Been hearing good things about the revamp of Star Fleet Battles called Federation Commander – it sounds like it can be played by both normal humans as well as rule-monkey hardcore gamers. I think that I’ll work BHK into it after she gets over the Pirates addiction. (Free Sample Game here as a pdf from the homepage) I’m more likely to get the Romulan one first… it has Gorn Ships, too, even though Klingons are plenty keen.
BHK and I spent most of our waking day with the in-laws… What I thought would be a quick-ish trip to get some plywood became a pleasant all-day affair.
Firstly, we visited our snowman, now just a stick and bit of cork on the dock, since it’s 63 degrees outside.
It was a nice day on the bay
Later we went to Leonardtown and stopped off at Witch’s Rock (An 875-pound boulder sits in front of this museum, and it’s said that visitors can see the hand print of Moll Dyer on the rock. Dyer was labeled a witch by the townspeople and was driven from her home on one of the coldest nights of the year. Her neighbors burned down her cabin, so she was left to the elements. Dyer was found the next morning, frozen to death and clutching the giant rock. When the townspeople removed her body, the impressions of her knees and hands were left at the scene. Three hundred years later, people report seeing a ghostly apparition floating over the land where she lived. Visitors to the museum report feeling aches and pains when they stand near the rock, and those who have tried to take pictures of it find that their cameras malfunction.)
after getting Mexican hot chocolate at the tea room, and touched it outside the courthouse. Lacking any non-photo manipulated spiritual manifestation, we continued on to try by touching witch’s other stuff (trash can, tree, flagpole, picnic table, and ash tray), with more solid results.
We’re just fine.
Veterans of WWI memorial, Segregated by colored and white Heroes fallen in battle.
Google has added a slick new feature to their mapping product. Over 30 major US cities (including DC) now sport a new “Traffic” button that will display congestion, or (hopefully) lack of it, on important routes.
- Red means bumper-to-bumper gridlock
- Green means go go go
- Orange means somewhere in between
I don’t drive, but it would be interesting to hear from anyone out there who has tried this interface and has gotten feedback that actually helped them pick a successful alternate route.
Kiddo’s name is unlikely to be familiar to readers; however, he was the first cat — maybe the only one — to cross the Atlantic Ocean (well, almost) by airship. He was a grey tabby and belonged to one of the crew members of Walter Wellman’s airship America. Wellman (1858-1934) was an American explorer, aeronaut and journalist. In 1910 he and five companions attempted to cross the ocean, leaving from Atlantic City, New Jersey on 15 October that year. Kiddo is said to have stowed away in one of the lifeboats, and really did not enjoy his first experience of flying, mewing and howling and generally getting on the nerves of the first engineer, Melvin Vaniman. The America carried radio equipment — the first aircraft so equipped — and apparently the historic first, in-flight radio message, to a secretary back on land, read: ‘Roy, come and get this goddamn cat!’
