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

Welcome one and all to the Aroma Café. If you're a regular here, welcome back! The room is largish (getting larger all the time, it seems) and, among other things, your eyes light upon two lazily spinning ceiling fans in the rafters, a player piano, a blue primate, a closet containing a cleaning bot, several comfortable couches, some comfy chairs, many, many standard café style chairs and tables, a framed photo (by the door) of an exploded tire (not a firestone, my own real tire), and a rather strange looking device -- like an espresso machine coupled with a space ship -- called an IIEM (Infinite Improbability Espresso Machine. Irving Washington may, or may not be standing behind the counter, depending on the time of day, night, etc.

This is the Café thread for the week of September 4 (or 4 September, depending on how you word it), 2000.

*gasping*

Did I make it?

*looks around carefully, in case someone is lying under a pile of papers*

Yippeeee! Made FTTF!

IIEM, something special, please.

*takes cup of multi-coloured mocha coffee and looks puzzledly at it*

Are coffee mugs supposed to have paper umbrellas and half a strawberry sticking in them?

*eyes IIEM suspiciously while retreating to corner to finish 'Metropolitan Life' by Fran Lebowitz*

Mornin'!!

Coffee please, IIEM.

Good morning Oneeye.
Make that two, IIEM!

Mornin' Bumble!

So how's life treatin' ya?

Evening all. I don't get to say that very often.

IIEM, green tea please

*floating in, in her usual v.e.l.manner*

Good morning all!

IIEM, a café mélange, please!

Titania, Loony, oneeye, hi!
The sun is shining, my desk is buried under unbelieveble amounts of work-backlog, but I am ajour with this thread!
I had to take another week off, and coming back to this makes me think they don't pay me enough.
If I move one pile, another falls off.
I need more coffee.

*muffled sound heard from neighbouring room*

Hello... uhm.. What's with the no light? Hello? Anybody?

*Enters new Café, looks bewildered*
Didn't the café use to ... ah, nevermind.

Good morning everybody! And good evening to those that may apply to!

*looks around at the cleaned up Aroma Café*

Nice work.

JAR

Hi Looney, JAR, T

How is everyboy? I know I need more coffee..

IIEM?

Everyboy is, according to some, fast asleep and every girl is also fast asleep, but I disagree. I am a boy, and I'm at work. And I'm doing fine. Great actually. My computer is acting up (well, the software is), so I can't do muchh of anything except hanging around at various places on the 'net.

The weather is great. Tho football match of the weekend was not great, but I don't mind. My hometown just won the Norwegian Rugby Championship! And some English Maories were dancing on the rugby field. It was.... interesting...

IIEM: A cup of...hmmm.... tea, please. Lemon. One sugar. Thanks!

JAR

*stumbles in and very sadly orders a fizzy water with a slice of lemon. Large, as if that is gonna give it any saving graces*

Hi. JAR - is Norwegian rugby any different to the varient invented-and-suddenly-played-badly by the British teams? Everyone seems to have their own rules these days.

Sol - Actually I have no idea. Rugby is a very small sport in Norway, only about a hunder spectators to the scandinavian Championship. In addition, I have only very recently begun taking an interest... So sady, I know nothing of English rugby. However, if English rugby is, as you say invented-and-sudenly-played-badly, maybe we Norwegians have an upper hand. At least our games still hold a bit gentlemanry. (A journalist stated that he had expected a game where testosteronmonsters attacked eachother on some muddy field in an attempt at killing everything moving. He then stated that what he saw was a game fillied with moves and tackles that would have sent any soccer-player to the hospital, coupled with good graces and laughter. There were no injjuries during the Championship!)

As to the rules. Hmm. Enlighten me. How does one really play rugby?

And why so sad this morning?

JAR

*sips his tea*

Sad, because after years of pouring huge amounts of cofee and other cafinated products into my poor body, I decided to stop abusing my system and drink the recommended 2 litres of water a day for a while. But I hate water.

*sips despised drink and pulls a face*

Actually I too have very little idea about the rules of rugby, I just asked because I saw a Russian game on TV and thought that one of the moves looked abit different: they were picking each other up to catch the ball, which as far as I know one doesn't do in the Brit version. I could be wrong. And of course you get Aussie rules football, which is a sort of cross between footy and rugby, and Am football which is just weird.

But you probably would beat the English team. Everyone else seems to. In any sport. I am waiting with bated breath to see how humiliated we get in the olympics.

You do seem to have a gentlemenly approach. My brother calls rugby a bllod sport, a term more usually reserved for sports where one tears small fluffy animals apart in a particularly messy way (fox hunting).

Hi Sol

JAR; didn't even know Horten had a rugby-team...

Sorry 'bout the little misspelling back there, t'was supposed too read "everybody" (as if y'all hadn't already guessed that...)

One-eye: Does Drammen have a rugby-team? It seems very few towns have. The finaly in the scandinavian Championship featured one finnish team and a mixed team from Vestlandet (that's one fourth of Norway, a few of our biggest cities and a fourth of our counties. Doesn't seem to be a lot of rugby going on there...)

Sol: Oh my god! Have you quit coffee alltogether or just cut donw a little? Belive me, cutting down is by far the best. After I suffered a light caffeine shock a few months ago (a particulary bad monday at work... ) I have cut to one cuppa at luch an maybe a few more later in the evening. But mostly I drink water. And grapesoda (Schweppes, love that sodathing). Good luck!!

JAR

I don't think Drammen has a rugby-team, but we do have an
Am.-football-team, and from what I understand, they're not that bad, either.

Now, about the coffee-thing:
Surely, it can't be healthy not to drink coffee! JAR, that light caffeine-shock you were talking about; explain?

The only time I quit coffee, and tea, was after drinking 20 cups a day for 2 weeks during a-levels. So no, I couldn't possibly. The max healthy number is, what four a day? we'll try to stick to that. Thanks for the support though. I give it till wednesday.

What is caffine shock? Running around madly unable to sit still or stop talking?