that balder has been well and truly dashed.

One of my s has been missing for over 48 hours Will he come back? Charlie, come home George is missing his sparring partner.

I just hope he's somewhere safe and warm, wet, windy and horrid outside.

I'm sure that your cat will be holed up somewhere dryish and warmish out of the wind Mags Have a loobrush. No compensation for a missing cat but it's all I can offer.

The wind and the rain has been around and still is. I got to the train station and ended up on the first train from there. I think there must have been other trains but not to our station as the train wasn't as full as it would have been if there were no trains at all.

MR the Sam Smiths in bottles is clear and filtered (probably pasturised as well). Not as good as from the cask but it'll not last long enough to go off. Most of the bottled beer in the UK isn't real but there is more and more out there that is bottle conditioned. Finding it can be hard sometimes but it is there.

Has anybody seen Hyp recently? I know she wasn't too well but thought she was on the mend.

I know I've mentioned this before, but I am not a big fan of beer. However, my friend Ben makes his own homebrew. A bunch of us got together for Sunday dinner this past weekend, and he unveiled his newest brew, a raspberry ale made from raspberries his wife and I picked last summer. It was delicious. So much so, lil' ol' beer-hating me had three pints.

you drank beer? I think that's a sign of the apocalypse, isn't it?!?!

Guinness in a bottle has a nitrogen "booster" that gives it something of a semblance of the nitro head it is supposed to have, but doesn't, and really is somewhat vile.

And it depends on the type of ale if it works well in a bottle. IPAs work well, as do browns and porters, but lighter ales, or ones that haven't been well-hopped, are indeed a sad thing. Which is why I dislike Sierra Nevada so much. Smithwick's isn't bad, but again, better on tap. Of course, most beers are better on tap, with the exception of chimays (which are bottle-conditioned) and lambics. I also like meads -- which aren't beer, of course -- better in bottles.

That said, can you tell I'm a beer freak? Last week we had a cask of Stone Vanilla Bean Smoked Porter. It was like the end of a root beer float, but better. It was lovely. Actually, if you have a facebook account, look up Anthill Pub. We have a page there with the beers listed, as well as a MySpace page. We're working on an actual website...

[Sol]

Br Magwitch, I hope your comes back! Though I am allergic. And I can say without hesitation that the allergy is not mentally induced, since it took me completely by surprise. I'd never really been around cats, never had a problem with them. I was at my professor's house one evening, her cat was no where in sight -- I hadn't even met it yet. I started getting itchy and stuffy for no apparent reason. I looked down at the glass of water I was drinking, and there, at the very bottom, was a single black cat hair.

On the other hand, I think I can adjust a bit to my cat allergy. MR's kitties don't bother me nearly as much as some others. Though, to be fair, I'd ingested 3 individual 24-hour allergy pills and several pints of beer before I met them. Still... I think I aclimated after spending the previous night in SEA's menagerie.

I've got more to say, but as I've just gotten into the office (It's after 1pm) I feel I should get some work done today.

Ag - Have you tried bottle conditioned ale? It has yeast in the bottle just as cask ale has it in the cask. Used to be hard to find, but now Morrison's even do their own brand, which isn't at all bad. Let it settle for a few days after you buy it and pour in all straight into a pint glass - when you set a half-full bottle down it kicks up the sediment.

Personally I like quite a few bottled ales (Wychwood are especially good) but they're often a poor reflection of a well-kept real ale.

They are offering to send people home early, they have come by 3 times in fact. The temptation is horrible but I missed 3 hours yesterday.

I feel cheated! Given the lack of winter we'd had in DK, I'd looked forward to seeing some snow in Michigan after the record snowfalls and some even recently. And it has melted

A very nice day in Lansing, though. A little above freezing, sunny and rather fresh

GDZ, I'd take 'em up on it, if I were you, but that's because I was driving to Window Rock at 6am to try to fix an issue with some paperwork that had to be physically in Window Rock today. WR, as we call it, is 3 hours away from Flagstaff. So I'd "worked" 6 hours or so before actually getting back into the Flagstaff office this morning. And now I have to do real work

Oh well. The drive was an adventure. The reservation is very livestock oriented, and cows are apparently more energetic in the morning. I kept having to stop for animals in the road. First, it was a pack of dogs of different breeds. I wouldn't exactly call them feral, I'm sure each one was someone's pet, but they were wandering about, across the highway, on their own. Then, I sped up to pass a pickup truck that was driving under the speed limit. I'd gotten far enough ahead of him to merge back into the lane, when a cow began crossing the road... so I had to come to a complete stop.

Once I got into town (Window Rock being the seat of the Tribal Government, it's a big town by reservation standards) another cow was wandering aimlessly in traffic. Just as I approached the Window Rock office, once again, wandering aimlessly through traffic, was our director of litigation, trying to get across the street for his morning coffee...

That story on knitting had me in stitches.

I've seen the knitted beer bottle cozies, but that's just to keep your beer cold.

> Bottled Guinness is VILE.

Yes, it is. But when you don't have access to Guinness poured from a Guinness tap installed by a Guinness technician, from clean lines, in a pub that serves it at just the right temperature and with just the right amount of gas.... Well, then, bottled Guinness isn't so bad.

The reason the bottled Guinness tastes weird is because it has that little nitrogen pellet in there that's supposed to aerate the beer when it's opened. At least I think so - that's how they serve Guinness in cans here in the States.

Er... yeah... what Montana said! I've developed a liking for Smithwicks - mostly because the distributor here in the US has developed some sort of problem with getting Bass to the pubs.

> So how come I turned out to be extremely allergic to horses?

Allergies seem to be one of those things that builds up. Like you can have allergies to ragweed, mold, pollen, and fungus, but when just one of those things is in the air, you don't suffer. But when they all start propagating and filling the air with their filth, then your system shuts down. Kinda like an overload from too much electricity.

Sounds like you have an interesting drive to work Irv , I can report no livestock on the A229 while driving to work this evening , other than a few flat hedgehogs .

best fishes....tod

Boy, Irv, your story took me back to more than one Tony Hillerman mystery and my own travels in the Four Corners region.

Tod, that's not my normal drive, but it was interesting. We have some flat critters on our roads, too, especially now that they've been coming out of hibernation. Unfortunately, most of the roadkill in Northern AZ are skunks, which are particularly unpleasant when flattened.

FG, it was definitely Hillerman stuff. He should come do a story about legal aid. I've got some great plot ideas... I suppose he could start with our client who was murdered last year...

Wasn't one of his main characters, Janet Pete, a tribal aid lawyer?

If so, I haven't read that one

I miss living next to the cattle barns... I used to live right up the street from the Cowtown Coliseum, where there was always some sort of domesticated cattle wandering around. One night there was a horse loose outside our duplex, and we had to call the police to lasso him and put him back in the pen. If you've never seen an inexperienced policewoman with a rope trying to catch a horse, you haven't lived.