Tracey has posted a gorgeous desktop calendar for January 2004. I’m loving it! I hope she does one every month. In a similar (but not nearly so nice) vein, I’ve posted a printable 2004 Roald Dahl calendar featuring covers from his books. Between the two of us, we’ve taken care of all your organisational needs.

Friday Five:

1. List your five favorite beverages.
Currently it’s Diet Coke, Vanilla Diet Coke, lemon iced tea, water, and beer.

2. List your five favorite websites.
Based on the time I spend on them, I’d say Glitter, MetaFilter, The Sydney Morning Herald, Television Without Pity, and Slashdot.

3. List your five favorite snack foods.
Since we started the whole low-carb thing, my snacking has changed quite a bit. Nowadays I’m more likely to be eating cheese, pickles, salami, hard-boiled eggs, and Cadbury Lite bars than chips and salsa.

4. List your five favorite board and/or card games.
Euchre, Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly, Taboo, and Egyptian Rat Screw. (That last one is an invented variation of War that my high school speech team buddies and I played throughout every meet.)

5. List your five favorite computer and/or game system games.
Ms Pac-Man, Tetris, Dr. Mario, Super Mario Bros. 3, and Minesweeper. I like the puzzle games.

More Australian Linguistic Weirdness
Today I discovered that popsicles are called “icy poles” in Australia. I nearly spat mine out.

Merry Christmas from the Hoff!

Apologies to the vegetarians, but I was pretty amused by this turkey shooting Flash game. How many can you get? And hey, it’s not like the turkeys don’t fight back.

Oh yum. Tonight my friend Martin invited Rodd and I over to his fiancee’s family’s Korean barbecue restaurant. It was fantastic. Twenty-five bucks for all-you-can-eat and everything was delicious. The table had a built in grilling pit and the waiter kept us supplied with glowing red charcoal. We threw on marinated beef and pork and ribs and baby octopus. We piled plates with kimchi and vegetables and strange salads of every description. We washed everything down with ice cold beer. It was the perfect meal for a balmy summer night. (The place is called Seoul Restaurant and it’s on Punchbowl Road in Belfield, if you’re interested and in the Sydney area.) As we were leaving, I tentatively said one of the few Korean phrases I know: “Kamsahamnida” (“Thank you”). Our hostess, Martin’s future mother-in-law, looked at me surprised. Martin rattled off something in Korean of which I caught the word “grandmother” and guessed that he was explaining my heritage. His mother-in-law looked me up and down – I was about two feel taller than her – and laughed. Yeah, that’s the usual reaction.

There are several new Mac OSX updates for us Apple folks today. I’m installing as we speak…

Finished! Install went smoothly, but I’m not noticing any immediate changes. Battery life remains the same. It reads 2:35 at fully charged, but as I keep it plugged in all the time I really don’t know if I’ve suffered any degradation.

Awww! New little baby tigers at Taronga Zoo in Sydney… We’ll have to go see them once the tide of schoolchildren has ebbed.

The BBC has reviewed the latest round of iPod advertising and they think it’s pretty cool. I was surprised to read that there are three different songs that show with the commercials. Here in Oz I’ve only ever seen the one with the Jet song (which would be the “garage rock” of the three, I’m guessing). I wonder if that’s because they’re an Aussie band…

Oh Ebert, you contrary little man. All the other other critics in the world are falling over themselves to declare Return of the King the greatest movie ever made, yet you give it a mere 3.5 stars out of 4. And that is why I love you.