Beowabbit

Mediaeval word puzzles, courtesy of Retronaut. I can’t quite tell whether they’re actually puzzles of some sort or just passages written in a grid like Seek-and-Find. They’re not that; they’re legible Latin left-to-right, but I suspect there’s something deeper hidden in the layout. (The phrasing seems a little odd, and the lack of spaces — the letterforms are clearly from a time when spaces would have been used — and features like the consistent use of Q alone for QU suggest some kind of puzzle.) The site where I found them doesn’t have much information; anybody whose Latin (or patience) is better than mine want to take a guess at what the puzzle is?

(This is a little more retro than Retronaut’s usual fare, but they have some interesting stuff.)

The last few days have been excellent. plumtreeblossom has had some good news: (1) thanks to Jim Bunning backing down, her unemployment benefits were reinstated — along with most other people’s who were in her situation —, although there was a lot of confusion around that fact as Massachusetts’ unemployment office ramped up again, (2) she has a temp gig for the next few weeks, which she’s had a day of so far and it seems pleasant, if not as lucrative as one might want, and (3) I’m going to let her post about lest I steal her thunder.

I had several very social days; got together with a friend on Wednesday, saw surrealestate and a bunch of her friends for games on Thursday (although I conked out kind of early), and had dinner with eisa on Friday.

Thursday night (after games, which she couldn’t make it to) I stayed at plumtreeblossom’s, and then last night she cooked dinner for me — a wonderful meal in the crockpot — before we went to a delightful and colourful birthday party where there was much dancing to ’80s music. (And I again conked out early, but I am told I was very cute snoozing in the dance hall.)

Today we slept late, and the weather was so warm, sunny, and delightful that we walked to Davis Square and shared an ice cream sundae sitting outside and listening to a (quite good) busker.

Got to talk to my sister and brother-in-law yesterday. She’s home from the hospital, as is one of the twins, and the other one is expected to come home on Monday. Our mother’s flying out there on Thursday.

And I got my formal official paper offer letter from MIT in the mail today.

It’s sure feeling like spring!

On Friday I met plumtreeblossom after work (see her weekend write-up here) and we took the train to Quincy Center together. We had dinner at Outback Steakhouse. I don’t like their corporate politics, but I love their food and sometimes I just need a hunk of cow. As it turned out, I’m very glad we did, because I ordered an Australian beer I wasn’t familiar with — Cooper’s Brewery Sparkling Ale — and it was so good I ordered a second, and then went looking for it at the liquor store later in the week. (If you are wise enough to follow my example, be cautioned that it’s fermented in the bottle, so there’s some sediment in the bottom; you want to pour it into a glass.)

After a yummy dinner, we went to my house and watched Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical, which was very funny, and a little bit of the original 1930s exploitation/propaganda movie, which was a bonus on the DVD.

( Another few meals, another movie, some geekery, and some games with darxus and cathijosephine. )

At some point in the weekend, plumtreeblossom took a whole bunch of pictures of grim warrior beowabbit, including the one that I eventually munged into my new userpic, and I also took some pictures of her cats, who were sleeping together on her bed looking especially cute.

The one bad thing about the weekend is that towards the end of the workweek I’d been having little twinges in my hip, and they got considerably worse over the weekend. I’m going to need to drive to the T tomorrow (where parking is $7); there’s no way I can do the normally 15-minutes walk to the T station with the ice that’s on the sidewalks. I’m not sure if this is a return of my sciatica or if I did something to my hip slipping on the ice. But if a hurt hip is the price for all the joy and fun I had this weekend, it was worth it.

Slept really late yesterday, and was conscious today. (Er, by “today” I mean “Sunday”.)

Got to go to King Richard’s Faire today with the wonderful eisa, who’s up from New York City for the weekend. We got to see [person who’s LJ name I don’t know, if he has one], who works there. They had tigers, leopards, and a stunningly huge liger, a falconry exhibition, an albino Burmese python, and oh, I think there were also some people walking around in funny clothes. It was quite fun. Afterwards we watched Grave of the Fireflies, an amazingly well done and amazingly depressing animated Japanese film about a young brother and sister orphaned towards the end of the war. It also presented a rather, um, simple picture of the war, but I wasn’t too surprised at that. Very good movie, but I’m glad I wasn’t alone when I saw it. Oh, and we got to play a couple games of Chez Geek, which neither of us had played in years. And on my way home from dropping her off to meet jadasc, I got to spend a little time with cathijosephine’s cat Chickenfinger.

Still wish I could have made it to BiCamp, but today still made for a good weekend. Now I must sleep. Actually, a long time ago I must sleep, but now I’m going to.

PS — Eventually I will post photos of the cats and raptors.

Howdy! I plan (slightly tentatively) on having a games afternoon on Sunday, August 27. It’ll be the day after my birthday, and it will have been a long time since I’ve played Cities and Knights, or Carcassonne, or Puerto Rico, and I’d love for y’all to come and help me fix that. (I’m going to be mostly interested in playing German-style board games, but if y’all want to bring card games, other kinds of board games, retro video games, party games, or whatever, you’re welcome to. And I plan on starting this at 2:00pm and going till 9:00 or so, so we should have time for several games.)

