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

Welcome to the atelier! If this is your first visit to our salon, please take a few moments to look over A304354, where you'll find some notes about how we work (and play), along with a link to our floor plan, some backstory and other illustrations.

New members in this conversation are Tartaronne, Ormondroyd and Santragenius, all of whom seem to be keeping up with our galactically famous backlog. A happy official welcome to all of them.

A Lurking bcB has provided such splendid notes that I shall be quoting them practically verbatim after this paragraph, but first let me present her with the scribe award for Conversation 6DX. *Chloe brings forward a peacock feather quill pen on a silver base*

Hey, Santragenius says that this place has a 'debonaire atmosphere and charm'! F38024?thread=451392&skip=900&show=20#p5665484

The thread started with a barbeque on the terrace, when Dave had foolishly offered us burgers at 1 o'clock one morning in the previous conversation.

Not Sporky and sea both paid us a visit, and Demon Drawer returned.

A good thread for quizzes: the first rapidly established that most Salonistas were destined for Hell, with a few for Purgatory. Maybe we will be able to keep in touch via the Atelier though. The next quiz checked to see how paranoid we are regarding hoax emails, and Dr Seuss told us how pure or wierd our sex lives have been. Then there was an extensive Geek test. Z was disappointed because he is officially not a Geek, but the rest of the Salonistas are most definitely Geeky. The final quiz told us which movie villains we are, and in true Matrix 3 form there appears to be an almost infinite number of Agent Smiths and a fair few Jack Torrences. We should get out more, shouldn't we?

Montana Redhead became an official girlfriend, which is splendid, and has been told that she has to have her gall-bladder out, which is not splendid at all. Laproscopies and apple juice were mentioned. Lil also learned that her bouts of illness are actually gall bladder attacks, but she is treating hers with diet.

Lentilla's husband R faced a heart op, and Mr Teuchter handed in his resignation at work so Teuchter feels rather stranded in the land of the Sassenachs and picked up a stomach bug with teeth and hobnail boots in Portugal.

Sol has been giving her students a hard time, but probably a considerably less hard time than some of them deserved.

The usual PC and server problems occurred, this time involving Operating Systems, Motherboards and Video cards and were experienced by Marv, Titania and GDZ among others.

Marv has been taking and sharing some wonderful photographs of sunsets, and went to a Berlin concert. He feels like JFK.

GDZ came out as a closet librarian, re-catalogueing his Dr Demento recordings. Then his kids came home, and boredom was suddenly a thing of the past. He also found the Official Site for the HHGG movie: http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com/main.html for anyone who forgot to bookmark it.

Phil and Metal Chicken have been munching their home grown veg and enjoying the WOMAD music festival. Caerwynn moved up a class for Pilates.

GorgeousKelli's garden was taken over by yarrow, but for some reason she didn't seem enthused by the idea of making I-Ching sticks with it. When she saw her food doctor, he told her to exercise less. (Why don't more doctors say that...?) There was a brief discussion on whether complimentary medicines work or whether their practitioners quack like ducks.

Toccata shared her thoughts about organising p**s-ups and running a brewery before going to see a business advisor. Hypatia put in a request for ugly trucks.

Z and his brothers are going to Paris, but Z's flatmate A going through a 'what do I do now I've graduated?' crisis which appears to have been solved by joining a bank and passing his driving test while Z is questioning relationships.

Egon has been checking out aircraft carriers. Nice to know the UK still has some. There were wistful desires to tour submarines, though Egon and Caerwyn already have, which led us naturally to aeroplane seats. And airplane seats, of course. Thence to phobias with heights and dreams of being in enclosed spaces being the most mentioned.

Mrs B4 was admired in all her slimmer-line glory on Azahar's photo pages.

Team Ant reformed and rejoiced when Amy ran another 5k race, but her most recent race was disrupted by yobs.

Unusually, this thread was fairly light on food discussions, the few we covered being:
* Successes and failures of using Splenda for baking; Hypatia observed that it works well in things with a lot of spices, but does not work with oats.
* saurkraut and not saurkraut, brats and meat
* what, and indeed who, the Salonistas would have cleaned and brought to their dressing-rooms if they were rock-stars
* beanburgers, with a recipe

However this thread has been *big* on body-stuff. The conversation strayed to body hair, the methods and results of removing it, when to remove it, how to remove it, where to remove it from, whether to remove it at all, and wa-a-a-ay too much information provided by many. This diverted via male pattern baldness to the horror that is the Mullett, and then to the affects of the 'phase of the moon' on waxing and perms.

There was a discussion about pubic and eyebrow crabs, and then the conversation became scarily gynecological with tips for our baby medic on how to and how not to perform cervical smear tests, and although Hyp could not be persuaded to tell the glitter story, Lentilla provided a link. Then flossing was mentioned, and Teuchter explained why we should floss and a large number of salonistas squirmed guiltily in front of their PCs.

