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

There don't seem to be many conversations going on on H2G2 at the moment. That's not a bad thing, because most of the time on here I am making sure everything is working out for the Mannheim meet on 24 April.

We have had quite a busy time since Christmas. In January my eldest son had his wisdom teeth out (three at once!) and then came to announce that he was getting married.

We haven't really had time to think about that much because it was my husband's 60th birthday at the beginning of February and that involved two busy weekends, as he had a big party on the 13th.

One of his presents was a whisky-tasting, given by his sister. This took place at a nearby hotel in the woods and we booked straight away for the next available date, 27 Feb. We drove over on the Saturday afternoon, checked into the hotel, went for a bracing walk and got changed and it was time for the whisky-tasting and dinner. The food was glorious - with each course we had a sample of a different kind of whisky, and right at the end the communal bowl was handed round (he said it is called a "queich") with a particularly nice sort.

The chap who presented the whiskies is a whisky connoisseur who has his own shop. However, I'm not sure how much of what he said was reliable, as he claimed that St Patrick's day was 19 March. Anyway, I didn't take notes, and the evening was really well organised and most enjoyable. We had grilled dorade, followed by a tiny little pot of cream of tarragon soup. The main course was grilled venison fillet (must have been from a very young animal, it was very light coloured meat and extremely tender) with green beans, served on mashed potatoes with ceps (? - French cêpe, German Steinpilz, Italian porcini) and for pudding a little tower of brownies and a whisky-flavoured cream with cherries.

The whiskies were out of this world and I didn't have a headache or anything the next day. In fact, I felt fine after the meal and could probably have driven home, but we'd booked a room.

More later - last weekend we were in Berlin!

Tonight we're going to sit down with son No 1 and future wife and her parents to go through the wedding details, and hopefully to sort out the financial side in an amicable and sensible way. Shouldn't be a problem, her parents are perfectly decent people.

My head is full of music and flowers! - aren't there any flowery smileys? Only the ?

There's .

Thanks for all the work you're doing for the Mannheim Meet-up, TC.

You're welcome. I hope to make it worth while for all who are coming. But knowing the hootoo crowd, usually they're happy to just sit and eat, drink and chat and walk around and admire the scenery.

Oh, it seems you're having a most pleasantly eventful start of the year

Stop changing your name, naughty boy! Or I'll starting using your RL name!

It reminds me of that game where you change one letter at a time...

e.g.

bank
band
hand
hang
bang

first toybox, then toyboy, tonyboy, now ponyboy... Where will this end?

It's all stunningfrenchie's fault! Back to toybox then.