The Lost Art of Knitting Nancies. Very informative little article, that, with lots of pictures. (Incidentally, we sell “knitting nancies” in the shop but we call them “French knitters.” People used to make them out of wooden spools but you never find wooden spools anymore.)

Howard’s Law: The chances of your running into a fellow Weight Watcher are exponentially related to the number of scoops of Forbidden Ice Cream you’re holding. *sigh*

I noticed recently that I wasn’t getting any sound in Flash movies on my iMac G5. My little iBook worked fine, but Big Boudicca just stayed mute. I’d even reinstalled Flash. Well, today I finally tracked down the problem. If you’re running OS X 10.4 and you’ve used Audacity at some point, you’ve probably got the same issue. Luckily the fix is pretty simple!

I discovered yesterday that Coke Zero has finally landed on Australian shores. (This Wikipedia article is particularly helpful in explaining the differences between the various Coke formulas.) I picked up a bottle with my felafel roll and had drunk half of it before I remembered I should be critiquing it. On that basis, I can conclusively state that if you like Coke, you’ll like Coke Zero. It definitely tasted sweeter to my Diet-Coke-attuned palate, but not so sweet that I had to suppress the gag reflex just to get it down. (*cough* Pepsi Max *cough*) Actually the thing I liked best about the new formula is the label design. Very schmick. And is that my favorite font Trebuchet MS on there…?

You know, I just can’t really imagine what danger a space terrorist poses. It’s not like they’re going to teach the tourists to polite the ships. It’s not like they’re going to point out all the buttons they could push to blow up the ship. It’s not like you’d be able to sneak a box cutter on in your space suit. It’s baffling.

Okay, I just DEVOURED the first volume of The Amazing X-Men, and it was fantastic and all… but since I’ve never read any other X-Men EVER, I’d say about 50% of it went right over my head. Can anybody fill me in on the immediate backstory? Assume I know nothing beyond the two movies (because I don’t). I figured out Kitty Pryde, but who’s Emma Frost? Where’s the Professor? What’s the previous virus they’re talking about? What happened when Manhattan was attacked? Is Magneto dead? Who are S.H.I.E.L.D.? I’m definitely going to read it again – and a lot slower – but I could sure use some help. If this is all too much, perhaps there’s a wiki or other useful introduction someone could point me to?

I’m officially launching the new design of the Knitters’ Guild of NSW website. I still have more content to add, but the basic gist of it is there… (And hey, that’s Miss Fee in the photo I used on the home page!)

Things I Discovered Today:

• It wasn’t the antibiotics that were making me feel woozy and crappy; it was the codeine in the painkillers! I switched it up to plain ibuprofen today and I’m fine. Kudos to the clever pharmacist at Harrison’s for diagnosing that one.
• Veronica Mars is really, really good. I watched the first six episodes.
• It is entirely possible to eat chocolate with only one side of your mouth. In fact, it’s possible to eat an entire Advent calendar with only one side of your mouth. Oy vey. I’m sooo not weighing in this week.

The Return of Pub Trivia
Since I wanted a big hunk of red meat for my last pre-op meal, the Snook and I ended up over at the Nag’s Head in Glebe. I had the filet mignon; he had the sirloin. Just as we were finishing, we heard someone announce that the weekly trivia comp was about to begin. “Why not?” We hurried over to grab an answer sheet. Needless to say, we absolutely SUCKED on the first round. There were too many questions about rugby league, too many song identifications we didn’t know… At one point, we actually resorted to putting down joke answers. (Which I normally hate, but when the question is “What countries are separated by the Bay of Bothnia?” and you have no clue, there’s nothing else to do but write “Therbia and Herthogivina.”) After that round, we were tied for fifth place and I was seriously considering bailing. It seems that we just needed to work the rust out though, because in the second round we ROCKED THE HOUSE. It’s like you use a special muscle to retrieve information from all the crazy cobwebby bits of your brain, and I just needed to give mine a bit of a warm-up before it was functioning properly. I even won us a jug of beer on a movie identification game. (The hints: made in 1975, featured coconuts as a “special effect” for horses’ hooves, starred Connie Booth… I got it as soon as she said coconuts, but I was worried since it’s such a long title to write out!) We ended up making a stunning comeback to finish second(!) behind an entire quartet of Comic Book Guys (who were so far ahead that it seemed dodgy). And besides, if you’d divided each team’s points by the number of members, we were totally the champions of the night.

Anyway, here were some of the memorable questions:

• Name the Steven Spielberg movies from the taglines: “The Mission is the Man,” “They’re Here,” “He’s Scared. He’s Alone. He’s Three Million Miles from Home.”
• Name the two actors who played the bumbling robbers in Home Alone.
• Name the Sydney 2000 Olympic gold medallists in the men’s 100m, 200m, and 400m dash.
• What vegetable is also known as the stinking rose? (We actually high-fived when she read this out.)
• Which part of the body contains spongy tissue called the “corpus cavernosum”? (We were the only people in the pub to get this right! And we actually wrote our answer down as a bit of a joke, seeing as how we misheard the Latin as “corpus cabanossum.” Go figure.)
• Which Clint Eastwood movie featured the song “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” by Roberta Flack?

And if any of you actually know the Bay of Bothnia, I shall bow down to your superior geography skillz…