There was a discussion about the big silent Elephants which sit in the living room being ignored, waiting patiently to be discussed, taking a lot of space, while conversation goes on around them. FG has an Elephant at work, and Agapanthus' family have herds of the things.

The pleasures and perils of gardening in the sun were mentioned, and the intertnationality of the thread was emphasised by Titania and Hati, who have hardly seen the sun this summer for grey clouds compared with the UKians and the USians who have been slapping on suncream or turning into lobsters. This led to a discussion of skin cancers. Then the weather broke, and thunder lightening and rain were the order of the day.

English weather seems to have got more variable and extreme over the past few years, and the Scandinavians have also been experiencing significant storms.

The thread rounded off with discussion of the Prince of Persia as a game to play and the Netherlands as a place to work.

Here endeth B's notes. Thank you! And to the rest of you, please make yourselves comfortable now that the environs have been vacuumed, dusted and mopped, and enjoy the never-ending conversation.

Am I first?

2nd

Oops - this reminds me that have yet to catch up with the backlog of the 6CXth conversation...

*Matina brings Titania a First-to-the-Forum mug filled with glög*

Ti, this isn't your first mug, is it? I wonder who has more than one...

Please continue with the conversation about the Netherlands and Global Warming. To recap, dave has an interest in working there, and B has given an excellent and concise description of what the country is like.

[Egon]

Sorry i've been away a while- starting 10 days ago I've been zipping about the country- Sundelrand-Newcastle-Birmingham-Worcetser_Warrignton-Newark-Nottingham-Scarborough-York-NEwcastle-Sunderland-Hartlepool has been my itinerary. Would have been worse if I hadn't missed a train to glasgow. Oh, and hello.

Damn! I was so busy rambling on about the Netherlands in the previous thread that I barely made it into the first LED on this one.

A Peacock feather Quill? I am very proud of that! Thank you!

B

Now that I have had a chance to read the summary: closet librarian, just because I catologued my tapes? LOL

[MTG]

That's good news about the hiring prospects, I'll put worrying about that issue on hold. Sorry hear you were on the receiving end of any discrimination B, anywhere. I feel like I'm starting to get a peek at the differences I can expect, at least initially, that will blow me away when seen in person. Thanks!

Remember when we were talking about the midwest really being an arid dessert? It may turn into a huge inland sea if global warming has it's say. Can I post a Sealab 2021 haiku? (or HiKoo, as they spell it)

B

*smoothly segues into the new thread, rapidly switching from Plain via Goo to Brunel until the walls were the right distance apart*

By English-speaking ex-pat, Dave, I meant people from the UK and also, the US, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand etc, etc. All the US people I met in the Netherlands seemed to worked for oil companies but I think that was just a coincidence.

Well, I definitely used to be a closet-librarian - or not so closet, come to think of it... before the archives were transferred to computers, you'd mostly find me leafing through the archive cards in search of yet unread books by current favourite author in the main library in my home town.

Since this usually took some time, I'd hang my coat in the manned wardrobe. The real librarians didn't have any kind of uniform, not even name tags, so I had no problem being taken for one of them. This would-be librarian even knew the answers to the questions she got, most of the time - scary, eh?

I'm not sure the real librarians were fond of me though - I'd often have them go to the underground warehouse to fetch the least borrowed books...

Come to think of it - I believe I've already told this story before - if so, please ignore me...

Wasn't there an Almost First To The Forum award?

Now I have an urge to wade through the back conversations to compile of list of First to the Forum recipients. I think I'll go lie down until the urge goes away.

*Matina returns from the kitchen with a cup of green tea in an AFTTF mug*


dave, when the midwest is an inland sea we'll be scuba-diving LA. Or somebody will. I'm staying right up here in the mountains.

Who will be the next scribe?

Oh ! A new conversation . Do you have a specific interval? I think the last one ran through a fortnight (?)

I like the resumées - a big help for us with - eh, Ti

During the weekend my brain almost melted - so today I've stayed in-door to finish my article. (Deadline this morning - but they know me )

Now, I think, it is bearable to go outside.

The ideal length is about a thousand posts, but it's been known to run twice that, and during the war last year I didn't start a new conversation until "Mission Accomplished", bogus as that was. And we were near 5000 posts or so, I believe. Or 4200.

Really long threads can be off-putting for newcomers, we find, who don't know where to jump in.

I'm officially back at work after a week's vacation, and MR is on the bus home. Among the exciting events:

*sleeping in
*staying up late
*going out to various bars and drinking
*rafting down the river
*a night of pub trivia (we didn't win)
*a Very Catholic wedding with a open bar wedding rehearsal dinner and an open bar reception
*general tourista business in another city
*silly photographs

I'm just sorry it had to end.

Sounds like a good time was had by all there FG

I don't know about the mid west or any other places but right outside the office is horrible and wet right now, just as I'm about to up sticks and walk to the train station to go home
Still at least it was dry while we all had to stand outside during yet another fire alarm (most likely the builders who have cut a big hole in the building I work in!)