This will be at my house in Quincy. RSVPs (via comment here or by email) are highly recommended so that (1) I can be sure that my relatively small house will accommodate everyone (although if the weather is nice, we can use the deck for those games that are less likely to blow away) and so that (2) I can get you directions.

PS — Also, Remember, Remember the 25th of August.

First, the morning from hell. For background, I got a new prescription for contacts a few months ago, which turned out to be incorrect, although the sample lenses the eye doctor had given me to try out were correct. So I had an eye appointment scheduled for today to get the prescription fixed.

I’m too tired to do a fully-fleshed-out write-up, so I’ll just tell you about my morning by copying and pasting from mail to cathijosephine. ( Here’s what I wrote. )

So, the three good things: Thanks in large measure to mud_puppy, I went to a fundraiser/rally for Deval Patrick at the Hynes Convention Center on Thursday. Introducing him was Barack Obama, who of course was a really good speaker, but who did a very good job of not stealing Patrick’s thunder. I’d heard Obama’s DNC speech and a couple other sound bites, so I knew what to expect from him, and I got it. But I’d never heard Patrick speak; at most, I’d read short quotes. And wow, he is a kick-ass speaker! Inspiring, entertaining, honest-sounding, impressive. He gives the sound bites, but he also connects them and uses them responsibly. He doesn’t just assert or imply something, he explains why it happens. His speech made me simultaneously really confident in him as a politician and really confident in him as an officeholder, and you don’t get that combination very often. (Even people who are in fact going to be good at both often do only one or the other in their speeches.) So that was amazing. And it was nice to see mud_puppy and a couple co-workers of hers, docorion, and lilbjorn and M. there.

After that, I met cathijosephine at Sarsfield’s, our local Irish pub, for a pint and a half each, which made up in caloric value for not having had dinner. :-) We had a really good time. While I’d seen her a few times recently, this was the first time we’d had a chance to just chat one-on-one since before I went to Hawai‘i, and it felt really good.

And tonight I went over to chienne_folle’s for a night of text-adventure games with her and her husband and a bunch of their friends, which was really, really fun. Makes me want to put some text adventures on my Treo to play on the subway; evidently there’s a lot out there. We played a game called Ad Verbum (if I’m remembering correctly), which was interesting in that it was largely about verbal puzzles. For instance, there’s a room in which all the descriptions use only words that start with S, and you can only use words that start with S in your commands. Atypical, I guess, but lots of fun. I left before they started the second one, because I was starting to get too tired for that kind of brainage, but I had a great time, and seeing queenofhalves there was an unexpected pleasure.

So, all in all, life is good! And soon I will have new contact lenses that don’t give me headaches and with which I can actually read computer screens!

beowabbit sleep now.

Thanks to zzbottom for a couple of fab Cities and Knights games last night, and to missdimple for opening her house to us.

This morning I read the Reuters headline “Straw urges Iraq to build unfed government”, and my first thought was “They’re going to want to spend some wheat real quick.”

What a fun, busy weekend!

Friday: Hanging out at the Diesel, followed by watching Finding Neverland with bbbsg, chillguru, cathijosephine, and dustriderma. Loved the movie, and the company.

Saturday: Three games of Cities and Knights with magid, queue, and pheromone (with G. who no longer has an LJ hanging out with us). It was marvellous. If I’m remembering correctly, pheromone won all three games; I know she won two of them, and I think I’d have remembered if she didn’t win all three of them, since it’s such a rare event.

Sunday: Yummy brunch, involving enjoying the company of a bunch of people I knew and making the acquaintance of a bunch of nifty people I didn’t know, followed by going over to zzbottom’s to welcome him home from auctioneering school and get one of his shiny new business cards.

Fun weekend!

Saturday was a going-away party for scholargipsy, which was tremendous fun, and at which I met sunstealer and heinleinfan, whom I’d noticed on LJ but never actually been introduced to in person.

This afternoon I had a very tentative notion of going to a Phantom Gourmet food festival in the Fenway, but it ended up not quite getting organized, which is fine, because it turns out it was sold out. Instead I had a mellow day at home, and got a call around 3:00pm about a Cities and Knights game getting organdized, so that’s what I did in the evening. It was a good game; more even towards the end than they usually are.

It’s also been a good weekend for getting little chores done – laundry, dishes, minor house stuff, packing some things to send to sionnagh, and so forth – and for reading and relaxing.

While I’ve had a good chunk of socialism socialization being social both days, I also had lots of good quiet alone time. I’m feeling very refreshed.

Oh, speaking of refreshed, on Friday I taught at work for the first time this year. I usually teach a few weeks of the required course for first-year CS/IS majors, on basic Unix skills and history and sometimes other stuff, but last year I didn’t because my group was so busy with the impending move to the new building. I really like teaching, and it always makes me feel good.

Howdy! Just a reminder that I’m having a games night at my place this Friday at 7:00pm. See my previous post for more details.

Also, tomorrow *looks at clock* today is your last chance to say hi to sionnagh and docorion at the Diesel before they return to their lovely tropical island, so stop by!